First of all, I was sad to hear of Zeller’s passing. I volunteered one Christmas to help deliver meals and it was a wonderful experience. I’ve also interviewed Zeller for news stories in the past. She was a wonderful woman and will be missed by this community, particularly given the challenges of fighting deadly illnesses in this isolated desert town with limited resources.

I should be surprised that people would respond to the cancellation of the delivery service so negatively, but I’m not. We received calls alerting us to the problem that Desert Manna not having enough food to give baskets to every family who requested help this season and having to restrict the donations to families of at least four.

One of the people who called us was angry and clearly expected us to write something critical of Desert Manna for not giving everybody baskets. Of course, we did no such thing. We reported about the situation in the hopes of encouraging community assistance (which apparently helped to some degree), but we certainly had no intention of pointing the finger at Desert Manna.

This is one of the results of living in an entitlement culture. The more we are given, the more we come to believe that we are entitled to these things we have not earned. I know that sounds callous, but is there any alternative? It’s certainly not acceptable to treat gifts from charitable organizations as though they’re something we’re owed.

It’s disturbing how pervasive the idea that somebody else will provide for us has become in our culture. I’m well aware that there are needy and helpless people within our community — I met several of them doing these deliveries a couple of years ago. But it’s disappointing that some folks immediately went to a place of entitlement, rather than helping look for solutions, when a problem arose.