Hello on Wednesday Morning

Dear Friends,



Our Tuesday went exactly as planned. The Mah Jongg ladies enjoyed the crock pot vegetable soup, which Linda whipped up and the jalapeño bread which I made in my bread machine.



Our 6 PM Irish Sister City meeting went well also. We ended up at Patrick’s Pub after the meeting for some food and merriment. We were home before 9 PM.



We are in a winter storm watch, but we are in the 5 to 10 inch range before the snow is over by the end of today. We are actually behind in snow fall amounts for this year.



We have the crock pot fired up once again. We have the traditional “snow day beef stew” brewing as I write this e-mail.

After sending my daily blog, I have to do the minutes for last night’s Irish Sister City meeting.



We will be so busy from March 8 through March 15 when our guests (2 females) from our Irish Sister City arrive in Pittsfield. We have meetings, lunch dates, and three covered dish dinners, Polenta dinner at the ITAM, and an Irish American Club’s St. Patrick’s Day dinner dance, and gatherings at some local Pub’s. I am exhausted just thinking about the agenda of events for this short period of time. All this doesn’t even include the events on St. Patrick ’s Day itself which we will be attending.

I won’t even have time to take our guests ice-fishing.



Observation – I want to return to my Dunkin Donuts experience so that I can relay another story that I listened on the other day. There were two guys sitting close enough that I could hear what they were saying. One guy was drinking coffee, and the other guy was just sitting there. They seemed like they were members of a local group similar to Alcoholic’s Anonymous. They were talking about not liking the leader of the group who runs the meetings. They also had reservations about the people who sponsored them. They both talked about having issues related to alcohol, but the group that they attend deals with people who have all types of addictions.

I guess the point that really struck home was that we have such needy people right here in the United States. I am not sure whether we take care of our own countrymen as well as we do for people in other countries who experience natural disasters.

When I first walked into the Pub last evening, my retired friend, who said that he was bored, was sitting at the bar eating supper alone. He told me that he tried volunteering at the Salvation Army on Tuesday. He said that the sadness that he saw in one day would rip your heart apart. This one guy came into the Salvation Army for a bag of groceries from the food pantry. The guy was trying to take care of two children on his own. He had a minimum wage job. The mother of his children was not in the picture any more because she got hooked on drugs. The poor guy told my bored friend that he didn’t know how he could survive each day without places like the Salvation Army. Of course, here is our group of Irish Sister City friends out at a packed restaurant on a Tuesday night paying for a fun evening of food and beverages while this poor guy isn’t sure where his next meal is coming from. The guilt was overwhelming for me!



This is why I keep saying to myself that “Life is Good!” I really appreciate how lucky that our lives have been from birth through the present time. My hot water tank problem in my finished off basement seems so trivial when compared to the life and death issues of so many people.



Well, it looks the snow issue is a sure thing for us in the Berkshires. It appears that the Science Fair that we are supposed to judge this evening might be canceled. If the schools do have a snow day, all evening activities like a science fair and sporting contests, etc. get canceled too.



Have to go and do my next quiet task – The minutes of last night’s meeting.

Talk to you soon. The Curley Lad