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August and the Beach on the Tannery Brook in Woodstock

March 4, 2024 at 4:28 pm

THIS BLOG IS CELEBRATING ITS 10TH YEAR OF PUBLICATION!

August is a wonderful time to be in Woodstock. The sun shines brighter. The breezes are unbelievable. Music is everywhere. And, finally, there is that August moon.

Woodstock is mystical and magical and a little bit too good to be true all year round but August is special.

People put on their swimsuits, grab some snacks, and head down Tannery Brook Road to the stream. We don’t need many more directions than that. If it’s your first visit, you’ll know you’re there when you get there..

As you go down Tannery Brook, you’ll cross over the Brook at Hillside Terrace.

Keep going. This isn’t the bridge you’re looking for.

Your next landmark is Streamside Terrace – on your left. It’s a fully armed street: Homeowners have put up “No Parking Signs” they got at Houst. They’ve posted them on their street by the road. Keep going past this street.

Next is the second bridge to cross Tannery Brook Road. You’re almost there! Cross over the bridge. If you turn left after crossing the bridge, you’ll be on Millstream. Going to the right will put you on Ohayo Mountain Road.

Just across the bridge, Tannery Brook dead ends at this intersection. This is the place! Town signs are all along the road: “NO PARKING”. As far as I can tell, nobody, absolutely nobody, pays any attention to them. Everyone is stricken with temporary blindness or something.

It’s crowded here. The swimsuits are all the latest styles. They get smaller every summer.

People jump around in the water, then sit on the little sandy beach. Children play. Teenagers play. Adults play. Parents play.

There is an absence of watches, timepieces, calendars and interest in the things we’re supposed to do.

There is maybe a boom box or two. Maybe even a guitar.

Everyone loves hanging around the stream and the sand with one another – old and new friends.

But, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, not everyone wears a swimsuit. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, some of the people are in street clothes minus their shoes.

They don’t have swimsuits. But they do have a little time to play in the water before the food pantry opens.

After playing in the stream a few minutes before the pantry opens, they get out of the water, put their shoes back on, and head for the food pantry line.

When they begin to put on their shoes and head for the food pantry line, they remind us of the reality of August:

September is coming soon.

Labor Day comes the first Monday. The Magical August Moon is gone and we are all wearing our winter boots – forgetting the summer’s magic we found in August.

Thank you for reading this article. If you liked it, please share it with your favorite social media network and send it to your family and friends.

Let’s Live with Thurman Greco is a program aired weekly on Woodstock’s own educational TV Channel 23. This show is an informative, upbeat hour with no rehearsals. Some segments support the blog information and highlight Reiki Therapy, Hand and Foot Reflexology and other wellness subjects.

Guests are various people whose lives have brought them to Woodstock for a day, a week, an hour, a decade or more. I can truthfully boast that guests report they enjoy the experience.

Let’s Live has been running for over 15 years with an occasional intermission, now and then.

Enjoy interesting and fun programs while getting a peek into Woodstockers being themselves. Search “Let’s Live with Thurman Greco” on YouTube and check out the ever growing list of videos.

Please let me know what you think: thurmangreco@gmail.com

Buy this book from thurmangreco@gmail.com while the website is being repaired. Once it is repaired, you can get it at www.thurmangreco.com

“Healer’s Handbook” is in its third edition. So far, this book has gone out to three dozen different countries. The best way to order this book is to contact me at thurmangreco@gmail.com. To celebrate our 10th anniversary, this book is on sale for $10!

The books are all listed on www.thurmangreco.com but the website is undergoing repairs and upgrades.

“But for Gabriel” is available as both ebook and paperback at thurmangreco@gmail.com. This book is also on sale: $10!

Contact me at thurmangreco@gmail.com with questions and comments.

Thanks again!

Thurman

Good Neighbor Food Pantry and Woodstock Library Close

March 28, 2020 at 7:34 pm

“Woodstock is completely packed with Coronavirus refugees from Brooklyn. We’re doing more business here in the post office than we have every done. This post office is busier than any Christmas rush has ever been.”

What a day!

