Poor Richard’s Almanac

No, this is not about dieting, so you can either stop reading right now if you’re hoping for the latest miracle diet, or keep on reading if the mere thought of yet another miracle diet is enough to make you go ballistic (or bulimic). Instead, it’s about how we can use the wisdom of the past to inform our lives today and make them better.

Our friend Ben’s cousin Linda sent me an e-mail this morning with a whole bunch of reproductions of World War II posters. This was both interesting and poignant, since some of us remember our grandparents’, great-grandparents’, or maybe even parents’ involvement in the war. (Our friend Ben feels that it is most tellingly evoked, especially insofar as it touched the lives of those who remained at home, in many of Wendell Berry’s Port William novels. You should be reading them anyway.)

Many of these posters urged people to buy war bonds, refrain from disclosing troop movements and other sensitive information in order to protect troops’ lives (something our friend Ben feels that today’s news services might attempt to keep in mind), or, of course, join the Army, Navy, or Air Force. But our friend Ben was most struck by one poster that was about food. It said “Where our men are fighting, our food is fighting. Buy wisely—cook carefully—store carefully—use leftovers.”

Today, we are still a nation at war, something none of us should ever forget for so much as a minute. But recession, not war, threatens most of us on the home front. We are battling personal poverty (or insolvency, for those who can’t bear the stigma of poverty), and many of us are fighting it by attempting to become more self-sufficient and more responsible about our everyday choices.

In these tough times, the advice from that poster rings true: Buy wisely. Cook carefully. Store carefully. Use leftovers.

As our hero and blog mentor Ben Franklin would say, “Waste not, want not.”