Hunger and Healing for Ourselves and our Planet During this Spring Solstice
Throughout the month, and especially on March 19th, whenever you find a time and place that fits your schedule…sit quietly for a few moments and visualize a world where positive renewal and growth exists for all beings.
Invite adequate housing, nutritious food, and reliable quality healthcare to become a reality for all.
Plant spiritual seeds to nurture goals and dreams of everyone. Reflect on all the wonderful opportunities available in our world for growth and hope throughout our planet.
Spend a moment including goals for housing and food and healthcare for those who have insufficient resources
Honor the mystical and magical change of seasons creating space for the spiritual growth for everyone.
Check in with yourself now. Give your spirit the support it needs and seeks to bring housing, nutrition, and good health to everyone on our planet.
Quiet your mind as you bathe in this new energy created by spring. Invite universal balance, and abundance into our world.
May all beings on this planet live and thrive in peace and harmony.
Thank you for reading this Meditation.
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Thanks again
Thurman Greco.
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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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
Preventing Senior Hunger
For years, I’ve been blogging and writing books about hunger in America in general and senior hunger specifically.
Senior hunger is not going away anytime soon.
If you read my blog posts, then you are probably interested in senior hunger. Recently I came across a guide which you will want to read.
To learn more about senior hunger, access it here: https://onlinegrad.baylor.edu/resources/seniors-food-insecurity-hunger/
Thanks for reading this article and thanks for your interest and action.
I hope you’ll not only read this article but will also share it wherever you feel it might be appropriate.
This new resource may be of interest to readers everywhere. The goal is to help open a dialogue in our country about senior hunger.
Thank you for your time and thank you for your concern about seniors and hunger.
Thurman Greco
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Peanut Butter in the New Year!
It’s hard, sometimes, for a person to figure out what to donate to a pantry. The supermarket has so many different items on the shelves. What is the best thing to give?
For me, the best food to give to a food pantry is peanut butter. Peanut butter is universally appreciated in a food pantry.
It needs no refrigeration.
It has a long shelf life.
It has no waste.
It is nutritious.
It does not require sophisticated preparation.
No special tools are needed to serve it.
It can be eaten alone or with other foods.
Peanut butter is appropriate with many categories of people: children, adults, seniors, homeless, toothless.
A jar of peanut butter is reasonably priced but it is still a bit expensive for many people.
Peanut is perfect for my needs!
Will you join me? Will you pledge to donate peanut butter to a food pantry.
I’m committing to a jar a week. But, your commitment doesn’t have to be that much. A jar a month will make a significant donation to a food pantry.
Or, even just a jar. Whatever you can give will be enough.
If peanut butter does not resonate with you and your situation, kind thoughts, support, and prayers are always appreciated. Pantries cannot succeed without the backing of the communities where they exist. Your help is necessary to fight hunger.
Thank you for your generosity!
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Thurman Greco
Hunger, our Planet, and the Winter Solstice
On this Winter Solstice please take a moment that fits into your day to focus on our world and how we fit into it.
Visualize a world where all beings know they are connected and live in the comfort of this connection.
Focus on a planet where everyone works together with mutual respect, honor, and harmony.
In your spirit, see a world in which no one goes to bed hungry.
Understand in your heart that hunger and homelessness are not categories. They are situations which can happen to anyone.
Create a vision of peace and food for all.
Thank you for reading this article. Please refer it to your preferred social media network.
Thurman Greco
Grief in the Food Pantry – Hunger is not a Disease
“Lemon Balm Betty is out in the parking lot again.”
When I think of grief, Lemon Balm Betty surfaces from my memory banks. She ran around the parking lot outside the food pantry as fast as her feet would carry her as she yelled at the top of her lungs “Thurman Greco is a f..king a..hole!”
“I don’t think she’s ever going to smile again.”
Her anger morphed into a smile one day when she brought in an armload of herbs. I put them out in the pantry for shoppers. Shen she saw this, a smile lit up her whole being.
