Early each morning when driving downtown, I pay special attention to the problem areas as well as the improved areas. I find green areas of the downtown and private properties that evidently the people who maintain them don’t know the difference between designated shrubs and blooming weeds and volunteer trees.
I also pay special attention to improvements that people are making on their homes and buildings. I can’t insist enough that when people make improvements, that they make them with design in mind as well as endurance against the weights of time and weather. I do hope that the City of Mason City sends out a memo to the business owners in the historic district before winter arrives that they must not use snow melt on their walks because if the slush is shoveled into a green area or has a melting run off, it will likely kill the perennials that are planted there. I have already seen it happen over this past winter.
The world is filled with developers and builders, but if there are not people who equally contribute in the long term maintenance, then what has been created falls quickly into dis-repair. I guess I’m an anomaly when it comes to presentation of commerce. I have know and worked with/for people who were always on the “cheap” when making improvements to their businesses. But, when I visited their homes, I would find borderline excess. Why would any owners of businesses which provide healthy incomes for their families not want to contribute the best towards their enterprises?
Many long years ago my sister and I went to visit my mother’s cousin who lived in the far south and east of Germany. His life was filled with many unbelievable struggles, but he endured. He created one of the larger woolen mills in Bavaria with a factory that was maintained to perfection. We had long conversations but one of the things he said that I will never forget was, “If I don’t take care of my employees and my company, then I have no right to consider myself a businessman.”
In our times of the world being of the idea of everything is all about “me”, then I believe we must all take a step back and look at the whole picture. Growing ourselves towards the mindset of long term growth is going to be slow. We must move forward with baby steps.
