Charity Begins At (Your 3,000 Square Foot) Home....

A South End couple ran the Boston Marathon last week and raised almost $29,000 for Children's Hospital. I applaud them (although I will not mention their names not so much as to protect their privacy as so that they don't have to suffer the ignominy of being associated with this blog). That's what the spirit of charity is all about, i.e., giving to others for the benefit of others.

This is the opposite of, say, donating money for a plaque depicting your deceased dog so that you (and your "rebound" dog) and other yuppie dog owners can mingle (owners) and run freely (dogs, presumably). In the former paragraph, we have selfless people raising money for others (unmet children) and in the latter we have people raising money for their own benefit (and secondarily, the benefit of other yuppie dog owners). Notice the subtle difference.

Of course the dog-owners, like the Hurley School "parking-entitled" will try to come up with any plausible explanation - "the children benefit from a well-appointed dog park," (of course the children have no safe and clean portion of the park) "the dog park people are a diverse cross section of the South End," (yes: wealthy gays, wealthy straights, wealthy old, wealthy young, wealthy black, wealthy white). I don't buy it. Donating money to a dog park when there are homeless people fighting for shelter space one block away is repugnant to me. Monies spent on a "doggie walk of fame," when kids in this same area haven't a place to play as safe and clean as neighborhood dogs is a shame.