Hunger Is Not a Disease

A Family Blessing

Families in communities everywhere make their way to a food pantry weekly. ly.  And, grandmothers are an essential part of this mix, playing their part in different ways.

Grandmothers care for the grandchildren while their parents work 2 and 3 jobs each.

Because the crowded conditions in many pantries are stressful for some children, grandmothers care for the grandchildren while the mothers shop at a food pantry.

Shopping at a food pantry can take hours depending on the crowds and the lines.  People don’t just “drop in” at a food pantry with a shopping list.

One family with 5 children attends the pantry weekly.  Grandmother sits in the car and watches the children and Buffy the dog while mother shops.  Somehow,  grandmother manages to entertain the children as they all wait in the car.  The mother stands in the line, first in the the parking lot and later in the building hallway, while she waits her turn to shop in the pantry for 3-4 minutes.

Grandmothers take their grandchildren shopping at a pantry when the parents   work.  One grandmother I know takes her grandson with her weekly.  Little David is always delighted to choose an apple as a treat on each pantry visit.

Children in our country today shop in the pantry weekly with their mothers or grandmothers.  Shopping with the family to put food on the table is an outing  practiced weekly the world over.

Listening and chatting with these children over the years I’ve observed  something:  Many of these children have never been in a large grocery store or super market.  A food pantry has a product selection of probably 50 to 100 items. A grocery store has  a product selection of probably 10,000 to 50,000 items.

BLESS OUR FAMILIES, O LORD.

Whether they are families by blood or circumstances, make them holy.

Make Yourself easy to find Lord.  Let us find you in our marriages, our families, our households, our communities and our relationships.  Let us find you globally.

Many things in our daily lives seem to conspire to divide us.  Help us see beyond the divisions and see a family.  Help us embrace one another as a family.  Help us love each other as a family .

May families in food pantries everywhere know your presence as they go about their days.

Amen

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Can We Break Down Barriers in this Pandemic? Food Insecure

Starving Seniors?  Food insecure seniors?  Are those terms too harsh?

Let’s ratchet them down:  hungry.

Or maybe:  food insecure.  Yeah, that’s better.  It sounds better anyway.

Call it what you want, the event is the same.  It’s your grandmother or grandfather (or me…I’m certainly a grandmother) caught in a situation where there’s simply not enough food in the house.  They are food insecure.

In these times, we seniors living on Social Security are finding ourselves routinely choosing between food and medicine, food and transportation.

I have two friends who daily hitch rides to the grocery store because their cars don’t work any more.  Here, in the middle of this health crisis, they are in a desperate situation not of their making.  Everyone is trying to shelter in place, wear face masks and gloves, practice social distancing, and find a friend to help  get food.

Walking to a store is totally out for one:  her hip and knee replacements won’t allow it.  And, we’re not supposed to be out in public anyway.

And, how can a person buy a used car these days anyway?  And, when the car gives up the ghost, how will we get to work?  Yes, I know lots of seniors who are figuring out ways to bring in $$$.

The issues with seniors and food insecurity are serious because when seniors no longer have $$$ to  buy the food they need for nutrition or when they can no longer buy the medicines they need, they become ill and finally end up being cared for by their children or they end up in a nursing home.

I know many stories about:

The senior in Woodstock living on mashed potatoes.

The older woman in Bearsville who ended up in a nursing home when  her take-out food pantry cut her off and she couldn’t get to a grocery store.

The older man who lacks $$$ for enough food and is slowly starving.

There is food available:

If they can get to a food pantry or If they can find a pantry offering takeout

If they can sign up for SNAP (food stamps).

If they have the strength to deal with long lines and frazzled volunteers.

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I spoke recently with a retired man I know:

“Richard, do you get SNAP?”

“No.”

“Why, Richard?  SNAP is usually easy to get.  All you have to do is apply.”
“Well, I’m getting by without it.  Let someone else, needier than me, get the $$$  Besides, I hear the lines are outrageous.”

