Writing this Blog Post was Risky
Writing this blog post was risky. In the early days I worried about peoples’ opinions. I wrote my first blog entries with skeptics in mind. On some level it was important to me for pantry deniers to understand that there are, indeed, hungry people around us
One day I saw clearly that some people aren’t going to like me or my work. Nor are they going to believe what I write, no matter what I say. Once I realized that truth, I knew I’d been wasting energy on other people’s opinions.
I’m no longer interested in convincing anyone about what it means to go to bed hungry.
I’m okay with people saying anything about me because I know the chapters I write are true. The words I write make a difference in peoples’ lives.
This blog is about people creating better lives for themselves while not having enough to eat and lacking proper healthcare, housing.
This blog is about healing and creating new opportunities in one’s life. This blog is about people changing their lives – against all odds.
While I tell this story, I know some people won’t believe a word. It’s okay. I have my story and they have their story.
Food and sex and money are three words and issues more concerned with a person’s core beliefs, emotions, and spiritual attitudes than anything else.
These three words offer rules for everyone. We each have core beliefs around them with opinions about what is okay and what isn’t okay. We have attitudes about food, sex, and money based on what we were taught by family members and peers when we were children. We live our lives based on those experiences. Reduced to their lowest common denominator, these words – food, sex, and money – are the same. They touch core beliefs in ways going straight to the heart and soul.
The food pantry was all about food and money. The sex part was limited, but still there. Sex happened in the pantry hallway line when a shopper suffering with mental illness, a handsome young man who lived in another world, masturbated in the food line.
Our attitudes, opinions, feelings about feeding hungry people are or are not based on facts, statistics, or reality. Nor will facts, statistics, information, change attitudes.
Finally, we all have beliefs about who it’s okay to feed and who it’s not okay to feed. My beliefs are based on life experiences, facts, statistics. Their beliefs are based on the same. I may have taken classes, gone to therapy. And, they may have also.
Their reality about what is okay and my reality about what is okay differ.
In the food pantry hallway, we all looked at the same people and saw different things. This situation is proof positive we each create our own reality about hungry people. Nothing changes either reality. We each see hungry people through lenses shaped by separate life experiences. Hungry people don’t live in two realities.
As the lines got longer, we looked at people in the line. I saw hungry people and they didn’t. I interacted with people weekly who dumpster-dived to feed themselves as well as their children, parents, housemates. Occasionally I read articles about the ethics of dumpster diving. I didn’t think we could explore the ethics of allowing people go hungry because they couldn’t make enough money at their jobs to buy the food they needed to live and work.
People coming to a food pantry can take a three-day-supply of food home each week. The other four days, they’re on their own. That means they can buy more food if they have a SNAP card and if they can get to a store selling food. If they don’t have the money or a SNAP card, they get creative or go hungry. This involves panhandleing, borrowing money or food from friends, relatives, neighbors. They can steal, dumpster-dive, drop in at someone’s house at mealtime, and skip meals.
“Thurman is out of control over at the food pantry” described the local vicar because of the number of people shopping at the pantry and the amount of food they took home.
Thank you for reading this blog post. Please refer it to your favorite social media network.
Thurman Greco
It’s Vacation Time!
Your vacation time is here! It’s your last chance to get a break this summer. That means it’s time to go to the beach – to the mountains – to the city – ANYWHERE!
What do you have to do to get away? Well, first, find a place to go. Second, pack your bags.
FINALLY, drop off loads of food to your neighborhood food pantry before you take off on your vacation..
August is the most challenging month of the year for food pantries because it’s the month with the least amount of food available at the food bank. Food pantries get most of their food from donations and very few people donate in August. And, sadly, this carries right through to September. September brings school openings with parents getting ready for school lunches. Food pantries are often empty.
It’s my opinion that people don’t donate food to food pantries in August because they’re focused on their own activities: vacation, getting kids ready for school.
But, your neighborhood food pantry doesn’t have to be empty. There are things you can do. You can organize a food drive in your neighborhood and take the food to the food pantry. You can keep the food flowing right through to October.
Thank you in advance for thinking of things you can do for your food pantry during the leanest months of the year.
Please refer this article to your preferred social media network.
Thurman Greco
A Holiday Thank You Dear Reader
Dear Reader
In the spirit of the holiday, I want to thank each of you for supporting my work and following the story of hungry people in America. This has been a busy year for me and, without your support, none of this year would have been possible. However you found my blog and the story of hungry people, whatever keeps you returning, I thank you.
This blog has existed since February, 2014. This year has been one of few posts.
Why? Well, “I Don’t Hang Out in Churches Anymore” finally published and I spend time now marketing and selling the book instead of writing and posting articles. Thank you for standing beside the hunger message this year. I pledge more and better articles in the coming year.
I discovered the Mower’s Meadow Flea Market in Woodstock, New York, where I had a booth on weekends for the summer and autumn. This is the perfect place for a book. People buy the book and return to the market to share their enthusiasm for the story. Thank you to everyone who has purchased a copy. I plan to return to this delightful place when it opens in May.
Each new reader and follower learns something from the story about hunger in America and each new reader inspires and motivates me to find new ways to share this hidden story. Thank you.
A second volume is on the way. I’m hopeful that “The Ketchup Sandwich Chronicles” will join “I Don’t Hang Out in Churches Anymore” on the book table at the flea market in 2019. There’s certainly room for another book about hunger in America. Thank you.
