Day 6: Nature

Day 6:  What in nature are you grateful for?

I am grateful for Lake Tahoe.  There are only so many places in the world where you can experience beach, mountains, and forest all in the same place:  how lucky am I to live within an hour's drive of one of them?  My kids love to dip their toes in the freezing cold water, build sand castles, and search for pine cones as big as their heads.  I love to breathe in the fresh mountain air and enjoy the beautiful view of bright blue water and snow capped mountain peaks.  And for me, this stunning lake reminds me of the beauty and glory of God.

Day 5: Sound

Day 5:  What Sound are you grateful for today?

I am grateful for the Christmas song "O Holy Night".  Both the music and the lyrics are stunningly beautiful and perfectly capture the hope of the Christmas season.  And I know it's not for everyone, but I love acapella music.

Here's another one of my favorite Christmas songs by the same group - "O Come O Come Emmanuel".

Day 4: Food

Day 4:  What food are you grateful for?

I am grateful for sushi.  It's not an every week or even every month meal for me - it's a special treat.  It's often the chosen meal for celebrations, so it feels festive.  Coming off 9 months of pregnancy, I'm grateful to have the green flag to eat it again.  One of Reno's distinctives is a plethora of all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants, and so I also associate sushi with abundance.  (The plate pictured above is what we call a starter here in northern Nevada.)  I'm grateful to live in a time and place in history where, every once in awhile, you can eat ridiculously big and lavish meals.  I had never tried sushi until Kenny and I started dating (this might sound crazy to people on the coasts, but is pretty common for Midwesterners) - he introduced me to what is now one of my favorite meals - so I also associate sushi with happy early memories with Kenny, for which I am extremely grateful.

Day 3: Color

Day 3:  What color are you grateful for?

I am grateful for yellow.  When we first moved into our Reno house, the living room had black floral wallpaper with matching drapes (pictured above).  Now, the same room has yellow walls (pictured below), and it makes an enormous difference.  It brightens up the room, both by increasing the literal lightness and by making it feel cheerier.

Another yellow related thing that I'm grateful for is sunshine.  Reno gets 252 sunny days per year, and the only way this could get better is if that number was 365.  I love this feature of desert living.  It mellows out winter, it makes it easier and more pleasant to spend time outside year round (and it makes it easier to boot the dog outside when he's being a pest), and it feels good physically and emotionally to get so much sunshine.

Day 2: Technology

Day 2:  What technology are you grateful for?

I am grateful for texting.  It's more efficient and less awkward than a phone call.  It's less annoying than voicemail.  It doesn't require an Internet connection like e-mail.  You can put in cute emojis.  You can contact more than one person at a time, quickly.  You can regularly check in with parents and far away friends, you can send out prayer requests, and you can send hilarious thoughts to your sister.  It's an introvert's dream come true!

30 days: Smell

I've done a thankfulness post every November since I started this blog, and this year, I'm going to try something a little different.  I found this image on Pinterest, and I thought it would be fun to use it as a writing prompt for the next 30 days.  (I might miss days, but I will make every effort to do catch up days promptly.)  I'm not going to put these up on Facebook (other than this starter one) - just on my blog - but if you are interested, I would love to have you participate along with me in the comments, on your own blog, on Facebook - wherever!

To kick off, I will start today with Prompt #1:  What smell are you grateful for today?

I am grateful for the smell of food prepared by other people.  As most of you know, we brought a new baby home 3 weeks ago, and friends from church and MOPS have been bringing us dinner every few days to help ease the transition.  This smell brings gratitude for many reasons:

• The meals have been delicious!  And I love to eat delicious food!  
• It's work off my plate - in these weeks where I'm working pretty hard around the clock, I'm so grateful to everyone who finds ways to lighten the load.
• Friendship - It's not a small thing thing to plan, shop for, prepare, and transport a full meal for a family.  If you work full time or if you have small kids of your own, which describes almost everyone who brought us meals, the logistics of meal provision (and then figuring out dinner for your own family) get even trickier.  I'm so grateful that people care that much for us, or care in general about helping people out in their time of need.  

Extreme World Poverty: Hunger in the Age of the Plenty

This post is a book review of "Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty" by Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman.  This is the first book review blog in a series exploring extreme world poverty.  My purpose in writing these book reviews is not to give a comprehensive synopsis or critique of the book, but to try to pass along the information that is most relevant to those wanting to help with these issues.  But if the issue of world hunger really grabs your heartt, then I would highly recommend reading this book.  

