HUNGRY FOR MORE

Have you read all three Hunger Games books? If not, why not?

I read the first one ages ago, long before the movie came out, but for one reason or another, didn't manage to get ahold of my sister's copies of the last two until just this past weekend. I started the second one when we got home Sunday evening, then read straight through both of them in about three days, not even pausing to do any of my art lessons! Yes, they were that good.

If you've been telling yourself, and others, that you are not about to read a book that encourages kids to go around killing people, then you know nought of which you speak. Believe me, I am usually the very first to toss aside any book where there's even a hint that bad things will happen to children (it took my friends months and months to convince me to read Sarah's Key), yet I just couldn't put these books down. They were like an onion, and you had to keep peeling away layer after layer to finally get to the truth.

The books could be set in the distant future, or it could be ancient Rome, in the days leading up to the fall of the empire. They are about no place real. They are about every place. In the end, what I came away with was this: The more things change, the more things stay the same. There will always be power-hungry people and green-eyed-greedy-guts, who want to take more than their fair share, regardless of the cost to others. There will always be Hitlers and Madoffs and Monsantos. But, the more independent and self-sufficient our "villages" are, the more resistant they are to oppression and aggression. How do we become more self-sufficient? By becoming less dependent on having our necessities shipped in from afar; by doing away with huge, corporate-run agribusiness; by rebuilding our local food systems.  Oddly enough, all the things that caused me to raise my hand at that very first Bountiful Sprout meeting I ever attended, and which have kept me there as a member and volunteer ever since.