The photo is haunting.
An emaciated Somali mother, Hawa Barre Osman, strokes her starving baby in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, looking for signs of life. The image is so foreign, from another world, except that there is a familiar detail, a sippy cup off to one side, just like cups our children use.
Last month, the New York Times reported significant progress in Somalia. The number of people "facing imminent starvation" fell from 750,000 to about 250,000. Yes, that's an advance since August when news accounts and photos like this one detailed the magnitude of the crisis.
But imagine 250,000 people facing starvation. More than half of Sacramento's population, almost all of a Stockton, or more than a Reno.
In California, some people invoke the trope that we are broke, that the people cannot afford another buck for charity, to fund a water system or, heaven forbid, pay any more in taxes for the common good.
Yes, many people are having a hard time. You can see them sleeping under freeway overpasses, and in encampments along the rivers. We pass them with our heads down and hands in our pockets when they ask for money on K Street.
Friends have lost jobs in this recession. Many of us know people who have lost their homes. Veterans coming home from the Middle East and kids getting out of college are having a hard time finding jobs.
But we who have stocked pantries and full refrigerators and yet feel that we don't have enough ought to think of what we might do for people in a place halfway around the world, or maybe for the person sleeping under the overpass.
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