As we Americans prepare for a day of utter gluttony tomorrow, I found Anna Quindlen’s back page editorial in this week’s Newsweek to be rather apropos. She writes on the devastating shortage of food recently in food pantries. –
The worst emergency food shortage in years is plaguing charities from Maine to California, even while the number of those who need help grows. The director of City Harvest in New York, Jilly Stephens, has told her staff they have to find another million pounds of food over the next few months to make up the shortfall. “Half as many pantry bags” is the mantra heard now that the city receives half the amount of emergency food than it once did from the Feds. In Los Angeles 24 million pounds of food in 2002 became 15 million in 2006; in Oregon 13 million pounds dwindled to six. It’s a cockamamie new math that denies the reality of hunger amid affluence.
There are many reasons why. An agriculture bill that would have increased aid and the food-stamp allotment has been knocking around Congress, where no one ever goes hungry. Donations from a federal program that buys excess crops from farmers and gives them to food banks has shrunk alarmingly. Even the environment and corporate efficiency have contributed to empty pantries: more farmers are producing corn for ethanol, and more companies have conquered quality control, cutting down on those irregular cans and battered boxes that once went to the needy.
This is a sobering reminder on the eve of a holiday generally used to preach the Christian values and origins of “our great nation.” Yet even in this remembrance we have somehow made it all about us. Now I’ve got no issue with family getting together for turkey and dressing or with the call to be thankful. But perhaps we could broaden our perspective. Instead of making construction paper pilgrim hats and handprint turkey placemats with our children in school and church, perhaps we should be out there collecting food and writing letters to the government imploring them to care for those in need. In our pious thanksgiving for all that we have been blessed with, it is good to be reminded that we need to in turn bless others. So instead of just remembering the origins and “Christian” roots of our country, perhaps we could put an effort into doing Christian things as a country. Like feeding the hungry.
But what am I doing to change that this year? Not a whole lot. I’m figuring it out too.