A downtown Northampton, Massachusetts, organization has made raking leaves an annual election day event.
Tuesday morning Chris Clark cast his ballot, and then came to Historic Northampton on Bridge Street.
He and other volunteers started off raking small piles of leaves. Then, those piles were raked onto tarps and pulled over to another pile.
That pile became larger and higher, and at the end of two hours there was an enormous berm of leaves at the back of the property.
"I think the idea of doing something on election day — particularly last year — was a really good idea," Clark said. "There was a big crowd."
Northampton, which is the county seat, had a heated mayoral and other races, but no federal or state candidates were on the ballot.
Clark thought that might be why fewer volunteers came out this year. Maybe people were less anxious, he said.
Historic Northampton Co-Executive Director Laurie Sanders said the event was initially created to help people get out any election day "jitters," though it also helps with the yard work.
Casting her eyes around the yard at the small but mighty crew, as Sanders described the volunteers, she said a few hours of raking is one way Historic Northampton can help people connect, and its a way to make memories she said. Especially for children who attend the nearby elementary school.
"If young people have a memory as they grow up of jumping in a leaf pile on their way to and from school, that deepens their sense of place," Sanders said.
What happens transcends the project she said, whether it's raking on election day, or getting volunteers to paint a fence, which was a recent event called Good Neighbors Paint Good Fences, riffing on a line of poetry from Robert Frost.
As a professor at Amherst College over decades in the early-to-mid 20th century, Sanders said he frequently visited a bookshop in Northampton, passing by this very spot.
These are ways historic societies or museums can play a part building community, Sanders said.
