One Small Thing

September 10, 2026

Twenty-five years ago tomorrow, when the September 11 attacks happened, I, like everyone else, was overwhelmed both by the enormity of what had happened and also by the awful feeling that there was nothing useful I could possibly do from hundreds of miles away. Back then, of course, KidsOutAndAbout.com was just me, running what was then a few-months-old community website for the Rochester, NY area, with an infant and toddler in tow. I had access to few resources, and even fewer ideas.

Then I learned that my next-door neighbor Steve, an emergency responder, would be heading down to New York City to help with the rescue and cleanup efforts. So I asked KOAA readers to email me notes of encouragement for the people working at the attack sites: firefighters, police officers, paramedics, volunteers, anyone who needed to know that people far away were with them in spirit, and were grateful. The messages poured in. I printed almost a thousand of them on my home computer and sent that stack of Rochester hope south with Steve. I had no illusion that pieces of printer paper could provide real help for the exhausted heroes picking through the wreckage, but we needed to do something. It was as much for us as for them.

That distinction lodged itself permanently in me: Some small good thing is better than no small good thing. I raised Madison and Ella with that attitude, and regular readers may have noticed versions of that theme threaded through this column for years. When the world feels chaotic, it's easy to feel powerless, because no single person can fix an enormous broken system. But we almost always have power over one tiny piece within reach, and we can tap others to join in our effort. We can take five minutes to make one corner of the world better than it was before.

Small things don't erase large problems. But 25 years later, I can still see those pages emerging from my printer, one after another, carrying the reminder I’ve kept ever since: Do some small thing, and then the next, and the next.

—Debra Ross, publisher

KidsOutAndAbout.com: Discover more. Do more. Connect more.