Be like the 'giving' Scrooge: Contribute to the food pantry

“I will honour Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year. I will in the Past, Present and the Future.”

— Ebenezer Scrooge

From Charles Dickens’

“A Christmas Carol”

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It was Ebenezer Scrooge’s epiphany, with a little incentive from an old business partner and three Christmas ghosts, that softened his soul and loosened his wallet.

In essence, Charles Dickens tranformed Scrooge from a miserly old coot to a man who vowed to spend his remaining life bettering the lives of those who are less fortunate.

History tells us Dickens reflected on his own life to write “A Christmas Carol.”

In the end, Dickens was not unlike the transformed Scrooge of whom he characterized, giving much of his acquired wealth to charities.

And, so should we.

I traveled to the Libby Food Pantry on Wednesday and visited with Kathy Lauer, the volunteer director of the pantry.

Certainly, we know these are hard times, but nowhere is this more evident in the number of meals Lauer and her crew prepared for Thanksgiving.

This year, the number was 165, or about 25 more than last year.

Twenty-five more.

This reflects nearly an 18 percent increase.

Kathy said: “It concerns me because with that kind of increase for Thanksgiving, I wonder what kind of request we’ll have for Christmas.”

For some reason, the needy forget about Thanksgiving, but come out in larger numbers asking for help for Christmas food boxes.

“We do what we can,” Kathy said. “We try to accommodate all we can.”

And this is where you and I can get involved. While we might not be able to volunteer our time. Those of us who are blessed with good fortune should give to the food pantry. If not in the form of a donation of food, we should, like the transformed Scrooge, open our wallets.

I ask, is there any more noble cause than helping those less fortunate?

I think not.

So, like Scrooge, for whom the Ghosts worked their magic all in one night, there still is time to benefit others.

Food baskets will be distributed on Tuesday, Dec. 18, a week before Christmas.

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If you had the opportunity to attend the Festival of Trees fundraiser Saturday night at the Memorial Center, you witnessed a great evening for a terrific cause.

According to KC Hoyer, SJLH marketing director, the event raised more than $60,000 for the SJLH Foundation for the new hospital.

The food, which was prepared by the dietary department, was just fantastic.

Thanks for the great evening!

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While at the Festival of Trees, I talked with our Sheriff Roby Bowe at some length.

It seems Bowe is quite an outdoorsman, and he invited me to go with him one day as he worked his hunting dogs.

Well, I didn’t have to wait long, as Roby called the next day and invtited me to tag along as he worked his Walker hounds in pursuit of a mountain lion.

Bowe was out cutting fence posts on his property when he noticed all the trackings of a cat that had taken down a deer. He traced the cougar back to the mostly eaten carcass, and it was from there that he released his three hounds.

The fattened lion may have only gotten about a tenth of a mile before it took to the trees.

A beautiful animal, the lion seemed rather unbothered by all the attention that ultimately attraced Rodd and Michelle Freese and Undersheriff Brent Faulkner and his family.

In fact, once we took our photos and headed off, the male adolescent cat, leapt from its perch about 25 feet high and dashed off to sleep off its feast.

It was amazing to watch the teamwork of these dogs as they combined to halt the big cat so that we might marvel at the majestic beauty of this predator.

It was just another day in our paradise.

 (Alan Lewis Gerstenecker is editor of The Western News. His column appears weekly.)