Tea it is.

A tweet from yesterday:  

Mama/daughter bonding over apple juice and rice krispie treats. It's not a bad life.

I look at her little face so contentedly eating that sticky treat, and my heart breaks a little inside. From happiness that she has never known what it means to not have anything to eat. From sadness that there are so many children in this country of excess who can't say the same thing. Through no fault of their own. With no understanding of politics or faltering economies. They know only one thing: they are hungry and there is nothing in the cupboards to eat. And so many of those empty, growling bellies are residing in my home state that my heart breaks all over again.

My friend Sarah is the executive director at Scott's Run Settlement House in Osage, WV.   In a letter, she shared the following:

In a recent report from the US Department of Agriculture, the state of West Virginia was one of only two states that saw a significant increase in food insecurity--to be food insecure means to have limited or uncertain access to nutritionally adequate or safe foods.  The national rate of food insecurity increased 19% from 2006-2009, in West Virginia, it increased a staggering 44%!

It is evident that your neighbors are suffering. Every June proves this as many parents who are dependent on the free meals their children receive at public school begin inundating the Food Pantry because they do not have the money to feed their children 3 meals a day for the entire summer.

Reading of the struggles of my fellow West Virginians made me choke a bit on that expensive latte.  So, I've decided that I am giving up my designer coffee habit for the summer and sending that money instead to Sarah at the Settlement House as they work to expand their Food Pantry services. $4 a cup x 4 times a week x 12 weeks in the summer =  $192. Not a huge sum, but I am sure it can buy something far more nutritionally sound and needed than the 48 cups of coffee I would have used it for.  And I should really be drinking tea anyway.