“Richard, think about getting SNAP.  This is a benefit you paid for.  Why leave $$$ on the table?”

The barriers to SNAP for seniors are great.  Seniors resist going to a pantry, soup kitchen, getting SNAP until they simply cannot resist any longer.  I know the feeling.  People in my age category grew up and entered adulthood feeling that if we worked hard and paid our taxes, we would end up okay.  We worked all our lives with this attitude and now that we’re retired…there simply isn’t enough.

When this happens, we feel inadequate and blame ourselves.  “I must have done something wrong.  Here I am living hand-to-mouth.  I don’t even have enough $$$ for food.  What did I do wrong?”

We are a whole generation of people blaming ourselves.  I feel like we’re really not totally to blame for being food insecure.

I tell myself the rules have changed.  This pandemic has shifted everything.  Because we’re retired, we’re not in the rules-making game anymore.

Whatever happened to the Grey Panthers?

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Thurman Greco

 

Situational Poor

SITUATIONAL POOR – A person fits into a situational category of poverty when s/he lands in a situation created by an event such as a hurricane, fire, flood, pandemic,   or other disaster which destroys the home, job, car.

Food pantries, food banks, soup kitchens are overworked in today’s pandemic world.  The line of hungry people grows every time the place opens.

It’s bad enough that the line grows weekly.  But, worse, many people in the line are confused, afraid.  The never thought they would find themselves in a food pantry line with hundreds of other hungry, confused, afraid.

How should they act?  What should they do?

What do they do with the food, once they get it home?  It may be good food – both delicious and nutritious.  However, it may not be anything recognizable.  More often than not, pantry food doesn’t come with recipes.  Super markets carry thousands of items.  Food pantries carry maybe 50 different items and the labels on the cans and boxes aren’t even recognizable.  The fresh produce may be organic but not be labeled as such.

So, now that the pantry food is in its new found kitchen, there is a big adjustment period involved in getting it to the table.

We are not so far removed from those people in the food pantry.  They are our neighbors, friends, co-workers, relatives, classmates.

And, truth be told, we are all confused, and afraid.

Even though you may not be in the line, there are definitely things you can do.  For starters, send a check to a food pantry, soup kitchen,  or food bank in your area.  If you don’t know where to send the check, look up an organization called:

Feeding America.

Feeding America is glue holding the food pantry world together.  If that doesn’t work for you, search out:  Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York.

The Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, along with the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley, do an amazing job of making delicious, nutritious foods available to those who need it most.

These two food banks are only two in a large network of food banks located throughout the country.  If you seeking a feeding facility in another part of the country, these organizations can guide you to one in the area best for you.

If you are uncomfortable sending money, this might be a good time to organize a food drive.

I wrote three action guides which list suggestions and options which are easy-to-understand and read.  You can get these action guides free.  Email me your mailing address and I’ll get your copies in the mail right away.  I’m not even charging postage and handling.

Email me your mailing address to thurmangreco@gmail.com.

The guidelines and suggestions are practical.  I feel confident you’ll discover practical things you can do to help on one of the action guides.

Thank you for caring.

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Thurman Greco

Woodstock, New York

 

What Inspires me in the Fight Against Hunger

Well, actually, it isn’t necessarily what.  It’s more likely who.  The first line of leadership inspiration is the hungry people in the food pantry line.  A food pantry really is all about the people grappling with hunger.

But, where did this whole thing actually begin?  For me, it all started with Robert F. Kennedy.  In 1967, he traveled to Mississippi to see poverty and hunger for what it was.  Being a wealthy man from a wealthy family, he actually had no idea.

Down there he saw  hunger and poverty for what it was, not what he thought it should be.  He saw people, elderly people, adults, children.  He saw people with no jobs, no welfare, no surplus commodities, and no food stamps.