I got a call from someone earlier today. “The food pantry is closed, Thurman. How can this happen?” As I went by the Woodstock Library, I saw a sign: “Closed”

The Coronavirus affects us all. We cannot avoid the reality. People jokingly call our community Brooklyn North.

As long as you have a car and money and an apartment and a cell phone and a computer, all you have to worry about is the spread of germs. But, that’s not how it is with everyone. Without a car and money and an apartment and a computer and a call phone, your life tells a different story.

Without those luxuries, your lifeline requires a food pantry and a library.

The library is essential because it’s your ticket to information about food, housing, and anything else you need to find. A library will help you find everything you need to survive. And, while it’s giving you information, a library roof keeps you dry. The walls of the library keep you warm and comfortable while you seek all that you need.

And, of course, the library has one other luxury people don’t talk about much: a bathroom. If you are without food and a roof and a computer and a cell phone, a bathroom is essential.

So, while the Woodstock Reformed Church has closed its doors, most of the food pantries in New York state are figuring out how to get food to people. They are receiving support from the Food Bank.

In fact, the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley reports that volunteers are responding to every emergency request received. This includes food deliveries to seniors, quarantined and high-risk individuals, school back pack programs.

If you can get to a phone, there are a couple of phone numbers you can call. Try 845-399-0376 or 845-633-2120.

Sources tell me that many food pantries and soup kitchens are not closed. I truly hope you can find one.

So, what can we do? Well, for starters, try to contact people you know but seldom see and find out how they are doing. Do they need anything? Is there anything you can do?

Contact food pantries and soup kitchens in your area and see if they need anything. My bet is that they do. My bet is they need food.

Times are serious. Your help is needed!

If you run out of ideas, contact me at thurmangreco@gmail and I’ll send you, free of charge, my three action guides with practical tips for fighting hunger and homelessness.

Thank you for reading this article. Please refer it to your preferred social media network.

Thanks again!

Thurman Greco

10 Things You Can Do to Help the Homeless in Your Area

November 19, 2018 at 1:09 am

“Homeless is not a category of people. It’s just a situation that happens. It can happen to anyone.” – Salvador Altimarano-Segura

This article actually has eleven suggestions. There are many things we can all do for the homeless if we will open our hearts and minds to the many opportunities. Hopefully this list will inspire you!

ENCOURAGE affordable housing. Is someone in your area trying to build affordable housing? Support this effort. Fewer people would be homeless if more affordable housing were available.

DO YOU KNOW someone with a tight budget? Encourage him/her to visit a pantry regularly.

BARTER. As fewer and fewer people have money, barter is a good way to go.

SUPPORT BUSINESSES that treat their employees fairly. This means giving your business to companies that don’t short shift their workers, refuse to report their earnings to the IRS to avoid paying deductions, and/or withhold wages.

WORK TO SEE that schools in your area offer free universal school breakfasts and lunches for all.

BACKPACK PROGRAMS assure that children have food to eat over the weekend. Does your neighborhood school have one? If not, set one up.

DOES YOUR CHURCH, SYNAGOGUE, OR TEMPLE have a food pantry? Set one up.

GIVE GIFT CARDS FOR FOOD, GASOLINE (if they drive) or PHONE MINUTES. These cards are perfect gifts for someone on a tight budget. These cards are also perfect to be used for donations to a pantry or shelter, or soup kitchen.

OPEN A FOOD PANTRY in a college or trade school in your area. People don’t realize that homelessness is an issue with students.

GIVE A LITTLE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR by regularly donating food, money or gas cards to a homeless friendly pantry in your area.

TEACH! Do you have a skill to share? Contact a local shelter and offer to give classes.

Thanks for reading this article! Please refer it to your favorite social media network.

Thurman Greco
Woodstock, New YOrk

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A HEALER’S HANDBOOK BY THURMAN GRECO

In “A Healer’s Handbook”, Thurman shares experiences and observations based on years of practice. She focuses on the spirituality of the different body systems, both physical and energetic.

This book offers extensive information on condition and illnesses encountered by healing practitioners. The spiritual connection is explained in every health issue because they reveal a person’s deeper layers, essential for healing.

