CHEERS to the seven Franklin County family farms that reached out to help their counterparts in Schoharie County devastated by the effects of Hurricane Irene. Three tractor-trailer loads recently carried 600 square bales and 44 round bales of hay to help the impacted farmers feed their stock. Even though their own hay supplies were limited, the farmers here dug deep and donated what they could. Special recognition also goes to the Franklin County Farm Bureau and the staff at the county's Soil and Water Conservation Office, who organized the effort. The farms are owned by Papas Dairy LLC, Bill Wood, Alan Choiniere, Vincent Farms LLC, Scott Robinson, Alan Lobdell and Kim Richey. We salute them for this generous gift to peers in need.
JEERS to the manufacturers of Christmas lights for not making a more durable project. We all know how it goes: You dig out your lights from last year, spend ages trying to get them untangled, finally succeed and plug them in — only to find that a strand of lights or, more vexingly, half a strand, isn't working. You shake a strand, and sometimes the lights come on or go off, which doesn't give you much confidence in their reliability. Granted, these lights are pretty inexpensive — you can get a string of 100 lights for about $4 — but do they have to also be cheap? What a mess in landfills to have people throwing out those plastics cords and tiny light bulbs after about a month's use when they won't light up the next year. Imagine the number of nonworking Christmas lights that are discarded nationwide every year? It seems, if the manufacturers wanted to, they could make a longer lasting light string. We hope their conscience gets a little more green in future years.
CHEERS to the volunteers who packed shoeboxes with much-needed school supplies, toys, hats, mittens and necessities for needy children around the world this season through Operation Christmas Child, a project run by the Christian charity Samaritan's Purse. A total of 6,456 boxes were collected around the North Country and processed at First Assembly of God Church in Plattsburgh, which has served as the area's central collection site for the past 10 years. Last year, volunteers packed 5,094 boxes. Organizers upped the goal this season to 5,700, but volunteers surpassed it by 756 boxes. Operation Christmas Child uses "whatever means necessary" to reach suffering children around the globe with gifts of hope, including use of ships, trucks, trains, airplanes, boats, camels and dog sleds. More than 86 million gifts have been hand-delivered to children worldwide since the program's start in 1993. It's wonderful to know that even in hard economic times and during the busy holiday season, North Country volunteers use their time and money to contribute to such an uplifting effort.
— If you have a Cheers and Jeers suggestion that you want the Editorial Board to consider, email it to Editor Lois Clermont at letters@pressrepublican.com.
