On Sunday, five volunteers from the Lafayette County Libby Party turned out for our second Adopt A Highway clean up. Four of us are pictured above.
It seems like a small turn out, and indeed it was for our group. However, we had originally planned to meet on Saturday, but canceled due to likely rain. So, Sunday was our back up date, and it unfortunately conflicted with the schedules of a number of our members. C'est la vie.
More important, however, is why we decided to adopt a mile of highway. It's living by our principles: by voluntarily cleaning up a part of Oxford, we're showing that such things can be done without the government demanding that they be done or penalizing those who don't take part (sound like something recently passed?). It's a small gesture on our part, but as can be seen in the photo, a small group of volunteers can make a lot of progress. We collected about 26 bags of trash in under three hours.
We also take part simply because we like Oxford. It's an attractive town, just as Mississippi is an aesthetically pleasing state. And because we like it, we want to see it clean and maintained. On that account, it's not complicated.
One could object to the "purity" of our principles by saying Adopt A Highway is in fact a government program; after all, we didn't just jump up and start doing this on our own. In response, I would say that, yes, it is a government program, but it's voluntary to join. Further, the volunteers collect not a penny of taxpayer money. If we and others don't volunteer, then the government would want to hire workers to do this. Then again, if there were no Adopt A Highway program created by the government, others would surely come forward and begin doing this work of their own initiative. It doesn't take a government decree for people to realize that litter on the sides of roads is unsightly, and it's especially unsightly in an attractive town such as Oxford.
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