We're Old School

It took me some time to appreciate what Bend is offering, but I have. I love this town with its sweeping skyscapes, and charming neighbors, many of whom embody that old-fashioned Brother's Keeper business we have been talked out of in the New Age.

There was a time when the mentoring of young people was considered our responsibility. The Me Generation stripped that from our social constitution in favor of video games wherein children could wipe out an army of grown men with the ease of a mouse click, setting a precedent of false independence that went unchallenged. "It's all good" being the war cry of this ignorance.

It was not all good.

We now have a mushroom colony of teens who would sooner spit in an adult's eye than ask for a hand. This is wrong. Heroes and mentors are necessary to the growth of a society, passing the baton to young people with great love, and watching as they surpass us with their added brilliance.

Bend has some of this at work, purely because the old fashioned ways of its residents recall a time when this was part of the fabric of real community.

Trish Mullahey