Shane Pruitt and Linsday Rob deserve high praise for starting Extreme Paintover. It's a volunteer program to help people paint their houses who can't do it themselves. The second house will be painted June 30. The idea is to get enough donated paint and enough volunteers to finish in one day, a la the Extreme Makeover model. Check the Traveler online archives for stories. There's also a video story on the Web site.

Pruitt is the city's code inspector, so he knows the world of deteriorating property and how hard it is to get things cleaned up. Linsday works at the land rush museum. These are two city employees, among many, who are more than bureacrats and care deeply about this town.