Author: Jennifred Jones

Tenant vs Resident?

Jennifred Jones

Are you a tenant or a resident? The words mean basically the same thing, but in my mind they seem different.

When the kids were small, we moved a lot. Rather than buy a house we rented. We were tenants. We lived in somebody else’s house, on their property, under their jurisdiction.

My husband had a rule of thumb. Always leave things better than when you found them. One time we borrowed his younger brother’s car while ours was in the shop. Before we returned it, he said, ‘We’re going to vacuum his car and wash it. Then we’ll fill it with gas before we take it back.’ He felt it so important to leave it better than when we got it.

This translated into the houses we rented. We always improved upon them any way we could. Putting in flower gardens, keeping everything swept and tidy, doing painting, deep cleaning, maintenance, yard care, anything we could do to make it better, and others noticed, including the landlord. We didn’t want to ‘live up’ to the name ‘renters’!

That was the difference in my opinion. A tenant was a ‘mere’ renter…living in somebody else’s place where the landlord did all the work. The tenant did nothing…maybe even was destructive to the place.

We were residents! We lived there, it was our home and we wanted to take good care of it like it was our very own! We were proud to live there and help keep it up. It was a true sense of ‘ownership’

How do you feel about this?

A Citizen’s Response -ability

Jennifred Jones

I am a citizen of the United States of America. I was born here. I am granted full rights and responsibilities being an American citizen according to the US constitution.

We are governed by law through elected officials who are to have our best interests at heart, because they are one of us.

This places responsibility upon me to be watchful of my country, to live by its principles and to help my officials and representatives follow what we elected them for. We pay our taxes to have this done, and we want to make sure our hard-earned money is going to a profitable return.

I realize this comment may open a big can of worms, and I’m not going fishing!

Let me give a local example fresh from today. We’ve had multiple inches of rain where I live. One of the central parking lot drains at a nearby apartment complex doesn’t drain right. Many times water stands in the lot and comes halfway up car’s tires when they drive through. The mailbox unit was engulfed so the mailman didn’t stop -he couldn’t get to the boxes for all the water. It’s been over 6 hours and water is still there. Residents have literally waded in ankle deep water to reach their cars.

I felt it my responsibility to call the city and inquire about the drain since this has been repetitive. After several calls I reached the right person. They were unaware of the situation. The helpful official said he’d check out whose responsibility it was – the city or the apartment complex. I told him I felt bad for the residents living there, (including a man with a limp who had to walk all the way around the big ‘puddle’ to get to his car.) There was no other interest of my own…just noticing other’s wading through their difficulty.

How simple it was for me to call. Yes, it took time and effort, but I thought this is why we pay taxes – to have things run smoothly for the citizenry. I spoke with the city official as person to person, citizen to citizen – both working towards a common good.

What if every time something needed attention, we citizens did our responsible part and contacted whoever we needed to and didn’t think, ‘someone else will take care of it’. We are the someone else and we need to take care of it. How will our officials know what we need if we don’t tell them? This is how America works and how we keep a big country small and approachable.

I’m glad we live here and can help make things better!

What do you think?

Your Mind – a Reservoir

Jennifred Jones

Reservoirs and floodgates. Store it up and let it out!

Our wonderful mind is like a reservoir that will store up whatever we send its way. All the good ideas and plans and thoughts, experiences, movies, songs, places we’ve been, books we’ve read…all in there!

I think that’s partly why so many books have been written. People have so much in their reservoir they have to get it out and share it with others. Essentially, they’re opening the floodgate of their mind and letting the water flow.

What we store in our reservoir is what will flow out. Thinking now about dams…debris tends to float on the top, it doesn’t go down into the turbines. That’s handy because the debris can be skimmed off and discarded. Other pollutants get mixed in with the water and won’t get filtered out but will come out when the floodgates are opened. That’s why some content is good, and some not so good.

Fortunately, there are water purifiers to help us filter out the pollutants. We can install these upstream before the water enters our reservoir to keep the waters clean and clear. Sunlight is another natural purifier which can kill just about any bad thing with long enough exposure. If the waters are very polluted and stagnant, a good hard rain and some flooding will clear everything out for us…maybe a little lightning and thunder so we can see and hear better what’s been getting into our water.

The object of the reservoir is to retain and release pure waters to help not only us and ours but others further downstream.

Do today:

  • Rake off debris
  • Check water filters upstream