a photographer I am not / war on poverty

The celebrations continue for a little bit over here- Thijs turned 21 years young and we celebrated accordingly. However, I took one measly picture, and it is on instagram.

My lovely mother is turning 75 years young today, and this time I did not forget. Ever since Thijs was born, I have missed this date several times...And my love and I will celebrate our wedding anniversary as well this month, although that has really mostly been a non-event (to me/us it is not about that particular day- as our family will no doubt remember, since we chose to have such a very low-key event).

We have never had our pictures 'done' (and I have never had my nails done either, which is a different matter and I don't care for at all), although we took plenty. I digress terribly here. Which goes to show it is not always a good thing to just go with the flow.

Also coming up this year, my 50th birthday. Unfortunately nobody will tell me 'you haven't aged a day' (Gandalf to Bilbo), so I guess my golden ring did not possess that kind of magic. It's only a number, to which we humans have attached some special significance (see also stuff Dutch people like or other accounts about the strange way they commemorate this particular birthday in the Netherlands).

Am I any wiser? No, I don't think so, more than anything I realize the extent of my ignorance. My life is richer however, with experiences, and love, with random encounters,  with work, and with learning opportunities (not, evidently, with the knowledge of correctly placing my comma's).

Yesterday, I spend long hours in the car to bring Vera, Kevin, and Jake home. It was enjoyable though, because on the way there I could knit and take in the special wintery beauty of fields, rivers, and forests in lovely hues of blue, brown, and cream/white. On the way back the son hung low and turned the stubble on the fields golden, the tree shadows on the snow eerie. Again, I took no pictures.

Burned on my retina though, was the sight of the wet-through encampment under the bridge upon entry to the city. I don't know the answer, but I see poverty as one of the largest problems we as a nation face. I was reading some quotes and parts of speeches by Martin Luther King today, and found the following to share- (and I would like to specifically note, this was said about half a century ago):

Excerpts from Dr. King’s Nobel Peace Prize address in 1964:

“A second evil which plagues the modern world is that of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus, it projects it’s nagging, prehensile tentacles in lands and villages all over the world. Almost two thirds of the peoples of the world go to bed hungry at night. They are undernourished, ill-housed, and shabbily clad. Many of them have no houses or beds to sleep in. Their only beds are the sidewalks of the cities and the dusty roads of the villages. Most of these poverty-stricken children of God have never seen a physician or a dentist.”

“So it is obvious that if a man is to redeem his spiritual and moral ‘lag,’ he must go all out to bridge the social and economic gulf between the ‘haves’ and ‘have not’s’ of the world. Poverty is one of the most urgent items on the agenda of modern life.”

“There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.”

“The time has come for an all- out world war against poverty.”

“The rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the unschooled, and feed the unfed. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.'”