inequality – mom's musings

Today I bought eight pieces of chicken at Piggly Wiggly around lunchtime and then gave in to the impulse to buy a piece of cornbread. Seventy-nine cents. One small square of cornbread cost seventy-nine cents. And was it necessary? No. I just wanted it. Yet even as I watched the PW employee wrap it, I thought of how selfish I was. There are hungry children all over Camden. Hungry adults too.

Back to the chicken. Family lore has it that one (maybe all) of my great grandmothers used to wring a chicken’s neck before frying it up in the pan. One great grandmother owned a gun and used it to shoot chickens (for meals) from her front porch. But I, one of their descendants, don’t fry chicken anymore, much less wring their necks or shoot them. I use the excuse that by the time I buy, clean, flour, and fry the bird, both my time and money would have exceeded that needed to purchase and cook it.

About the cornbread, not only did my grandmothers and mother bake cornbread, they did so at least weekly. Me? I used to bake it in my mother’s cast iron skillet every few weeks, but it was heavy with all that buttermilk, and besides, as my family dwindled in size, I ended up tossing much of to the birds…not that the wrens and woodpeckers don’t deserve to eat, too. I began using cornbread mix and doctoring it up with onions before finally succumbing to Jiffy.

Taking shortcuts doesn’t bother me. Being selfish does. I’m thinking of a friend who, after discussing poverty and homelessness in America, went to the local Starbucks to buy a pumpkin latte. Aren’t we all like that just a little?

One more quick thought. It’s actually a related example. Years ago I read of people in Manhattan who, on their way to the theatre, stepped over and around homeless people on the streets. “That’s terrible,” I thought. But guess what? I did the same thing when I visited there. Am I callous AND selfish? Apparently.

No easy answers. For starters, I’m going to investigate Backpack Buddies. And I’m going to pass right by that cornbread next time.

What about you? What are your challenges when it comes to fighting hunger in your area? Or am I over-reacting?

No travelogue tonight Friends. I just have a couple of things on my mind that I feel like sharing before getting ready for book club.

Earlier this week I was reading the newspaper and came across two interesting articles on the same page, and while both had to do with money, the stories were totally different. One was about how more women are getting into the Avon and Tupperware businesses on the side. Why? To make extra money to supplement the family income. I then saw a short piece about a man who didn’t understand all the hoopla about his bonus. After all, he deserved it, by golly! The thing is, his company has lost BILLIONS, and he got a 75 MILLION dollar bonus. Huh? Here are moms peddling plastic while this guy is raking in millions. I’ve read that the income gap is widening, but this is ridiculous. By the way, I can’t remember the name of his company, but I’m not making this up. Really.

I’m picking up mssc54’s lament about the number of mothers having babies out of wedlock. It’s astounding to realize that 40 percent of America’s babies are born to single mothers. Don’t take my word for it; check it out for yourself. I just do not understand this. Call me an old fogey or whatever else you want to throw my way. But before you do, check out the research on child development, and you’ll learn that study after study confirms that children with two parents in the home fare better in every way: emotionally, socially, psychologically, physically, and financially. Yes, I know there are two-parent homes where abuse and neglect are regular happenings, but still….Don’t take my word for it. The studies are easy to find, and they all say the same thing; babies raised by single mothers (and it’s usually the mom who’s raising the child) are more likely to live in poverty and suffer the consequences (often long-term) that go along with that.

This phenomenon (single mothers), long a concern in psychology and sociology circles, has now captured the attention of the media. A couple of weeks ago I happened to catch part of the evening news, and an interviewer was asking a young single mother WHY. Why did you opt to have this baby out of wedlock and keep him? She said that it (motherhood) was something she purposely sought and that the reason she didn’t want to get married was because she didn’t want to be cumbered with a husband. She, however, wanted to have a full life, one in which she experienced all sorts of things, including motherhood. The baby was looking at the camera in big-eyed curiosity. I wonder when his daddy-ache will begin or how he’ll react when he begins school and gets asked/teased about his father. But hey, does that really matter as long as his mother feels fulfilled?

Only one more thing. I’m wondering why so many people feel that it’s necessary to take potshots at President Obama. Lately some columnists have been giving him a hard time for having what they perceive to be a condescending attitude towards Americas and perhaps too much of an empathic one with some of the folks he’s been visiting overseas. President Bush got bashed for having too much of an ethnocentric, “we’re #1” attitude. Can any high profile person avoid getting slammed by the cynics?

My next post will be more upbeat. I just had to get this stuff off my chest. Does anyone have any answers to the above???