Monday, November 25th

ON THE 21st I fasted to be in communion with the 250,000 who did so, especially students in New England. I have felt so strongly that we could not sit passively while so many starve in Africa and I have been miserable for weeks that Ford does nothing and Butz and the others more or less wrecked the food conference in Rome, when some positive action on our part might have lit the fire. It is not enough to send money all the time as we all do. Somehow one has to give part of oneself.

It was a rainy miserable day and I had a lot of errands to do here and there. By noon I felt rather cross and by six P.M. I was counting the hours to morning! It was a very good experience and I mean to do it again.

I have nightmares about us Americans, weighed down as we are by “things” and by excessive eating. I read yesterday that Americans eat fifty times the meat the British do, for instance. Overeating makes people logy in a different way from the apathy induced by too little nourishment, but I feel sure that it takes the edge off perception. Many of us are literally weighed down. Who can imagine hunger who has never experienced it, even for one day?