The Homeless
The homeless have problems just like you and me: employment, health issues, disabilities, domestic violence. They just don’t have a roof over their heads.
Homeless people, families enter food pantries very quietly. They’ve lost their voices. The goal is to melt into the background, get food, and disappear.
There’s an exception to the voicelessness – when the person communicates with beings unknown to the rest of us. One shopper I know has been in another world since before I began working in the pantry in 2005. He communicates in a high, shrill, unknown tongue which I cannot describe. His shrill vowels are punctuated with hard, sharp whistles, clicks, squeaks.
We can all help homeless people in some way. Each of us has talents and skills which can be useful.
DONATE. Homeless people carry their kitchens in their pockets . So much food which we take for granted is just not helpful. Important in the homeless diet is peanut butter and crackers in individually wrapped packages, cereal in self-serve packaging. Fruits and vegetables which can be eaten raw, milk and/or fruit juice in individual containers. Donate these items throughout the year by regularly giving the food to a food pantry in your area which is homlesss friendly.
VOLUNTEER. Pantries everywhere need an extra set of hands to answer mail, drive a truck, serve food, clean up at closing time, send press releases, hold food drives, stock and straighten shelves, deliver food to the home bound.
CLEAN OUT YOUR CLOSETS. Donate clothing, bedding, books, and other gently used items to places where the homeless will have access to them.
SHARE. Do you or someone you know have a garden? Donate the excess to a homeless friendly pantry in your area. When your garden tomatoes get to be too plentiful, there are those in your area who need the food.
PUSH THE ENVELOPE. Contact elected officials about homeless issues in your area. Encourage them to make ending homelessness important in your community.
EDUCATE YOURSELF. Returning veterans have special needs. For one thing, they begin separation from the military homeless.
FIND A JOB. Encourage your church or community to hire a homeless person. Many homeless want to work, have skills, but have trouble finding regular employment.
DO YOU HAVE A SKILL TO SHARE? Contact a local shelter and offer to give classes.
For a time, one of our most trusted volunteer/shoppers was homeless. His partner, Nancy, died and her children didn’t want him in the house they had lived in together for many years. He fought her children for a year with a lawyer, made several trips to court, the whole enchilada.
He finally moved out and ended up homeless for a time. He eventually got housing through a homeless veterans program. I helped him move his clothes and things over to his new apartment in Saugerties.
Homelessness cannot be generalized. Each homeless person is a special personality and has a special situation which s/he deals with. So here’s my rule about homeless people:
IF YOU’VE SEEN ONE HOMELESS PERSON, YOU’VE SEEN ONE HOMELESS PERSON.
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BOOK UPDATE: The new hunger book is going to be out soon. The publisher assures me that we’re going to see the book within a month! Hurrah!
Thanks again
Thurman
Caring Hands
Kingston, New York is a rapidly gentrifying and trendy trendy little town in New York State. Almost every day I see new neighbors in this community. They’ve found just the perfect weekend apartment and are ecstatically, euphorically furnishing it with just the perfect finds. In short, they are in love with Kingston!
In their giddiness, they have may not have yet noticed the Caring Hands Food Pantry and Soup Kitchen. Or maybe they have. Maybe they see that one of the most important things about Kingston is that the residents care for one another. This attitude helps make Kingston what it is – a community we all want to be part of.
2017 is turning out to be a tough year for food pantries in general and Caring Hands Food Pantry in Kingston, New York in particular. But, Caring Hands isn’t just a food pantry. It’s a soup kitchen, and a warming center with a recovery and twelve-step program. As if that’s not enough, they’ve got a free legal clinic, too.
Volunteers at Caring Hands, under the direction of the Rev. Darlene L. Kelley at the Clinton Avenue Methodist Church, work hard as they put their beliefs into action daily. Almost 600 meals are served weekly in the soup kitchen. Over 3,000 households receive groceries monthly.
Children, the elderly, families, veterans, and the ill are all welcome at Caring Hands. The goal is to help people in need help themselves. The message of God’s transforming love is spread throughout the community from the Clinton Avenue Methodist Church as it ripples out in waves.
It is easy for you to be a part of this message. You don’t have to move to Kingston. You don’t have to attend the church there. You don’t even have to know anyone in the area. All you need to do is give a little … or a lot … of whatever you can share.
- Sending a check always helps. Caring Hands always needs money.
- Sending a gift certificate always helps, too. Did someone give you a gift certificate that that you’ll probably never use? Well, now is a good time to use it. Send it on over.
- Extra time is extremely valuable. If you live in the area, you can be a part of this miracle when you volunteer. Your gift of presence will be greatly appreciated.
- Hold a food drive. Gifts of food are always, always needed. If you don’t live in the area, hold a food drive anyway and donate the cans and boxes of food to a food pantry in your area.
- Call an elected representative and lobby for the poor and hungry in your area. Persuade this elected official to be generous with funds for those around us who do not have everything they need to live a healthy life.
- Your prayers and kind thoughts are always welcome. Those at Caring Hands as well as at other food pantries throughout our country are working hard to bring food and love to a broken community. They need your support.
Caring Hands has a mailing address to send your check and/or gift certificates: CARING HANDS
c/o THE CLINTON AVENUE UMC
P. O. Box 1099
Kingston, New York 12402.
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With this blog posted article comes an apology for not having posted often enough in the past months. This doesn’t mean that I don’t care or that I’m no longer interested in hunger. To the contrary. I’m deeply involved in bringing my next book to my publisher. And, it’s about hunger in America.
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
A Holiday Gone Wrong
“When we talk cooking and eating, we are talking love, since the entire history of how a family loves – when and how they learned to love – can be told in most kitchens.” – Marion Roach Smith
The first year a person uses a food pantry for primary shopping, Christmas is a holiday gone wrong. After several years, Christmas becomes whatever the household can make of it. The adjustment is, for some, difficult and for others more difficult.
The difficulty lies, mostly, in the ability to get food items considered “traditional” by a household when no money is available to purchase them in a grocery store.
Once, I heard some pantry shoppers talking in the line about holidays past. Their conversation centered around people celebrating by eating too much delicious food and visiting with relatives, friends, neighbors while swapping stories, catching up on the news.
For more and more people living in poverty, this just doesn’t happen. Both households and individuals find themselves unable to finance the expense of the holiday event.
Not only can they not afford the food, more and more people no longer have the table to sit at, the chairs to sit on, and the stove to cook the food. Recipes, pots and pans, china, silverware, crystal are long since gone. Eating without a kitchen is the way of the modern household living on a minimum wage.
With luck, today’s struggling class household will have the gas to get the car to a soup kitchen. Otherwise, it’s going to be a regular day with a meal prepared in a crock pot, or on a hot plate. The economic situation for some is that just to take the day off and still be able to buy groceries the next day is more a goal than anything else.
Realities faced by the hungry pantry shopper weigh on my shoulders every day of the year. This weight keeps me squirreling away food so the pantry shelves can be stocked for celebrations with canned soup, canned gravy, potatoes, stuffing mix, canned green beans, cranberry sauce, chicken broth and all the fruits and vegetables that can be gotten at food drives and the food bank. Storeroom space and a few freezers at the food pantry are essential.
Pantry volunteers have a difficult time just keeping up with the ever increasing client census. Those with a stable shopper base, a large storeroom and connections can begin scrounging in July to set aside food. It’s extremely challenging to get several hundred or a thousand of an item in the summer and store the food until December.
After several years and several holidays, the food gatherer in the household becomes, if time allows, more skilled at scrounging for food in both the pantry and the grocery store. The difficulty lies, mostly, in the ability to get food items considered “traditional” by a household when no money is available to purchase the items in a supermarket.
While distributing food, I mentally predict who’s going to be successful at scrounging and gathering by the sound of the automobile as it’s driven into the parking lot of the pantry. A successful holiday dinner depends on a working automobile, time available between jobs, and the energy to sustain the search.
Transportation challenges, disabilities, and serious illness in the family can defeat all efforts.
Thank you for reading this article.
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Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
Book Update: “A Healer’s Handbook” has been published and is available on Nook and Kindle! It will be available in the paper version in early January. If you order it now, it will be mailed directly to you upon publication.
More information about this book can be found on Thurmangreco.com.
Publication of “The Unworthy Hungry” is now scheduled for January 2018.
Thank you for your support and your patience. Now that “Healer’s Handbook” has been published, there will be more frequent and regularly published articles on all blogs.
Thanks Again
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.
Please refer this article to your preferred social media network.
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
Prayer for the Hungry – Number 1
O GOD
Allow me to serve the hungry with an understanding heart.
