To the Editor:
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declared in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies.” Four decades later, King’s wish remains unfulfilled. The global food market’s shelves are getting bare.
According to John Blake of CNN: “Food riots erupted across the globe this year in countries such as Egypt and India. Food pantries in the United States also warned that they were running out of food because of unprecedented demand. The news from the World Food Programme is even grimmer: A child dies of hunger every six seconds, and hunger now kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.”
I remember as a youngster when we would take our orange trick or treat boxes out for UNICEF to help ‘feed the hungry children’. In our innocence, we talked of how many pennies it took to buy milk or seeds to grow food and we believed that our bits and pieces counted. I still believe that bits and pieces do count and call upon everyone to watch out for their neighbors this winter, locally and globally, not only that we should keep them safe and warm but also fed, body and soul.
Sometimes it is just the one kind word in a long, hard day that gives someone the energy to keep on going. We all have kind words in abundance, so share them.
If you can, make a donation of food or household supplies to your local food pantry, drop some change in the kettles when the bells ring this holiday and be a good neighbor. Small changes make big changes eventually, bit by bit.
Let’s all pitch in and watch our little corner of this world shine with kindness and compassion. If you think you are not lucky, imagine living where mothers must choose which child to feed on many days and realize how absolutely blessed you are by fate to be born in the United States of America.
Ellie Hinds, Nobleboro