Finally!
Grief was unavoidable in the pantry. Grief and fear are best friends. Fearful people are uncomfortable and feel hurt in their hearts, clear down to their first chakras.
Grief happens when we realize how vulnerable we are, how insecure we are.
In our past, we sought security. Some of us found it.
But, then, things spun out of control and our lives began again – in the pantry.
Pantry shoppers and volunteers live with grief. No one talks about it but people working and shopping in a pantry lost a lot: love, jobs, family (not to mention the house and everything in it), friends, self-respect, self-love. Grief is an ongoing series of losses. In the pantry, we all just duck our heads and press on.
Hungry people live with the specter of what if.
What if I hadn’t lost my job?
What if I hadn’t come down with cancer?
What if I hadn’t lost my car?
It’s all loss. It’s all change, whether a lost job, the death of a loved one, a lost home.
Loss triggers grief. And, it’s all incredibly lonely.
I occasionally saw people crying in the pantry. And, truth be told, I cried in the pantry a few times as well. Sometimes I cried silently. Once I cried loud, earth shaking tears. I was intensely afraid the pantry would shut down. I knew there was no other place to feed the people.
I don’t remember the exact circumstances which made me so emotional that day. The reason I cried escapes me now because why I cried wasn’t important. More important, the pantry is a safe place for us all or no one would have shed a tear. This safety allowed me to let my guard down for just a moment to cry the tears I needed to cry.
This I do remember: I cried tears for us all in the building that day as numbness wore off. This was grief at work.
Tears are necessary to heal wounds. There were drugs to numb and mask the pain but there were no pills to heal. So…I cried because there were no grief pills at the Village Apothecary.
Grief is a journey confronting, enduring, and resolving loss. A grieving person moves forward never leaving grief behind. The pain, emotional suffering, were a necessary part of the process. We grieved over things lost: people, jobs, hopes, dreams, belief in self, fun.
The trip to the pantry left us all with unfinished business. It was impossible to lose so much and have it go as a clean break. No loss was perfect. While we traveled to the pantry, our lives were full of ups and downs, good and bad moments. We carried both happy and sad memories inside the pantry room. Grief was the new normal. But grief, with all its tears, paved the way for something positive which we experienced when sadness and loss diminished.
Grief attracted spine and joint problems, respiratory problems, irritable bowel syndrome, bronchitis, asthma, pulmonary issues.
Grief needed to be experienced with depth and honesty. Denying grief got no one anywhere. I was honest with myself about the grief I felt for the pantry. If I hadn’t been, I would have lost the pantry to those who didn’t approve of me and the hungry people I fed.
Grief and anger were never far apart. Anger was always there, just below the surface until it yelled.
In the pantry, each of us were trying to figure out who we were at the moment and who we would be in the future. In the middle of the grief, we explored a new reality we found while we each defined who we were in our new surroundings and community.
We tried on new careers and identities in our new lives. As this happened, we saw the past, the present, and the future all at once. This experience allowed us to see newly discovered talents, strengths, gifts.
In this experience, we created new voices. We found courage to overcome fears.
I recognized this new voice whenever I heard “I won’t be coming again. I got a new job and I’m moving on.” When I heard this new voice, I also heard anxiety, struggle, disappointments, and courage. The person was discovering what was going to work and what wouldn’t.
RITA
Rita lived in the Saugerties/Palenville area before Hurricane Irene. That storm cost her everything. One day her life was normal and the next day she had nothing. The most anyone could say about Rita was that she was homeless.
A friend we both knew, Lorene, found Rita a worn out pickup somebody couldn’t sell or even give away.
Until I looked closely at it, I didn’t know what color it was. I knew what color the tires were, though: slick and bald.
So, anyway, Rita got the pickup and the key that went with it. She put the key in the ignition, turned it. The motor came to life. It had enough gas to get her to the gas station. Hurrah!
