A DAY FOR BEING HELPFUL. Saturday was NIU Cares Day and there were student teams at work all over town. The girl in this picture got some help with the yard work from some collegians.

DeKalb Chronicle photograph by Elena Grimm.

[Joe] Riguad cleared toys and leaves from his yard Saturday with his 4-year-old daughter, Iliana, as five members of NIU's Pi Sigma Epsilon planted flowers and raked. Having lived in DeKalb for five years, he said he was surprised when he was approached by city officials about the program.

"Having someone else do my yard, I feel like that's cheating," was his first thought, he said. "But I don't know any other places I've lived that do something like this. It really shows the value the city puts on their city."

Student volunteer Cristy Sagun found some value, too.

"My parents are not going to believe me when I tell them what I'm doing," she said as she raked leaves. Gardening is not Sagun's forte, and it would surprise her green-thumb parents to know she volunteered her time to do just that.

I saw members of both basketball teams at work in the parkways, clearing the winter's litter from the banks of the drainage ditches. (There may be names for these waterways, but I haven't learned them yet).

Saturday was also electronics recycling day. I spent an hour waiting in a long line of cars to offload some batteries and life-expired compact fluorescent bulbs and a monitor, and some dead mice. The city promised the electronics would go to a responsible scavenger, not some Chinese toxic pile. That noted, the carbon footprint of all those idling cars (with more than a few big pickups and sport-utes) might have more than offset whatever benefit keeping the toxics out of the waste stream provides.