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
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
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
Thank You From Hunger is Not a Disease
Thank you in advance for standing with the hungry, believing in the dignity and humanity of those in the pantry, and for joining in the solution.
2019 is still new and I’m beginning the year with a new story: “The Ketchup Sandwich Chronicles”.
Throughout the coming year, chapters from this new book will appear as the book develops and becomes its own entity. Thank you in advance for reading them.
It’s time for the chapters to each find a place in the story. So, when you read them, you make this chronicle a reality.
Thank you for making this work possible.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, New York
Please share this post and its follow on chronicle chapters with your favorite social media network.
The first chapter, “I Need a Gun” will be posted in the next few days. I sincerely hope you’ll like it. – TG
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.
Tom Pacheco Performs Peace Concert December 15th
Tom Pacheco, a local and extraordinary songwriter and singer/guitarist will perform his annual December Peace Concert along with Brian Hollander at 8:00 pm on Saturday, December 15th at the Rosendale Café, 434 Main Street, Rosendale.
Tom Pacheco is a much loved performer who writes poetically beautiful songs. He tells stories of life in a penetrating style which sends a message about fighting for the truth. He and Brian Hollander have played together many times at concerts in the area.
Tom Pacheco is also a personal hero of mine. His support of the food pantry as we served hungry people went beyond words. On two separate occasions, Tom Pacheco played concerts with all proceeds going to feed hungry people.
The Rosendale Café doesn’t take reservations but serves fine vegetarian food. For more information, see rosendalecafe.com or call 845-658-9048.
Tom has his own chapter in this book because of the work he did to bring food to the pantry to feed the hungry.
Thank you for reading this article. Please refer it to your favorite social media network.
Please tell all your friends, relatives, neighbors about this concert.
Thank you
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, New York
Thank You, Supporters, For All You Gave
The Mowers Meadow Flea Market is closed for the year and I want to thank you, every one, for all you gave and all you will continue to give for those less fortunate. I use the phrase “all those less” because I know you are givers and givers give and give. You make the world go around. Without you and your generous spirit, our planet would be a much different place.
With every blouse, book, and toy you gave, with every hour you spent finding the things to give, with every story you shared and with every social media post you “liked” you brought us all one step closer to living in a better world.
With every donation you stuffed in the donation jar, with every book you bought and every shirt, coat, handbag, pair of shoes you took away, you brought us to an anonymous donation I made – twice.
Working together, made a difference in someone’s life. We came one step closer to ending hunger for those in need.
For that, I am truly, deeply, profoundly grateful.
I look forward to seeing you in the spring!
Thank you
Again
A Food Pantry Thanksgiving Day Blessing of Opportunity
I offer blessings for the volunteers in the food pantry and for everyone I see shopping each week.
The food available in the pantry reminds me that we all live in the abundance of this time and place.
I am thankful for the clothes on my back, for my health.
And, I’m thankful for the opportunity to celebrate this historic day with people of all languages and faiths.
I’m honored to live in this great country whose landscape is vast and whose population come from the world over.
This Thanksgiving Day is a time to welcome the coming new year with thoughts and prayers of hope and new beginnings for the coming year.
May the energy of this special day gather new energy for peace.
Finally, I’m grateful to be here, to be connected to this pantry. I appreciate the support I’ve received from the people I’ve come to know here.
I look forward to the blessings which I feel will be coming my way in the future.
I’m hopeful about the opportunities I see coming my way in the near future as 2019 becomes a reality.
Thank you for reading this article. Please refer it to your preferred social media network.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock
10 Things You Can Do to Help the Homeless in Your Area
“Homeless is not a category of people. It’s just a situation that happens. It can happen to anyone.” – Salvador Altimarano-Segura
This article actually has eleven suggestions. There are many things we can all do for the homeless if we will open our hearts and minds to the many opportunities. Hopefully this list will inspire you!
ENCOURAGE affordable housing. Is someone in your area trying to build affordable housing? Support this effort. Fewer people would be homeless if more affordable housing were available.
DO YOU KNOW someone with a tight budget? Encourage him/her to visit a pantry regularly.
BARTER. As fewer and fewer people have money, barter is a good way to go.
SUPPORT BUSINESSES that treat their employees fairly. This means giving your business to companies that don’t short shift their workers, refuse to report their earnings to the IRS to avoid paying deductions, and/or withhold wages.
WORK TO SEE that schools in your area offer free universal school breakfasts and lunches for all.
BACKPACK PROGRAMS assure that children have food to eat over the weekend. Does your neighborhood school have one? If not, set one up.
DOES YOUR CHURCH, SYNAGOGUE, OR TEMPLE have a food pantry? Set one up.
GIVE GIFT CARDS FOR FOOD, GASOLINE (if they drive) or PHONE MINUTES. These cards are perfect gifts for someone on a tight budget. These cards are also perfect to be used for donations to a pantry or shelter, or soup kitchen.
OPEN A FOOD PANTRY in a college or trade school in your area. People don’t realize that homelessness is an issue with students.
GIVE A LITTLE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR by regularly donating food, money or gas cards to a homeless friendly pantry in your area.
TEACH! Do you have a skill to share? Contact a local shelter and offer to give classes.
Thanks for reading this article! Please refer it to your favorite social media network.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, New YOrk
