A total community effort

The many volunteers who came together to build Sisters High School's new, state-of-the art greenhouse should be proud of themselves. They certainly earned the opportunity to bask in its warmth on a blustery early spring day, while enjoying some treats crafted by the SHS Culinary Arts program.

Uncounted volunteer hours went into the resurrection of the greenhouse program after the original greenhouse - then located at Sisters Middle School - collapsed under the weight of a heavy snowfall. That won't happen to this one; it's solidly built enough to withstand a hurricane.

Local businesses and contractors donated time, materials and expertise to make the project happen.

This is the kind of thing that Sisters does best. The gathering to cut the ribbon on the facility last week featured people of all ages, a variety of walks of life, and doubtless a wide range of social and political views on the world. There were retirees and young students, teachers and excavators and a stray photographer or two.

Whatever their differences in background, life experience, and outlook, they gathered on common ground: a belief that hands-on education matters; that a connection between farm and table matters; that overcoming obstacles to realize a vision matters.

It's easy to focus too much on the things that we don't like, the things that go wrong, and the things that divide us. Last Friday, a fine cross-section of the Sisters community gathered to celebrate the things that bring us together, in what lead volunteer David Hiller described as "a total community effort."

Hats off to 'em.

Jim Cornelius, Editor