My stories don’t generally cover my personal activities, but do include brief examples of life lessons. Today I awoke at six, a full half hour before the opportunity alarm sounded. The temperature in the house was down to sixty-eight degrees, the lowest since last winter. Outside, the first frost of autumn displayed a soft white glaze over the lawn.
I shuffled down to my personal bath in the basement and shaved a four day beard. My appearance today had to be sharp and clean. It was show time for my Lions Club. Candy Day 2018 is a very important fundraiser for Lions Illinois Foundation. Basically, we (Lions) stand at intersections and at storefronts shaking our buckets. Our buckets are empty one gallon plastic milk jugs with a hole cut into the side. We paste a Lions Candy Day label on the side to cover the dairy label. As we say we shake our cans looking as pathetic as we can asking the public for money.
My station this morning was at the local Dunkin-Donuts shop. I asked our event leader where I should stand. He said, “Oh just hang around the front door.” This was my first experience standing in front of a store shaking my can. In previous years I stood in an intersection at the Burger King. That was an adrenaline producing work out because with traffic coming at me from three directions it kept me moving out of the way. The worst was dodging a semi-truck delivering to one of the stores in the plaza. They need a lot of room to make a turn and the trailer typically cuts across the spot where I usually stood.
Within two minutes of covering the front door I saw where I should be standing. The drive by takeout window had a line of cars six long. I went there and stood in one place. A very dour group of drivers lowered their windows to reach out with a dollar or with a handful of change scrounged from the console. In return I handed each of them a roll of mints, hence the name Candy Day.
The Lions Illinois Foundation is a non-profit charitable organization and a means used by Illinois Lions Clubs to provide statewide services for the visually and hearing impaired.
It was founded July 1, 1974, is registered with the Office of Illinois Attorney General, and qualifies 501c# tax-exempt organization.
All programs are approved by Lions at the annual membership meeting in May. The Foundation is governed by Elected trustees from each district.
The Lions Of Illinois Foundation is devoted to the highest Lions ideals of service to those with vision or hearing impairments.
Through the Foundation, communities and clubs benefit from these services:
- Camp Lions for Children and Adults
- Adult Low Vision
- Lions of Illinois Statewide Student Low Vision Valuation Clinics
- Mobile Retinal Screening Unit
- Mobile Hearing Screening Unit
- Used Hearing Aid Bank
- Recycling: Used Eyeglasses, Hearing Aids, Keys, Cell Phones, wire and Aluminum tabs
- Social Services and Referral
- Lions of Illinois Funds for Emergencies (L.I.F.E.)
It is funded mainly by club contributions from Candy Day, Sight and Sound Sweepstakes, Tootsie Pop Day, Gift Card Campaign, Annual Gala, Car Show and BBQ.
The Foundation led a campaign to raise $5 million to finance construction of the Lions of Illinois Eye Research Institute (L.I.E.R.I.) in Chicago, as well as the campaign to raise $1.1 million to finance the Charles I. Young Professional Chair.
The above explains why I stood in drive-through window at Dunkin-Donuts on the morn of the first freeze to shake my can in an attempt to help my club support L.I.F.
Several kinds of people came across my path:
1. Non-smiling, sleepy looking, caffeine deprived early morning risers who slowly groped about the car seeking change, but eventually opened a wallet to pull a dollar bill or two. Even though they didn’t look at me smilingly they cheered up when I told them to have a “great day.”
2. Smiling, cheerful, eagerly rolling down the window to load my can with paper money or a handful of change. They thanked me and accepted the mints with a broad smile.
3. The drive-by, usually with black windows who couldn’t be identified, and impossible to make eye contact with. I waved and wished them a good morning anyway.
4. Smiling, cheerful, eagerly rolling down the window to tell me that he doesn’t carry cash. I tell him next time I will have a credit card machine. He laughs as I tell him to have a wonderful day/
After an hour and forty-five minutes my bones were chilled and aching. My shaken bucket was full so I gave it up for the day.