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I Don’t Hang Out In Churches Anymore

Thurman Greco’s “I Don’t Hang Out in Churches Anymore” will touch your heart as she relates both the joys and hardships of contemporary American life as seen through the eyes of a small town food pantry. This is the story of how one woman in America found God.

In truthful, upbeat, intimate language, these prayers relate events and stories that may sound familiar to you. They are the stories of your neighbors. These experiences reveal joy, love, laughter, pain, surprise.

Do you believe in miracles? There are stories in these prayers that can be interpreted no other way.

The prayers in this book will empower you to pray for yourself as well as others. When this happens, you will discover just how import prayer for others is, as did author Thurman Greco. You will learn more about yourself and your connection to your community. In this process, you will learn more about God.

Click here to purchase Miracles

Miracles, like beauty, exist entirely in the eyes of beholders. Naturally occurring events, they happen all around us like the wind, rain, and sun outside the pantry room. We only need to see them for what they are. They happen when we open our eyes, ears, and hearts to the possibility that they exist at all.

Pantry miracles never change much. Except, they do. They change how we see the pantry and how we belong in it. These humble events change our inner lives. We become responsible for ways to overcome the hunger and homelessness we face.

Pantry miracles remind us it’s never too late to know ourselves and understand the talents we were born to use in our lives.

Click here to purchase Ketchup Sandwich Chronicles

Ketchup Sandwich Chronicles tells the story of everyone brought together by the pantry: Hungry people kept moving in a line around the room. At times there wasn’t enough space between the people to even turn around. They got to know each other in sound bites shared between grabbing a can of green beans or a package of strawberries. A sentence here. A sentence there. The children were eerily silent, clutching their mother’s pants leg.

The struggle of each person who came in the door could be felt.

When you read this book, you’ll become intimately involved with rules surrounding the feeding of the hungry, the economy of hunger, the biases of people about pantries, and the taboos of hunger. You’ll get up close and personal with the politics of hunger.

Thanks for sharing this journey with me. Peace & food for all.

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Wherever you go, if you’re healing yourself or caring for someone else, you are on a journey. This book is a ticket to your healing adventures.
“Wellness for All” adds a spiritual layer of personal care to every situation in your healing life.
This book enlightens and empowers you with information and insight you can use. The focus is on your health, healing, and wellness. This book gives you a boost to care for yourself and those important to you. “Wellness for All” explores:

• Helpful Lifestyle Changes
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I live in Woodstock, New York. My life – all 70+ years of it – has been a journey down a path toward a food pantry serving thousands of hungry people monthly. I feel this because, in this pantry, I’ve been using every life skill

Learned in a part of Texas that looked like it came right out of the movie set of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” where I spent much of my childhood

Learned in being a mother as I raised two daughters

Learned in getting acquainted with hunger in Mexico and Venezuela

Learned in becoming fluent in a second language, Spanish

Learned in becoming a healer

Learned in becoming a writer

Learned in running a successful business.

But, I didn’t learn all the skills necessary to run a pantry. In the pantry I got up close and personal with the politics of hunger.

As the coordinator of the Good Neighbor Food Pantry during the time that the economy tanked in 2008 and beyond, I, along with many volunteers, served groceries to people as the weekly shopper census rose from 25 people weekly to 500 people weekly. This chronicle explores those events. In order to do justice to this saga, I learned facts, figures, issues, motivations, outlooks.

Melissa Petro recently said it all: “Thurman, you have the cred.”

Thank you for joining me on this journey.
Peace and food for all.

Thurman Greco

“The most important and generous thing any of us has to give as a writer is our own voice, how we experience our lives.” – Hal Zina Bennett

Donate to feed the hungry

Whenever possible/practical I reviewed the conversations with people who could help reconstruct events, chronology, and dialogue. Based on these reviews, some of the incidents as well as certain events were compressed, consolidated or reordered to accommodate memories of everyone consulted. All dialogue is as accurate as possible to actual conversations that took place, to the best of my memory. The names of some of the characters (mainly the shoppers) were changed. The names of some of the characters were omitted.

This memoir was edited and rearranged over many drafts in an effort to be as accurate as possible. If you read a sentence, page, paragraph or even an entire blog post that you feel is outrageous or untrue, it is nonetheless very real. Everything written in this book/blog actually happened. It’s my story.