Thank you for reading the blog and the books. When you read them, we both learn more about hunger, a subject important to us all because there just shouldn’t be any hungry people in our country.
Thank you
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, New York
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Holiday Christmas Feast December 25th at Congregation Emanuel
Congregation Emanuel of the Hudson Valley at 243 Albany Avenue, Kingston, NY 12401 is having its second annual Christmas Feast on December 25th from noon until 3:00 pm.
You are invited!
Christmas Feast Holiday dinners are always a good time to get together with others and get to know new people. Holiday dinners are a good time to sit at a table and swap news stories and enjoy food with one another. The members and volunteers at Congregational Emanuel hope you’ll join us at the Feast on the 25th.
Thank you for reading this article. Please share this blog post with your friends and refer it to your preferred social network. Please don’t forget to tell your friends about this feast and share this post with your email neighbors.
Thank you –
Thurman Greco
May the coming new year bring you the best of all you need and desire.
Winter Solstice Meditation – December 21, 2018
Find a quiet place where you can feel protected when you begin this Winter Solstice Meditation.
Calm yourself. Center yourself. Begin this Winter Solstice Meditation with a long, slow, breathing pattern as you breathe out negativity, problems, stress and breathe in peace, positive thoughts and beauty.
As you breathe in and breathe out for a few moments, you will become calmer and more grounded.
The Winter Solstice is a turning point of the year, a time of re-birth and a new beginning for all life on Planet Earth. This Winter Solstice turning point brings new energy.
May all life on Planet Earth use our new energy for peace.
May all life on Planet Earth use our new energy to know we are connected and to reclaim our awareness.
May all life on Planet Earth use our new energy to work together to deepen the understanding between every being and the natural world surrounding us.
May all life on Planet Earth use our new energy to foster mutual respect and work together focused on harmony.
May all life on Planet Earth be blessed with abundance and enough food.
May all life on Planet Earth be blessed with appropriate housing and be free from fear.
Sit quietly with this meditation and its energy for a few moments.
When you are ready to end this meditation, move your muscles gently as you return to your surroundings.
You may regain the energy of the re-birth of the Winter Solstice whenever you want.
Thank you for participating in this meditation.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, New York
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Please share this meditation with everyone you know.
The Pantry
Lord, thank You for the food pantry where I work.
And, Lord, thank You for the shoppers and volunteers I’ve come to know through our work here.
I ask You Lord, have patience as we learn to pray for one another and care for one another. Our pantry work is a glorification of Your name as You work miracles in our midst. Thank You for the difference You make in all our lives.
Lord, You teach us much in this pantry. For starters, You’ve taught us that the hungry shall be fed – no matter what – no matter why – no matter who.
We experience what it means to be new as we learn what it’s like to work with, accept, and feel welcome – both the worthy and the unworthy.
We’re learning that we’re all Your people. We are all accepted. We are all holy. We are all worthy. The pantry is faith in action.
Amen
Thank you for reading this article!
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Thank you.
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
Another Year Has Begun Again
Another year has begun again. (And, far too quickly, too.)
As I begin another year fighting hunger, God, my time with the pantry is in your hands.
Give me patience again, O God. And let me remember that it’s my job to offer the best, most delicious, nutritious food I can find for the hungry.
It is not my job to end hunger. Let me remember, God, that you have your own timetable.
As a year begins give me wisdom and grace to serve the hungry with respect and honor…which they deserve. Give me energy and strength to trust that those who have enough will continue to give so we will have the money to continue to feed the hungry as long as we need to.
Donations to the food bank have worked beautifully up to now, God. Give me the strength to trust the system to work in the new year too. Let me trust in the miracles of this system.
And, God, thank you for giving me comfort when I grow discouraged. Forgive me for not being stronger.
Thank you for giving the money, volunteers, and resources the pantry needs to continue to feed the ever increasing number of people whose paychecks are not going up but their gasoline, rent, and food costs are rising.
Thank you for the miracles you give us daily.
I say these things in your name and with gratitude from the bottom of my heart, O God.
Amen
Thank you for reading this blog post!
Please refer this prayer to your favorite social media network.
This prayer is one of a series of entries I’m writing to go in a memoir about hunger. It will be entitled “I Don’t Hang Out In Churches Anymore – the story of hunger as told through prayer”.
Thurman Greco
Voices not Heard in the Hallway
We’re having a white Christmas in Woodstock. The tree is up on the village green!
Voices can be heard in the hallway, just like all year long.
Except:
One thing no one ever discusses in the hallway of the pantry is the past. The shoppers speak about things that happened in the past week or so but never much beyond. Whatever took place before the food pantry came into their lives just isn’t on the agenda.
As holidays approach, no one ever mentions the Thanksgivings, Christmases, Hanukkahs, Passovers, Easters they had before their lives spun out of control. No one ever mentions that there wasn’t enough money to get Passover food which isn’t available in our pantry.
No one ever asks a child what Santa is going to bring.
Thank you for reading this blog.
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One thing: the reflexology book, “A Healers Handbook” by me, Thurman Greco, is finished! It will soon be available for purchase and can be bought now in the ebook version at Kindle and Nook. For you, the reader of this blog, this means that I’ll be posting much more often now.
Thurman Greco