Filed under: Lions Club, Seniors | Tagged: Candy Day | 1 Comment »
about how we are living in the USA today.
8:00 am I made a snowman.
8:10 A feminist passed by and asked me why I didn’t make a snow woman.
8:15 So, I made a snow woman.
8:17 My feminist neighbor complained about the snow woman’s voluptuous chest saying it objectified snow women everywhere.
8:20 The gay couple living nearby threw a hissy fit and moaned it could have been two snow men instead.
8:22 The transgender ma..wom…person asked why I didn’t just make one snow person with detachable parts.
8:25 The vegans at the end of the lane complained about the carrot nose, as veggies are food and not to decorate snow figures with.
8:28 I am being called a racist because the snow couple is white.
8:31 The Muslim gent across the road demands the snow woman wear a burqa.
8:40 The Police arrive saying someone has been offended.
8:42 The feminist neighbor complained again that the broomstick of the snow woman needs to be removed because it depicted women in a domestic role.
8:43 The council equality officer arrived and threatened me with eviction.
8:45 TV news crew from the ABC shows up. I am asked if I know the difference between snowmen and snow-women? I reply, “Snowballs” and am now called a sexist.
9:00 I’m on the News as a suspected terrorist, racist, homophobe sensibility offender, bent on stirring up trouble during difficult weather.
9:10 I am asked if I have any accomplices. My children are taken by social services.
9:29 Far left protesters offended by everything are marching down the street demanding for me to be beheaded.
Moral: There is no moral to this story. It’s just the world in which we live today, and it is going to get much worse.
I cannot imagine how the world became populated. Last week I overdosed on the Senate hearings, and frankly, I am sick of it. They made me hate all democrats even though I have some very good friends who are democrats. I heard only one take on this matter which made sense. Both Ms Blasey-Ford and Judge Kavanaugh are right. Neither is lying. Ms Ford is telling what she remembers, but what if what she remembers isn’t what happened? What if during the course of her therapy to get over this dreadful incident while a teen she was hypnotised and the process has altered her memory? Stranger things have happened.
Now here is my old guy take on the matter. I think Ms Ford wanted to be abused by the Judge when they were both young, and he rejected her. I wouldn’t put it past a woman scorned to create a story so brazen that people believe it. Just today, I heard a story on the news about a mother who allowed her very young daughter to be raped by her boy friend. What will that little girl remember? I turned on an afternoon program MC’d by Maury Povich. A very pretty young white girl a little bit over weight had a baby and she asked Maury to find out which of nine different boys might be the father. She remembers all of them but which one really hit the jackpot? It will take the remainder of the week to learn if any of the nine guys she named is the father. Today, they eliminated two. The stuff of life happens daily and will continue to happen daily as long as Earth is filled with people.
When politics begins to establish new norms upon which to base our votes and those norms are based upon teen age curiosity about sex and the awful scar it leaves on the psyche of the offenders it is time to re-set the country. I don’t believe there is a woman alive who lived through her teen years without at least one story to tell about how she was groped by an over-sexed boy who thought that was the way you make it with a girl. That very kind of activity is most likely why marriage was invented. Set the rule, want some sex, get married and the world opens for you at least with the woman you chose. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. In my day it mostly worked. Many of my friends met and married when they left high school and they are still together sixty-five years later.
When I was young, there was no such thing as a legal pre-nuptial agreement except the vows one took at the altar. After my first wife set me free by leaving (she died) I got married a second time, but not without intense pressure from my lawyer to have my new wife sign a pre-nuptial agreement. I argued that we wouldn’t need such a document. He insisted, and we went to a family lawyer to discuss our views. We married without a pre-nup, but we both spoke the vows of “till death do us part.”
All I can say in closing is that Ms Blasey-Ford is one screwed up lady, and she has opted to make the Judge into one screwed up guy.
