Leave A Simple Photo Alone (2015)
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.—Frederick DouglassÂ
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]What did you have for breakfast this morning, anything at all? As adults, the meal is perhaps the easiest to skip. A cup of coffee and we’re out the door. We don’t have time, we’re not in the mood to prepare anything, and many people just don’t have breakfast food in the house. Maybe we could make toast, but that’s about it. I’ve heard mothers complain that they just can’t get their children to eat breakfast. My mother would be appalled. Breakfast wasn’t an option, it was a mandate.
Life really wasn’t all that different when I was growing up, but there was one thing about which my mother was adamant: you’re eating breakfast. It didn’t matter how early it meant we had to get up, we weren’t leaving the house without having food. Where we lived in rural Oklahoma, there was no catching something on the way, or stopping at the convenience store down the street because there was nothing there! I think school breakfast might have been an option, but I never knew anyone who actually ate it. There were some Saturday mornings in high school where the band bus left for a trip at some ungodly hour that required us to leave home at something like 5:00 AM. Guess what, we sat down and had breakfast first. Every morning. Not just something slapped together, either. Eggs. Bacon or sausage. Hot cereal during the winter. Toast. Fruit in season, when we could afford it. Breakfast was a big deal.
Today, there are more options. It actually makes sense for Kat’s kids to eat their breakfast at school; it’s built into their schedule along with lunch. We know they’re getting nutritionally appropriate meals and we don’t have the added fuss at home of trying to convince them to finish their food before the bus comes at 6:30. People who have to commute to work also have more options now than were available forty years ago. There’s a fast food option on every other corner. Seated service restaurants are in greater abundance. Grocery stores are open earlier. We’ve got it made, right?[/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]No, we don’t have it made. Having it “made” means that everything is balanced and healthy and that we’re making the right choices. None of those things are accurate. Our lives and our diets are anything but balanced or healthy and we’re notorious for making bad choices. We create poverty within our own lives by eliminating the things we need most while being excessive in the things we need the least. Children get the worst of it, too. We place them in food poverty by failing to make sure they’re actually eating fruit. Globally, a lack of food in the diet kills 3.4 million people a year, and the great majority of those are children. They don’t only have impoverished diets, they have impoverished lives.
More than a financial state, poverty is a life condition. Even people whose incomes are well above what is considered the poverty line can still have impoverished lives because of the choices they make in how they spend what they have. One of the biggest areas of poverty, strangely enough, comes in having too few fruits and we replace that with an excess of sodium, which in turn kills yet another 3.5 million people. And no, grabbing a bottle of juice isn’t the same, especially for children. Juice doesn’t contain the fiber and other nutrients available in whole fruit. What’s sad is grocery stores and markets dump tons of wasted fruit every day. Global economies keep prices out of reach for people who need fruit the most, and those who can afford fruit look at it more as a dessert item, not a dietary necessity.
We like to think we’re rich, and comparatively we are, but look in your shopping cart the next time you buy food. If you have three different kinds of chips, packaged foods, and/or soda, and less than three different kinds of fresh fruit, you are creating a poverty of life for you and your family. We should all be appalled. [/one_half_last]
Tuesday Morning Update:12/17/24
The first morning after is impossible. You wake up hoping it was all just a dream. The inevitable jolt of reality hits harder than it did yesterday. Denial is more difficult. The US is the most dangerous place in the world for going to school. Yes, bombs drop on people in Gaza. Schoolchildren in Ukraine have had to stop classes because of the danger. But those are areas of declared war. The enemy doesn’t know the names of the people they’re killing. Here, a boy stabs a girl to death as she walks to school. In Wisconsin, it’s an upset 15-year-old girl who kills another student and a teacher, then shoots several others before turning the gun on herself. And just like that, more families have joined the list of those waking up on what should be a school day and realizing that nothing’s ever going to be the same again.
There have been 323 shootings at K-12 schools in the country this year. Texas, Louisiana, and Maryland have the most. They range from small towns to large cities, both public schools and private. When our children leave for school each morning, we have no guarantee that they are safe. We jump when the phone rings and our heart drops when we see that it’s the school that’s calling. When you’re braced for the potential that something has happened to your child, them having a D in History class isn’t such a big deal anymore. You’re thankful that they’re still breathing.
The Associated Press released its list of ‘influential’ people who died this year. Of course, there’s always some old film star that passes during the last five days of the year, but the list is largely complete. You’re not on it and neither am I. Chances are pretty good that we never will be on one of those lists. What passes as being ‘influential’ does not mean that one is a good person. For many on that list, talent triumphed over character. There are no school shooting victims on the list. Apparently, our children are not ‘influential’ enough.
The kids are not okay. Tests show math skills are in decline. Whether you like math or not, this is important because math helps develop critical thinking skills. And while there are plenty of opinions about education, the fact remains that we’re letting the kids down in more ways than anyone can count. The curricula are insufficient. Arts programs that aid cognitive learning are non-existent. Over seven million students have Individual Education Plans (IEPs) for specific education needs. Their nutrition sucks. Each day 47 US students are diagnosed with cancer. And perhaps most insane of all, we’re actively debating the efficacy of the vaccines that have all but eliminated polio, smallpox, and many other childhood diseases. If we’re wilfully creating this environment for our kids, do we even love them at all? Do we care if they come home from school alive? Our actions and our words don’t match.
I have more years in the past than I do in the future. I probably won’t see the day when this year’s kindergarten class is running the country or the world. But then, that’s assuming that there’s still something to run. The world doesn’t need government if there are no people to govern.
The planet goes on spinning. A self-induced extinction event might help clear the air. Literally.
Tuesday coffee hits differently.
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