This Thanksgiving – A Blessing of Opportunity
This Thanksgiving I’m grateful for the clothes on my back.
This Thanksgiving I’m grateful for my health.
This Thanksgiving I’m grateful for food which is available to me and to those who rely on the resources and generosity of others for the basic necessities we need to continue our lives.
The available food reminds me that we all live in the abundance of this time and place.
Thanksgiving, for me, is an opportunity to welcome the coming new year: hope and new beginnings arrive in January. The energy of this Thanksgiving gives me strength to gather energy for that prayer.
I’m holding on to the healing, wellness, and regeneration we will all experience as the Pandemic finally moves on.
I’m waiting for the blessings which will come my way as the Pandemic exits and leaves space for the new reality we will experience in its place.
And, I have to admit, I’m excited to experience our new reality. In my heart of hearts, I feel we’re never going back. We’re going forward, instead, to something new and different and better.
I’m grateful to be here, to be connected to all the efforts of the many people working for those who need food and housing. I appreciate the support I continue to receive from people I’ve come to know in this world.
This Thanksgiving I’m grateful for you. I feel a kinship in your readership so that, in my search to spread the word about hunger in our country, I know that I am never alone.
Thank You.
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Thurman Greco
No Fixed Address
“No Fixed Address” is dedicated to those in our country with no roof over their heads. See your neighbors, your friends, your relatives, in new ways as they describe their daily lives in their own words.
The people in this new book reveal themselves to be both brave and fearless as they go about their activities: work, laundry, children’s homework, appointments. Mostly they live like the rest of us. They just have no roof over their heads.
“No Fixed Address” is my newest book in the Unworthy Hungry series. It’s easy to read and understand. You won’t be bored, not even for a minute.
I hope you’ll order it today. Get an extra copy for a friend!
This book has an extra surprise. When you get a copy, you’ll be making a donation to a good cause. You’ll be fighting hunger and homelessness.
It doesn’t get much better than that!
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Thurman Greco
Serving the Hungry with an Understanding Heart
O Lord, You are a God of Abundance.
Allow me to serve the hungry with an open heart.
Give me the courage to distribute food without strings attached when volunteers are serving the hungry.
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.
Grant me the emotional stamina to understand the many needs of the shoppers.
Never let me get so tired that I forget we are all one group: Yours
At the food pantry, hunger is hunger. It doesn’t matter what size the household is, what size the car is, or what or where the family calls home. At the food pantry, no one has to complete an application shop. What’s important is that the person is in the line and there is food for that person and his/her household.
Lord, You send over the food, You send over the people and You send over enough food for everyone with some left over. This happens every pantry day on every week. People are always welcome. Lord, You bring people together through the food pantry.
Thank You for all You do for the hungry.
Amen
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco – Woodstock, New York
Think Globally – Act Locally at the Food Pantry
“It doesn’t solve the problem” she said. “We should be solving the problem.”
WE WERE STANDING IN THE HALLWAY OF THE PANTRY. Hungry people jammed the place. Even with the heat turned off, it was warm, just from the body heat of the crowd. Someone had invited her over in hopes she’d see the people and be motivated to write a generous check to the pantry.
THE WHOLE SCHEME BACKFIRED. “There was an ad in the paper on Sunday” she said. “These people should all be out applying for jobs.”
Yeah. Right. We’ll all line up and apply for the job you saw listed, I thought. Besides that, many of these people have jobs. Some of them have more than one job.
“Well, I can see your point,” I replied. Certainly, on some levels, a pantry does not solve the problem. However, there are many problems to be solved when we talk hunger. “Pantries do solve some of the problems.”
Take, for example, the problem of food waste and landfills.
We need to all understand where the food fed to people in pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters comes from. It’s mostly diverted from the landfill. This diversion can reduce the waste stream, thus saving much money on local, state, and national levels. Currently, the amount of food discarded annually amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars according to the recent Feeding America survey.
FOOD SERVED IN OUR PANTRY IS DONATED FROM GROCERY STORES, FARMS, FOOD MANUFACTURERS. It’s delicious, nutritious, beautiful, mostly organic produce which should never have gone to the landfill to begin with.
For the most part, pantry and soup kitchen workers are volunteers doing a necessary job for no money. This is our tax dollars at work.
THE FOOD IS AVAILABLE. The people are hungry. When people shop at a pantry, they may save money which they can later circulate in the community.
Even though many elected officials are very much against SNAP, the funds spent with this program go directly into the community. This is a financial boost that every town, hamlet, and city can use.
