I thought I should consider posting a blog entry as often as I post a cartoon of the week – the two possibly having something to do with one another.
I actually didn’t read the statistic I quote from the World Bank in a paper, I heard it on NPR. I was driving along Lake Shore Drive, coming from some shopping downtown, and I nearly had to pull over. I felt kicked in the gut by that fact. I did some research on it, but never really doubted it. More than any other statisitc I’ve heard, it makes it clear how disproportionate our lives in this country are to those in most of the rest of the world.
There’s all this guilt in response — like I should do something, reduce my consumption, blah blah blah… What does that really mean? I don’t know. That’s why I left the cartoon open ended. We give to the Greater Chicago Food Depository, but not enough. Maybe that’s a start. Maybe someone out there has some suggestions.
I remember when I was a kid and didn’t want to finish my beans and mom would say, “There are children starving in (insert country name here)” and I would smart-ass answer, “we could mail it to them.” I thought I was so cute, but that really was a pretty jerky thing to say, which explains the two-by-four type slap that always followed.