Category Archives: Harry Adams

Editor’s Note: Today’s blog entry is a reprint of a July 2009 column by Harry Adams, a regular contributor to our quarterly Volunteer Voices newsletter. His words of wisdom are timeless. Not everyone is or can be a volunteer. It takes a person with certain gifts and a certain quality of life to be a volunteer. Let me support that assertion by indicating one of the gifts and one of the qualities of life which a volunteer inevitably has. First the gift. There is a haunting line in Samuel Beckett’s play, “Waiting for Godot.” At one point Vladimir says: “Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now?” It is possible for people to be unaware of the hunger, the homelessness, the despair of others in the community in which they live. They simply don’t see what is right before their eyes. The volunteer has the gift of...
Continue reading »

Editor’s Note: Today’s blog entry is a reprint of an April 2005 column by Harry Adams, a regular contributor to our quarterly Volunteer Voices newsletter. His words of wisdom are timeless. The way we view our world depends on our perspective. There is a story about a ship passing through a channel at night that saw another light, and blinked at it: change course. The light blinked back: you change course. The ship responded: VIP on board, you change course. Again the light blinked back: you change course. The ship tried again: you change course, I’m a battleship. The light blinked back: you change course, I’m a lighthouse. We can see hunger and homelessness from very different perspectives. Some of us believe we can avoid the problem by just not looking at it and, maybe, it will go away. Others know that there are hungry people out there, but think...
Continue reading »