She began her life over by doing anything that anybody needed to have done for $10.00 an hour and lunch. She cleaned out flooded houses and sheds. She hauled trash to the dump. She used her computer skills when she found anybody who needed administrative work done. Her clothes came from Family of Woodstock. She found a room in someone’s house and was finally not sleeping in the pickup.
Whenever she worked over in Woodstock on Wednesday, she took time out to shop at the pantry.
And, I will say this about Rita.
She never once grumbled. She always had a smile on her face. She always acted as if the pantry food was the best she had ever eaten. And never, not even once, did she complain about the ancient jalopy pickup rig she drove around.
As far as I could tell, she never lost hope. Without hope, I don’t think she would ever have made it to the other side – wherever that was.
For my part, I never once asked her how she got the pickup repaired and I never even looked near the inspection sticker. Frankly, I was afraid to ask. I was afraid she would tell me.
Rita was no different from any of the rest of us shopping and volunteering in the pantry. She had to figure out how much of her past she could rebuild. And she had to figure out how much of the past she was simply going to close the door on as she moved into the future after Hurricane Irene. Rita obviously gave up much beyond her material possessions.
She gave up everything she felt stood in the way of her successful future. Quitting was something she couldn’t afford.
She gave up rear vision. Looking back into her past simply didn’t happen to Rita. She gave up bitterness and seeing wrongs. This means she gave a person a second chance, and even a third when they needed it.
She gave up waiting and putting off something because the stars and planets weren’t properly aligned. She gave up criticism. This included herself as well as others.
Rita was the right person in the right place in the right job to unfold her path in front of her. She carried on each day as if she truly believed it was better than yesterday. She walked as if blessings were all around her and all she had to do was open her eyes a little wider.
Each day, every day, she did whatever was necessary to build her life. Rita embraced the future and renounced her past.
She never quit.
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Thurman Greco
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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Reality in the Food Pantry
“How did we all fit?” What is the reality in the food pantry?
New shoppers always had funny looks on their faces the first time they shopped at the pantry. They expected to fill out forms. They expected to prove through documents they existed, had an address, and deserved the food.
They brought social security cards, utility bills, pay stubs, birth certificates. They came prepared to surrender their innermost private lives in exchange for recycled food originally rejected by a farmer, food manufacturer, grocer, wholesaler. It was all bound for a landfill.
The pantry didn’t have much in the way of screening procedures. For intake, shoppers signed their names and wrote the number of seniors, adults, and children in the household.
Nobody showed documents, especially not their social security cards. Our forms didn’t ask for addresses because the first inspector to visit the pantry after I became the coordinator assured me they weren’t necessary.
On pantry day, hungry people lined up and went through the pantry as fast as we could process them. In the two-to-three minutes they had in the room, they took their share of everything on the shelves, regardless of what it was. I never saw a person turn up a nose at canned peas, fresh spaghetti squash, or beets.
Pantry food is a shock to hungry people on their first visit. They see unrecognizable items. They sometimes sought a realitycheck. They don’t know what they’re called, how to prepare and eat them, how to store them. They have no idea what the nutritional content is.
Often, ethnic shoppers have no money and are separated from anything and everything they know or experienced. Undocumented citizens have no money, know few or no people, probably can’t speak the language, and they are forced by circumstances to shop in a pantry offering nothing familiar to eat. This must be a lonely feeling. They questioned the reality of their circumstance.
Worse, finding ethnic food, kosher food, Asian food, is simply not going to happen in a pantry. This is not necessarily by design. Food pantries only have food available to them that the food bank has to share. And, of course, the food bank shares what is donated.
At the end of the shift on pantry day, in the quiet of the closed pantry room, I counted totals. I carefully added the children, adults, seniors, and households in the pantry line that day. Often I was surprised at the end of a shift that such large numbers of hungry people shopped in the pantry in one afternoon.
