THE GOOD DEED

Tuesday, 8:15 AM.  26 degrees F, wind S, moderate with stronger gusts.  The sun climbed a scaffold of black clouds at dawn, eventually reaching a mostly blue sky.  The weather changed dramatically overnight and it is finally a sunny, cold, wintry day again, a relief from the dark, gloomy weather that had been hung around our necks like a heavy weight for the last ten days or more.  Bayfield had become Seattle, and this feels more normal.
        The bird feeders got hung up on the back porch yesterday; two with sunflower seeds, one with thistle seeds, and the chickadees found them as soon as I closed the patio door.  I still have to buy some suet/seed blocks.  I hope the neighborhood bear has gone to sleep.
        I assume by now that you have heard of, and seen the photo that “went viral” on the internet, of the NYC cop who bought socks and boots for a barefoot homeless man and put them on his freezing, blistered feet.  Now that homeless person is seeking “a piece of the action” that he assumes there has been from the story and the photo, and he is now back on the street, barefoot again.
        It is said, and we should fully expect, that no good deed goes unpunished. Or even appreciated, for that matter, as in this case. 
        So what should we make of all this?  Simply that good deeds are their own reward, and are not contingent upon approval, disapproval, reward or punishment.  The homeless man would not be sitting on a New York sidewalk with bare feet if he were a rational person, so we shouldn’t expect a rational response to a good deed.