WE ARE A NATION WITH FEW PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION OPTIONS. Our country’s oil industry has powerful lobbyists who leverage enough influence so their clients pay no taxes.
To feed the poor of our nation with surplus food offers them the opportunity to put more gas in their cars and get to more of the low-wage jobs they hold down. The trend is toward a person working 2 or 3 jobs. If we are too rough on the poverty stricken struggling people, they won’t be able to get to their jobs and then where will we all be?
We need more pantries to make more food more available. We need pantries in schools, churches, synagogues, town halls, hospitals, anywhere people congregate.
WE WANT TO AVOID HAVING PEOPLE DYING OF HUNGER.
Peace and food for all.
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Thurman Greco
School Days Are Here Again! – feeding the hungry
NEVER IN MY WILDEST DREAMS DID I EVER THINK I WOULD WRITE THIS BLOG POST. NEVER.
Hunger is a condition. It accompanies malnourishment. As Mark Bittman of the New York Times said: “Hunger can lead to starvation; starvation to death.“
School supplies, school clothes, shoes, coats, sweaters, lunches, snacks.
WHERE ARE ALL THESE THINGS TO COME FROM FOR THE HOUSEHOLD WHERE THE ONLY THING IN ABUNDANCE IS THE INSIDE OF AN EMPTY REFRIGERATOR?
Nationwide, 17 million children go to bed at night hungry. In many of these households, parents and older siblings go hungry so the younger ones can eat.
FOOD INSECURE SCHOOL CHILDREN HAVE A MUCH HARDER TIME LEARNING THAN THEIR WELL FED CLASSMATES. Statistics from the Feeding America survey tell us that one child in five eats only as school. Food Banks try to fill this gap by offering backpack programs in tandem with Food Pantries and Elementary Schools. Lucky is the child leaving school Friday afternoons with a backpack filled with nourishing food to eat over the weekend.
There are few to no Backpack Programs in our area so the volunteers at the Reservoir Food Pantry work overtime to secure enough food for families with school children.
Only 2 weeks ago pantry volunteers were outside the Kingston Walmart for three days soliciting peanut butter and jelly for school sandwiches. These volunteers will return on September 4th, 5th, and 6th to ask for food for school lunches.
On Saturday, September 27th, we’ll be outside the Boiceville IGA asking for food for school children also.
If you can drop by either of these places with a donation, we’ll be extremely grateful. If you can’t make it and want to send a donation, please send it to Reservoir Food Pantry, P.O.Box 245, Boiceville, NY 12412. Either way: dropping by the store or sending a check, we’re grateful. The food will be used to feed hungry children.
CHILDREN LEARN BETTER WHEN THEY RECEIVE NEEDED NUTRITIOUS FOOD.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – Whew!
Such a day! Such a week! Even I can’t believe all of it. But, I suppose actions speak for themselves. And, I have to realize we’ve been working towards this week for a whole year now.
Volunteers at the Reservoir Food Pantry are living proof that excitement can make a person drunk. We were intoxicated on gratitude all day Monday.
For starters, Prasida went off to Latham early Monday morning and returned at noon with almost 700 pounds of fresh produce – gorgeous produce. Corn, greens, potatoes, onions, carrots, herbs, spinach, apples, apricots, peaches, melons, beans.
And, while Prasida was off on 87 doing her thing, the two Bobs, Pat and I were over at the Hannaford’s getting our very first monthly shipment. With a lot of planning and praying, this went off without a hitch. This is a huge step for our new little pantry. We’re working on a standing appointment at 11:30 on delivery day!
Then, we made our way over to the pantry and set up our tables. The spread, under a gorgeous sky, was the best ever. And, to celebrate all this bounty, some of us worked the distribution tables serving groceries from the Food Bank, Migliorelli Farm, Shandaken Community Gardens, Bread Alone, and Esotec.
Others measured shelving for the new shed we just put behind Robert’s Auction. At one point, Sean went off to purchase same so we can get it installed.
By the end of the pantry day, we were all so excited we weren’t touching the ground.
We’re soon to celebrate our first anniversary! We hope you’ll come out between 4 and 7 on the afternoon of September 11th. We won’t be hard to find. We’ll be in the adorable red shed behind Robert’s Auction in Boiceville.
Come out and see what all the excitement is about. Come share some refreshments. Come see where people pantry shop in the Reservoir area!
Peace and food for all.
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Thurman Greco
What Hunger Looks Like in Woodstock
POLITICIANS THIS YEAR POSTURE ABOUT CUTTING BENEFITS AND INFRASTRUCTURE SPENDING TO PRESERVE OUR NATION. Newspaper and magazine articles regularly discuss how we now have more super wealthy CEOs and individual Americans than we have ever had before. The growing number of poor is largely ignored.
