by Mike Rosso
Our cover tagline speaks of embracing change, and not just the change of seasons – although Rita Roberts’ painting goes a long way toward invoking just that – but also the changes that occur in our everyday lives.
Change can happen when you least expect it, or it may happen due to personal and purposeful motivations. Quitting one’s job, deciding to retire, selling your home to go live on a boat – those are all decisions we make that indicate it is, in fact, time for a change.
Other changes happen to us. Losing a friend or family member, unexpectedly gaining a fine new friend, maybe a sudden medical diagnosis that upends your familiar, day-to-day existence. How we choose to deal with these changes says a lot about ourselves. Often we resist unplanned change with every fiber of our being, which is natural if the change is unpleasant. Embracing change turns it into more of an adventure, like taking a wrong turn on a mountain road but continuing on nonetheless, to see what lies beyond the next bend.
Salida itself is going through some big changes these days. Housing prices are on the rise (when houses are available), and there are more and more new faces calling this place home – a new change for them and for the city as well.
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Even our city government is about to change. We have three council seats up for grabs this November as well as the mayor’s chair, the results of which will have an impact on Salida for better or worse. One group is running three candidates on the “change it back” platform, but that train has long since left the station. More newcomers mean more change: more students in the classrooms, cars on the road, feet and bikes on the trails, and more voters.
Thankfully there are no senate or congressional seats up for grabs this year. Instead, we get to obsess about the 2016 presidential election. But as I write this, there is a special visitor in the U.S.: Pope Francis, the 266th pope in the history of mankind. He’s making a splash of sorts, and possibly bringing about some positive change in a country obsessed with wealth and possessions, that seems to have nothing but contempt for the less fortunate among us. Francis is actually preaching the gospel of compassion, of caring for our fellow man and for our planet, and in my book, that is a welcome change.
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In our special poetry issue last month, a printer’s error caused several poems to be illegible. We’ve rectified that by reprinting them on page 31 of this issue.
Thanks for reading!
