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EditorialEditorialWhen the Burns Sisters finished their set and the final cars left Myers Park after an event-filled Lansing Harbor Festival, something strange was evident.  The park was not a mess.  Festival volunteers had very minimal cleanup to do even though more than 5,000 people had been in and out of the park in one day.

The park had to be ready to go on the following day because all of the pavilions were rented, Park Superintendent Steve Colt said on Wednesday.  "The park was very clean by early Sunday morning."

In so many ways this doesn't make sense.  That many people invading a space are bound to throw things on the ground.  Or are they?

I think that a large part of the phenomenon can be explained by the outstanding job the Lansing Parks and Recreation Department does in maintaining its parks.  Even with reduced budgets park employees take obvious pride in making all the town parks look perfect.  Myers is arguably one of the nicest parks in the county, and there wasn't a leaf out of place when the first visitor arrived for Harbor Festival.

When people see something like that they respect it.  They appreciate it and do their part to keep it that way.  That was helped by the convenient placement of countless trash and recycling barrels within a few steps of wherever you happened to be, and a park staff that kept emptying those barrels throughout the day.

I also think that the community's pride in its beautiful park played a big role.  Even though people came from all over, the core Lansing community loves that park, and I think that kind of thing translates to visitors to the community.

That's the only explanation that makes sense to me.  There were no trash police roaming the park.  And it wasn't scoured with a giant vacuum cleaner after the Burns Sisters finished playing.  It was just people seeing something beautiful and instinctively wanting to keep it that way.

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