Setting the vibe in our community

My closet at home is overflowing with T-shirts, filling totes, lining shelves and hanging from racks.

There are shirts from 5K road races and sprint triathlons we have done the past few decades. Shirts from the bands we have seen at concerts in our own town and those we have traveled hours to watch. And shirts from just a few of the cities and states we have visited over the years.

It is that final category about the places that caught my attention recently as I sifted through the hangers. I was looking for something to represent McCook as I attended a conference. I wanted fellow-attendees to know I was from McCook, without them having to squint to read my nametag.

I have a sweatshirt from San Francisco, a cool t-shirt from Red Cloud, and a simple black shirt highlighting Omaha, but my McCook selection was minimal to non-existent. The only shirt in my closet noting McCook is one the McCook Community Foundation Fund designed for a program that we will share down the road.

Sure, my closet has plenty of clothing adorned with McCook Bison logos, but that is not the city of McCook. My clothing is made up of shirts from all the races we have held in McCook, but that is not representative of the town.

The closest example I can find of a t-shirt available that represents our community is from Mac’s Drive-In with its’ “McCook Famous” proclamation. I’m hoping they are still for sale and because everyone rushes to buy one now, Tyler McCartey has to put in a new order.

But why do I own a Red Cloud, Nebraska shirt and not one McCook? Because I walked into the National Willa Cather Center and found a variety of Red Cloud shirts to choose from. Many featured Cather quotes obviously. But others featured Red Cloud artists, who had designed the shirts. It was a win-win. The artists were featured and held up for their creativity and the community had something to promote itself.

Wearing a shirt with writing on the front sends a message because it is something you are willing to put on your body. The shirt says you represent that concept or that idea. It says that you are proud of where you come from. It says that you want others to know more about what it says.

A shirt can also represent the “vibe” of the idea or in this example, of the community. In order to put something in writing or into a design, you have to understand what the vibe is.

And that is what we are working on in McCook today. We are figuring out what the vibe of McCook is. Many organizations and individuals are working together to determine what we want the vibe of McCook to be.

And this doesn’t have to just be applied to a community. We all determine what the vibe is around us, whether at work, in the school, at church, or in our organizations. Each and everyone one of us sets the tone of wherever we go. It is simple to look at others and say they control what the tone is in a particular setting, but we have a say in what happens.

If you don’t like the way something is run, step up and say something and make a change. If you would like to see something happen in your community, get involved, ask questions, offer to volunteer.

It is easy to sit back and blame others for things that happen - or don’t happen. It is easy to say there is nothing you can do to change the tone of your community. But we can all make an impact in our places of worship, in our schools, in our places of work and perhaps most importantly in our communities.

We get to determine the “vibe” our communities want to be and we get to figure out what will make us proud of where we live so that we can wear the shirts with the name of our hometown blazing across our chests.