Food Pantry Rules
A food pantry is what it is because of three things:
the economic situation at the moment
the volunteers
the people who shop there.
The people come together looking for groceries but often, they want and need far more.
While the coronavirus pandemic rages, the food pantry lines get longer every pantry day because people, families, deal with change they didn’t ask for.
In short, they are rewriting their destiny stories without a road map or instructions.
A number of the people in the pantry, both shoppers and volunteers, didn’t know about food pantries until circumstances set up a situation where they suddenly looked around a room and realized where they were.
There is a name for their category – SITUATIONAL POOR.
A person fits into the situational poor category when s/he lands in a situation created by an event such as a hurricane, fire, floor, pandemic, or other disaster which destroys the home, car, job.
Pantries offer much – peace, community, spiritual connection, groceries. I always think of a food pantry in the basement of a church as a cross between a church service and a busy pizza place.
A food pantry, and those connected with it, are not a program. They are a community. As volunteers, all we really do is open the door. As all the hungry people walk through the door, they undergo a change somehow.
Each person in a pantry, in whatever capacity, has experienced rejection in some way – too young, too old, too crazy, too sick, too poor, not poor enough.
The food pantry experience does not heal a person, nor does it change the story.
The food pantry experience does not offer therapy.
The food pantry is, instead, a conduit for each person’s own healing.
FOOD PANTRY RULES
Sign your name in the register as you enter the pantry.
Find a place in line.
Do not crowd or block the door to the pantry room.
No more than 2 shoppers are allowed in the pantry at one time.
No more than one new shopper is allowed in the pantry at one time.
Shop for a three-day supply of food for everyone in your household.
Place your selections on the table as you shop.
Respect the restrictions on certain foods.
Finish your shopping in 10 minutes.
Once you begin to bag your groceries, do not continue to shop.
Because the food availability is different each time you shop, it is best to visit the food pantry weekly.
Thank you.
Thurman Greco
P.S. The rules may be different at the pantry where you shop. Each food pantry is different. The space is different. The times the pantry is open is different. The management is different.
These specific rules were used in the food pantry I managed where the people were many, the space small, and the hours few.
Please forward this article to your preferred social media network.
Share it with your friends.
What I Believe – Seniors in a Food Pantry
As seniors age, the courage we experience becomes more obvious as we feed hungry people. After all, what does a senior have to lose? Courage is a necessary part of the aging personality because our platform continually shrinks.
We’re often overlooked in the homeless arena. Those looking out forhomeless people focus on an older adolescent (especially if there’s an infant involved), and families. There’s just not much energy left over for hungry people seniors and cocker spaniels.
It never occurred to me that turning away hungry people in the pantry line was something I would do. Or could do. Or even consider doing. Turning away hungry people was not an option.
I came to the pantry as a crone or harridan depending on the circumstances and a person’s attitude toward me and my attitude toward hunger. I brought already formed opinions and beliefs, many of which were with me at birth.
Some argue that people are born as blank slates. I can’t agree. For one thing, I never experienced a blank slate when it came to hungry people. I didn’t have an “aha” moment when I met my first hungry person. I didn’t examine the value of feeding hungry people in a philosophy or government class. I never, at any time, analyzed the concept of feeding the hungry.
Because I lived my opinions about hunger, and because I got up close and personal with hungry people in Mexico and Venezuela, I was comfortable with the concept of feeding hungry people.
I never even considered not feeding hungry people I the food pantry. When I saw them, I remembered moments in Mexico and Venezuela and realized hunger is an intensely personal situation accompanying malnourishment. Hunger can lead to starvation.
Hungry people needing food are voiceless. Even though it’s harder on those with mental and emotional issues, it impacts everyone spiritually.
As they distribute pantry food, volunteers reduce costs in other areas of government: healthcare, housing, education.
A long-term poor diet contributes to illness which poor people can’t afford. Healthcare costs get shuffled over to taxpayers. When forced to choose between housing and food, the hungry often opt for housing. Later, if they can’t pay the housing costs and end up homeless. This results in further tax bills.
