Need & Giving.

In our local news is the very sad story of a family who lost their apartment. The single mom being a working person had no place for her two youngest kids and left them locked in a storage locker when she went to work. The manager heard them while making his rounds, the police cut the lock, the children were removed and the mother picked up at work and taken to jail. To the ministers who raised her bail she said she couldn't find any other option.

Then last night the Home Makeover show was definitely a 2 hankie show with the widow and her 2 kids. The part that got to me most was that, when asked, the local farmers 1) plowed, seeded and set up the irrigation on her field 2) gave her tons of hay to sell to tide them over and 3) passed the hat and raised $60,000 for their future.

I wonder, if she or her parents had asked would the community have come through for her like that? Was this outpouring of resources possible because the tv crew was involved? Or, are these kinds of assistance available around us just waiting for someone to ask?

Like in the case of another local event. A local amish family lost their barn, their buggys and their tobacco crop in a fire. What made the paper, however, was the barn raising that followed. The amish came from everywhere around to help the family get back in business. They used the most traditional community solution they have to protect their members. Through their labor the whole community acts as insurance for the individual amish family.

The tv show reminded me of the barn raising in many ways. The producers went into the community and got them involved in helping the widow. Together they gave the family's farm a head start on the future. Pretty darn uplifting stuff.

But then I worry about the family I started with. My brain is torn between the stupidity of locking the kids in the locker my thoughts bouncing from one possible horrible outcome to the next and my dismay in a society where this person says she felt she had no other options. Saddest of all, she did have options, she just never asked. The churches that posted her bail have said they'd have helped, every former neighbor they interviewed said they'd have helped. Everyone the papers spoke with say they would have helped, if she'd only asked.