Well, where to begin?
We are thankful for ANYTHING that can help poor Libya and the terrible flooding that caused so many deaths, and the Moroccan earthquake disaster, and so many places on this earth that are having major problems in their cities and among their inhabitants.
In the US it is child poverty and hunger. In the USA! Much of the poverty in the south is caused by racism and fewer opportunities for non-white inhabitants. So sad.
Why the heck can’t we all get along and help one another instead of what we are doing to our poor planet and inhabitants.
We would surely be thankful for that. Sigh…
The world needs many, many more snuggles…
I agree, Loulou, the world needs lots of snuggles. ~Ernie
Oh, and do we get a few, Ernie? We could be on the Miss and Mr Snuggle poster.
You are 200% right dear Loulou….the world is a sad, scary and messy place these days. Man against man, man against nature, nature against man – it’s just full of turmoil. It was NOT like this when my Mom was growing up…..but it is the future our children and their children face. We wish we all wouldn’t have to be worried for life and the future but who can help worrying when things are crumbling all around us. We must keep HOPE in our hearts. AND love…..lots of love.
Hugs, Teddy and Mom Pam
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone….you’ll NEVER walk without us, Teddy.
Hear, hear, Loulou. The world is a strange place, but at least there are kitty snuggles so that’s a plus.
And getting stranger…okay, challenging!
Oh LouLou you are so correct ! Your pensive look makes us stop and think and say a purrayer or two.
I think that’s a good choice. Or maybe I ponder a bit too much.
So much sadness in the world. Seeing your pretty face makes me feel better. XO
Well, we feel better, too when we see your charming kitties, Ms. E. And little darlings who are back in school.
Just cause we live in the South doesn’t mean we are racists. Thanks for joining our Thankful Thursday Blog Hop!
OH, we did not mean to imply that at all, but unfortunately, that part of the US seems to have more than its share. Mama is from Texas and you can bet your boots that there is more racism there than you can imagine.
(This is an awfully long comment…will WordPress take it? I want to find out…}
Much of the poverty in the US is caused by our definition of poverty as having less than 80-90% of the people. That means that 10-20% of people will *always* be “below the poverty level”…the poor, poor people who might have to depend on government aid for cell phones, private school tuition. and name-brand athletic shoes for unathletic growing children.
People who’ve lost everything in floods, fires, etc., really are poor–at least temporarily. People who are homeless in cities really are poor–though the majority of “homeless & hungry” panhandlers are neither homeless nor hungry. Then there’s the kind of poverty that comes from not knowing what to do with what people have. I think that accounts for most of the hungry children, whatever color.
It’s not that food, or money to buy food, isn’t there. It’s not that most of the children are small or thin! Most of them are grossly overgrown from eating hormone-fattened meat. They have deficiency diseases because they make bad food choices. They make bad food choices because they listen to advertisements!
I doubt that they’d read books by us old (and White) foodies, and remember, a few years ago, publishers not picking up on a book a young man who survived our peculiar kind of famine wanted to write. The medium to reach them would probably need to be rap videos.
But seriously…anyone with an address can get food stamps in the US. Do not be deceived. They get enough money to buy food for a month. In my town I know which ones always have money/food to barter for other things at the end of the month, and which ones always blow out their handouts in the first week and have bare cupboards toward the end of the month. We cannot and must not try to force food choices on people, so not much can be done except to offer decent school meals (if possible) for the kids. The ones who are hungry for half the month are the ones who eat convenience food for the other half. The ones who bake bread and cook beans are likely to bring me sacks of canned veg to trade.
So for the second half of the month, in my town, they can go to the food bank. Some young relatives of mine run that program now. They get all kinds of food donations and cash, too, to help with water and electricity bills. It’s a very well intentioned program that ought to be an adequate safety net if people knew how to use a safety net, and of course some do. They give people a reasonable mix of meat, veg, fruit, bread, pasta, nuts, dairy, and pricey “treat” foods, three big bags per person, enough to get anybody through two weeks…but of course there’s no guarantee that anyone will be able to digest the food person was given, and no efficient way to substitute more appropriate items. They’ll give a whole bag of frozen food to someone who has no freezer, so what’s not eaten that day will be ruined the next day in summer. They give meat to vegetarians, dairy products to the lactose-intolerant, wheat products to the gluten-intolerant, and often on roads leading away from the food bank on handout days you find a whole bag of handout food someone couldn’t use lying beside the road!
Then there’s a church meal program for those who can’t cook, which spotlights an even worse problem–the case I knew of personally died just this summer–where addicts will buy food, take food from food banks and church meal programs, and resell that food for booze and drugs.
Hunger is a large-scale problem even in the USA, but not one that can be solved by just throwing money at it.
Merci, thank you so, so much for giving us thos very clear information about food programs in your area. And yes, it is so true that often those with food stamps are buying junk food to feed their families and so often they are overweight and certainly not healthy in the best sense of the word. Addicts are another very big problem in the US. You have given us much to ponder…mama says it all goes back to EDUCATION…from schools, from parents, from family members who try to teach the kids what health is about. Thank you so much for your very enlightening response. And we would like to comment on your blog but find nowhere to do that!
I’m with you on how thankful I would be if we could help one another and fix all the bad things we’ve caused – that is the best thankful of all LouLou.
A bit pie-in-the-sky, mama says, whatever that means, but yes, we can help one on one whenever possible…and maybe it will circle out like a pebble in the lake.
You’ve said it, Loulou…the world needs more snuggles.
Ahh…so we shall push that as a big first helper for all of these problems, non?
Yes, we need to think of the neighbors who are right in our own backyard…
Let kindness to all be our motto.
If only weird anthros would BE kinder to one another.