One of the wretched ironies of living in Monterey County is that despite the fact it's one of the major food-producing areas of the United States, we also have extensive hunger among the working poor, many of whom are the same people who help grow and pick the food.
I am fortunate that I've only been "hungry", in the sense of not having enough food to eat, a couple of times in my life (touch wood). Once was when I was stranded in Washington, DC during the air traffic controllers' strike -- my plane ticket was worthless and the summer session at Georgetown I had been at had ended -- and I had run out of money expecting I'd get a refund for my ticket home. I went two days without eating anything, and it made a big impression on me. Boo hoo, you say, old Matt: yes, I admit this is the worst I've ever had it, of actually wanting to eat (not having the flu or whatever) and having no food, and no place to sleep.
Sadly I admit to not having acted on this knowledge as much as I should have over the years. But with the advent of the recession last year, realizing exactly how well we were eating here and how much we enjoy this aspect of California life, I started trying to "round up" our grocery bills each month and contributing the rounded-up amount to the Food Bank of Monterey County.
I am not sure many people realize how pervasive hunger is in this country of plenty. In particular there seems to be an impression that because we have a Government food stamp program, nobody need go hungry. Unfortunately, this is far from the case. The hardest hit folks are often those with regular, low-paying jobs, who have crises with finances for a variety of reasons (health care costs in this country are a major contributing factor to these household emergencies - consult your Maslow's hierarchy). I encourage my readers to check out the FAQ from the Food Bank of Monterey County to see why food assistance is so critical, and how it works. Food contributions are great, but the organization can use cash even more, as it's able to leverage its network to buy $7 of food for every dollar of contributions.
I don't have advertising links on this page, but I should probably put up a link to the Food Bank. In the meantime you can donate on-line here. Even $10 or $25 helps a lot and if you like the content on this blog, it would mean a lot to me to "support" this effort tangibly for somebody who could really use it.
