The gauntlet has been thrown down.
And picked up.
Now, there’s nothing but some trash-talking going on until the results of the dual are known.
The dual is a competition between the Mount Airy Rotary Club and the Rotary Club of Mount Airy. No, that isn’t some sort of metaphysical inner-battle, and the trash-talking doesn’t mean heated insults being hurled (though there might be a little bit of tongue-in-cheek taunting).
It’s a simple contest between the local Mount Airy Rotary Club and the Rotary Club of Mount Airy, Maryland, and the competition is to see which club can do the most to clean garbage from their highways and community.
Marion Goldwasser, president of the local club, said Dick Wilcher, her counterpart in the Maryland club, first contacted her last fall.
“He wanted to set up a contest between our two Rotary Clubs, to do something focused on environmental stewardship,” she said.
Wilcher explained that Rotary International, the parent organization for Rotary Clubs, recently shifted gears to add a new area of focus to the work their members do, with that focus being on the environment.
“Sometimes there’s some confusion among people about our two clubs,” he said, given their city names are the same. “I thought ‘Why don’t we have a challenge between their group and our group?’”
A little digging and he came up with Goldwasser’s contact information, reached out to her and soon “Mount Airy, Maryland vs. Mount Airy, North Carolina” was born.
The gist of the contest is that both clubs, working in their respective communities, organize an effort to get out and clean up trash along roadways, in public areas, wherever there’s garbage that’s not supposed to be there.
The specifics on the competition seem to be a little nebulous.
“We did ours last weekend,” Wilcher said Thursday. There, the Rotary club members gathered on roadways that had already been scouted and graded for need.
“We identified all the major roads we wanted to clean up, then we went out and looked at them, evaluated them based on how much trash we could see…then evaluated them for traffic conditions.”
The roads with the most need were first priority, and those with higher traffic meant additional safety precautions, such as reflective vests and a truck following behind the workers to shield them from oncoming traffic.
Once the roads to be cleaned were selected, Wilcher said the effort was opened up to any community group which wanted to participate.
“The community involvement was incredible,” he said. Boy Scout troops, other civic groups, businesses and individuals came out to help.
“We had a business donate a dumpster, a 20-cubic yard dumpster, he delivered it Friday afternoon and picked it up Monday morning.”
On Sunday night, Wilcher said the dumpster contained 3,140 pounds of refuse.
While that is an impressive figure, Wilcher said the contest rules he and Goldwasser agreed to measure the number of people participating and the total hours worked as the ultimate measuring stick.
That’s where the contest rules become a little hazy. While the Maryland club apparently believes the contest was limited to a single April weekend, the local Mount Airy club seems to be operating under a slightly different set of rules.
The club did hit the streets last Saturday, along with a host of other local organizations and individuals, cleaning roadways and public spaces. But Goldwasser said the organization plans another run at cleaning up trash this Saturday — though forecasted rain will likely push the effort off until the following weekend (to which Wilcher, with a laugh, gave a bit of good-natured trash talk by saying “We wouldn’t let that affect us…we have hardy people here in Maryland.”)
The local group’s effort was combined with those by Boy Scout Troop 556, where Ridge Reeves organized the clean-up as part of his First Class rank community service; with Shante Anderson and the Equality in Action organization; with the Surry Sunrise Rotary Club; as well as the local high school Interact clubs; and Dr. Philip Brown, Polly Long, and others cleaning up around Jones Elementary School.
While the figures from last weekend’s effort haven’t yet been compiled, Goldwasser said the Boy Scout troop included troop members and adults working three hours, while filling 54 bags of garbage; the folks at Jones Elementary filling 65 bags; and a number of Rotary volunteers clearing along Green Hill Road in front of Cross Creek Country Club.
This weekend, or next weekend if the rain does come, she said the Rotary Club will be working along Old Route 52.
“If there’s anybody who gets inspired by this who just wants to go out and clean their yards or what have you…if they contact me and send a picture, that’s one more bag to add to the contest,” she said. Her email is mmmgoldwasser@gmail.com.
As for the final tally, that seems to still be a work-in-progress for the local Rotary Club. For his part, Wilcher said “I’ll give you our numbers as soon as they give you theirs,” again with a laugh before suggesting perhaps both clubs could send their totals to the Mount Airy News, the one here in North Carolina, for the final determination on the winner.
For now, the two club leaders will have to work out which direction they go with determining a winner. Either way, their members worked hard to make both communities a little bit cleaner.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com