When school children are too hungry to learn, the damage is long term. They risk becoming uneducated adults unable to qualify for employment. Our problems flow to the next generation and the future.
DANA
“Hi, Dana. Come on in and shop. How’re you doing this week?”
“Fred’s still in the hospital. He’s been diagnosed with kidney disease and he’ll be on a special diet when he comes home.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m so glad you sent me to Dr. Longmore. He told me exactly who to go see, what paperwork to get, everything I needed to get care for him. I hope Fred’s coming home soon.”
“Dana, I’m so happy to hear this.”
“Thank God the pantry has all these fresh fruits and vegetables. By the way, do you have any laundry soap today?”
“I wish!”
I met Dana the first morning I worked in the pantry and she shared her adventures with me every week from that pantry day on. Of all the people going through the line in the pantry, I probably learned more about her than anyone else.
I never learned where she lived, how many children she had, where she came from or anything like that. What I learned from her was a running commentary of present tense food insecurity. She shared her daily struggle as she traveled through life trying to keep a roof over her head, clothes on her back, and food in her refrigerator.
Walking through the line weekly, she shared her life with me. I learned how she found a coat for the winter when the old one wore out and she had no money.
“Dana, your coat is beautiful!” It’s going to keep you so warm!”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it? You should have seen it when I found it. It was filthy!” I couldn’t even tell what color it was. I took it home, put it in the tub and worked on it all afternoon ’til I cleaned it up. Now look at it. It’s a perfect fit!”
I learned how she struggled to keep her car going…and then finally gave it up.
“The bus is working out real well over here. I catch it about two blocks from my apartment in Saugerties and ride it over. I wait in the hall ’til it comes back to take me home. I only have to carry my groceries about five blocks in all! I’m so lucky I found this bus. I get to ride free because I’m a senior!”
Dana was the most confirmed optimist shopper in the line. And, when Dana was in the line, I was the most confirmed optimist pantry volunteer in the place.
Thank you for reading this article! Please refer it to your preferred social media network.
Thurman Greco
New Beginnings – Part 2 as I Explore the Spirituality of Hunger in America
Like many first-time pantry volunteers everywhere, I showed up that morning because someone from the church asked me to come. A slot needed to be filled and I stepped up to the plate when I was asked. I was a foot soldier in the army of the outreach. I tried to live up to my status in the church as a new member. I showed up at whatever activity needed help and did my share. Nothing more.
I had no desire to move up any ladder in the congregation.
On that morning of new beginnings, I had no premonition I would ever return to this pantry room.
I had no plans for this place in my future. I had a profession teaching reflexology, Reiki, and canine massage therapy in a healing space in my home on Tannery Brook.
This was a case of fools rushing. Knowing what I know now, I should have run out the door and never looked back. Mary could have handled the crowd that day without me. In the whole two hours, no more than a couple dozen people visited the pantry.
I wasn’t blessed with any psychic knowledge…certainly not the feeling of danger I felt when I saw the head of the building committee in the hallway outside the pantry months later.
There were no lines in the hallway at the new beginnings of my time there. People wandered into the pantry in groups of one and two to choose from cereal, soup, tuna, and peanut butter.
Never in my wildest thoughts on that day did I envision the pantry hallway filled with hungry people, the tiny room packed with fresh produce and jammed with shoppers.
By 2008, the tanked economy was well underway and waits in the hallway were an hour or more.
The Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP) passed down feeding guidelines which included whole-grain bread, 1% milk, fresh produce. By 2011, the building committee had rules dictating where people could stand, what bathroom they could use, and what parts of the hallway were off-bounds.
Never did I foresee monthly food deliveries averaging over 12,000 pounds.
Never did I imagine, on that day, building committee members angry over hungry people receiving food according to guidelines set down by the State of New York, the Department of Health, and the United States Department of Agriculture.