The State of New York sent down clear guidelines, rules, conditions about what, how, and when pantries distributed food donated to hungry people.
Produce came from area farms. The Hepworth Farm, the Patroon Farm (owned by the Food Bank of Northeastern New York), and Migliorelli Farm as well as from other area farms throughout the Hudson River Valley, throughout the nation, and from foreign countries even. Farms grew and gave beautiful, fresh, clean, colorful, aromatic produce.
Produce made its way from a farm to a wholesaler, food manufacturer, and finally, a bakery or grocery chain in New York State. Food manufacturers, wholesalers, farmers, supermarkets salvaged food and donated it to the food bank. And that’s where the food banks came in. Food pantries received rejected food anywhere along the food chain. Volunteers put it on the shelves, and distributed it to hungry people lacking money to buy food.
Most fresh produce came directly to the food bank and what received was often organic but not labeled. It costs money to label produce as organic. The stickers alone cost money. Paying someone to apply them is another cost. The reason against labeling the produce is practical. Labeled or not, this beautiful food kept shoppers from feeling they were getting rations. That’s how the State of New York wanted it.
Not all Hudson Valley farms used organic methods. Migliorelli Farms, for example, didn’t label produce as organic because this family-owned farm used European agricultural standards to reduce health risks and exposure to pesticides by incorporating crop rotation, fertilization, irrigation, and planting systems.
Never ours, the food was in our safekeeping to give to hungry people, homeless people, the mentally ill, physically ill, poor, to anyone in need. Leastways, that was what I thought we were supposed to do with it.
New York State tax dollars worked in the pantry. When volunteers worked at the pantry, we did so willingly and for free.
Sometimes I thought I was the only one in town to see it this way. Many felt I fed the unworthy hungry, that I embraced the wrong people. None of the food boxes came to the pantry stamped Worthy Hungry Only. I never understood what unworthy hungry meant, who the unworthy were, where they came from. I didn’t understand unworthy hungry the same way I didn’t understand rocket science. I just didn’t get it. Because I didn’t get it, no one could sway my beliefs.
Instead, I understood hunger, giving, receiving, sharing, and abundance. When people signed their names and accepted food, miracles rippled out beyond the building, beyond walls and boundaries – to a divine experience.
While shoppers got food, they sought the resources to live meaningful lives and to trust there was something to believe in, cling to. They sought the focus to rebuild lives.
At the pantry day’s end, I was thankful people got groceries.
I searched and searched and got beyond hunger and abundance. My search was about the meaning of life. In my youth, (in my thirties), I asked two questions: What is the meaning of life? Whatever happened to the Anasazi?
In the pantry (in my seventies), I still searched for the meaning of life. My questions were different: How did I end up in a food pantry at my age? Who are the unworthy hungry. My questions were wrong. What I should have asked was “why”, now “how” or “who”.
All my life I felt when I got to be a woman of a certain age I would sit in the rocking chair I inherited from my grandmother and learn to knit or crochet. Maybe I would occasionally venture beyond home in my yellow Volkswagen convertible with a black top to paint a picture or two in a class nearby. I fantasize the top would be down at every outing to free my cotton top curls.
Instead, I worked in a small town food pantry in the midst of the biggest economic downturn for decades.
I managed a food pantry in a community where some weren’t interested in recognizing poverty and hunger existing under their very noses.
It came down to reality. I never found discovered the unworthy hungry because I never saw anyone in the pantry who didn’t need food. Those preoccupied with feeding with the unworthy hungry saw freeloaders who didn’t need the food, or didn’t belong in the line.
I saw grandmothers and mothers with children standing in the line without uttering a sound. Not in my wildest dreams did I figure out how they got the children to be so quiet and stand so still. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, and close friends stood in the line for as much as an hour on Wednesday or Thursday afternoon with children, mostly preschoolers.
