 Uptown Reedsport is swirling with flower petals, a beautiful insistence that summer is around the corner. While waiting at a traffic light, I saw flurry of petals across the street caught in an eddy, but when the light turned, they suddenly rose up and gusted down the highway in a river of pink as though they had been waiting to go. What a lovely display for Earth Day!
Another lovely display for today will be our Reedsport Main Street Program’s Open House tonight from 5pm to 7pm in the Community Center. This is your chance to learn more about the program, talk to the volunteers who have been getting involved, and find out what we’ve been up to. Come take a look at the newly restored steam donkey stack and check out one of the prototype Bike Pods that will soon be making a splash in the middle of town. We’ll have presentations from Mayor Linda McCollum, City Manager Jonathan Wright, yours truly, and Dan Varcoe from Rural Development Initiatives. Best of all, we invite you to enjoy a free meal provided by our volunteers. Our program is entirely run thanks to the energy and optimism of regular people from our community. Maybe you’re one of them? If you’re not sure, come tonight and learn about ways that you can help our town. One way that you can help is by continuing to vote for Reedsport in the America’s Main Streets Contest, and online competition for $25,000 based on popular vote. This contest is extremely competitive, but nothing ventured nothing gained! The voting is open for two more days, and you can vote once every 24 hours per IP address. The link for our nomination is here: http://mainstreetcontest.com/profile.php?id=228 Our Façade Improvement Grant is currently open. If you have a business in Reedsport that fronts Highways 38 or 101 and would like to apply for our grant to help improve the exterior of your building, you have until the end of the month to submit an application. Thank you to everyone who has already submitted or is in the process of submitting! You can find the link for the application here: www.reedsportmainstreet.com/facade-improvement-grant.html Our next community volunteer project day will be on Friday, May 6th, from 10:30am to 4pm (or thereabouts.) Like before, lunch will be provided at noon for folks to take a break. These days have a been a great opportunity to meet people from all parts of our community and attract the attention of passersby! “What’s going on in Reedsport?” is a question that we always love to hear! We’re still hashing out the details of the work, but it looks like we’ll focus on some areas for weeding, general cleanup, potentially some work on the steam donkey, and potentially some painting. Mark your calendars and stay tuned for more info! If you love sharing and learning about the history of the Lower Umpqua region, then our upcoming Community Collection Day is the place for you! If you recall, we have been compiling a digital archive of local history in order to preserve it and make it available to everyone. This archive is not meant to overshadow the hard work of other historians who have worked in our area, but to provide a resource for future historians to use as they learn about the communities of Scottsburg, Gardiner, Reedsport, Winchester Bay, and everyone who has every contributed to the story of the Lower Umpqua. We’re building this archive by recording oral histories and copying the materials that people bring to our Community Collection Days. If you have anything that you want to contribute, whether objects or stories, then please come to our next Collection Day on May 13th at the Lower Umpqua Senior Center, 460 Winchester Avenue, Reedsport. We’ll be available from 10am to 12am and from 1pm to 4pm. Remember, we’ll only copy what you bring – you keep the originals. Interested in helping out? We also need volunteers for the Collection Day to record information, interview people, and scan materials. If you want to get involved, please contact me and plan to come to our volunteer training on Wednesday, May 11th from 3:30-4:30pm in the conference room at Reedsport City Hall. We’ll have a special guest, a mentor from the Oregon Heritage MentorCorps program, who has offered to help us shape and improve this historical collection campaign. We are undertaking something that has never quite been done before here in Oregon, and so our goal is to do it well and lead the way for others while doing a great service for our community. Finally, here are some more dates for the month of May. Tuesday, May 10th, the Promotion Committee meets at 5pm at the Waterfront Restaurant. The next day, Wednesday, May 11th, the Economic Development Committee will meet at 5pm in the conference room at City Hall. Tuesday, May 17th, the RMSP Board of Directors meets at 5pm in the conference room at City Hall. There are so many meetings in that room, I’m surprised a Starbucks hasn’t taken root there yet. And that about does it! I hope to see you all tonight or at one of our upcoming meetings or events. If you ever have any questions or comments, please give me a call. I love chatting with people; it’s the highlight of my day! All the best, Katie Lockard Reedsport Main Street Program Coordinator Comments are closed.
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