Every now and then one is totally surprised by another’s good deed. With the days growing shorter as summer wanes, it becomes especially easy to grow hyper critical of those charged most directly with helping those in need, especially with the daily news filled with various creative misdeeds of local government officials.
In 2003, perhaps to make up for some completely heinous offense, the good people of the Illinois government actually did something worthwhile, very much living up to its charter. It developed the Good Samaritan Energy Trust Fund to help lower income families manage their budgets by paying their heating bill for a month or two during the heart of the winter.
For our southern readers, it gets cold in Illinois in the winter – really cold. I know this because around January in my house, printed newspaper advertisements for real estate properties in Bend or Santa Rosa mysteriously begin to appear in some great numbers. I think I even find them piled up on the kitchen counter, stuffed in my laptop, wrapped around the remote, and even lining the dog’s bed. Okay, maybe I imagined all that, but I am pretty sure I can never find a really good answer when inevitably asked “why do we live here again?” .
In the depths of winter, opening the electric or gas bill generates it’s own kind of heat, but the numbers can be staggering even when expecting a shock. For lower income families, choosing between food and heat is an unfortunate January reality, one that we hope our small LITF efforts today on behalf of the Energy Trust Fund make just a little less likely.