<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'>
<div><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></FONT>Hi Bob,</div>
<div>We find about 10 percent of those who eat with us on Sundays are very young children, and their numbers grow weekly, monthly, now. </div>
<div>They seem not to be actually starving, but families will wait for more than an hour for the hot meal, and will even come to Vespers.first(!)</div>
<div>And as best we can discern, food stamps are not helping them nearly enough; so the administration needs a new plan, it seems to us.</div>
<div>Peace and blessings,</div>
<div>Joe</div>
<div>St. John's, Elizabeth, NJ</div>
<div><A href="http://sjnj.org">http://sjnj.org</A><br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
<div style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica,arial; COLOR: black; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Robert P Morrison <robertpmorrison@charterinternet.com><br>
To: propertalk: stsams.org <propertalk@stsams.org><br>
Sent: Sat, Dec 12, 2009 1:48 pm<br>
Subject: [Propertalk] Illustrations for 3 Advent<br>
<br>
<div style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #fff; MARGIN: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif; COLOR: #000; FONT-SIZE: 12px" id=AOLMsgPart_0_9330f37c-2efb-4fda-a0ab-6b10134f3cee><PRE style="FONT-SIZE: 9pt"><TT>I don't think I need any more illustrations - I may save these for Christmas Eve
- but if anyone hasn't seen the following from today's Washington Post, they may
illustrate John the Baptist's point about repentance and love towards God and
neighbour.
Bob
Missing more than a meal
Child hunger, called the 'silent epidemic,' is an increasingly complex problem
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 12, 2009
PHILADELPHIA -- Three weeks before he was elected president, Barack Obama set an
audacious goal: end hunger among children in the United States by 2015.
Since his inauguration, Obama has seldom broached the subject. His aides
brainstorm weekly with several agencies, but their internal conversations so far
have not produced fundamentally new approaches. The president's goal could prove
daunting: Childhood hunger is more complex than previously understood, new
research suggests, and is unlikely to be solved simply by spending more money
for food programs.
If Obama intends to erase childhood hunger, the government will need to reach
even further into the rowhouse kitchen where Anajyha Wright Mitchell sometimes
takes tiny portions so her mother will have more food. "I tell her to eat, eat,
eat, because she is real skinny," Anajyha, 12, said of her mother, Andrea
Mitchell.
Anajyha, a serious girl with two younger brothers and a mother who has lost two
of her three part-time jobs, is growing up with an ebb and flow of food typical
of a growing number of families. In her home, in a scuffed neighborhood called
Strawberry Mansion a few miles north of the Liberty Bell, food stamps arrive but
never last the month. There can be cereal but no milk. Pancake mix and butter
but no eggs.
The intricacy of the problem -- and of the Obama administration's task -- plays
out here, where Anajyha could have enough to eat but shortchanges herself.
Philadelphia offers a particularly vivid ground-level view of what researchers
call a "silent epidemic" of hungry and undernourished youngsters. For years,
local civic activists, health experts and politicians have tried some of the
nation's most innovative experiments -- and learned how intractable hunger can
be. Researchers here have also been at the leading edge in trying to fathom the
effects of a scarcity of food.
Even when children are not hungry, studies have found that slight shortages of
food in their homes are associated with serious problems. Babies and toddlers in
those homes are far more likely to be hospitalized than children in families
with similar incomes but adequate food. School-age children tend to learn and
grow more slowly, and to get into trouble more often. Teenage girls are more
prone to be depressed or even flirt with thoughts of suicide.
Solving the problem is further complicated by its subtle nature. "Most people
who are hungry are not clinically manifesting what we consider hunger. It
doesn't even affect body weight," said Mariana Chilton, a Drexel University
medical anthropologist who is part of Children's HealthWatch, a network of
pediatricians and public health researchers in Philadelphia and four other
cities. Hunger cannot be solved by food alone, their work shows, because it is
one strand in a web of pressures that trap families, including housing and
energy costs.
A nuanced problem
This more nuanced picture is emerging as the problem has become more
widespread. With the economy faltering, the number of youngsters living in homes
without enough food soared in 2008 from 13 million to nearly 17 million, the
Agriculture Department reported last month.
In Philadelphia, researchers found that, during the first half of this year,
one in five homes with a baby or toddler did not have enough food. And one of
every dozen young children was outright hungry, a rate twice that of the same
period the year before.
Although the problem has deepened, White House and Agriculture Department
officials say the president's goal remains, as one put it, "something that seems
manageable." Congress increased food stamp benefits this year by $20 billion
and, more recently, set aside money to test ways to feed children when school is
out for the summer. The president's aides are focusing on a congressional
debate, deferred from this year to next, on how to renew the nation's main child
nutrition law.
Although ideas in Washington have not fully crystallized, an unlikely lobbying
force is at work. A group of Philadelphia women has begun appearing on Capitol
Hill and at national conferences as part of a "Witnesses to Hunger" project,
organized by Chilton, who handed video cameras to 42 mothers to document their
efforts to feed their children.
But learning to dress for success at news conferences, these women are
discovering, does not solve the food problem at home. One of the "witnesses" is
Christina Koch, whose younger son Jesus, 2, wakes up at night thirsty for milk
or juice. "If I don't have it," she said, "I take him into bed and try to rock
him to sleep."
Running out of drinks for her toddler is part of a tangle of obstacles that
shape Koch's days. At 26, she lives in North Philadelphia with her son, Dale, 5,
a picky eater, as well as Jesus and her fiance, Jesus Nieves, who has had as
much trouble finding and keeping jobs as she has.
Not long ago, when she had the money, Koch bought more than 20 boxes of
macaroni and cheese and stored them under her kitchen sink. The sink leaked.
