Poverty

I think about Amos Bronson Alcott, an early American vegan, and the father of a great female novelist, who was part of the Transcendental Movement, with his fantastic educational failures, and his rejected prophecies, when I eat a cup of applesauce. He traveled to England by boat eating potatoes and applesauce.

"After many delays , Alcott sailed off aboard the Rosalind on May 8 , carrying a supply of applesauce and potatoes as his vegetarian diet ." From Baker's Emerson' Among the Eccentrics.

Too much milk and packaging, garbage, non-vegan food, non-vegetarian food, from the food pantry set up at the school to help people and families during Covid-19 pandemic. I have broken my veganism. 

Today I thought to take it like a Buddhist monk, as an offering for my efforts. I shall bow in gratitude to the City of New York for their generosity and support of my Buddhist path.

I'm gaining weight because I fear someday I won't have food, so better pack on the pounds. I can totally see why poor people are sometimes paradoxically weighty, and hate my past judgements that I can do nothing about, only live forward.

I eat a lot of potatoes. Saw someone stab a potato and put it in the microwave for 8 minutes. Now I do that all the time. A friend told someone sailed around the world and only ate olive oil. He says it's the perfect food. So I put olive oil on my potatoes. And something green, peas are the easiest, and they have protein too. I put some hot sauce for flavor, though olive oil, potatoes and peas are quite tasty.

My great grandfather was Irish. The potato famine was really terrible. Ireland has just increased its population to the amount it had before the famine. Then I wonder if the Jewish people have replenished after the Holocaust. I know a woman who had 12 children. I don't identify with any of the groups I'm in to make that kind of effort, though my child-free friend lets me know I have children, like I could forget those buggers.