What's the book about?  

For several decades, the world has grown more than enough food to feed all of its people, even as the population continues to grow.  Yet 9 million people each year continue to die from hunger, most of them children in Africa.  This is a complicated issue with many causes, including those that many of us have heard of (drought / natural disaster, war zones, corrupt dictators), but also those that many of us have not heard of:  how the richest countries in the world have enacted policies, or failed to institute and support economic systems, and this has resulted in hungry people not being able to afford food that would otherwise be available.

There's a lot of dense content in this book, especially regarding agricultural practices and economic policy.  The book gives a history of different things that wealthier countries have tried in aiding hungry countries, explaining which policies have worked well and which policies have caused more harm than good.  

What are things that have historically helped?

• Provide money that goes back into the African economy
• Some examples of this are 1) western countries granting debt relief to African governments, and 2) sending money for Africans to purchase food from African farmers rather than sending over American food while African farmers can't sell the food they produce.
• "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a
  
  lifetime." (Lest this suggestion come off as too paternalistic -- African farmers are well aware of what they need, but the daily struggle to survive makes it too difficult for them to implement these things for themselves.  When they are given a little bit of breathing room (their family has enough food, they have regular access to water, etc.), they DO start implementing these things for themselves.  These are tips for us westerners as to how we can best help in a sustainable, rather than short-sighted, way.)
• Establish markets so that farmers have access to fair price discovery, uniform quality standards, and futures contracts.
• Infrastructure - roads, electricity, irrigation, farming tools.
• Extension offices that provide information to farmers on the newest and best farming techniques.
• Access to better seeds, fertilizer, etc.
• Private citizens, religious groups, and private corporations mobilizing to help raise money and awareness for these issues.  (It is especially helpful if you are a big name like Bono or Bill Gates :), but everyone's efforts help.)

What are the policy solutions that would most help with world hunger now?
(Note:  If you are wondering why these particular ideas, or what has been the harmful consequences of going a different direction on some of these suggestions - that's the bulk of the content of this book.)

• Wealthier countries should keep promises to expand development aid - $9 billion is currently given by all sources (public and private worldwide), and that amount needs to be doubled to reach everyone.
• Create a global fund to aid small farmers in Africa - help small farmers get the tools and information they need to grow enough food for their own families, and this will eventually lead to them making extra food and becoming self supporting.
• Invest in infrastructure - Support projects that provide roads, electricity, and irrigation.
• Africa takes responsibility - African governments need to keep their promise to dedicate 10% of spending to agriculture.  (Some are, some are not.)
• Plant new seed technology - (controversy alert!) - it would be helpful to the farmers of Africa to use genetically modified seed technology that is engineered to be most productive given the various agricultural conditions of their countries, but this seed is more difficult to obtain while there is controversy about GMOs in America and Europe.
• Find an alternative to turning food into fuel - Research other types of green energy that don't take away from the food supply (including making energy from the parts of food that we don't actually eat).  
• Create an international grain reserve - When emergency drought conditions arise anywhere in the world, it would be helpful to have a ready-to-go store of food available.  
• "Level the plowing fields" - (controversy alert) - provide subsidies to African farmers, and consider the effect of subsidies in western countries and think about whether there are ways to make them less harmful to African farmers (for example, by linking subsidies to better environmental practices rather than production).  (You could also just cut subsidies to western farmers, but i feel REALLY squeamish making this recommendation, both because I was raised in Nebraska and know some farmers, and also because fairness - if Americans should help with world hunger as a justice issue (and i think we should), this should be spread equally and not all heaped on the back of farmers.)
• Give U.S. food aid the flexibility for local purchases - Right now, the United States sends the vast majority of food aid in the form of actual bags of food.  It would be helpful to African farmers if the U.S. sent half of this in the form of money for Africans to purchase food from African farmers (or, if cutting the food amount sent would be too detrimental to American farmers, increase the aid budget and send the entire increase in the form of cash to purchase from African farmers).

Which Organizations Are Helping?
(Note - neither of these are formally endorsed by the authors of this book, but they both come up multiple times as organizations that are helping make positive change):

• Bread for the World - this is a group to check out if you want to learn more about policy changes and justice issues related to world hunger.  They have an email list, tips for how to contact your elected representatives, tips for how your church can get involved, etc.
• World Vision - this is a group to check out if you want to provide a financial donation to a group providing direct aid to hungry people.