Every box was ruined. For the past few months, the gas and electricity have been
cut off because she hadn't paid the bills.
She has been cooking on a hot plate, borrowing electricity from the neighbor in
the rowhouse next door, who let her thread a jumbo extension cord through the
kitchen window. But when the neighbor was evicted last month, she was down to
using candles until her family chipped in to pay her bill.
She is bad, she knows, at budgeting. In early November, when $650 in food
stamps came, she splurged on $18 in Chinese takeout. When the food stamps run
out, she buys on credit from Indio's Mini Market, a few blocks away. In October,
she ended up with a $300 tab.
Making a difference
Koch met Chilton, the anthropologist, in the emergency room at St.
Christopher's Hospital for Children, where Chilton and her co-workers spend
hours on questionnaires to measure the food shortage. Across the hospital
parking lot is the GROW clinic, which provides more evidence of the effort it
takes to make a difference, even a few children at a time.
Inside the clinic -- similar to Children's HealthWatch clinics in Baltimore,
Boston, Little Rock and Minneapolis -- pediatrician Hans Kersten and a team see
about a dozen young children and their parents each week. Four in five children
here and at the other sites are not getting adequate food. The team checks head
circumference as a clue to brain growth, motor skills, toddlers' vocabulary.
"Hi, beautiful," nutritionist Kristen Roscioli says as the team walks into the
examining room where 14-month-old Joeanna, the first child of Sherita Parks and
Joseph Mouzon, is waiting in a diaper and pink barrettes.
"She has managed to gain about two pounds, which is great," Kersten tells
Joeanna's parents.
"But she still is underweight?" Parks asks.
"She is a tiny girl," he replies. "We just want her to be healthy."
The main problem, her parents say, is that Joeanna doesn't like to eat. But
Parks also says, "It would be great if we could get food stamps." Mouzon's pay
from working in a pharmaceutical warehouse means they just miss qualifying.
A novel experiment
Long before the GROW clinic existed, Philadelphia's school officials and
anti-poverty activists began a novel experiment whose future the Obama
administration, in one of its first decisions about children and food, has put
in doubt.
Instead of requiring people to fill out paperwork for their children to get free
lunch and breakfast at school, Philadelphia officials persuaded the government
19 years ago to let every child qualify automatically in neighborhoods with
enough poor families. The number of students getting the meals soared. Last
year, the Bush administration decided that the experiment was too old and must
end soon.
After Obama arrived, the local congressional delegation and others appealed.
Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, upheld the Bush administration's
decision. Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell (D) fired off a letter, saying
that "hundreds if not thousands of eligible students" would lose meals. Vilsack
relented, for now.
Administration officials say they want families nationally to have easier
access to food programs. But they want to leave the question of Philadelphia's
approach for the congressional debate on childhood nutrition.
Though safe for the moment, the program has never been a complete solution. At
W.G. Smith Elementary School in South Philadelphia, 155 of the school's 380
students came for a free breakfast on a recent Monday. Many parents simply bring
their children to school too late.
Cuerethea Travis, Smith's school nurse for 13 years, stockpiles graham
crackers, yogurt and fruit for the trickle of children who come to her every
morning, drooping and with stomachaches. "You feel like you are Dick Tracy," she
said. "Is it the kind of pain you feel like you need to go to the bathroom? Or
is it the kind you feel like you want to put something in your stomach?"
Often, she asks children to look at the clock on her wall, then count back,
telling her how many hours it has been since they had something to eat.
Why food matters
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Studies show that growing up in a home without adequate food can damage
children in many ways. Even if they are not hungry themselves, babies and
toddlers in households with slight food shortages are more likely to be
hospitalized, at risk for developmental delays and to be raised by mothers who
are depressed. While not all children develop these problems, here are some of
the other effects researchers have found can be associated with food shortages:
-- Slower brain and cognitive development by age 3.
-- Less ready for school by age 5.
-- Lower academic performance ages 6 to 17.
-- Slower physical, mental and social development through age 17.
-- Worse social skills and behavior, and greater chance of mental health
problems, ages 6 to 17.
-- Children report themselves as less happy ages 6 to 17.
Research shows that hunger and poor nutrition among children are rooted in a
complex web of strains on poor families, not just a shortage of food. This is
because parents must make hard trade-offs in how they spend scarce money, and
groceries sometimes suffer when other bills mount. Here are some specific
effects:
-- Children whose families are on waiting lists for government housing
subsidies are eight times more likely to be underweight than those whose
families already are getting housing assistance.
-- In poor families that do not get the government's main form of energy
assistance, called LIHEAP, babies and toddlers are nearly one-quarter more
likely than those who get the help to be underweight and one-third more likely
to have been hospitalized.
Source: Children's HealthWatch
Letters to the Editor
All signs point to a weak signal
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Thanks [digital channel signal strength is low] to the new [digital channel
signal strength is scrambled] HDTV world, we [digital channel signal strength is
scrambled] no longer [digital channel signal strength is low] get [digital
channel signal strength is scrambled] Channel 4, [miss you, "Law & Order"] [miss
you Brian Williams] or Channel 5 [really miss you, "House" and "Bones"] or
Channel 20 [miss you, reruns].
The rest of the stations [digital channel signal strength is low] come and
[digital channel signal strength is scrambled] go as well, frivolous [digital
channel signal strength is scrambled] signals. You see, not everyone has
[digital channel signal strength is low] cable or even [digital channel signal
strength is scrambled] high-speed Internet.
Mark and Sally Pfoutz, Purcellville
--
Robert P. Morrison
The Episcopal Parish of St James,
PO Box 789
Lincoln City, Oregon, 97367
541-994-2426 (Church)
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