I never thought I would spend months grappling with the unworthy hungry, a concept introduced to me by a local religious leader. The concept wasn’t explained. Only the two words – unworthy hungry – were used in a sentence: “You are feeding the unworthy hungry.” This was something I never heard of before. What did she mean? Who were the unworthy hungry?
After that first morning in the food pantry, I drove home, pulled out a little notebook from a drawer and wrote what people said, like real writers do. When I wrote these things down, I felt my grandmother’s presence.
Her spirit was with me in the room. I looked around the dining area to see if someone had entered the room without my realizing it. But, no, I didn’t find a soul. I walked over to a cabinet and began my dialogue journal on that afternoon.
A shopper: “They cut my food stamps again. I don’t know how I’m going to make it. I have no money this month. My car died and I don’t know where I’m going to get money to fix it. If I can’t fix it, I can’t buy a new one either.”
Lillie Dale Cox Thurman spoke to me clearly that morning with emphatic, strong, direct instructions. She went straight to my head: “Write this down! Write this down too! Now…write this down.”
My grandmother, Lillie Dale Cox Thurman, stepped into my life on the first morning in the food pantry and never left. Not even when my mother, Uralee Thurman Lawrence, roared in with prayers and fast, furious, aggressive instructions which I resisted to the bitter end. Under their directions, I joined the crowd in the basement and was soon volunteering regularly.
So, now, I’ve got the second volume, “The Ketchup Sandwich Chronicles,” coming out on this blog.
Thank you for reading this blogged book! Please refer it to your preferred social media network and stay tuned for future chapters!
Thurman Greco
Summer Came and Went. And a book signing…
Please join me.
You are invited to attend my Author’s Reading and book signing on Saturday morning, September 22nd at 10:00 am on the grounds of the Mower’s Meadow Flea Market.
Refreshments will be served.
School is starting. And, once again, the focus of my life has adjusted itself. Hunger takes us all to new places that we never thought we would go.
For me, I spent the past two years writing my hunger book. I felt as if I’d gone into a cave…a writer’s cave. And, of course, with all this time in the cave, the inevitable finally happened: a book signing.
I finished the book! Not only that, I’m working on the follow-on volume. But, that’s getting off message.
A book signing is always appropriate in September.
Where? I’m selling the book at the Mower’s Meadow Flea Market in Woodstock. Somehow, I feel this was the logical direction I was headed from the first day: a book signing.
I sell the book….and a lot more. While selling the book, people purchase other used books and gently used items to raise money for the hungry.
I’m selling items and collecting donations to buy peanut butter for a pantry which doesn’t have any on the shelves on the day I call the pantry. Why peanut butter?
Peanut butter doesn’t need refrigeration.
It can be eaten by people who no longer have teeth.
Peanut butter has a generous shelf life.
For homeless people, peanut butter is a staple.
But, getting back to the basics, people are dropping gently used items off at my home. I wash them, or dust them off, and otherwise freshen them up and then take them to Mower’s Meadow on Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays.
The prices are reasonable. The items are really nice. People fighting hunger are being really generous.
Lucy and Erin made a wonderful banner for my booth so people know what’s happening in the booth.
Thank you for reading this blog post. Please refer it to your preferred social media network.
I look forward to seeing you at the Book Signing at 10:00 on the 22nd!
Thurman Greco
Ramen Noodles Should be a Choice.
Ramen Noodles should be a choice.
Ramen Noodles should be a choice.
On a recent New York Subway ride, I stood in a crowded car bound for Flatbush, thinking about hungry people having only Ramen Noodles to eat because they had no money. Just then, an older black man near me spoke to everyone in the crowded car.
With a well modulated, practiced, articulate voice, this cotton top knew what he was doing. He talked about veterans and their needs. He obviously either wrote the speech because he was an excellent and experienced speech writer or he found himself such a person to do the job.
He ended his short presentation with a plea for money. And, wrapped up in this short talk was the realization that he was as much interested in consciousness raising as he was in collecting dimes and dollars. What he wanted, really, was for captive audience members in the metro car to hear his message, digest it, understand it, and act on it in some beneficial way.