Caregivers stood in the hallway weekly in cold, wet, dry, rain, snow, broiling heat inching their way down the long hall until their turn came in the pantry room. No one, either child or adult, complained about the freezing cold hallway in the winter where the only warmth came from the body heat of fellow shoppers. The nearest I ever got to a complaint was volunteers and shoppers wearing two hats in the winter. No one, neither adult nor child, complained about the oppressive summer hallway heat. The children never made a peep.
Many lived on fixed incomes unprepared for the financial costs and emotional roller coaster ride involved in raising someone else’s children. Ready or not, they cared for children when the biological parents couldn’t. For some, the situation was overwhelming. For others, it was just another day.
THREE SHOPPERS
I saw a cancer patient with finances reduced to a large box filled with bills and no money in the bank. He shopped weekly until his death.
I saw the woman whose brother had Alzheimer’s. She was his caregiver and he couldn’t be left alone. Sometimes she arrived at the pantry so disheveled it was difficult for her to stand in the line and shop. One afternoon she crashed her car into the bridge outside the pantry entrance.
I saw the widow with more month than money who refused to go to her children for help. She visited the pantry regularly. One shopping trip included the first anniversary of her husband’s death. She kept her pantry trips a secret from her children because she was embarrassed to let them know. This was a small community, so they eventually figured things out.
THE MOTHER AND GRANDMOTHER
She brings her young granddaughter to the pantry weekly. Sue is maybe four. She is shy. Dark brown ringlets frame her little cherubic face. Her expressions and posture tell me she’s still unaware of her situation. Her mother works two plus jobs. There’s not enough food to eat in this household. Her little dresses are threadbare.
This lovely child takes pleasure in the smallest gifts. Today, her treat is a can of juice a volunteer found in the storeroom that’s not dented. Her grandmother teaches her to stand in line quietly, smile, and say “thank you.”
When I see them, I see the universal mother and grandmother next door. I see a mother and grandmother working hard so that adorable little child has access to a good school, health care, safe streets.
They are our neighbors.
They are our family.
They are us.
I’m reminded we do not live in a we/they world.
Poverty hits children especially hard, with long-term consequences for behavior, learning, and mental health. They suffer the effects of going to bed hungry. Ketchup sandwiches and bowls of dry cereal don’t offer the nutritional strength a child needs to grow up into a healthy adult.
However this shakes out, the hungry are us.
Thank you for reading this post. Please refer it to your preferred social media network.
Thurman Greco
Exploring the Spirituality of Hunger in America – New Beginnings Part 1
Part 1
I began this memoir before I even knew it. On the first day I worked in the basement food pantry, I sat with Mary, a member of St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church and the head of the alter society. We greeted a couple dozen hungry people. Mostly single homeless men, there were a few of Woodstock’s famous colorful characters included in the mix that day.
Throughout my career in the pantry, the most colorful of the colorful was Grandpa Woodstock who liked to bring his bride, Lady Estar into the pantry to shop. The two of them went around the room choosing from peanut butter, cereal, tuna fish, and soup. While this happened, he entertained us gushing enthusiastically.
“My, how beautiful you look today!” I fell for his spiel every pantry day. Those words melted my heart. The most professional of the street actors, he knew how to make us each feel special when he flashed his peace sign and posed for photographs. Grandpa knew how to flash that peace sign, whip out his postcards to sell, and sound off his horn “toot toot”. I sometimes thought he spent a few afternoons posing in front of a mirror to figure out how to get the best response from tourists.
Grandpa Woodstock and Lady Estar were most photogenic with their long, flowing silver hair. Their lovely matching beards only emphasized floral print silk skirts and kimonos. Their toenails were painted matching colors and their Teva sandals matched.
None of Woodstock’s rich and famous got so many requests for autographs and photographs. They simply couldn’t compete with his show off tricks.
After all, Grandpa entertained us all with street theater at its finest. So what if he didn’t mean a word of it? We all enjoyed being sucked into the show!
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Thurman Greco