If the history books tell this story  correctly, it was the children who got to him.  He saw the hunger as it was. Seeing children hungry to the point of near starvation,  Robert F. Kennedy came face-to-face with malnutrition.

Robert F. Kennedy was both moved and angry.

There is a book out there  telling the story of their  hunger.  You may or may not ever have heard about this book.  “So Rich, So Poor” was written by Peter Edelman.

In reading about Robert F. Kennedy, I read a paragraph which has meaning for me:

“All of us, from the wealthiest to the young children that I have seen in this country, in this year, bloated by starvation – we all share one precious possession, and that is the name American.

“It is not easy to know what that means.

“But in part to be an American means to have been an outcast and a stranger, to have come to the exiles’ country, and to know that he who denies the outcast and stranger still amongst us, he also denies America.”

Those words resonate with me.  They may  mean nothing to you.  But, whether or not they have meaning for you, they are powerful words and they tell a story I see in the food pantry line.

I thank you for reading this blog post.  I thank you for your interest in fighting hunger.  I know that distributing food in a food pantry is not going to do away with hunger.

But, this I do know:  Distributing food in a food pantry will keep the shoppers in that line from starvation for three days.

This is all I can do.  This has to be enough until a better option comes along.

Thurman Greco

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Have You Applied for SNAP?

Have you, or has someone you know, applied for SNAP? SNAP is about all that’s left in the way of assistance for people as welfare shrinks and shrinks.

SNAP is important for you and your household because you’ll be able to get more food with your SNAP card and you won’t be hungry anymore. This can translate to better health.

Are there more days in your month than money? Are you a senior who has outlived your pension, savings, or ability to hold down a job. Statistics tell us that one senior in seven doesn’t get enough to eat. SNAP is one successful way to help your situation.

If you have trouble buying food, now is a good time to apply. If you’ve applied in the past and were denied, maybe you need to apply again. You may, after all, have answered a question incompletely or incorrectly and were denied this benefit because of it. Try again. You might do better this time around, especially if you or someone in your house is disabled or is a senior with medical expenses.

You may be reluctant to apply for SNAP because you don’t know if you are eligible. Or, maybe you applied in the past but were denied. Maybe even you don’t know how to apply and are overwhelmed by the application. You might even have never heard of SNAP and think of it as food stamps.

SNAP is a debit card which offers privacy and is easy to use in grocery stores. If you don’t want anyone to know you receive SNAP, they won’t. Once you are approved, your SNAP allotment will be renewed monthly.

One thing: If you work, you need to know how to meet the work requirements. Some information is needed for you to apply successfully for SNAP. This information comes in several categories.

Proof of income is necessary. You can use pay stubs, social security income information.

Are you a senior? You are eligible for SNAP. If you are a senior, please apply for SNAP benefits. You worked all your life, paid your taxes, contributed to the economy. It’s time to benefit from all of the contributions you made throughout your life.

Identification is needed. This might be a state ID, passport, birth certificate.

Bills help. Bring your medical, heating, water, auto, rent bills.

Your social security number and the numbers of everyone in your household are necessary.

Dependent care costs will help. These include day care costs, child support, being an attendant for a disabled adult.

Contact your local Department of Social Services office for application assistance. If this doesn’t work, contact your Office on Aging or Catholic Charities.

SNAP is important for you if you’re having trouble buying groceries. SNAP helps you pay for the food you need to live a healthy life. When you eat healthier food, you will prevent and control some chronic health issues. This will lower your medical bills.

SNAP is important for your community, too, because when you are able to get food with SNAP, you’ll have cash available to use to pay your rent or buy gas to get back and forth to work.

SNAP is also good for your community because the allotment on your SNAP card brings outside money to your community. The money you bring into your local economy helps farmers, grocers, and local businesses.

When you buy groceries with SNAP, you are not taking money away from someone else who might need it more. There are enough SNAP dollars for everyone.

You can still shop at a food pantry if you are eligible for SNAP.

Get SNAP today!

Be well.

Thurman Greco

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