This man’s message went right to my brain and my heart. What this old cotton top didn’t know was that we are on the same path. I, too, am on a mission of consciousness raising and fundraising. And, like him, I’m not doing this just for the fun of it. I’m on a mission to spread the word about a truly tragic and hidden horror in our country: hunger in America.
I want people in this country to have enough food in their lives so that Ramen Noodles should be a choice.
I sell books and T-shirts to raise money, give talks in libraries and church meeting halls. Finally, I work daily to interest you in the plight of hungry people of every age in our great nation who simply don’t have the money to buy food. Ramen Noodles should be a choice.
When you purchase my book, you help me feed the hungry. All the proceeds of “I Don’t Hang Out in Churches Anymore” go to buy food for hungry people who need it. Ramen noodles should be a choice.
Right now, because of the summer months, I’m donating peanut butter to hungry people. At other times in the year, the focus will be on different foods.
Peanut butter has many qualities which bring it to the top of my go-to list.
Peanut butter…
is nutritious.
has a long shelf life.
doesn’t need refrigeration.
is a staple in a household with children.
can be eaten by people who have no teeth.
can be easily carried in the pocket or backpack of a homeless person.
In short, Ramen noodles should be a choice.
Thank you for reading this post. Please forward this article to your favorite social media network.
Ramen Noodles should be a choice. Feed the hungry!
Thurman Greco
Help the Homeless
The world of people who are homeless may seem very foreign – But, it’s actually very near. We meet people every day who are just like us, only they don’t have a roof over their heads.
We can all find ourselves without a roof when we lose a job. Or, maybe a spouse dies. Possibly an accident which leaves physical disabilities is the cause. In short, all it takes is a personal tragedy.
There are many things we can do to help end homelessness. There are many, many things we can do to help those who are struggling with homelessness.
One easy way we can help is to take a little extra food along when we go out of our home to work or on errands. A few extra sandwiches will help. When a person asks for change, offer him or her a sandwich.
A couple of times each year, gather the clothes you are no longer going to wear and donate them to shelters and pantries providing services to help those who are homeless.
While you gather clothes for the homeless, look at your family’s toys, books, and games and select those that are no longer being used. Children living in shelters have few possessions and will enjoy them.
Can you spare an hour or two? Tutors can make all the difference. Volunteer to tutor children in shelters.
Celebrate your birthday or anniversary and ask the people you invite to bring items for the homeless.
Carry fast food certificates with you when you are going out. Hand them out to people who are homeless.
Hold a food drive and take the food to a shelter or a pantry in your area.
Donate your collectable recyclable cans and bottles to people who are homeless. Donate a bag of groceries to a soup kitchen, shelter, or food pantry.
Volunteer at a food pantry or shelter.
Volunteer your professional services. Lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, counselors, and dentists can all use your skills when you volunteer at a pantry or shelter.
Ask your company, church, school to host a fund-raising event for a pantry or homeless shelter. Items of dignity are really needed by the homeless.
Thank you for reading this article!
Please refer this article to your favorite social media network.
Thurman Greco
PS: The hunger book is really moving along. Things just never get finished as quickly as we all wish. Writing a book requires years and years of research and writing. In writing the hunger book, I have gone through thousands and thousands of sheets of paper and three computers. I have spent years and years getting this story moved from an event in my life to a book which will attract you or not in less than two minutes.
Whew!
SNAP
SNAP is important. SNAP will help you if you are having trouble buying groceries.
SNAP is important for your community, too, because when you are able to get food with SNAP, you will have cash available to help pay your rent or buy gas to get back and forth to work.
Have you, or has someone you know, applied for SNAP? SNAP was formerly known as food stamps.. SNAP is about all that’s left in the way of assistance for people because welfare is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking yet again.
If you are having trouble paying for your groceries, 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. 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.
