News Roundup — If table tops could talk…/Many coins, much care

Published 8:00 am Wednesday, February 9, 2005

If table tops could talk…

“Do you feel listened to as a teen?”

“What are you afraid of?

“What have been your top challenges as a parent?”

In a few weeks, those questions will start appearing on cards sitting on the tabletops of Winslow restaurants and coffee shops, and on a large banner on the fence near the ferry dock.

The purpose of “Table Top Talk,” as the Imagine Bainbridge project is being called, it to get youths and their parents talking, and listening, to one another.

“Our goal is to raise the level of conversation in this community,” said Sally Kidder Davis, an organizer of the project. “What happens today in our culture is that we spend less time face-to-face, and more time communicating via the computer screen and the cell phone.

“Studies show we are, by nature, hardwired to connect. And the best way to do that is through conversation.”

The “Table Top Talk” questions came out of a workshop involving parents and teens in October 2004.

At the suggestion of Mayor Darlene Kordonowy, those questions were put out into the larger community.

“These are the burning questions that people in the community have asked” one another, Kidder Davis said.

“For me, it’s almost more about taking the time to listen to the answer, than about asking the question,” she said. “We often don’t take time to deeply listen.”

Answers to the “Table Talk Talk” questions can also be shared via the Internet, at www.imaginebainbridge.blogspot.

It is hoped that even more questions will be asked and answered there, “and the conversation will continue,” Kidder Davis said.

In the future, Imagine Bainbridge may provide “Table Top Talk” questions for people to put on their tables at home to inspire conversation.

For more information on the project, call Imagine Bainbridge co-founders Billie Taylor at 842-6631, or Kidder Davis at 780-0104.

– Rhonda Parks Manville

Many coins, much care

Ordway Elementary School’s 400 students raised a whopping $4,000 for the Coins That Care tsunami relief fund, an achievement they celebrated in a school assembly on Monday.

“I learned that it’s good to help people and that you can do a lot alone, but together you can do much more,” said fourth-grader Quincy McGee, the student who coordinated the fund drive.

Coins That Care was founded by Suellen Cunningham, Nancy Quitslund and Bill Reddy in the days following the India Ocean tsunami, as a way to involve island children in the relief effort.

The fund tally now stands at $37,000, the bulk of it raised by children at the island’s public and private schools.

Another $10,000 is anticipated from an auction held at Island Fitness.

The money is being donated to Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, and UNICEF.

When McGee presented the trio with a large symbolic check at the Ordway assembly Monday, Cunningham’s face was wet with tears.

“Look at what has happened. Look at what you have been able to do,” Cunningham told the children during the assembly. “A big thank you to all of you.”

McGee came up with a plan to raise money during the winter break.

He bought clean paint cans and created labels imbued with school spirit, “Calling all Otters,” to donate their change and cash.

He and two friends, Thomas Delgado and Anthony Jensen, made speeches to classrooms about the fund-drive, raising twice what they had hoped for.

“We saw kids bringing in whole piggy banks; most kids gave $20 or higher,” McGee said, noting that during Monday’s school assembly, “I saw a lot of kids crying in the audience, and that was great.”

– Rhonda Parks Manville