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LCCC CIC Club hosts guest speaker

Letter to the Editor: Gun affinity gets taken to extremes by some who reject sensible checks

Would it be a good idea to &#8230;&#8230; build a stronger sense of community here?People in Luzerne County&#8217;s 76 municipalities can be forgiven for not feeling like they&#8217;re part of a unified place. Historically, residents of this region&#8217;s towns, which sprang up to support the coal industry, have been split by ethnicity, income, religion and language. Today those barriers might be less noticeable, but, for many reasons, we sometimes struggle to get to know the neighbors, much less the new couple who moved in down the block.Can we truly &#8220;live united&#8221; &#8211; as the United Way slogan encourages &#8211; if we rarely connect?The situation, familiar to people in many U.S. cities and suburbs, has prompted lots of academic discussion and no shortage of practical suggestions.EngagingCities, an online magazine, published a 2012 article titled &#8220;<a href="http://engagingcities.com/article/connect-your-neighbors-nine-creative-community-building-ideas" target="_blank">Connect With Your Neighbors: Nine Creative Community Building Ideas</a>.&#8221; Among its suggestions: eat dinner with the family on the front patio, take down (or lower) your property&#8217;s fence and organize potluck street parties. Also, take a survey of your neighbors, it was suggested, to create a list of the skills each could offer if a natural disaster or other crisis struck. &#8220;Frame it around &#8216;emergency preparedness,&#8217; but watch how it cultivates community,&#8221; the article stated.An Internet search on community-enhancing ideas also yielded these results:&#8226; BetterTogether.org&#8217;s compilation of &#8220;<a href="http://www.bettertogether.org/150ways.htm" target="_blank">150 Things You Can Do To Build Social Capital.</a>&#8221;&#8226; Youth Service America&#8217;s promotion of the 2015 Global Youth Service Day, which offered community-building <a href="http://www.gysd.org/community_building" target="_blank">project ideas specifically for kids</a>.Might an organization, such as the United Way of Wyoming Valley or the Wyoming Valley Interfaith Council, lead an effort in 2016 to counteract the corrosiveness of recruitment efforts here by a KKK-affiliated group as well as the hatemongering fueled by national political disagreements?On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, of all days, might someone locally feel the call to help area residents &#8220;live together as brothers&#8221; and sisters?Or do you believe things would be far better if we all lived by this motto: Keep your distance?Give us your feedback by sending a letter to the editor or posting comments to this editorial at timesleader.com.Likewise, tell us your ideas for improving the community and making area residents&#8217; lives better. Maybe we&#8217;ll spotlight your suggestion in a future editorial and ask readers, &#8220;Would it be a good idea to &#8230;&#8221;

Our Opinion: Your small acts can create stronger bonds throughout NEPA