Turn Your Porch Light Off...Make a Real Difference

This has been a tough week for a lot of people because they aren't happy with a verdict in a trial that they have had nothing to do with other than that they followed it in the news. I will have to agree with my friend, David Wright, that we tend to feel powerless in situations where we have no control and it makes us angry.

Am I saddened that a child lost her life? ABSOLUTELY! Do I think that it is suspicious that the mother told so many lies during the investigation? Darn right! But I didn't hear everything that the jury did and I'm not going to form any full opinions over it. That's just how I roll...sorry if that upsets you, but I refuse to get angry at someone who has an Ultimate Judge to take care of whatever she deserves.

What does frustrate me is that people are putting on their porch lights for remembrance of this innocence lost. It's a nice sentiment, but it doesn't really do anything. David posted a very angry note that describes his feelings on it all...it also gave some very interesting statistics: “Seventy-Three of the One-Hundred and Twenty-Seven (or so) missing American children on helpfindmychild.net have gone missing since the reporting of Caylee Anthony's disappearance in June of 2008.
 
As near as I can tell, an average of more than 700,000 American Children are reported missing annually (it appears that a large number of these are erroneous, but more than 100 of them are "stereotypical" kidnappings - the kind of stuff you see on Law & Order).  Upwards of 200 end in death.
 
There are CURRENTLY 328 missing children in the State of Florida alone.”

So I'm going to follow his lead and say, turn off the porch lights. If you want to do something to remember that poor baby who was taken far too soon, donate the money that you would've spent if you'd left that light on for 6 months to a year to The National Center For Missing & Exploited Children. (If it's a 100 watt bulb and you leave it on for 24 hours that's 2.4 kilowatts. So if you pay about 12 cents a kilowatt for electricity that comes to 29 cents/day or $52/6 months.) Do something with the anger that you feel that will actually make a difference. Stand up for ALL of the children that need our help, thoughts, prayers. Because I like to think that if we all wake up to what we really can do in this world we'd be surprised at the differences we can make.