Laurel: To a beautiful journey. Art can be taken for granted. It can be locked away in museums and require a ticket to view. But a new art installation in Natrona is a way to promote community and provide an opportunity for exercise.

The mosaic trail off River Avenue opened Tuesday. It’s a 10-foot-wide, 100-foot-long concrete trail that connects walkers, bikers and anglers to the Allegheny River.

For $45,000, including grant money from the Grable Foundation and PNC Cultural Trust, the project became more than a simple piece of pavement. It includes a walkway fence lined with 13 mosaics of things like beaver, blue heron and butterfly milkweed — native natural wonders that people could appreciate in the Allegheny Valley.

The path won’t just bring the community together along the trail. It also brought them together to build the mosaics, which were designed by Pittsburgh artist Stevo Sadvary but assembled from a kaleidoscope of broken glass pieces by members of the community.

Just as each mosaic is built of small pieces, so was the project, bringing together Natrona Comes Together, Friends of the Riverfront and more than a dozen community stakeholders. It’s an example of how beautiful things are built by cooperation and a mutual goal.

Lance: To two examples of the same problem. There are things that shouldn’t be brought into school without a specific purpose. Some are because they are distracting, like a litter of puppies or an air horn. Some are because they are dangerous, like a chain saw or a box of matches. There may be a time for their use, but it should be rare.

Bullets are the same way. Guns are not supposed to be on school property — unless they are in the specific care of authorized law enforcement personnel. If you can’t have a gun, you shouldn’t have a bullet.

Yet, two area school districts are dealing with finding items on school property. Plum School District reported to families Sept. 22 a bullet was found on a bus at the end of the school day. No other details were available. On Monday, a casing was found at North Allegheny Intermediate School in McCandless.

While Plum is investigating its incident, North Allegheny Intermediate is not, saying the casing “could have been there for a while” and wasn’t “nefarious.”

A bullet or a casing isn’t the same thing as a gun. There shouldn’t be overreaction or panic. But that doesn’t mean they should be expected or accepted in a school setting.

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