Neighbors Helping Neighbors
Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel
Faced with empty food shelves in supermarkets or the difficulty in going shopping – especially for seniors – we’re all thinking about food…and toilet paper, too.
SurfWriter Girl Patti woke up this morning thinking about the 1962 book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. How’s that for a strange thought to start the day?
Like many of you, she read the book in high school and remembers the deprivations that Denisovich goes through trying to survive in a Russian gulag (prison work camp) in the freezing Siberian cold with minimal food to eat. He ate every morsel of the meager fish portion he got and then boiled the bones for broth and sucked the marrow out.
Things haven’t gotten that bad yet. And, thankfully, members of our communities are stepping in to help neighbors in need.
Around the country mini food pantries the size of kids’ lemonade stands – like this one SurfWriter Girls friends Cindy and David Kirby in Anaheim, CA, put up – are popping up on lawns and driveways to help get food and necessities to neighbors.
If you need a can of soup or a fresh tomato, just take it. Or even a book to read. And, if you can drop off something for someone else, just leave it. The motto is: “Take what you need. If you have something to spare, please share.”
At SurfWriter Girl Patti and Greg’s house they put this big teddy bear in the window so the kids can see it when they walk by with their parents. Ted puts a smile on everyone’s face…something we all need now.
With good will and charity to others like this, we’ll find a way to get through the coronavirus situation. Just remember Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He survived eight years in a gulag.
We will survive, too…one day at a time.
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Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel hold the exclusive rights to this copyrighted material. Publications wishing to reprint it may contact them at surfwriter.girls@gmail.com Individuals and non-profit groups are welcome to post it on social media sites as long as credit is given.