Some people are reluctant to apply for SNAP because they don’t know if they are eligible. Or, maybe they applied in the past but were denied. Many people don’t know how to apply and are overwhelmed by the application. Some people have never heard of SNAP and think of it as food stamps.
One thing: If you work, you need to know how to meet the work requirements.
Some information is needed to successfully apply for SNAP. This information comes in several categories.
Proof of income is necessary. This comes in the form of pay stubs, social security income information.
An identification is needed. This might be a State ID, passport, birth certificate, etc.
Bills help. This will include medical, heating, water, auto, rent.
Your social security number and the numbers of everyone in your household is necessary.
Dependent Care Costs will help. These include day care costs, child support, attendant for disabled adult.
Contact your local Department of Social Services office to arrange for application assistance. If this doesn’t work for you, contact your Office on Aging or Catholic Charities.
SNAP is an important benefit which will help you if you are having trouble buying groceries.
SNAP is important for your community, too, because when you are able to get food with stamps, you will have cash available to help pay your rent or buy gas to get back and forth to work.
SNAP is important for your household because you’ll be able to get more food with your SNAP card and you won’t be hungry anymore.
This translates to better health.
Thank you for reading this blog post.
Please share this article with your preferred social media network.
Please forward this article to anyone and everyone you know who might be able to have a better life with SNAP.
Thurman Greco
This book is being published now and will be available soon!
This book will be going to the publisher before the end of the year.
Caring Hands
Kingston, New York is a rapidly gentrifying and trendy trendy little town in New York State. Almost every day I see new neighbors in this community. They’ve found just the perfect weekend apartment and are ecstatically, euphorically furnishing it with just the perfect finds. In short, they are in love with Kingston!
In their giddiness, they have may not have yet noticed the Caring Hands Food Pantry and Soup Kitchen. Or maybe they have. Maybe they see that one of the most important things about Kingston is that the residents care for one another. This attitude helps make Kingston what it is – a community we all want to be part of.
2017 is turning out to be a tough year for food pantries in general and Caring Hands Food Pantry in Kingston, New York in particular. But, Caring Hands isn’t just a food pantry. It’s a soup kitchen, and a warming center with a recovery and twelve-step program. As if that’s not enough, they’ve got a free legal clinic, too.
Volunteers at Caring Hands, under the direction of the Rev. Darlene L. Kelley at the Clinton Avenue Methodist Church, work hard as they put their beliefs into action daily. Almost 600 meals are served weekly in the soup kitchen. Over 3,000 households receive groceries monthly.
Children, the elderly, families, veterans, and the ill are all welcome at Caring Hands. The goal is to help people in need help themselves. The message of God’s transforming love is spread throughout the community from the Clinton Avenue Methodist Church as it ripples out in waves.
It is easy for you to be a part of this message. You don’t have to move to Kingston. You don’t have to attend the church there. You don’t even have to know anyone in the area. All you need to do is give a little … or a lot … of whatever you can share.
- Sending a check always helps. Caring Hands always needs money.
- Sending a gift certificate always helps, too. Did someone give you a gift certificate that that you’ll probably never use? Well, now is a good time to use it. Send it on over.
- Extra time is extremely valuable. If you live in the area, you can be a part of this miracle when you volunteer. Your gift of presence will be greatly appreciated.
- Hold a food drive. Gifts of food are always, always needed. If you don’t live in the area, hold a food drive anyway and donate the cans and boxes of food to a food pantry in your area.
- Call an elected representative and lobby for the poor and hungry in your area. Persuade this elected official to be generous with funds for those around us who do not have everything they need to live a healthy life.
- Your prayers and kind thoughts are always welcome. Those at Caring Hands as well as at other food pantries throughout our country are working hard to bring food and love to a broken community. They need your support.
Caring Hands has a mailing address to send your check and/or gift certificates: CARING HANDS
c/o THE CLINTON AVENUE UMC
P. O. Box 1099
Kingston, New York 12402.
