@Manna Food Center

Today we volunteered at Manna Food Center.

“Fighting hunger and feeding hope in Montgomery County.”

There were huge bins of food that had been donated and collected from various organizations and charitable people.

A group of us from the synagogue, Magen David, met at the center.

We checked the dates on each item to ensure the food was not expired and still good to eat. 

We sorted the food by type into different boxes, crates, and shelves. 

There was areas for cans, pastas, cereals, pantry items, and more. 

The area that had the most stuff when we were done sorting…you guessed it–the junk food like cookies and chocolate–sort of unfortunate, but probably a comment on our times for what people actually buy and eat (despite all the calls for healthier eating and living).

There was one area specifically where we placed food for kids who don’t have enough food for the weekends (when they don’t have the school lunch program etc.), and they come on Fridays and fill their backpacks with milk boxes, crackers, and other things they can easily take home with them.

This really made me think about the dire straits that some families are in and especially the impact on the children.

G-d, no one should go hungry, and it was nice to see that people donate and volunteer to help, but still why in such a rich country like ours is there still so much hunger and need? 😉

(Source Photo: Dannielle Blumenthal)

Growing Shoes For Growing Feet

Innocent children around the world living in poverty are frequently forced to walk barefoot, without shoes, risking dangerous injury from hard and sharp objects as well as disease from contaminated soil. 

Now there are expandable shoes that can be adjusted in the front toe piece and side with snaps, as well as with a back heel strap.

The shoes are made to expand five sizes and last 5 years with high quality rubber soles and leather uppers.

A donation of one pair for a needy child is just $10.

No child–or adult–should ever have to go without the basics like shoes and this can help millions get to a higher standard of living, which everyone deserves. 😉

(Thank you to Michelle Blumenthal for sharing this with me.)

Fair Trade Principles Are Cool

So I was up in Harpers Ferry and discovered this cool boutique store called Tenfold.

The store carries a collection of creative “fair trade,” eco-friendly products from around the world.

They had a cool variety of clothing and accessories–that was different and special.

We all found something there to come back with and had to choose what we liked best.

I ended up getting a couple of handmade ties from a company called Global Mamas in Ghana and the girls got some skirts (and necklaces) made by Unique Batik in Thailand.

I liked the quality and design of the merchandise.

But more than that, I was truly impressed by the principles these companies adhere to under fair trade:

– Alleviate poverty and social injustice
– Support open, fair, and respectful relationships between producers and customers
– Develop producers’ skills, and foster access to markets, application of best practices, and independence,
– Promote economic justice by improving living standards, health, education, and the distribution of power
– Pay promptly and fairly
– Support safe working conditions
– Protect children’s rights
– Cultivate sustainable practices
– Respect cultural diversity

Note: Fair trade is not to be confused with free trade–the later being where government does not interfere with imports or exports by applying tariffs, subsidies, or quotas.

Truly, if we give people a chance to be productive under fair trade working conditions, they can make the world a little better one product at a time. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Pleasure At Pain

Why do people laugh and feel pleasure at other people’s pain and misfortune?

The Wall Street Journal (20 August 2013) reviews the book, The Joy of Pain, on this topic.

Schadenfreude is the German word for feeling pleasure at the calamity of others.

And we see people laugh, point, and otherwise gloat when others are hurting physically, emotionally, financially, and so on.

When they fail and you succeed, you feel strong, powerful, self-confidant, and that you were right–and they were wrong!

Feelings of pleasure at other people’s pain is partially evolutionary–survival of the fittest.

It is also a function of our personal greed and competitiveness–where we measure ourselves not by how well we are doing, but rather relative to how others around us are faring.

So for example, we may be rich and have everything we need, but if someone else has even a little more than us, we still are left feeling lacking inside.

Thus, we envy others’ good fortune and take pleasure in their misfortune.

In a sense, our success is only complete when we feel that we have surpassed everyone else, like in a sport competition–there is only one ultimate winner and world champion.

So when we see the competition stumble, falter, and go down, our hands go up with the stroke of the win!

Anyway, we deserve to win and they deserve to lose–so justice is served and that makes us feel just dandy.

How about a different way–we work together to expand the living standard for all, and we feel genuinely glad for others’ success and real empathy for their pain, and they too for us–and we go beyond our pure humanity to something more angelic. 😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution for Lukas Vermeer)

Putting Children Above Ourselves

What a distorted editorial this morning in the Wall Street Journal called “What’s Really Behind the Entitlement Crisis.”

Oh, thank goodness (NOT) that we have these pundit-types to tell us what’s “really” happening and feed us their self-serving “proofs.”

Anyway, the author, Ben Wattenberg, contends that we all are suffering a decline in standard of living because we don’t have enough children.

He actually advocates that we have more children to bear the burden of our waste, fraud, and abuse and inability to live within our means.

The author writes: “Never-born babies are the root cause of the ‘social deficit’ that plagues nations across the world and threaten to break the bank in many.”

Never mind that current world population of over 7 billion people is anticipated to rise above 9 billion by 2050, and we continue to spoil and deplete our world’s limited resources already.

The author selfishly contends that “Declining birth rates mean there are not enough workers to support retirees.”

Unfortunately, the author ignores that if current and prior workers and politicians did not spend down the balances in social security to finance other pork-barrel political initiatives, then each workers savings would still be there to support their retirement, and we would not have to rely on future generations to make up the difference by spending their savings to support our prior excesses and waste.

Wattenberg ends by saying that “The real danger for the future is too few births.”

Like a glutton, he advocates that we eat more in order to keep trying to satiate our insatiable spending needs.

When I was a kid, my father used to joke about eating too much and say we should do some push-ups–push the the table (with all the food) away from us!

No, like teenagers on day time TV shows, who contend that they want to have children because they feel it is their “way out” of their problems and only then they will be loved and be able to love, and the TV show host puts them in a program with a fake baby that cries and makes at all the inconvenient hours of the day and night, does the teenager realize that having (more) children is not the answer to their problems, but actually may only increase their problems.

Having more children as a nation–we already average about 2 per family–in order to finance our retirements and entitlements through the development of another generation of a slave labor pool is completely misguided.

Have children for the right reasons–out of genuine love and a commitment to give–not to receive.

Mr. Wattenberg does not seem to care if children are brought into the world of broken families, poverty, violence, drug and alcohol abuse, molestation and incest, homelessness, and separation and divorce, because Wattenberg’s standard of living is at stake.

Bring children into a world that is giving, loving, and sustainable.

Safeguard life, but don’t recklessly encourage birth.

Birth is a privilege of the young, not an entitlement for the elderly.

(Source Photo: Michelle Blumenthal)