To The Editor:
Re gratitude, many Christians give thanks by saying grace before a meal. Likewise, Buddhists recite a verse that starts with these words, “This food comes to us from the labor of 10,000 beings. Let us be grateful …” That’s a lot of beings. Among them are the people who cooked the meal, created the recipe, printed the cookbook and shopped for the food; the grocers who stocked it and sold it; the clerks who rang up the sale and bagged it; the farmers and farmworkers who grew it; the truck drivers who delivered it, the people who built the trucks, constructed the roads and supplied the fuel that the trucks run on; the math teachers who taught us how to measure ingredients; our parents who showed us to cook; our ancestors who crossbred the many different varieties that we enjoy today; the gas and electric companies who enabled us to cook it; the workers who manufactured our pots and pans; the bees who pollinated the crops; the birds who ate the pests that eat the crops; the worms who aerate and fertilize the earth and even the tiny microorganisms that keep the soil healthy. I’ll stop there, but when you think about it, an awfully large interdependent network of creatures directly or indirectly contributes to each plate of food we eat. Let’s remember at least a few of them and be grateful whenever we sit down to enjoy a meal.
Paul Hanke
Warren, VT
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