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Legislative News and Views - Rep. Bud Nornes (R)

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Please donate to food shelves; Gettysburg Address 150 years later

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Dear Neighbor,

I encourage local citizens to contribute to local food shelves as we reach the holiday season. This time of year can be especially trying for people who struggle to put food on the table and food shelves themselves feel the crunch.

Here are some notable statistics:

  • Visits to Minnesota food shelves have increased 166 percent between 2000-2012 — more than 3 million visits a year. Link here.
  • Hunger has doubled in Minnesota over the past five years. One in 10 Minnesotans misses 10 meals per month, forced to make choices between food and other necessities such as housing, utilities and health care. Children account for 40 percent of Minnesota’s hungry. Link here.
  • The three main programs to address hunger in Minnesota — food support, food shelves and subsidized school lunches — all hit record levels of use in 2012. Link here.

Click here for more information regarding food shelves and other resources throughout our area.

On a separate note, this week marks the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It seems like this speech’s prominent place in history becomes more interesting the more I learn about it.

Lincoln was not even the keynote speaker and his speech only lasted two minutes. The guy who preceded him spoke for some two hours.

When Lincoln finally got to the podium, he said, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” The Chicago Times was more blunt and called Lincoln’s speech “silly, flat and dish-watery utterances.”

Lincoln summed up the Civil War in just a handful of sentences and, notably, used words like “us” and “we” at least 15 times in declaring our nation’s common purpose. The words “I” and “me” do not appear in transcripts. Maybe Lincoln’s ability to reach the masses in such a concise manner is what makes his speech one of the most lasting in our nation’s history.

The sidebar stories certainly help make it one of the most interesting to me.

Sincerely,

Bud