Rusty Nails, Kitty Litter, Electricity & Rotten Wood

At The Pretender's school, they don't have a playground.

Which wouldn't be so bad.   After all, they do have a big grassy field, and some marshy, watery areas. 


And the sandy place where the old playground used to be.

But the kids aren't allowed near the water.  Maybe for good reason.

And the culture of the school drives them toward the sandy spot.  Because the parents like to sit on the railroad ties that surround it.  Plus, who doesn't like sand?

Did I mention that drugs were found earlier this year in that sandy area?  And that it's wide open for stray cats to... well, you know.  And that those railroad ties are rotten?  How about the fact that there are huge rusty nails on these selfsame ties?  Unfortunately, I don't mean the Scotch cocktail.  I mean rusted, approximately 8 inch long spikes of metal.  Did I tell you kids use these railroad ties as balance beams, too?

But it gets "better".   Because next to the sandpit (the kids' name for it) there is a bricked in box.  Inside that box is an operative electrical transformer.  On the other side of the sandpit (and some nice pine trees, it must be added) is a lighted parking lot.  Can you guess what the electric transformer and the lights have to do with each other?  And surely those wires are buried so deep that no child could possibly dig down deep enough to uncover them.  Right?  Wrong.


And that, my friendly reader, is why I am on the committee to build a new playground for The Pretender's school.  I don't fully (or even partially, really) understand why the city doesn't pay for playgrounds for its own schools, but we need to raise money to buy a new playground and so I and a group of others who work much harder at it than I do are raising money.  S     L     O     W      L     Y.

Well, our esteemed leader found out that this group called Kaboom (click the name to read more about them) was doing a video contest and put together a wonderful pull-no-punches video about the school's need.

And the good news that comes after all that bad news above is that we were chosen from among who knows how many entries for the top 10.  The top 5 vote-getters of that group get $15K grants!  Would you believe that won't even begin to cover the total cost of a playground?  I never would've before this, but it's quite true.  Our fundraising goal is $75K.  But it's an awful nice chunk!

The great thing about this odd, maybe even shocking situation that I described above (no pun intended, obviously) is that in this case you can actually do something tangible.  Don't feel sorry for the kids, because they don't need or want that.  These are perfectly happy kids.  But what you can do is to vote for WELCH SCHOOL once a day in this contest.

Please go to this page to vote for WELCH SCHOOL as many times as you remember before June 22.  Oh, and you must do it through Facebook.  Sorry if that's a deal-breaker, but that's how the contest is operated.

Thank you for every vote from every reader that votes.