Patrick Henry

My very-first-right-away-out-of-the-box-early-morning thought was that at the present time, Oysterville needs a champion orator – you know, someone like Patrick Henry who could go around firing up the populace and getting them to write letters to our County Commissioners.

So many people have contacted us about their distress that our Commissioners are considering rescission of Pacific County Ordinance #162 – the only legal/official/bottom-line protection our little village has against the onslaught of the 21^st century. It is the Ordinance and its accompanying Design Review Guidelines that keep trailer parks and mobile homes at bay (so to speak) and protect the historic character of our village.

Welcome to Oysterville!

We are gratified that so many people have weighed in through email and telephone and FaceBook to offer us encouragement. And we urge each and every one of them to write to our Commissioners. But what we really need is a modern-day Patrick Henry to inspire the masses. Not in a “Give me liberty or give me death” sort of way. More with a “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country” type of sentiment.

I looked up that “Now is the time…” phrase just to be sure that I was attributing the quotation to the correct patriot and… guess what? Patrick didn’t say it at all. It’s one of the standard phrases like “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” that was once used in beginning typing classes. Who knew?

Printype Oliver Typewriter, 1912

Somehow, there’s a lesson to be learned here. The person we need to spread the word and get a letter-writing campaign organized isn’t so much an orator, but someone handy at typing (translation for the millennials: keyboarding,) Even better, we need everyone who loves Oysterville to use their  keyboarding and texting skills to write our Commissioners:

Frank Wolfe (fwolfe@co.pacific.wa.us), Steve Rogers (srogers@co.pacific.wa.us), and Lisa Ayers (layers@co.pacific.wa.us). The snail mail address is P.O. Box 187 South Bend, WA, 98586.

The message we need to send: Save Section 20 of Ordinance 162. Keep Oysterville protected!