I always say when people ask if I prefer winter or summer that winter’s much easier to take. In summer, it gets hot, you can only take off so many layers in public before you get arrested. Winter, you can always put on another sweater.
Assuming you have one, that is:
Evergreen Park’s annual coat drive typically provides outerwear for hundreds of needy people, but this year’s collection is lagging far behind previous years.
“I only have 20 coats,” Jim Feltz, director of the village’s youth commission, said. “We usually have 100 or so.”
This story wound up in my inbox Wednesday when I was looking for something to direct our attention toward in order to make a world that had just gotten a little bit darker brighter again. Evergreen Park’s on the southwest side of Chicago, in an area hit hard by the manufacturing decline and the continued insistence of our bankster masters that things are getting better. Like most Illinois suburbs, it’s seen a dramatic increase in the need at its social service sites and in poverty in general. Like most places everywhere, there are people that need taking care of.
So: got a coat you ain’t using? A nice thick sweater, sweatshirt, fleece thing? Throw it in a flat-rate Priority Mail box or in a puffy envelope and send it to the community center:
Clean coats, jackets and sweaters can be dropped off from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays at theEvergreen Park Community Center, 3450 W. 97th St., [Evergreen Park, IL 60805] through the end of the month, Feltz said.
Local, in southeastern Wisconsin/northeastern Illinois? E-mail me atathenae25 at yahoo.com and we’ll figure out a pickup. E-mail/Facebook your friends and relatives and get a few coats together. I’m personally bugging everyone I know so we can bring in a big pile prior to Thanksgiving.
Don’t want to mail outerwear? Feel silly? Don’t have extra coats but do have extra cash? Awesome. Hit up the tip jar with “COATS” in the comments box. They’re also collecting to stock the food pantry for the holidays (and every day thereafter) and could use the money to buy food. We’ll drop off the coats AND a nice check.
Last week was one of those times when, trolls’ contentions about our awesome Internet powers aside, it seems as if there’s just too much misery and stupidity to really make any kind of difference. Left alone, that’s the sort of feeling leads to impotent frustration, teawad rage, unplugging and dropping out. So let’s do this. Here in Chicago, it’s getting cold out there.
Let’s keep some people warm.
A.
You might ought to hook up with the knitters. They’re dangerous.
I suspect that maybe many of the people who used to donate coats are needing them, now that the bansters have tossed them out in the cold. Sign of the times.
i donate them locally. i need to deal with grandma’s vintage ones. i bet still wearable. been doing milwaukee’s winters with a windbreaker and sweaters and layers and layers.
I’m completely the opposite — I hate winter, because I don’t even feel the heat as unpleasant until it gets up into the high thirties celsius, and with my joint/muscle spasticity problems, when I get cold (which is all the time when it’s not warm out), I get stiff and sore.
I think that people who say “You can always put on another sweater” are smartasses, because I can’t fuckin’ type in gloves, and my fingers get too cold and sore to be useful at about 68F, if I’m working at a desk.
If the heat bothers you so much, stop living with air conditioning all year round so you’re never in temperatures warmer than about 21C until you leave your car occasionally in the summer. Youwill acclimatise.
The “One Warm Coat” drives are the best! For some reason, it seems so much more useful to donate that one coat than it does a whole bag of other clothing. Maybe it’s because we spend care & time picking out our winter coat(s), and they’re such a substantial item. Most of us *do* have an extra warm item in the closet we can do without. Thanks for the reminder, Athenae!