The brain can only take so much confirmation of depravity — that is, the daily news of people doing violence to others, down the street or across the oceans.
And, if that does not suffice, there's a rich and endless stream of cinematic cruelty, too. Evidence of the dark side is abundant without Woody Harrelson, at his drunken-thug best, brutalizing a woman, which is why, after the first five minutes, I shut down my Netflix feed of a "four-star" film called "Out of the Furnace."
I do this not because I want to escape life's gritty reality — as if that were even possible — but because too much of a bad thing skews the world view.
And besides, even if you eliminate violence of fact and fiction, there is an abundance of human dysfunction and flaw — children in poverty, the widening gap between the very rich and everyone else, lingering racism, unsustainable and planet-threatening consumerism, a broken political system in perpetual stalemate, and a debilitating discourse infested with the snark of trolls. The brain can only take so much.
So today, I offer blankets and quilts.
You should not go another day without knowing about Mission Quilts, a program of Baltimore-based Lutheran World Relief.
The $3 billion in revenue generated in 2014 by Under Armour, another global organization with headquarters in Baltimore, is a wonderful thing. Good for Plank & Co.
But the 400,000 quilts produced annually by Lutherans for some of the poorest and most distressed people in the world deserves equal or better recognition.
Every year, thousands of volunteers in congregations around the country produce 60-by-80-inch quilts that are shipped through either Maryland or Minnesota to troubled places around the world.
Last year, thousands of quilts went to the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan, thousands to Lebanon for the refugees of the war in Syria. They also went to poor villages in Peru and Tanzania. In all, Lutheran World Relief collected and shipped 408,245 quilts for those efforts.
In the previous year, LWR challenged its quilters to hit the half-million mark, and they came within 15,000 of doing so.
About half of the quilts ship through the LWR warehouse in New Windsor in Carroll County.
In addition to being a bed cover, a Lutheran quilt has other uses. Here's how LWR describes them on its website: "A baby carrier, tied around a mother's back; a market display, spread on the ground and piled with vegetables; a sack for transporting those goods to market; a sunshade; a shawl; and most importantly, a constant reminder that someone, far away, cares a lot."
Now, about the blankets.
Nancy Packard, who lives with her husband, Darl, in Union Square in West Baltimore, likes to crochet things for others. She's made comforters for homebound Baltimoreans with AIDS. In 2012, she made hats and mittens for New Jersey children whose homes were damaged in Superstorm Sandy.
Last year, she crocheted baby blankets on the weekends, during Ravens games, with no particular recipient in mind.
"Every Sunday, my husband and I dig in to watch the game," she says. "He shouts and I crochet. It calms my nerves."
In all, Packard made 14 baby blankets — blue, pink, yellow, green, lavender. On Super Bowl Sunday, she asked me to recommend a place that could use them. "Every baby deserves a handmade blanket," she said.
I suggested Health Care for the Homeless, on the Fallsway in Baltimore. HCH has had a pediatric clinic for five years. Some of Baltimore's children are born to homeless women. Some families with infants become homeless. "We indeed see newborns," Kevin Lindamood, the nonprofit's president, told Nancy Packard. HCH would put the blankets to good and immediate use, he said.
So that's where the Packards took the blankets Friday morning — to the homeless babies at Health Care for the Homeless.
I thought you should know.