It's Cold Outside

Last week, we had an unseasonable, and rather unsettling, heat wave with highs in the 70s. This week, we're back pretty much to where we ought to be in December. There's been no snow, but the ground has been white with frost on recent mornings; and there's been frost on the northern and eastern windows, that sometimes doesn't melt at all. The house is full of the comfortable rattling, clanking, hissing, and humming of radiators. They don't keep the heat quite as high as I prefer it, around 68. They claim that's "too warm." Still, as President Carter pointed out, there's nothing wrong with wearing a cardigan, and our house is certainly comfortable.

That leads me to my point. Some people in this country aren't as fortunate as I am. Fuel is expensive, sometimes too expensive. Last year, while I was looking around the Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation site, I came across a page listing addresses to send donations to assist with winter heating. (I can't find that page now). Among the project addresses, this one caught my attention:

Bob's Gas Service
Winter Heating Project for the Elderly
P. O. Box S
Martin, SD 57551

This particular cause is very important to me, not for a direct, personal reason, but because my heart burns with anger at the thought of old folks having no means of staying warm in the brutal South Dakota winters. I send a little bit each quarter - well, I forgot in June, but I reckon that's all right. I urge you to join me this month in sending a donation to Bob's Gas Service. I'm quite sure they can put a $5.00 check to equally good use as a $50.00 or $500.00 one.

Everyone has a pet project, and God knows there's no shortage of projects, and desperate needs, at Pine Ridge, a community of some forty thousand souls. It is a microcosm of the want we fortunate ones associate almost dismissively with the Third World, right here in our own back yard, in this country that prides itself on being the greatest nation on earth. I'm reminded of an exchange near the beginning of a favorite movie, Finian's Rainbow.

Sharon says: "But, Father, are there no poor in America? No hungry or ill housed or ill fed?"

"Of course," her father answers blithely. "But they're the *best* ill housed and ill fed in the world."

Note that the quotation is from memory, and thus approximate. You get the idear though. Charity begins at home, they say. And, we don't need to look beyond our own heartland to find conditions as bad as any Save the Children or Christian Children's Fund commercial. In fact, it's worse, because these are Americans, our brothers and sisters.

I wish we could all go out there in the summer and work renovating and insulating houses. But, like I said, it's a huge reservation with forty thousand residents. And we're a very small group. And, even if we could get out there all at once, I daresay few to none of us have the requisite skills…

I wonder, though, if we could write as a group to Habitat and say we see this need and would like to help sponsor a project. What do you guys think?

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