Columns & Opinions

Rockdale Christian Services operates a food pantry at 224 West Cameron Avenue, open the second and fourth Thursday and Friday of the each month from 10 a.m. to noon. Donations of non-perishable food items are welcome, especially one-pound bags of rice, pinto beans, macaroni and cheese, canned soups and peanut butter. Donations may also be taken to 11 RCS-member churches: First Baptist, First Christian, First Presbyterian, Full Gospel Chapel, Grace Lutheran, Peace Lutheran, Meadowbrook Baptist, Primera Iglesia Bautista, St. Joseph’s Catholic, St. Thomas Episcopal and St. John’s Methodist.

am currently reading the Charles Dickens classic, David Copperfield and there is a perfectly fitting section in it that describes Copperfield's first evening with Dora, his first true love. Copperfield says this, “The sun shown Dora, The birds sang Dora, The south wind blew Dora, and the wildflowers in the hedges were all Dora’s. I took Dora’s little hand and kissed it and she let me, and we all seemed to my thinking to go straight up to the seventh heaven. We did not come down again, we stayed up there all evening. At first we strayed to and fro among the trees. I with Dora’s shy arm drawn through mine and heaven knows, folly as it was, it would have been a happy fate to have been struck immortal with those foolish feelings and have stayed among the trees forever.”

In the summer of 1986, municipal workers of Philadelphia went on strike. During that hot summer, the trash got higher and higher. Orange rinds, drink bottles, old newspapers. Junk mail, aluminum foil, chicken bones. Old shoes, dead batteries. Coffee grinds, half-eaten hot dogs, tin cans.