Here’s a feature we’re debuting today: the Comment of the Week. The idea is to give a little lovin’ to reader comments that say something well.
It’s not about flawless grammar or spelling, though those are always welcome. Rather, we’re looking for comments that get to the heart of some topic or question in a way that we find admirable, at least relative to that week’s competition.
This first winner was selected in-house at redbankgreen to get things going, but we’re planning to introduce an online voting system whereby readers will nominate and choose. Until then, we welcome nominations via email.
The Week 1 winner was posted by Ibar10 under our breaking news alert about last week’s fire at Memory Bowling in Shrewsbury:
To all my coworkers and friends from Memory Lanes, it was a pleasure working and getting to meet you all. The building may be just a memory now but, the friendships I have made there will remain with me. I worked in another bowling alley for 17 years, but in three short years I made so many more true friends and relationships here than I did before. They will last and be a part of my life long after the building is gone. We really are one big happy family. When something happened to one of us in the past, it affected all of us. We have pulled together through other tragedies and now we will pull together and help each other through the hard times ahead.
To all of you that are posting immature garbage, making fun of the hard workers and wonderful regular customers, you should remember that this place paid a lot of taxes, employed a lot of local residents, provided fun outings for the whole family, both for events like birthday parties and for regular bowling outings, hosted the local school bowling leagues, contributed to local charities, and provided a safe neighborhood night life for adults. All of that is now lost, maybe forever. Even if the lanes rebuild the time, money, and resources lost today, not to mention the lives risked – workers, customers, and firefighters (And many, many thanks to those brave volunteers who fought the blaze and gas leak down, risking their lives to minimize the damage to the lanes and save the surrounding neighborhood.) mean thereÂ’s simply nothing funny about today’s tragedy.
The tragedy could have been so much worse, thank God (and those firefighters) that no one was killed or even seriously injured. With help from each other we will overcome this, and this sad memory will not be the end of our friendships.
If you’re wondering why this comment and others don’t appear under the fire story, it’s because we lost about 80 comments in transitioning to new publishing software over the weekend. We apologize to the authors of those comments and are working to recover them.
