Food Pantry Blog – Hunger, Homelessness
Do you remember the recent story about Mary-Faith Cerasoli? Probably not. In today’s world, it’s easy to forget a story with so much information coming at us all day long, every day. Well, for my money her story is one of the most important local articles to appear in the New York Times this year.
Ms. Cerasoli, an adjunct professor of Romance Languages at Mercy College in Westchester is homeless. Corey Kilgannon recently covered her story as she (Ms. Cerasoli) painted a sign – “Homeless Prof” – on a white ski vest, and went to Albany, alone, to lobby our politicians there with a protest against her working conditions.
Her story brought up many questions for me:
Did she make it to Albany?
If so, with whom did she speak?
How was her situation received?
How successful was this trip overall?
What kind of push back did she receive at work as a result of the publicity she received?
Is it possible, now, that someone in power will understand that many people are underpaid?
Is it possible, now, that someone will realize educational institutions need pantries?
Is it possible, now, that other employed homeless people will be motivated to go to Albany and lobby?
Is it possible, now, that she will find affordable housing as a result of her story being made public?
The very short detail in the New York Times pieceabout the unnamed psychology professor who gathers leftovers from departmental luncheons speaks volumes in its brevity. It highlights how little we, as a nation, care about those who teach our children and fellow adults.
Whatever the outcome, the important thing which makes this story so extraordinary, is that Mary-Faith Cerasoli protested. Finally, a hungry person is refusing to be voiceless.
With any luck, Mary-Faith Cerasoli has started a trend.
With any luck, more employed poor and hungry people will travel to Albany.
With any luck, some politician in power somewhere will realize how disgraceful it is that we treat our professors this way…and do something about getting more income for professors and teachers.
Peace and food for all.
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Thurman Greco
The Homeless…..A Few People Working to Change the Game
PETE CAMARATA – As a high school student, he helped collect day-old bread for the homeless
PAWEL ALTHAMER – Instituted a coat drive to benefit residents of the Bowery Mission, a shelter for the homeless in New York City.
ANDREA ELLIOTT – won the George Polk Award in Journalism in 2013 for local reporting for “Invisible Child”, a five-part series appearing in the New York Times which focused on a girl named Dasani, one of 22,000 homeless children in New York City.
ELI SASLOW – won the George Polk Award in 2013 for national reporting for articles about food stamp recipients that the Polk Award judges called “an indelible portrait of American Poverty.”
NORMA RAMOS – “There’s a strong connection between homelessness and prostitution, the endpoint of sex trafficking. All too often children in foster care already feel homeless and graduate into homelessness.”
In the face of New York’s mounting homeless crisis, MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO announced on Friday, February 21, 2014, that his administration is removing hundreds of children from two city-owned homeless shelters that inspectors have repeatedly cited for deplorable conditions over the last decade, official reported.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – If Only….
The inspiration for this chapter came from a quote written by Janet Poppendieck, author of a book about hunger in America entitled “Sweet Charity”.
There’s all this food out there. Most people who know about hunger agree there’s enough food for everyone. If we would stop the push back on this concept, and just feed the people, our lives (everyone’s lives in the whole country) would be very different. Imagine a world without hungry children and grandmothers.
Just for a moment, think of all the ways we can benefit our many people and institutions by using this extra food.
For starters, think of pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, as our tax dollars at work. Much of the emergency food effort is manned by volunteers diverting food headed for the landfill. For my money, this recycling effort works primarily to keep people from starving in the streets.
Now, consider the United States Department of Agriculture. As our country accumulates agricultural surpluses, instead of being embarrassed by the food, life would be better if the USDA could proudly distribute the surplus to those in need. After all, surplus food is an uptown problem. It’s almost impossible to produce exactly what we need. Farms don’t work that way. Weather doesn’t always cooperate. Droughts don’t come by request. Floods have minds of their own. It’s better to produce too much than too little.
Businesses can and should ship excess food to pantries, soup kitchens, shelters. This is a responsible way to dispose of unwanted excess food products. When grocers donate to food banks, they avoid excessive dump fees and accrue tax savings. They reduce dumpster diving.
