HASSO HERING

The Periwinkle Bikepath behind Lowe’s looked unusually clean on the afternoon of April 26.

Several times over the years, I have reported on the super-messy conditions of the Periwinkle Bikepath, especially the north end that is walled off from the Lowe’s home improvement center. So it was a surprise to see how clean it was when the bike took me there on April 26.

Except for traces that evidently were impossible to erase on the concrete-block wall, the graffiti was gone. So was the trash on the concrete path and in the bushes between the path and the creek.

I had been out of town for the better part of a week and was unaware of any big cleanup effort along the path. But such an effort obviously had been made.

By whom?

The path is part of the city park system. Rick Barnett of the parks department referred me to Ilynn Winn, a volunteer organizer and retired Albany teacher. Here’s what she told me in an online message:

“I was asked by Kevin Harding at HP to find 15 projects that HP employees could do on April 19 for their WE Day. Some of the places were Lowe’s, Fish of Albany, City Parks, painting a room out at Clover Ridge School for the Albany Public Schools Foundation, painting wood trim for the tiny houses on Waverly, GAPS, Cumberland, and more.”

I had never heard of “WE Day,” but from the internet I understand it to be some kind of internationally observed day of volunteers doing good things in their communities.

I would have liked to know more, like how many people worked on that path, how long did it take them, and how did they manage to get most of the graffiti off the porous material of that wall.

Regardless of those unanswered questions, the Hewlett Packard volunteers who labored to clean up the path that day did a very good deed. Users of that route, including me, are grateful for their work.

How long will the path and the wall stay clean? Someone with red paint has already done some dirty work on one part of the wall.

Except for that, so far so good. Today, April 30, this path still looked great. (hh)

After this story was posted, I learned that it took the 15 volunteers four hours to get the job done. As for the graffiti, they painted over it rather than try to scrub it off. City staff was on the scene to help dispose of the piles of litter that were removed.