Too much hype and drama.Too much hysteria.Too many empty shelves at the grocery store. State of Emergency issued for the entire state. School MIGHT be closed. Don't drive anywhere!
Why all this? Because of the weather forecast that started a week ago. You'd think it was Armegadden or Snowmegadden as a storm was called a few years ago. Huge amounts of snow. Freezing rain and then snow on top. Night after night the hype continued THEN ......... the forecast for snow dropped to almost nothing.
So what does this have to do with a potato? Glad you asked! It is about winter. That cold, miserable, windy, freezing weather that Oklahoma gets so often. It reminded me of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book that I read to my 4th graders years and years ago. The title was "The Long Winter."
To say this book is powerful, is quite an understatement. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about the long winter in Minnesota in which the entire town was on the verge of starvation. In the book, as the winter howls on, and the only way to keep their house warm (they were in town at the time) was to twist hay tightly into knots and burn it in the stove. The hay burned so fast, that Laura and her father twisted hay all day long to keep them from freezing. All the food in the town had been bought and used up. Most families had little to nothing to eat. A supply train was supposed to bring them supplies in December, but got caught in a huge blizzard. When the train hit a huge drift of snow on the rails, the entire train slammed to a complete stop. They couldn't go on. As the engine cooled, the snow that had melted when that hot engine hit the drift, became sheets of ice that encased the engine in a solid block of ice. The train would not make it to the Ingall's town.
In the Ingall's household, the food was down to one potato per person per day. The potatoes were baked in the ashes of the wood stove and that was their food for the day. Think about that. It is hard to understand in this day of so much food ready all the time. One potato. That's it.
During read aloud time, I read this book to my students. They were mesmerized. One day I decided to do an LEA (Language Experience Activity) with baked potatoes. I put potatoes in a crock pot, and baked them during the morning. When they were done, I gave each student a potato to eat while I read several chapters from the book. I read the part about the Ingalls having only one potato each per day to eat.
Because of the starving families, a group of men went out to hunt, hoping they would be able to find any kind of game. The group saw an antelope which would have provided just a tiny bit of meat for each family. But one of the men was so excited to see a source of food, he shot too quickly and scared off the antelope. I remember the kids gasped when I read that part. Their faces were a mix of horror and anger. I stopped just after the antelope part.
After I read, I told them we were going to write letters/journal entry. I told them they could pick any character in the book - and they were to write a letter or a journal entry from that perspective dealing with the one potato per person and/or the antelope getting away. How did that person feel? Were they angry? Scared? Frustrated? Starving? So my kids wrote and wrote and wrote!
I honestly didn't know what to expect when I read their papers. I was completely blown away - it was so powerful!. Some were mothers not being able to feed their babies. Some were one of the men in the hunting group and the frustration of not getting the antelope. One student wrote as a dad, and his writing made me cry. His letter was pure anguish over not being a good provider for his children, and how upset he was that the antelope got away. He said he felt worthless because he could not provide food for his children. That letter was so powerful, I felt like I was right there in the room with that dad, anguishing over not having food for his children.
All their writing was wonderful. That has been 21 years ago, but I remember it like yesterday. So thus the title - One potato.
This lesson was powerful. Most children today have no idea of what real hunger is. Food is everywhere. In America, food is thrown away every day - in quantities to feed thousands of people. Probably hundreds of thousands of people. In our lunchroom at school alone - the food that the students throw away could easily feed 50 families. The waste is staggering. As I think back to the winter of near starvation for the Ingalls, the contrast between then and now takes my breath away.
One potato. To survive.
