SIMMONS: Volunteerism’s virtue? It’s nonpartisan

Another engaging website is pointsoflight.org, where visitors are also given tips on aiding military families.

Too often, anti-war sentiments mean we turn our backs on the very people who serve on the front lines and, once back home, are left to fend for themselves. (The repercussions of Americans’ hatred of the Vietnam War are still among us.)

But it’s easy — it’s so easy, folks — to look at your own community, where children need volunteer tutors, mentors and athletic coaches, armed-service members need a wink, thank you and caring hand, and the sick and shut-in need a healthy meal, free ride to a pharmacy or someone to read to them.

It also doesn’t matter whether you’re a Kennedy or Obama Democrat, Reagan or Bush Republican, filthy wealthy or broke as a haint, American born or birthed in another country.

We are, as the saying goes, all in this together.

Hand-in-hand

The winds of change are upon us, although the central figure of this inaugural weekend is hardly unfamiliar to us.

So I leave you with a few words from Mr. Lewis, reared in a family of Alabama sharecroppers.

Mr. Lewis once said to me, in an interview many years ago, that to be effective when you’re moving with purpose, it’s best to have the wind at your back.

He mentioned that that is exactly what he and his relatives had to do when the wind kicked up a horrifying storm around their wood-planked home.

“Walking with the wind saved our house and our family,” he said in an undeniably Southern drawl.

The devil and the details

There is a recurring theme among gun-control advocacy.

The gun made them do it.

How insane.

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