Hunger Is Not a Disease

Meet 7 Wednesday Shoppers in the Good Neighbor Food Pantry

The local bicycle shop owner visited regularly. If I were going to give a title of “mayor” to a member of the pantry shopping community, I would give it to him. Everyone loved visiting with him, chatting with him for a moment. His energy was calm, grounding. He knew everyone’s name, shared his energy with everyone he came in contact with. He embodied a real respect for the earth and its resources as he rebuilt used or discarded bicycles into beautiful, functional, desirable pieces of equipment to be used again, in another incarnation. One Christmas, for example, Jo Schwartz bought a bicycle for Robert Allen from him.
Some afternoons we saw as many as four or five of the more famous local poets lined up in the hallway together. I always felt honored to be in their presence. And, I was honored that they came to our pantry for food. I was, however, saddened by the fact that we live in a society with absolutely no consideration for writers, poets, artists, sculptors, musicians.
One angry man showed up at our pantry the day after he was fired. After that day, he shopped at our pantry regularly. And, of course, it was a situation where we all knew he wasn’t ever going to work again. It took him way over a year to calm down from the injustice of it all. He was quiet about his anger but anybody with a brain and an eye could see the emotions. He simply could not get his feelings off his face.
One famous artist came regularly for many months. He home was being foreclosed on. He maintained a positive mental attitude about the whole experience. But sorrow was unavoidable. After the foreclosure process was complete, he ended up in a shelter in Kingston. He still shopped at our pantry whenever he could get over to Woodstock for about a year afterward. Here was a man with an international following who could not make payments on a very modest dwelling in Woodstock.
Thank you for reading this blog/book. Tomorrow’s post focuses on the actual Wednesday afternoon opening ceremony of the pantry.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco