Tag Archives: breadline

Breadline

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Breadline: (n) a line of people waiting to receive free food.

I’ve actually said it out loud.

“I’m starved.”Dictionary B

Truth of the matter is, I have rarely been hungry enough to justify a complaint. Maybe lunch was a little late and I claimed low blood sugar, which justified eating a Snickers while waiting for my Big Mac. But I’ve never really been malnourished to the point that my innards were trying to take over my brain.

When I see pictures of human folks standing in line to get nourishment, a meal which I would mock for its insufficiency, I am temporarily humbled and shaken.

Much of the world will go to bed tonight without dinner.

You don’t make friends by bringing this up at a party, and you don’t feed ten children by putting them on your prayer list.

What truly astounded me was when I found myself touring through Haiti, I came across a man who had picked up a few pennies on the street to buy two tomatoes. He also had saved some grains of rice from a bag which had a hole in it. I watched him put that in a pot over a little fire and stir it together as he realized he needed a little something else. He walked over to a patch of grass and pulled out a handful of blades and threw it into his concoction with a smile on his face.

At that point I realized that I had no comprehension of hunger.

Would I be willing to stand in a breadline, waiting for a paltry parcel of portion?

Actually … I think my stomach might insist on it.

 

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Axis

Axis: (n) a line about which a body rotates.

What makes the world go ’round?dictionary with letter A

I’ve heard rumor that it’s love. Some people like to say that. It’s a safe statement, since nobody really has an adequate definition for love.

I can tell you what has made my life roll better and revolve as it evolves: finally coming to a conclusion that the axis of purity is, “no one is better than anyone else.”

And my God, I am tempted to be prejudiced.

But it leads to all sorts of evil. I believe we had a president who even referred to it as the “axis of evil.”

For instance, we have politicians who argue that raising the minimum wage might enable some people to make a living from their present job, but it would cause suffering to their bosses, and threaten the bottom line.

Whether we like it or not, or whatever your political persuasion is, that thinking places you in the “axis of evil.”

You have decided that this group of people over here–because they’re employees–are not as good as this group of people over there–because they are employers.

We should be looking for a compromise. How can we make sure the employee gets his or her due and still guarantee a decent profit for the employer? But we aren’t going to do that.

So we develop another axis of evil: “Those people are not as good because they don’t have enough education. If they had education, they could be employers instead of employees” (even though there is nobody who can employ without finding people who are employable.)

At the core–or at the axis–of the truth, is the notion that we need each other.

If the employer and the employee found themselves stranded on a desert island, such relegation would become irrelevant. The one who found the water and brought it to camp would be no better than the individual who collected the coconuts.

If they developed any kind of caste system, they would either die of starvation and thirst, or kill one another.

Such foolishness is only permitted in a society which has been granted the blessing of plenty.

As there are no atheists in the foxhole…there are no bigots in the breadline.

 

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