Universities, hospitals, caterers, restaurants, bakers, schools, can use Food Banks to absorb leftovers. In metropolitan areas, the surplus food can go directly to soup kitchens, pantries. This is both a civic responsibility and community outreach.
Community colleges and Universities can recognize there are impoverished students, staff and faculty in their ranks. Pantries and soup kitchens on campus will make it easier for students and staff to stay.
Elementary, Middle, and High Schools would do well to recognize the poverty among the students and staff. Food Pantries have a definite place in schools. Backpack programs should be in every school to ensure that students have enough food to eat over the weekends and holidays.
Churches, Synagogues, and other religious institutions have opportunities to express concern for their fellow man as they include the poor at the table. Congregations refer to their feeding efforts as outreach. These necessary hunger prevention programs feed people who otherwise would not have enough to eat and they give the congregations a local outlet for charity and outreach programs.
Courts and penal institutions can use this concept by having people work service hours at pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, to avoid or lessen incarceration.
Working at a pantry, soup kitchen or shelter provides service opportunities for people of all ages. The more people donate time, the less isolated these facilities become.
Diverting food from landfills offers communities an opportunity to improve our environment. Besides, why throw away good food?
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – My First Visit to the Good Neighbor Food Pantry: Hindsight is Always 20/20.
“So you begin…I began. I picked up one person – Maybe if I didn’t pick up that one person I wouldn’t have picked up 42,000. Just one, one, one.” – Mother Teresa
This morning I met Stuart Kline in Bread Alone. He was at the high coffee bar on a stool right at the entrance. Stuart and I see each other in passing most mornings at Bread Alone.
We exchange the usual pleasantries. What’s happening in Woodstock? Who died this week. It seems that everyone in our age group is dropping dead at the rate of one old codger a week. Some kind of fad, we joke.
Stuart is wearing a beautiful plaid shirt: chartreuse, red, blue, white. Plaid cotton.
Plaid. Floral. He has the distinction of wearing the most beautiful men’s shirts in Woodstock. His sister who lives in Nashville picks them up at a consignment store and sends them to him.
Suddenly – a shock went through me. A memory. Yes! A memory I never knew I had. It must have been one of the colors of his shirt. Who knows? Like a flash of some kind, I remembered the first time I walked into the Good Neighbor Food Pantry.
A new volunteer, I had been assigned a Thursday morning shift with Marie Duane.
I drove over to the Woodstock Reformed Church, parked my car in the parking lot behind the building and cautiously walked in. I had never been to the pantry before. There was no sign on the door so I wasn’t even sure I was in the right place.
I entered the empty hallway and found the first door on the right open. I turned into the room and there it was: a small room, actually, about 12′ by 16′. There were two windows on one wall and a third window on another.
Each wall supported a set of metal shelving units.
Each unit stood six feet high and three feet deep with four shelves.
Most of the shelves were empty. One shelf had cereal. There was a little handwritten note in front of the boxes: person: 1 cereal. family: 1 cereal.
One had a few cans of tuna. Another handwritten note in front of the tuna said: person: 1 can. family: 1 can.
One shelf had a dozen or so cans of soup with a handwritten note: person: 1 can. family: 2 cans.
One shelf held jars of peanut butter. Person: 1 jar. Family: 1 jar.
There may have been other items on other shelves but I don’t remember them.
A small table stood in the center of the room. A metal folding chair was placed in front of each window.
We sat in the chairs, Marie and I, and chatted with one another as people trickled in. We discussed the usual: weather, gardening, knitting, decorating the alter at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church.
“Hi. How are you today? Will you sign your name here?” Marie asked each person who came to shop.
The shopper signed his/her name and noted the number of adults, seniors, and children in the household. As a point of trivia, most of the shoppers were single, homeless men.
After signing in, the person walked around the room selecting from the cereal, peanut butter, and soup. The selected food was placed on the table and bagged for the person to take home, wherever or whatever that was.
This was my first visit.