Thank you for reading this blog post. Hopefully you’ll share it with your favorite social media outlet.
With this blog posted article comes an apology for not having posted often enough in the past months. This doesn’t mean that I don’t care or that I’m no longer interested in hunger. To the contrary. I’m deeply involved in bringing my next book to my publisher. And, it’s about hunger in America.
Thurman Greco
The Hunger Book is on the Editor’s Desk!
After what seems like eons, this hunger book is finally on the editor’s desk.
This book is long, complicated, and full of information focusing on a subject people know very little about – unless they live and/or work in it. Recently, on the advice of my editor, the book has been divided into three separate books.
Because of these changes, the hunger book will be easier to read and use.
With three volumes, we now have three titles:
“I Don’t Hang Out in Churches Anymore”
“The Unworthy Hungry”
“Hungry in America”
Of course, as a book progresses, things change and then they change again. So, whether it’ll have two sections or three, it’s true that the one volume was way too large.
I’m extremely excited about this project! Our goal for this project is to send the first volume to the publisher by mid-September.
Thank you for reading this blog. Please refer this article to your favorite social media network.
“A Healer’s Handbook” is now available! You can purchase it through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and my website: http://www.thurmangreco.com.
Thanks!
Thurman Greco
The Monks are Going, Going, Gone
They came in quietly, unannounced, a couple of years ago on the 10:05 Trailways bus from Boston. Eighteen monks in all. They were transferred out of a lovely monastery in Brookline, Massachusetts, these priests who traditionally never move at all.
They left quietly these last few weeks, unannounced. They’re moving to a brand new monastery north of Albany. Funny how these things happen. I get the feeling that God is grinning from ear to ear.
We met them because, when they showed up in Woodstock they were temporarily hungry. The story was slow to surface and I wrote about it earlier in this blog and on the Good Morning Woodstock Blog . They shopped at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry until they got their budget straightened out. Once we found them, Peggy made sure they didn’t lack for anything if the pantry had anything to do with it.
In a very short time, weeks, they were delivering food to the home bound on Tuesday mornings with the other pantry volunteers. They filled out an application to be a food pantry with the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley. And, finally, they were attending our mass distributions.
Within a few short months they had their own food pantry going and were serving food to the hungry seven days a week.
Without saying a word, these men of the cloth showed us all how to feed the hungry. They didn’t skimp. They made as many food runs to Albany as they needed. They offered whatever food they had to anyone who needed it.
Then, when I went out and helped open the Reservoir Food Pantry, they made sure we never lacked for yogurt. Every time the pantry opened we had a freezer filled for our hungry.
I mean, these priests showed us all how to feed the hungry. They didn’t offer a three-day-supply of food to someone with the understanding that it needed to last seven days. They didn’t spend a lot of time focusing on questions about where people lived. It didn’t matter whether a person was homeless or not.
When the hungry pulled away from the Holy Assumption Monastery Food Pantry, they had enough food to not only feed the body but the soul.
So now, the priests, who traditionally never leave a monastery and move to another monastery, are packing up their gorgeous beeswax candle factory, their Food Bank ID number, and moving off to a community which really needs their skills, their dedication, their belief system.
Frankly, I was devastated when I heard the news. I went out to visit and write the story. I couldn’t do it.
I sat, visited, and kept asking myself “How can this happen?” The answer is easy, folks. They are being asked to take their skills and expertise to Schoharie County where no one is going to question the ethics of feeding the hungry.
And, I take comfort in the fact that we have not been abandoned in Woodstock. We have been taught our lesson. So…now the monastery is being converted into a convent.
These gorgeous men of God are taking their smiles, their radiant halos, their worship, and their food pantry skills to Cobbleskill, New York and they will press on with their daily lives.
The good nuns will have a pantry in Bearsville for our hungry. I understand they’ve already got their own Food Bank ID number. God is making sure we don’t forget what we learned.
Thank you for reading this blog/book.
Please refer this article to your preferred social media network.
Thurman Greco
