npr

I am a cynical, sarcastic 23-year old naysayer who really does not care for Thanksgiving. But sentimentalism got the best of me, courtesy of NPR, my most reliable source of news.

NPR recently aired this story of an unassuming farmer who decided to give away the unharvested portion of his crop to anyone who wanted to get their hands dirty and harvest it themselves. He advertised that they would open the farm to the public at 9am and expected about 5000 people to show up over the weekend.

People began to arrive at dawn. In one weekend, Joe Miller estimated 40,000 people showed up to his farm. Don’t you wish you could give this much to people?

Yesterday I spent about 8 hours doing community service in Watsonville, CA. I rang a bell for the Salvation Army for four hours, then proceeded to cook and serve dinner to the homeless at the Salvation Army building. I had not done either of these things for at least six years. I truly don’t feel any better about myself for having done these things, because I did them grudgingly and with a hangover, but I will say for a moment, after all those people had been served, I did feel a sense of accomplishment. Which was immediately followed by the knowledge that these 50+ people would not get a meal this fulfulling for maybe another couple of weeks.