Totally Unauthorized

When the Contra Costa Bridge club found a location, it was in the First Christian Church in Concord.  Another tenant of the complex is the SHARE Food Pantry, a charitable organization originally founded among 16 churches to combine their efforts to feed the poor and homeless of the county.

Unit 499 Board Member Jackie Zayac is also a member of the District 21 board, and used her influence to persuade the district charity committee to donate $2,500 to SHARE, enough to purchase 6,000 pounds of food to distribute.

There was a small ceremony today at the bridge club to hand over the check, so I thought I’d drop in, take photos and see if there was cake.  Good news.  There was cake.

Jackie spoke first, introducing Tom and telling how the district makes charitable donations but our unit doesn’t.

I’m very pleased to see the District make this contribution. It is good to be part of an organization that considers the greater community.

I’m not at all pleased to hear that our Unit NEVER makes donations to charity.  We have over $32,000 in the bank (having had a hugely successful program with Barbara Seagram which netted us over $6,400!!  Good work, Anne!)  Surely we could spend a bit of that to help those less fortunate.

By and large, bridge players are intelligent, educated, successful and well-off.  A few are just plain rich. The enormous amount of money we have in the bank should be doing at least some good for the greater polity, not just financing dealing machines and new decks of cards for the local clubs. I’m all in favor of helping the clubs, I just want to do more.  Don’t we who have been so lucky in life have a moral responsibility to help others?

Tom Pajak told me that the Oakland unit makes an annual donation to the Oakland Zoo, which is quite close to the East Bay Community Bridge Center.  Good for them.

The Contra Costa Bridge center, not the unit, is planning a charity event to help SHARE.  I heard some different possibilities today, but it is clear that they have a strong intention to make a significant contribution. Good for them: I’ll be there.

This is nothing new–I’ve been railing against the amount of money our unit and our district hoard for decades. You’d think it was their own money and their children were barefoot. And no, I don’t think we should give everything away and don sackcloth and ashes. There just has to be a reasonable, sane amount that we can give to make life better for people who need help.