The librarians put together a few of their own dollars to pay down fines on overdue books. A man at the Olde Main café paid for somebody's coffee across the room. A woman whipped up enough ham-and-bean soup to feed 50 people and took it, along with bowls and spoons, over to the hunger relief kitchen. A teenager helped shovel a car out of a snowbank. An anonymous person hid a $100 bill downtown, with a simple note: "Hope this brightens your day."

Since Feb. 1, a quirky new project in Elk River called 1,000 Random Acts of Kindness is igniting a curious trend: Flares of unexpected generosity, both large and small. During the monthlong campaign, residents have been encouraged to call a special phone line, mail a pre-printed post card or send an e-mail if they perform or receive some act of kindness.

The tally is kept on a wooden thermometer at the corner of Main and Jackson Streets in downtown Elk River. As of Monday, the count had reached 420, said local life coach Cindy Gibbs, who is keeping all the paperwork as her own act of kindness.

The idea was inspired by the story of patrons at a Philadelphia diner who spontaneously started paying each other's meal tickets, said Elk River Mayor Stephanie Klinzing, who has been meeting with Rotaries, public school principals, and church groups to hand out stacks of the postcards. Her vision was to cultivate Elk River's small-town sensibility, even as the city has more than doubled in size from 11,000 people in 1990 to about 24,000 today.

"Constituents have come up to me and worried that they don't know any of the new residents, that they walk down the street and there's no one they recognize. They go into the grocery store, and they feel like strangers," says Klinzing.

For Klinzing, the Random Acts of Kindness project is just one piece in a larger puzzle. She points to Elk River's new center for "active seniors," opened three years ago. "You know, when we moved the library out of that building, we could have sold it. It was right on church alley. But instead we decided that the people needed more gathering spaces to be together, to be a community."

Klinzing also points to the Pinewood Golf Course, which the city bought from football Hall of Famer Paul Krause for $2.8 million. During the past two summers, said Klinzing, the course has grown extremely popular with seniors as well as kids who are just learning the game. "We didn't buy the course because we'll make money on it," says Klinzing. "We bought it for the people aspect."

"People want to believe that where they live is home, whether they've been here for 50 years or five months."

Alyssa Ford is a Minneapolis freelance writer.