We can cure physical diseaseswith medicine

but the only cure for loneliness,despair and hopelessness is

love.

There are many in the worldwho are dying

for a piece of breadbut there are many more dying

for a little love.

Mother Teresa(1910 – 1997)

The Great Depression 1929 – 1933

The Great Depression started in the U.S. in 1929, quickly spread to every part of the world. Most Americans lost everything as banks failed.

This is a wonderful photograph of  Florence Owens, better known as the Migrant Mother.

This is one of the six famous photographs taken by Dorothea Lange.

It was taken just outside a pea pickers camp in California during the Great Depression.

Throw out the lifeline, throw out the lifeline, someone is sinking today. --Edward Smith Ufford

There were many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of heart broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream – whatever that dream might be. --Pearl Buck (1892 – 1973)

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.If you want to be happy, practice compassion.-Dalai Lamab. 1935

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror I can take the next thing that comes along.”

…You just do the thing you think you cannot do.

--Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962)

June 10, 2010

By Ryan Widdekind

SALEM, Ore. -- Oregon Housing and Community Services once again reports that Oregon homelessness is on the rise.

Unemployment tops the list of reasons for the increase.

And this year, children now make up 31% of the state's homeless population.

The number of homeless families with children increased 33% from the previous year.

It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.

--Irish Proverb

Image Source Page: http://thirdcreekbaptistchurch.org/homeless2008/pages/img_7620_jpg.htm

So long as little children are allowed to suffer, There is no true love in this world.

--Isadora Duncan (1878-1927)

Salem, Oregon homeless family. Photo by Tim King Salem-News.com

Image Source Page: http://www.shepherdsarms.org/

Oregon leads nation in homeless countBy Steve LawThe Portland Tribune

Be kind – everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. -–John Watson

As in most major U.S. cities, the number of people experiencing homelessness in Portland, Oregon is growing very fast.

The soup kitchen in Berlin (Germany) provides pets of the homeless and unemployed with a free meal. (Reuters: Pawel Kopczynski)

Jon Earl Blake, a homeless man from Oregon, hugs his dog Hannah at a homeless shelter dubbed PetCo Place that accommodates the homeless and their pets, Monday, Aug. 4, 2008, in Hollywood section of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

"Somewhere in America a state needs to be able to demonstrate that we can weather this kind of challenge without losing our sense of community, without losing our commitment to one another, and emerge stronger and more united than where we began.

Let's make that our state. Let's make that state Oregon."

Inauguration Day 2011Governor Kitzhaber(1/10/11)

Kaylee Motherdol, 12, left, and Adi Wolfenden, 11, fill handmade bowls with soup as lunch is served to the needy at the Family Kitchen at Bend's Trinity Episcopal Church. Rob Kerr / The Bulletin, Bend, Oregon

Since its founding in 1991, Oak Grove's Mobile Soup Kitchen's participants have made over a quarter of a million sandwiches!  Every week of the year, this dedicated group prepares meals for and serves them to approximately two hundred homeless people.

When you carry out acts of kindness you get a wonderful feeling inside.It is as though something inside your body responds and says, Yes, this is how I ought to feel.

--Rabbi Harold Kushner