I’m a sucker for stories like this; I wish I had thought of this first.
Meet Reed Sandridge. He’s an unemployed guy living in Washington, D.C., and last December he decided to try an experiment.
It’s the kind of thing you talk about in sociology class in college, or just hanging out with some friends one day dreaming about making the world better.
Sandridge decided that every day, for a year, he would give away 10 bucks. And he would record all the details of the transaction, through video recording with his camera, and on his website, called A Year of Giving. So far he’s given away almost $1,300.
It’s such a wonderful concept, this random philanthropy on the street. My friend Pearlman, for a story for Newsday, once stood on a street in Manhattan and tried to give away $1 to every person he met. An astonishingly large number of people refused to accept the bill. They thought it was a scam, or weird, or something.
But this Reed Sandridge guy, this is a man simply doing good. Who knows what that $10 might mean to that person on that day? They may use it to buy flowers for a loved one. Or eat a slightly nicer meal than they could’ve otherwise afforded.
Little gestures mean so much to people. Bravo, Reed Sandridge.
** Bret Michaels, one of the heroes of my 80s music-obsessed youth, is in critical condition with a brain hemorrhage, it’s been reported. Very sad to hear. He truly did kick ass on stage; I saw Poison live in Raleigh, N.C. once and he was fabulous.
Hope Bret pulls through; here’s a little bit of one of my favorite Poison songs. By the way, my sister Debbie used to have the lyrics to this song written on one of her school notebooks. She had a big crush on Bret.
Just throwing some random Lewis family trivia out there for you, that’s all.
Wide World of Stuff 