Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Homeless at Christmas

It is that most wonderful time of year for homeless people. There is something about the Thanksgiving holiday and approaching Christmas celebration that brings out the goodness in people. Perhaps seeing a tattered homeless person causes them to feel grateful for the things they have and the giving spirit of Christianity takes a hold of their hearts. Churches, that regularly prepare and serve food for the homeless and hungry, have an overabundance of volunteers at this time of the year. It seems that everyone wants to do something special to help brighten up a homeless person's life during the Thanksgiving to Christmas holiday season. Homeless people truly appreciate the generosity of spirit, but also chuckle about the lack of help come January and February.

Above is the start of an article I wrote for Associated Content with gift giving suggestions for those who wanted to gift the homeless this year. Ask me why I never submitted it for publication, go on ask me, and my answer will be: I do not know. I wrote it early enough to submit for pay. (A two week time lapse usually between submit and offer or rejection) I had it timed to appear just around Thanksgiving. I had that article planned every since I joined AC. It seems people who write such articles give the same advice and the homeless end up with dozens of brown paper bags full of the combs, toothbrushes, full size bars of soap, shampoo, toothpaste and so on. Being on the receiving end of holiday gifting I have a good idea what works and what does not.

Perhaps AC had rejected other articles at about the time I wrote it. The answer probably can be found in my gypsywoman and All About Mary blog posts. The ones I will not be posting. Perhaps IE had slowed the computer down to a crawl. Maybe I had checked out my page views and whybotherism took hold. Dunno. I think it is a decent paragraph. For whatever reason, I am glad I found it; gave me something to blog about in honor of the holiday and one more Notepad item I can delete. Will have no problem rewriting the deleted article if I decide to write it next year.


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