Back when I was a Junior in college I was taking a class in a building I rarely went to. On the way I stopped at a bathroom I hardly ever used and saw an advertisment seeking a rape crisis counselor. The training was provided for free and through my county. I applied, was accepted and went through an intensive 40 hour training. Months later one of my fellow rape crisis counselors called me out of the blue to offer me a job. She knew I was a writer and the paper she worked for was hiring. Was I interested? Now 10 years later I am still writing for that publication and many months my income from here has meant our family survival.

Around the same time I was looking for a summer internship. I applied with Metro Transit and got an interview. But after attending decided it was too far to drive. They called to offer me the paid internship and I turned them down. Then they called me back to see if we could work something out. We made a part time arrangement that just happened to have me working the same hours as Proeun. 

Proeun for his part never wanted to be a bus driver. But when he was looking for work it seemed like the opportunity kept popping up. If he hadn’t taken the job, or if I hadn’t or if we worked different hours we never would have met. Now 12 years later he has a good income, good insurance, and His work allows me to be home with our children. 

Then there is the whole story about how we got into farming by running across information about the Minnesota Food Association while we were at the Living Green Expo, the only time we went. Then all the things that had to come together for us to find this perfect place and get financing and set up the farm. 

 Whether you chose to believe it was divine blessings (as I do) or fate that orders our path in actuallity none of us our entitled to anything. Right now I am feeling really blessed. I am incredibly aware of the fact that I have so so much to be thankful for and we are in a very good place. I wish more people, especially those in power would be aware of the fact that if they have much they have been given much and should therefore forgive much. Cut people a little slack.

I just read a series of books that take place in Ireland around the time of the potato famine. I discovered that there really was no wide spread famine in the land. Only the potatoes were affected. But that is what the poor people ate. Those in power, the wealthy, often English and Absentee landlords, could have chosen to ease the people’s suffering by allowing them to eat some of the grain they grew rather then exporting it for top dollar to England. Instead they chose to look at it as an act of God passing judgement on the Irish. When the poor couldn’t pay the rent whole towns would be sacked by gangs of “destructives” which forced already starving families to the street. Over 1 million people died of starvation and 1.3 million emigrated to America before the crisis was over. Ireland has never recovered its pre “famine” population.