Newspaper Building Eyed for Museum

I have a dream also. It doesn’t equal the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s in grandeur of scope, but it’s important to me and all the people with whom I associate. Children are important, and again and again I’ve read that “it takes a whole village to raise a child.”

My dream is that communities take pride in providing uplifting, educational activities for their children. I admit to having the very old-fashioned notion that people should be able to provide the necessities (food, shelter, etc.) for their children before they decide to bring them into this world. But beyond that, children’s minds need to be nourished and challenged and expanded so that they are able to explore and conquer all facets of this enormously complex world into which they are being born.

For years now many of us have been actively engaged in trying to keep the Ventura County Children’s Museum operating in Oxnard. Can you imagine what a building like the empty Press-Courier facility would be like as a children’s museum? At the same time, our auditorium, which is acoustically just as fine as the very highly-hyped Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, needs refurbishing.

Our City Council, large industries, individual contributors and newspapers such as yours need to encourage the children of our surrounding communities in all kinds of fine arts.

Oxnard is getting ready to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Community Concerts, a remarkable organization that provides wonderful concerts for minimal cost. Our auditorium needs new curtains, new carpet, new seats, and tons of hype, along with the funds to generate programs of particular interest to families so that they will “get off their duffs” and see to it that their children learn something of the beauty available in this world.

MARCENE CAMP JARDINE, Oxnard