My sister thought it might be a good idea to work at out local food kitchen serving a Christmas Eve lunch. Feeding the hungry she said. I had always wanted to do something like this, but never seemed to find the time. Well, I could have found the time, but never did. My sister volunteers there once a month through our church, so she knew how the system worked.
This year, I made the time. I started my X-Mas vacation a day early. I went to the food kitchen around 8:15 met up with my sister, her daughter and one of my nephews, and got busy. We dished out 137 meals, small compared to larger cities, but it seemed like a lot of meals me. Yesterday they served 117 meals. My wife missed the event as she is under the weather a bit.
While we were there, a local gas station chain, came in with a check for what I think was a $1,000. They held a fun raiser to support the food kitchen. A elderly man donated several boxes of bread, cupcakes, hot dog and hamburger buns, for the people to take home. It was all taken. Several people came by to donate items for future meals. And a group was making the meal for the Christmas dinner tomorrow.
I noticed one thing about the homeless, the poor, those who are down on their luck, they all said thank you, or yes sir no sir, and please. How often have you helped someone who "has it made" and hear a thank you? Even the little kids were polite.
I enjoyed the time spent helping out today. If only for a moment, someone's life was made a bit better.
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What's up at the convenience stores? What's with the price hike in gas from one day to the next? Why they porking us so hard? They raise the price whenever they hear the price of oil has gone up. There is a fellow in my town who owns several stations (the picture isn't one of them). He says he is only making about three cents a gallon. He raises the price as he gets a shipment of gas and the price reflects that shipment. Of course that is a lie. He must be getting a shipment every other day or so. Truth is, when the news reports that the price per barrell of oil has gone up, the local stations here raise their price that night, the next day or the next. Is that reflective of a shipment? No, that is trying to make more money off what you have in the ground, right now. This guy has spiked his gas as much as ten cents on the news of oil cost from one day to the next, and a few days later lowers it two or three cents. Are we being boned at the pumps? Hell yes, what do you think? Can the politicians help fix this mess? Would you want to if you had stock in a big oil company? I wouldn't be quick to fix it. Price goes up, mo money, mo money for me. It's a big con game and we can't do anything about it.
The Davis Memorial at Mt.Hope Cemetery, in Hiawatha Kansas, was erected by John M. Davis as a memory to his wife Sarah E. Davis. She passed away in 1930. John had Italian marble, life size statues of he and Sarah made and erected around the grave site. The statues are at various stages of their lives.
In the 1930's during the depression, this was no small feat and costly at 200,000 dollars. By today's standard it would be well over a million dollars. A 52 ton canopy (weighing over 50 tons) was first erected on stone pillars around the her grave and in 1932 the first marble statues arrived. There are 11 total marble and granite statues.
This memorial has been featured in Newsweek, Life, People magazine and on Ripleey's Believe It or Not. The brochere says the sites has 20-30,000 visitors a year. I found the site very interesting and the fact he spent 200 thousand dollars during the depression instead of helping others is something else. That money could have fed a lot of people. But it is waht it is and now it's an attraction. If you are in the area, stop by and check it out for yourself.
Whose memoirs would you most like to read?
I would like to read the memoirs of Jesus Christ and follow that with the memoirs from God. That would explain all and say all. You wouldn't need to read anything else after that. How cool would it be to read their works and find things that aren't told in the Bible. Like what kind of friends Jesus had growing up, what he thought about his early years, was Mary at the last supper like some suggest, what was God doing all the years before creation, where did God come from, what was his childhood like, did he have one, who is his daddy? In all seriousness, I want to know the little things, the untold stories.