Give me the courage to distribute food without strings being attached.
May I never need to keep score.
Give me the physical strength to keep the shelves of the pantry stocked with as much food as we can pack on them.
Please help me to understand the many needs of the shoppers.
Never let me get so tired that I forget that we are all one group – Yours, O God.
Libraries – and the Hungry
“Hunger and income inequality is probably the single biggest issue facing this country.” – Susan Zimet
LIBRARIES ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO A TOWN, TO A COUNTRY.
Libraries are equal opportunity events offering information, learning, culture for any and all who enter. They also offer an opportunity to get in out of the rain, snow, heat. As far as I can tell, it’s easier to get into a library than it is to get into a lot of pantries.
For one thing, I don’t think you have to prove where you live to get into a library. There may be libraries out there that require proof of address, and other identification but I don’t know about them. (If you know of a library requiring identification or proof of residency to enter, please let me know. I don’t want to be wrong about that.)
Libraries are important to a community. The most important thing I carry in my wallet is my Woodstock Free Library Card. I never have to show it to anyone to use the library. I just walk in the door and all this wonder, this knowledge, this information is available to me…for nothing. But, for some reason, I feel that it’s important to carry it.
At the Woodstock Free Library, a person can even take his/her dog if it’s on a leash.
As soon as I walk in the door, I see the computers. And, of course, they are available to everyone. These computers are sooo important to those of us who are in a situation where there are only funds for rent and gas. For those in the “broke” category, a computer is out of the question.
For those in the homeless category, library computers are even more important because they are a homeless person’s ticket to communication with the outside world…especially offices such as Department of Social Services, Office of the Aging. For a homeless person seeking shelter, they are invaluable. For a housed person seeking a larger or less expensive apartment, they are necessary. A job seeker cannot get hired these days without access to a computer.
We can all get an email address quickly and cheaply at Gmail.
I’ve been connecting with area libraries recently to book a series of speeches I’ll be giving this year. Libraries in communities all around Woodstock are in such wonderful condition. They are right in town in beautiful buildings. Ample parking is available. The libraries are open for extended hours.
They have bathrooms – a luxury that we all need.
I mention these things in a blog about hunger and food pantries because, in a perfect world, I would have a library and a pantry in the same building. It only makes sense really. After all, all the people I see in the pantry are also all the people I see in the library.
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Thurman Greco
Tara Sanders Teaches Trauma Sensitive Yoga
Many people coming to a pantry or soup kitchen have given up on their stories. They’ve lost their voices. With trauma-sensitive yoga classes, they have an opportunity to change the stories themselves. They can add new chapters.
Tara Sanders, a Woodstock based yoga instructor, is the program director in the nonprofit Exhale to Inhale.
Exhale to Inhale yoga works to empower survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault to heal through yoga. Exhale to Inhale yoga guides women through postures, breathing, and meditation. Taught in trauma-sensitive style, practitioners are enabled to ground themselves in
their bodies
their strength
their stillness.
As this happens, they connect to themselves and work toward empowerment and worthiness. This practice can be transformational for survivors of sexual abuse and domestic violence when they shed the cloak of victimhood.
This is extremely important for people working and shopping in pantries because many survivors of domestic and sexual violence are found in these communities. The influence of this trauma is great. Add to this trauma another layer of
hunger,
unemployment,
underemployment,
homelessness,
serious illnesses to include mental illness
and you have a person who is finally voiceless.
Finally, the classes are free. Many attending these classes have absolutely no money at all.
Healers and body workers have long known that when the body is traumatized, the event is stored in the muscles.
Tara teaches the classes without music. She does not touch the students to correct a posture. Lights remain on throughout the class. These sessions offer survivors an opportunity to reclaim their lives through the healing and grounding of yoga.
Tara uses the yoga classes to help her students feel safe, strong, and in the present moment. As she teaches, she is a conduit for healing, and healthful programs in our community.
Exhale to Inhale is a New York-based nonprofit offering free weekly yoga classes to survivors of domestic and sexual assault. As an introduction to our area, Tara will teach free public yoga classes on Saturdays from 11 am to noon at the Center for Creative Education, 15 Railroad Ave, in Kingston.
After June 20, Exhale to Inhale yoga will be offered free of charge to women in area shelters.
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Thurman Greco
