Problem Solved:
Posted on 11/29/2005 4:39:00 AM PST by Flyer
With Christmas around the corner, a group of Katrina evacuees worry they can't give the holiday to their kids.
Hauling home a Christmas tree is at least a $30 cab ride.
For Sheryl Lee whose New Orleans home was destroyed, her brand new house is a "dream come true," she said as she wiped tears from her eyes.
Yet for all that it offers, it is also a trap.
"No way to get to a shopping or nothing," Lee said.
The Clarke Springs subdivision, with its neat rows of humble homes, sits outside the beltway. The nearest Metro bus stop is a 30-minute walk.
Sheryl and her neighbors, all Katrina evacuees placed by the city of Houston, do not own cars.
"It's not close by too many things. So far out," said Colette Montgomery, Katrina evacuee.
Neighbors believe at least 40 Katrina families live in the Clarke Springs subdivision. What they're worried about now is whether they can provide Christmas for their kids.
Like all kids, Sheryl's 9-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son love Christmas, but look around and you won't find a single decoration because hauling home a tree is at least a $30 cab ride.
"And that kind of money I don't have right now," Lee said.
With no car, not only is a job hard to come by, so is Christmas.
"Although they [children] lost everything they had once before, but I could try to get them just a little of it. Might not be all, but it's a little," said Lee.
I guess not knowing anything about this woman or the others in her situation there, but knowing what it's like to live in area isolated from any stores or public transportation, I'm not ready to feel the 'bah humbug'.
Let me think... 40 families in the same area... No transportation...
Uh... Do you think you could get together and come up with something?
>>Of course I do all the maintenance and repairs myself though.
Which is yet another skill you applied yourself to and learned, beyond your job skills and frugal-living financial skills, all of which you show evidence of in a short post. None of which, I'm afraid, this woman will ever have.
Problem Solved:
Tell em my tv is broke and I am fishing for one of them there plasma screens.....lmao
I believe Santa came a little early for these folks. They lost the old house and got to move to a new one. They even received cash money to spend on manicures, trips to the casino, topless bars and other essential things. He could have left a lump of coal or something of that nature.
My daughter is on her second round of braces. The dentist badgered me into them when she was in 4th grade, when she was 18, wisdom teeth messed up her mouth. At 19 she had braces again, $6,000 on us! Thank goodness for payment plans. Last payment due next month.
So, contact YOUR church and then volunteer to organize a shopping shuttle for the needy and helpless in your neighborhood. Or better yet, go to wherever this woman is and volunteer to do so there.
Your idea, now make it work. I'm not sure who it is you think "should" develope the idea. It won't put a chicken in a pot for the hungry if you just discuss recipes with them, or try to when most aren't willing to listen. If you think finding the chicken, prepping and cooking the chicken and then providing the table, chairs and service for to eat the chicken is the best way to feed those who are without, then do that. But, the idea is usually to give in reason with what one has, not to prove ideas or whatever, but to give according to one's means.
And what means most of us are talking about is suggesting that this woman will eat the chicken and return in a few months to ask where the next chicken is and when you're serving it and if not, why not. She needs to learn how to motivate herself to get (and cook) her own chickens or learn what a TV-Dinner is when she can't find a chicken.
It's not the end of the world and she has so much to be grateful and thankful for, that, well, I'd sorta' think she would be out trying to find opportunities for herself to give to others from all that she has.
Take the virtual tour here:
http://www.apartments.com/partner/vtour.aspx?page=vtour&view=7&property=143908.2&p=switchb&state=TX&partner=switchb&prvpg=20#photos
These people have no right, no right whatsoever to complain. The gimme gimme gimme more more more attitude makes me sick.
"If she never had a car, then I have no sympathy."
I would assume some of these folks are just lazy, but others who lived in the city never needed a car. They rode buses and streetcars and had stores close to their homes. My late grandmother lived in a very modest house off Carrollton in N.O. and never even learned to drive. She walked two blocks to the streetcar or the bus most of the time, and she also had family that helped her out, including a sister next door.
Had she been alive and moved to the same place these folks are (in her case that wouldn't have happened because she had 10 children, 8 still alive), she would have been just as lost as they are now. And my grandmother was NOT a helpless person.
Does the government or taxpayer owe these people a Christmas? Of course not.
At least they are calling them Christmas trees.
You are so very right. My apologies! Having a veritable army of paid servants to wait on me and to attend to my every need, as I do, I often forget about the poor unfortunates who must live through the brutal pain of daily suburban life. Vacuuming and going to the store are only two examples of this hellish existence...
Suggesting someone take responsibility for themselves and begin to experience gratitude and generosity accordingly is not exemplifying "bah humbug". Quite the contrary.
Most people who are ungiving never are happy, don't regard what they have as being adequate to meet their needs and judge others negatively for not giving enough to them.
There's this expression, "an attitude of gratitude." When you're grateful for your life, that you are housed (much less a "new home"!), that you even have children who are alive and with you...a thirty minute walk seems like nothing!
Get a dratted bicycle. Call a neighbor. Attend a church and ask for some sort of network helps for basic transportation. Sign up for ride-share, save for a one-time taxi ride home...there's so much this woman could do, I mean, make her own decorations and enjoy herself and her children and laugh and sing and love one another! That's a Christmas many people with illustrious things never experience.
This woman's plight is so minor, it's pitiful that she's feeling down and without. Just pitiful. Not that she lacks things but that she lacks gratitude and character.
Someone in her neighborhood could and should help, yes, for the Holiday but I fear that unless this woman gets some other intervention, she will always be complaining about not having a ride, being too isolated, nothing, no one, not enough...
Glad you found your compassion:) I too am hoping my maid will be able to hire a maid for her maid this Christmas.
Yes, that's a good point. I would assume that your Grandmother and her children were of a different mindset and wouldn't have looked to the taxpayers to help them out. It's a different world today.
Where do I sign up???
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