Commentary by Roger Martin Martin writes about research at KU for Kansas media and in a Web zine. Contact Martin at rmartin@kucr.ukans.edu or (785) 864-7239. Martin also can be heard on KANU 91.5 FM public radio Archives More articles by Roger Martin Subscribe now to receive KU News by email

Count your blessings

by Roger Martin

When I whined that I hated lima beans, Mama brought out the heavy artillery -- the starving people of India.

"Now, honey," she'd say, "remember the starving people of India. They'd be happy to have those beans on their plates."

I'm still not much of a lima bean guy. That is, I suffer recurring amnesia when it comes to my blessings. If I were transferred to paradise, I'd probably fuss about the per diem.

Two reasons I bring this up. The first was learning what a fix the Russians are in. The second was seeing the movie "About Schmidt."

I heard about the Russians from Eric Hanley, a University of Kansas assistant professor of sociology. He's visited the country, talked with fellow scholars about it and analyzed data on Russian families who were tracked by University of North Carolina researchers.

Hanley says that half of urban families, whether they're full of college professors or truck drivers, farm. The average Russian family produces more than a ton of food a year, eating almost all it raises. In the summer, the families drive their cars or take buses or trains to their tiny plots of land. A shack with a wood stove awaits them. It might or might not have electricity.

According to Hanley, only 3 percent of Americans are involved in serious food production, compared with 60 percent of all Russians.

Are they farming because their 401(k)s have dipped? No, we're talking here about wage drops of 50 percent in 10 years.

How about going into business for yourself, then? A friend of Hanley's started buying used cars in Eastern Europe to sell in Russia. A couple of months later, a rep from a crime family came around. He wanted 20 percent of the take. Hanley's friend quit. It's a story that gets told over and over.

The government's in your pocket too, Hanley says.

Subsistence farming, then, turns out to be a nifty way to dodge the greedballs. They want your folding money, not your soybeans.

Thomas Jefferson once said, "Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God." A Russian who works eight days a week might wonder what kind of God this is.

Things are much worse in Africa, of course, and many other places. But to be blunt, I seldom imagine in any depth, or for more than a moment, the harsh terms of life elsewhere. Do you?

I knew all these facts when I recently went to the brilliant film "About Schmidt." Jack Nicholson plays a Nebraskan to whom material comfort brings no joy. He lives oblivious to the more primal suffering of his African foster child, Ndugu.

After contemplating the Russian situation and this movie, I propose a moratorium on all whining about salaries, politicians, children, parents, bosses, employees, in-laws, outlaws, spouses present or former, abortionists or gun nuts, lobbyists or liberals.

The moratorium will open up hours and hours during which we can contemplate dead-tired Russian urbanites who grow potatoes that aren't worth extorting, as well as scenarios going down elsewhere that are even worse.

Why, heck, some of us might even eat our lima beans.