At the time, I knew nothing about HPNAP guidelines: offering a three-day supply of food, who could or could not visit the pantry, what food safety rules we followed. I was unaware of these things.
I certainly had no premonition that I would ever even return to this room after this morning’s volunteer effort.
This was clearly a case of “fools rushing in”. Knowing what I know now, I should have just run out the door and never looked back. Certainly Marie could have handled the crowd that day without me. In the whole morning, no more than a couple dozen people visited the pantry.
But, I wasn’t blessed with any psychic knowledge…certainly not the feeling of danger I felt when I first saw Ed Jabbs of the building committee.
So…Marie and I sat and visited with one another for two hours while people trickled in for the few items on the shelves. At 11:00 a.m., we rose out of our chairs, walked out of the room while turning out the lights, closed and locked the door, and went home.
I got in my car, totally unaware of experiences waiting for me in the pantry, completely unprepared for what lay ahead.
Never in my wildest thoughts did I envision the hall filled with hungry people, the tiny room packed with fresh produce and jammed with shoppers.
Never did I foresee monthly food deliveries in excess of 10,000 pounds.
Never did I for one moment imagine the building committee of the Woodstock Reformed Church being irate 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.
Never did I think I would be grappling with the term “unworthy hungry”, introduced to me by local religious residents.
Peace and food for all.
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Thurman Greco
Hunger blog – There is Absolutely No Need for Anyone in this Great Nation to go Hungry.
My conviction is that hungry people shall be fed. I’m totally convinced that there is absolutely no need for anyone in this great nation of ours to go hungry.
I was 20 years old when I saw my first hungry person. Traveling by car to Mexico city on a trip to meet my future in-laws, I saw a hungry woman holding a small baby in one arm and asking for money. She was sitting on a street corner in Monterey, looking at people with her hand out – palm up.
Seeing this woman didn’t constitute a life changing event. This moment merely confirmed a belief I was surely born with.
So, this brings up a question beside the point: If I’m born with a conviction, is it genetic?
Or, is it a carryover from a past life experience?
This conviction has been part of my life experience – a dormant piece of belief trivia until my life in the Good Neighbor Food Pantry moved it to a center stage action affirming creed.
So, then I have other questions regarding this conviction.
Why was I born with this conviction?
Why did life events not trigger this belief until I’m over 70 years old?
Are there other convictions out there that haven’t been triggered until life events activate them?
What happens to those other convictions if I die before they’re “turned on”?
Peace and food for all.
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Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – The New Mobile Reservoir Food Pantry Appeared to be Magical
Today’s outdoor pantry opening at the Reservoir Food Pantry in Boiceville was our first day for this mobile pantry and it was a totally new experience for Boiceville area residents. We absolutely loved it! People walked up. They came in cars.
Four tables of food were arranged in a parking lot on the hill behind Robert’s Auction House.
There was a large variety of canned/boxed goods in several categories: fruits & veggies, protein, grains.
We had a good selection of bread from Bread Alone.
We had totally wonderful fruits and vegetables from Migliorelli Farms and the Food Bank of Northeastern New York. Most of the produce was organic: apples, tomatoes, onions, salad greens, limes.
We sat out in the sun for two hours while local residents came to shop…many were visiting a pantry for the first time and were, of course, timid and cautious. The shoppers quickly got over that and became very friendly with one another and with us. Who wouldn’t? Here was an array of food many had not seen in quite some time.
The message here is in two parts:
This mobile food pantry is our tax dollars at work: All the workers are volunteers. All the food costs nothing.
The food distributed in this pantry was all diverted from a landfill. Virtually every food item was donated from a farm, grocery, food manufacturer, etc.
The conclusion here: THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE FOR ANY PERSON IN OUR COUNTRY TO GO HUNGRY.
Thank you for reading this post. Tomorrow I’ll return to articles about food pantries and hunger featuring the Good Neighbor Food Pantry of Woodstock. However, in the future, I will digress occasionally to share news of our new pantry in Boiceville: the Reservoir Food Pantry.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman