Sometimes the best laid plans …. You may recall that I felt that the good people at the Open Door Seventh Day Adventist church deserved special praise for the effort they made during this summer to keep their commitment to providing Sunday lunch to the homeless and hungry. Even to the point of a grown son turning to his mother to cover for him and serve Sunday lunch. No matter how old a child is still a child and a mother is forever your MOM.

This week the keeper of the coffee urn was away on holiday. In preparation for this he provided a house key for access to the coffee urn. However, he did forget one little thing, a sad fact of modern life, – the alarm code. I am afraid that when I see him I will have to give him a ribbing about the “trust issues” inherent in this oversight.

Be that as it may, the outcome was that those in charge of lunch Sunday found themselves without the ability to brew coffee. Among those they serve lunch to on Sunday I for one am willing to acknowledge my coffee addiction and I am not alone in my need for Java. Most fortunately a local coffee franchise stepped in to provide not just coffee but REAL coffee.

Starbucks donated the coffee, real actual cream (a nice treat), cups, stir sticks and provided the container to serve the hot coffee from. A nice BIG container so we all could have more than one cup and those of us with the need could sate our desire for caffeine with extra servings of a most excellent brew. Yummy! Not to mention the energy and ability to focus to get several writing projects written.

We sometimes tend to overlook that some of the franchises and franchisees, as well as other corporate citizens, in our midst take an active role as “citizens” of our community providing support for charities and other good causes in a variety of ways and products. People have come to take this so for granted that it is often forgotten to say “Thank You”.

So to those corporate citizens who understand the importance of charity and contributing to their community, we of the homeless and hungry communities want to express our thanks. With a special big Thank You, for coming through on such short notice, to Starbucks. Real cream, real coffee = a real treat.