Trying Not To Scream
[…]
Allyson Jamison. seventeen years old. Died Sunday along with her nine-year-old sister Mary when their house burned down.
It’s just news, y’know? Story like that every couple of days, oh-how-sad. A little sympathy, a little empathy, maybe a tear or a prayer or a small donation to a memorial fund. You don’t get to live very long before you learn that there’s a huge disconnect between how it feels when it happens to someone else and how it feels when it happens to you. The world might stop and pat you on the back before it moves on. The world’s a little more interested in who the stars are wearing than in what happened to somebody nobody ever heard of.
I’m not going to scream. This isn’t supposed to happen, but I’m not going to scream. There’s a moratorium on shutting off heat during the winter months provided the customer applies for state energy assistance. They didn’t, apparently. I’m not going to scream. “Shutting off the gas is something we really try to avoid, especially during the winter, but with the size of the bill, it just wasn’t possible,” said Dan Considine of Citizens Gas. He’s doing his job. The gas company in Indianapolis is a public charitable trust, not a for-profit utility. We’ve managed to resist its sale to a faceless, heartless corporation so far. I’m not going to scream. I’m not going to take a cheap shot at the worship of mammon or empty promises of “faith-based” solutions. There are programs in place. They weren’t enough. Somebody, maybe everybody, screwed up. I’m not going to scream. Two young girls are dead, and in another couple days the news will be too, and no one will ask why we send a man over to disconnect the gas because some paperwork wasn’t filled out, instead of picking up the phone to find some help, somebody, somewhere, however temporary. Pray for their souls and find some way to make ourselves feel better. We ignore a hell of a lot worse in Iraq every day, don’t we? Life isn’t neat. If you let one person slide then everyone will want to. I am not going to scream. Tears are much more civilized.
Now there’s no more moratorium on disconnections. There are some support programs but they stop in May or when the money runs out, whichever comes soonest.
March 11. 2006 6:59AM Winter heating bills: More aid may be needed
As moratorium on shut-offs ends, social services expect spike in requests.JOSHUA STOWE
Tribune Staff Writer
As Wednesday approaches, local social services are bracing for a flood of requests from Hoosiers seeking help with their heating bills.
Wednesday, or March 15, marks the end of a moratorium on shutting off customers who are receiving aid from the government-financed Energy Assistance Program.
These are low-income earners, senior citizens and disabled people. They’re encouraged to continue paying their bills through the moratorium.
But the reality is that some, especially the needy, will have put it off. And many of them will be seeking aid so they can heat their homes through spring.
“We think it’s gonna be awful,” said Carol Thon, director of the United Religious Community of St. Joseph County, which assists people with a range of needs at its Advocacy Centers. “We expect to get hit very, very hard.”
Tags: Oil Energy Crisis Poverty
