Aloha, My Friend,
You would think that after all the years of dealing with the Holidays as an adult I would finally start getting comfortable with it but each year it sneaks up on me like that annoying person who hides in the closet waiting to jump out and yell, “Boo.”
It isn’t the gift giving aspect of Christmas that bothers me; I worked that angle out many years ago when I married Laine. She is very thoughtful and usually she will have something picked out for everybody by August and this is pretty amazing considering the size of the contingent that she has to deal with. Her side includes her family and friends and that is a large gathering indeed. On my side of the kith & kin line, although it is mostly just family, it is an Irish Catholic family that for almost 20 years went on a breeding spree. For a while there my sisters were human Pez dispensers, popping out little nieces and nephews at an almost preternatural rate. Bless them all, I think that they are the greatest kids in the world, not this world, of course, but certainly one of a galaxy nearby. And Laine is wonderful, she knows all of their names, most of their birthdays and which parent they belong to.
My hang up with Christmas is the family gathering thing. Except for healthcare, police / fire rescue & postal delivery, I don’t think anything should be socialized, especially holidays. Every year starting around January 2nd I start polishing the memories of the previous Christmas gathering. Gleaming are the stories that my family told about their vacations (points to the sister who doesn’t have pictures), sparkling are the accomplishments of the children in academics, music and sports. As for my brother, he is sort of like Chandler from the sitcom, “Friends”. Nobody knows exactly what he does for a living but it might have something to do with business management and that he dates women prettier than Courtney Cox.
I have been blessed with a wonderful family and most of the time they love and tolerate me. And I am not a pretty package so even from family that is asking a lot. Even the year that I almost set fire to the kitchen one Christmas is a story that isn’t often repeated until after the wine has been flowing freely, which we call lunchtime at a Grace Holiday fete.
And the 2009 year will be fantastic – precious time with family, the gift of friendship continued, the pleasure of meeting and making new friends, the adventures that each dawn brings with it, the generous opportunities to continue to learn from my mistakes and the ability to effect change in Tallahassee.
Recently there was a letter to the editor in the Democrat written by Jeri Bush, the Director of VolunteerLEON (www.floridavolunteercenters.org.) In her appeal she illustrates that your gift of giving to the community can take many forms. “Volunteer opportunities abound in our great community, and thousands quietly do so throughout the year. Volunteers contend that the reward for their work is not money, but is, instead, the satisfaction of helping others, active involvement in our community and the friendships that they form through volunteer work.”
The Belgian playwright and Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Maurice Maeterlinck, put it succinctly, “An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.”
Here is your chance at happiness for just 5 bucks or five cans of food.
Please join us for Souper Sunday on the Second Sunday of the New Year, January 11th from Noon – 5pm. This second annual feast is a tasty fundraiser for the Second Harvest of Big Bend. Many of the participating shops and studios here at Railroad Square will be cooking up some of the best homemade soups and chilies you have ever tasted. Bowls will be sold for $5 or five canned food items and you can take your bowl to each shop and sample the warm varieties. We like doing fundraisers for 2nd Harvest. We strongly believe that their mission to alleviate hunger is marvelous cause and, sadly necessary in every community. These are our neighbors who are hungry and we might not even know of their troubles. Although politicians talk about “poverty in America”, decision-makers avoid specifically mentioning the growing, and often deadly problem of hunger. George McGovern said in 1972, “To admit the existence of hunger in America is to confess that we have failed in meeting the most sensitive and painful of human needs. To admit the existence of widespread hunger is to cast doubt on the efficacy of our whole system.” Three decades later, evidence indicates that the existing system is failing a vast number of Americans. An estimated 36.2 million people lived in households considered to be food insecure and some 13 million children are living in households that are forced to skip meals or eat less due to economic constraints (16.9 percent of all children). It is impossible for me to put a face on these people so I will let you do that yourself. I did a simple Google search of Famous Homeless and came up with these names. Definitely keep in mind though, it isn’t just the homeless that are hungry, from the comfort of my car, with a Starbucks in the cup holder I am sure that I drive past many of the “food insecure” home every day – and so do you.
Please Support us for Souper Sunday. Here is a list that I came up with -
Halle Berry
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Buddha (Gautama Siddhartha)
Drew Carey
Jim Carrey
Charlie Chaplin
Kurt Cobain
Daniel Craig
Ella Fitzgerald
Kelsey Grammer
Cary Grant
Woody Guthrie
Harry Houdini
Don Imus
Burl Ives
Jesus of Nazareth (Yeshua of Nazareth)
Eartha Kitt
David Letterman
Jim Morrison
John Muir
George Orwell
Gordon Parks
Sally Jessy Raphael
Debbie Reynolds
Joan Rivers
“Colonel” Harland Sanders
Tupac Shakur
William Shatner
Martin Sheen
Hilary Swank
Shania Twain
Whoopi Goldberg is a former welfare mom.
Carol Burnett is a former welfare kid.