Sunday, January 18, 2009

Peace, Love and Understanding Part 2

Dammit. I am so blown away by the kindness of the people in this country. Last week I put up a post about the Obama organization, USA Service.org. I talked about all of the events on the website and all of the millions of people who have signed up to attend those events. I talked about the feel good, warm fuzzies that viewing all of that left me with.

There's more.

Yes, there are more warm fuzzies. Kiddo and I noticed that the event that we signed up for had more people signed up than were necessary. We signed up to help serve lunch at Tent City. Tent City is a homeless encampment in our county; there are actually many of them. It is good that they are available for the people who live on the streets to gather together and look out for each other (there is safety in numbers) but it sucks that they are needed at all. I think that they should be called "Bush-Villes" - regardless of what you call them, homeless people live there.

So, we decided that it might be good if we gathered items together to leave with them that will last a lot longer than the lunch that we have volunteered to help to serve.

We typed up the following and gave it to the people in our cul-de-sac.

*********
Thank You In Advance

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the National Day of Service we are going to tent city in xxxxx on Monday, January 19, 2009 to help to pass out food to the homeless. There are numerous volunteers for this event already so Kiddo and I thought that it might make more sense to use our time gathering up items to leave with the people at tent city; things that they will need long after the lunch is over.

Please donate any of the following (and anything else that you can think of that would come in useful for people trying to live in a tent during a long, cold winter.):

• Coats/Sweatshirts/Warm Sweaters
• Blankets
• Shoes
• Sleeping bags
• Baby Items/Diapers
• Tarps
• Toiletries
• Books
• Non-perishable food items
• Socks
• Flashlights & Batteries


If you have any items that you are able to donate, please gather them together and give us a call. (We are just now digging in our closets. We know that money is tight for everyone; used items are gladly and gratefully accepted.) We will pop over and pick them up. Thank you so much.

Husband, Anjha and Kiddo xxx-xxx-xxxx

To find out more about service events in our area go to www.USAService.org

********

We handed it out to the 8 homes in our cul-de-sac and by 11 AM this morning, my car was full of boxes of items. This is so unbelievable. Seriously. I am blown away by the kindness and generosity of the people in our neighborhood, county and this country.

And honestly, I am not really doing a damn thing but passing information along to people, making a couple of phone calls and dropping off the stuff. Even I can handle this kind of involvement.

I hope that this does keep going. That people continue to participate and that Obama uses the bully pulpit that he has to continue to guide people into service and to paying attention to what is going on in their communities. This is truly a bottom up movement. And it is about friggin' time.

4 comments:

Judith said...

Anjha, we need more people like you. Don't think me crazy, but I thought I detected people being a little nicer today, a little more helpful, and little more kind. Perhaps we are experiencing a collective sigh of relief from the hell hole we all are emerging from.

Anjha said...

Anjha, we need more people like you.

That is sweet of you to say Judith, but you do not have to live with me.

I do not believe that they would want more like me, except that more of me would make more food and clean better.

Perhaps we are experiencing a collective sigh of relief from the hell hole we all are emerging from.

Oh, I think so. I can even see it in the pundits. They seem happier and more hopeful.

I've heard that a large percentage of the fix for the economy is attitude. If people feel more confident then things will get better because they will go out and spend money and borrow money.

One of the problems, however, are the credit markets. They are still frozen - at least for people who are over-extended and do not have perfect credit. I can hear the wingnuts now, with their "those people shouldn't be borrowing money anyway, they are why we are in this mess..."

I am not talking about people who will not pay it back. However, a whole lot of the people in this country ARE over-extended. Most people have been using the housing bubble to use their homes like ATMs taking equity out to pay for life. What else could they do when wages went down over the last eight years and the costs of everything went up?

I hope that things are changing. I really hope that they are getting better.

Judith said...

"I can even see it in the pundits. They seem happier and more hopeful."

Yeah, but the comedians aren't happy. They all say their biggest target of jokes is leaving the WH.

Did anyone catch Gregory yesterday on MTP? He seems to small for the job.

Judith said...

Anjha, cleaning and cooking is over rated (smile).