What I learned from Newfoundland and the Hunger Games

I wrote this earlier but I am just now getting it posted.....

Last week we were near Ann Arbor MI and looking for a grocery store when we saw a sign for Whole Foods. As I stepped inside the door I was hit with an amazing amount of lights, colors and products. So many choices!  Home in Colorado I run in to Whole Foods often and think nothing about it.  But during this trip we have been in so many small, quiet places that I was now overwhelmed.
In Newfoundland the rural grocery stores are small and dark with shelves of prepared food products.   They have a small produce area with cabbage, potatoes and a few apples or bananas.  The frozen food is in a white chest freezer with a list on the lid as to what is inside. The same small space usually has a liquor store and sometimes the Post Office too.  Not a lot of choices, nothing fancy but you could make a meal with what they carried. In the urban areas there were very nice large grocery stores, but nothing like this Whole Foods.  It was so overwhelming, so much.  And it was so nice! Large displays of perfect produce, lighting, lots of choices, amazing bread, and beautifully designed products.  I am not a tentative shopper but I was paralyzed by so much to choose from.

A large but typical store in Newfoundland.  This was a variety store.

This leads me back to thinking about how I went from wanting what I need to needing it to be more. To me it is a question of balance.  How do I remember that when the recipe says vinegar it doesn't necessarily mean 12 year old aged balsamic. How do I resist the avalanche of media trying to convince me that I need more?  How do I want less?  Because it was very nice to not care.

I was reading Mockingjay, the last of the Hunger Games trilogy and when the surviving prep team  looks into a closet full of gowns designed by Cinna for Katniss  Octavia fingers the fabric and says "It's been so long since I've seen anything pretty".


I realized that it is human nature to want the nice and we are fortunate enough to live in a country where so much is available. It is ok not to feel guilty.  We can appreciate the nice without having to go overboard.  I am reminded to follow the advice that everything you own should have value and be functional or beautiful, or both.

At the prison that we visited there were many examples of functional and beautiful. There was a time when people strived to make all objects beautiful.

Really a bad photo but these are the lights that revolve at the top of a lighthouse.  My photo  does not convey how beautiful the mechanism was.