Laurels & lances: Vandals, cleanup and delivery
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Lance: To defacing nature. Over the weekend, vandals spray painted graffiti all over hundreds of feet of the natural sandstone that lies along the Youghiogheny River in Ohiopyle State Park.
This wasn’t some underpass or derelict old building where vandalism is still unwanted and makes a city or a neighborhood look unloved and unwanted.
“This defaces one of the most scenic parts of the park that draws most of the visitors here,” said park operation manager Ken Bisbee. “It’s pretty unfortunate and upsetting.”
Actually, it’s not pretty anything. It’s ugly. Not just the paint that stained the rocks carved by the water over centuries, but the callous, malicious act of destruction itself.
Laurel: To restoring nature. What restores hope, however, is the work that has been done to fix the vandals’ blight.
The day after discovering the paint near the park’s Ferncliff Peninsula Natural Area, just across from the visitors center, four employees were hard at work with a pressure washer, a generator, scrub brushes and biodegradable soap safe for the nearby water.
A clean-up that might have taken a week given the size of the area — the largest vandalism Ohiopyle has ever seen — was attacked quickly and visitors may never even know the sprawling letters and pictures covered the rocks.
On the watch list: A homey idea. Delivery services are really popular right now. DoorDash or GrubHub for restaurant food. Shipt can deliver groceries from Giant Eagle or just about anything from Target. Heck, Uber can deliver your grandma from the airport.
But Walmart may have them all beat with their InHome delivery that works with technology to promise a safe way to not just bring groceries to your house, but to come inside, put things away and show you every step along the way.
The program is being piloted in Pittsburgh and employees are trained at a townhouse in Sewickley that neighbors might not realize has no one living there since it receives so many deliveries.
Is this a good idea? Is it a problem waiting to happen? Hard to tell. Wait and see.