By Roslyn Ryan, Editor
editor@powhatantoday.com

Although some weeks are undoubtedly busier than others, we get an awful lot of letters here at Powhatan Today.

I would say — not having done an actual study on this — that the vast majority are split between letters from residents concerned about an ongoing county issue (land use, traffic safety) and those taking issue with what another letter writer had to say about one of those issues.

The rest of the letters pretty much run the gamut, and include those taking issue with a story our staff filed or a decision made by a local official.

What we don’t see quite as often —though we do get them, see below — are those letters in which someone simply wants to thank someone or some organization in the community for a good deed or a kind gesture.

I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, after suffering through a particularly tricky (and fairly embarrassing) incident on Route 60.

I had been driving my husband’s truck to run an errand, and was doing my very best to ignore a strange rattling sound coming from what sounded like the bed of the truck.

(I have used this ignore-it-and-hope-it-goes-away-tactic before with strange vehicle noises by the way, and I’d say the success rate is about 50/50.)

I was about halfway home, when a State Police cruiser eased up behind me and flipped on the blue lights.

No, I hadn’t been speeding. What I had been doing, as the officer informed me, was dragging the muffler of the truck all the way up Route 60, sending sparks flying (and creating a noise the trooper had not found so easy to ignore).

As I tried to calculate the dent both the muffler and the ticket I was about to get were going to make in the family budget, the most curious thing happened. Instead of writing me a ticket or waiting while I called a tow truck, Trooper Christopher Putnam went to work tying the errant muffler back on for me.

He certainly didn’t have to do that, as I’m quite sure car repairs are not listed among his duties.

It was an act of kindness similar to those that many of us witness on a day to day basis in Powhatan. Unexpected, but also so appreciated in a time when so much bad news seems to dominate the headlines and broadcasts.

I would like to extend an invitation to our readers to drop us a note telling us about some of their experiences with acts of kindness in the community.

They don’t have to be recent necessarily, just recollections of a time when someone did something for you that they didn’t have to, something that made a difficult moment easier to deal with.

If you can’t think of one offhand, I hope you will consider sending in a letter to the editor the next time there is someone you would like to thank.

It’s never a bad idea to let someone know you appreciate them after all, whether in person or in print.