Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:48:21 -0400
From: Karen Crowell
Subject: a home is a place to live
Chatham County is a place. A place where you can live. It can be a place where you were born, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be a place to raise a family , make a living, or retire. It can also be a place where you can own a house or a piece of property. For all of these reasons, it can be a place to cherish, a place to call home.
You can say that you are from Chatham County. You can even be proud to be from Chatham County. But it’s also home to many other people. People you know, but a lot of people you probably don’t know. People you may or may not like. People who share your history and values or don’t.
What you cannot say is that Chatham County is your home and not theirs. Because you don’t own Chatham County. You can speak of it as if it were yours, saying, for example, “my county” or “my country”. But Chatham County, like America, is a place. Unlike a house or a piece of property, places cannot be owned or bought or sold.
Chatham County can be a place we all call home. A place where we can all live and prosper. But not if we only let /some/ people live here or only let /some /people prosper.
With this in mind, I wish to extend a warm welcome to the families who will be honored this month as new owners of Habitat houses. These are houses they built with the help of many friends, family and volunteers. They all worked very hard and they deserve our praise. We should be proud, too, that we, as a community, made it possible
by supporting and contributing generously to Chatham Habitat for Humanity.
Isn’t that the kind of community you’d like to live in? Maybe you already do. Maybe not. But you can. It’s up to you.
Karen Crowell