Lou Decruss wrote:

> I'm far from a "bleeding Heart"
> but a hungry person can touch my feelings.

Same here, but upon closer inspection I think I have a different
reaction to:

* hungry for reasons beyond one's control
* hungry due to decisions one has made during this calendar day.

Example: if I give someone $3 for a sandwich and they buy a 40 with it
in front of me instead of food, I am unlikely to provide them with
additional funding due to their hunger.

An anecdote related to hunger and charity:
I worked at a decent bakery attached to a restaurant and there were
certain kinds of breads and pastries we couldn't keep and or
cost-effectively recycle into other foodstuffs: breads with nuts or
whole grains, filled croissants (peach, apricot, cream cheese,
chocolate). Anything that couldn't be rolled over into croutons or
bread pudding the next day. Decent food, good stuff, good ingredients
used well.

Since we were tossing them in the dumpster every night got permission to
offer the leftovers it to the local homeless shelter (the company made
me track every item for tax purposes) but they said they didn't have
anyone to get it. So I started taking it by every night after work.

The complaints from the homeless started immediately --
"where's the meat?"
"how come you only bring us bread?"
"I don't like this crap. What the hell is this stuff?"
etc

After a while got tired of schlepping it on my own time and own dime and
getting harrassed for it. I don't need thanks but please spare me the
heckling. After a while I thought: tell ya what, fellas. Fsck you,
get your own fscking food.

Hell, I was a poor grad student eating the same stuff at night and knew
I was lucky to get it. My girlfriend and I basically lived off our
bread allotment and leftovers from that place.

> Luckily for me coke isn't part of my life anymore but I still think
> about it once in a "long" while. And my pantry and fridge are always
> full.

Glad to hear you survived it. Several from my high school class didn't
make the trip back...

--
brother mouse
composed offline and synced later.
http://www.mousetrap.net/mouse/offline.html