by Laura Conaway

In a blog entry headlined "Maybe We Need a Downturn," listener Shawn Smith writes:

The other day on my bus into downtown SF, a down-and-out looking guy stepped on and asked if anyone could give him the dollar he was short on bus fare. Amazingly, five or six people stepped up to oblige, and it got me thinking about the economy. I've seen people ask for money on the bus before, but I've never seen five people leap to lend a hand. Hard times can create a kind of brotherhood.

He puts me mind of a report from the New York Times over Christmas. The paper says its annual Neediest Cases charity has received over $500,000 more than it had by this point last year. And that's not all. The number of people giving went up, too — by 53 percent.