Thanks for sharing this journey with me.

Peace and food for all
Thurman Greco

This book/blog is dedicated not only to the shoppers at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry in Woodstock, NY, but to the people who shop at food pantries all over the country. You are good, decent people working hard to survive against all odds. To me, you are the face of God.

This book is also dedicated to all the volunteers: those from the congregations, as well as the community. Without you, I would never have had a story to tell. Thank you. I haven’t had so much fun in 40 years.

“We all need to create the story that will make sense of our lives,
to make sense of the daily wasks.” – Nick Flynn

Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco

“Some of the most important relationships we chart, from which our spirits profit the most, are those to which we have the strength to say no.”
-Sylvia Brown

Many people helped write this memoir. The real creators of this book are the wonderful people who shopped at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry week after week after week. These individuals and families offered us all an opportunity to heal and grow. Without you, none of us would have even had a reason to be in the building.

The majority of the events described in this memoir took place in the basement of the Woodstock Reformed Church where the pantry room, the storeroom, and the hallway are located. Thank you, members of the Woodstock Reformed Church, for your generous donation of this space for feeding the hungry.

I’m grateful to everyone at the Food Bank of Northeastern New York and the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley for the support and training they offered as I traveled down this incredible path.

The Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program offered needed guidelines to ensure that people did, indeed, receive the food they needed to live and function in this culture. Thank you for your mandate of a minimum 3-day supply of food for each and every person. Thank you for insisting that pantries offer client choice. Thank you for having policies insisting on fresh produce and frozen foods. Thank you for your commitment to nutritious foods.

I extend my most heartfelt gratitude to everyone in the Woodstock Interfaith Council and the members of the Building Committee of the Woodstock Reformed Church for giving me the strength to continue feeding the hungry at the pantry until I knew in my soul that the pantry was going to be around “for good.”

And, I offer a sincere “thank you” to the residents of Woodstock and elsewhere who showed your support of the mission by sending checks, giving fundraisers, offering verbal support, and donating money to the Sunflower Natural Foods Market every month to honor the pantry. Whenever times were tough, your generosity and support reminded me that feeding the hungry is, indeed, the right thing to do.

Thank you Richard Spool, Rich Allen, and Guy Oddo for putting Miriam’s Well together. Thank you to Prasida Kay for making all those trips in Miriam’s Well. Those were wonderful, beautiful, delicious days that I’ll never forget.
All of our pantry volunteers, over the years, offered me much spiritual growth. A special thanks goes out to each and every one of you. All of you gave 110%.

Thanks goes to Barry, who stuck by me with very few complaints.

He went to the dump weekly in addition to the trips made in Vanessa by myself and the other volunteers.
He went to Hurley Ridge Market for produce every Tuesday morning and brought six to ten boxes of beautiful produce, bread, and pastries to the pantry.

He helped stock shelves when the Anderson crew was unavailable. He drove me to Latham weekly for many months on Fridays and helped load the 1000 or so pounds of canned/boxed goods which I ordered on the Wednesday before.
He occasionally participated in the monthly food caravan, helping to bring the food over from Kingston.
He made sure Vanessa always had gas, regular oil changes, inspections, needed repairs, etc. He never once complained about these maintenance costs.

He was a strong fan of my efforts. However, his support was definitely not 100%. At one point he told me that my job was impossible. “Not even a Marine Drill Sergeant would take on the job of coordinator at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry.” He said once with feeling.

He finally put an offer on the table: The day I walked off the job, he would finance a 90-day trip, wherever I wanted to go.

“Take the Prius and go. Go see the kids. Go to Florida. Go anywhere you want. Anywhere. Ditch the phone so they can’t call you.”

I chose this book instead. What a wonderful gift!

He was also strongly against a public meeting with the pantry denigrators. He felt I shouldn’t participate in the planned spectacle. Once he extracted a promise from me that I wouldn’t meet with them, he prepared a special treat for me of homemade cream puffs. (My favorite – totally made from scratch.) They were delicious!

I took some of them to a board meeting and offered them to all the board members. They devoured every one.

Life does have its little humorous moments. Right?