Nolen: Some holiday food for thought

With Thanksgiving only a few short days away, a lot of people are firming up their itineraries, adding those last few touches to their to-do lists. This has been a difficult year for many people and the one thing most of us will have no trouble doing is finding things for which we can give thanks.

Many, many people have lost their homes to foreclosure and some of them are currently homeless. Those of us who still have a roof over our heads can give thanks for that. Other people have had serious health challenges and some of them have lost their insurance coverage to boot. So, those of us without health and insurance issues have much to give thanks for, also.

I recently heard there are many people who can’t buy enough food to keep their families fed on a daily basis. The face of America has changed. There are those who have many other serious concerns, such as loss of loved ones, loss of jobs, divorces or separations and the list goes on. We can give thanks for everything we have, especially grace.

Living in America, it’s way too easy for many of us to take everything for granted. During the 1990s when we had more jobs than we had people to fill them, we had no idea we were just a few years away from recession. Those who were living well in those days had no idea that people at the low end of the economic ladder have been living under recessive conditions for a long time. While CEOs and some business owners have been wallowing in millions, people who have been laboring in the service industries have been trying to struggle by on pennies.

What I’m saying is that many working-class people have been living in want long before the country was in recession. In the days of plenty and the days of deprivation, the working class has watched the rich get richer while they have gotten poorer.

And if history repeats itself, undoubtedly when the economy recovers, the country will go back to business as usual. But that does not have to be the case. We can learn something valuable from this experience.

In the case of the economic classes — the rich, the middle class and the poor — we can begin to form a more perfect union. We can learn to practice a better form of capitalism where people in all economic classes are paid adequately for the work they do. We can pass labor laws that require fair compensation. As a people, we do not have to sit by while our political leaders drive the country into Third World status where there is no middle class, and only the poor and the rich survive.

Now, I admit the greed on the part of many capitalists will make that a hard goal to attain. It will depend on what kind of country we want our children and grandchildren to inherit. That consideration will determine how much effort we are willing to expend.

We can go forward with a new resolve and remember to treat our neighbor the way we treat ourself, We’ve always known that was the right thing to do, we just need to remind ourselves to do it.
Today can be the first day of a better way of life.

Obesity becoming a big issue

I know no one wants to talk about it with the holidays approaching. Visions of platters filled with delicious foods are dancing in our heads and we can’t wait to sit down with family and friends to the annual feast.

Unfortunately, we have another issue on the table. Kenneth Thorpe, a researcher from Emory University in Atlanta, recently issued a report on obesity in America, released by cincinnati.com.

According to his studies, he predicts that by 2018, 42.8 percent of adults in this country will be obese. This is not just a matter of overeating and gaining weight. Health issues resulting from this tendency are driving up the cost of health care as well. If all Americans maintained the same weight they have today, Thorpe states that $198 billion dollars in health care costs could be saved in those nine years.

With health care reform hanging in the balance and many Americans with no health insurance, this is a serious matter. I’m sure we all know people who feel no responsibility to care for the uninsured. What today sounds like a personal problem, if we continue to overload our plates, could be a public problem tomorrow.

Let’s all have a happy Thanksgiving and let caution be our guide!