More Americans live at or below the poverty line than ever before in the history of our country according to a Feeding America survey. Where do these people come from? They come from the poor and middle classes.
THEY MAKE UP A NEW GROUP: THE STRUGGLING POOR.
In September, 1990, when the Good Neighbor Food Pantry opened, President Bush and Soviet President Gorbachev met in Helsinki to discuss the Persian Gulf crisis. Only 13.5% of our nation’s people lived below the poverty line. That percentage represented about 33.5 million people according to infoplease.com. Today, it’s estimated that 15% of Americans live at or below the poverty line. That number is about 46.2 million.
AS THE COORDINATOR OF A SMALL TOWN FOOD PANTRY, I SAW THE SHOPPER CENSUS CLIMB FROM TWENTY-FIVE PERSONS PER WEEK PRIOR TO 2008 TO 500 PER WEEK BY 2013.
For years, the pantry served mostly single homeless men and Woodstock’s colorful characters on Thursdays. By the time we were serving over 500 people weekly, we were giving a three-day-supply of food to families, households, and individuals in many categories: artists, crazy poor, elderly poor, generational poor, homebound, homeless, ill poor, infant poor, messed-up poor, musicians, poets, newly poor, resource poor, situational poor, struggling poor, terminally ill poor, transient poor, underemployed poor, unemployed poor, veterans, writers.
AS TIME PASSED, I SAW MORE AND MORE HARD WORKING PEOPLE STRUGGLE WITH THE REALITY OF NOT HAVING ANY FOOD MONEY AFTER THEY PAID THE RENT AND BOUGHT GAS TO GET TO THEIR MINIMUM WAGE JOBS. I served people just laid off from a job who I knew would never work again. Seriously ill people came for food when they had no money left because every dime had gone to pay the medical bills. Traumatized people came in when their homes were foreclosed or destroyed because of Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy.
On a more personal level I met alcoholics, artists, child abusers, children, crazies, the disabled, druggies, drunks, elderly men and women, hardworking people juggling two and three jobs, homeless, mentally ill, messed-up people, musicians, people battling terminal illness, politicians, schizophrenics, thieves, veterans, Woodstock’s colorful characters, writers, various church people, and pantry volunteers.
When I meet with other professionals in the food pantry industry, we all agree that we’ve never seen anything as bad as now. Don Csaposs, a retired board member of the Food Bank of Northeastern New York recently described our situation very aptly when he said: “We are living in an upside down world.”
NOW, IN 2014, POLITICIANS PONTIFICATE ABOUT THE POOR: LAZY, IRRESPONSIBLE.
The average wait for a three-day-supply of food (which must be stretched to last a week) in the pantry hallway is almost an hour. The building committee allows no chairs for the shoppers to sit on. In the winter, there is no heat in the building except for the body heat generated by people crowded in the hallway.
AND, THIS WAIT IS ONCE THEY ARE INSIDE THE BUILDING. Many wait outside for an hour or so in freezing weather, snow, sleet, rain, 100 degree heat, before the pantry opens. It doesn’t matter. The three-day-supply of food is gone and they have no money for more.
The three-day limit is a Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP) guideline. And, it’s a practical one. The fresh produce distributed isn’t going to last much more than three days because it’s been diverted from a landfill on its way to the pantry.
While receiving a three-day supply of food, they are doing without a lot: salt, pepper, sugar, flour, fresh milk, cooking oil, coffee.
Often these people, like members of the Flores family work seven days a week – every week. Every family member has more than one job. They manage to bring in enough funds to pay the rent for a cramped apartment and to buy gas.
No insurance.
No food.
No clothes.
WHEN I THINK ABOUT IT, I REALIZE EVERYTHING THEY GET IS RECYCLED:
The apartment they rent is old and rundown.
Their pickup is definitely used.
The clothing is donated to Family by people who no longer plan to use it.
THE FOOD, LIKEWISE, IS RECYCLED.
The produce, dairy, and bread is all definitely on its way to the landfill when it gets diverted and sent to the Food Bank, then on to our pantry.
The canned goods are diverted at the grocery store from the landfill. Cans are dented, outdated. Some have no labels.
The boxed goods are the worst…especially the crackers. A box of crackers is often a box of cracker crumbs.
NO MATTER, PEOPLE ARE GRATEFUL FOR WHAT THEY GET. It’s better than nothing and no one ever complains.
On behalf of the Flores family and other pantry shoppers, I thank you for reading this blog/book. This blog is their story…one that desperately needs to be told.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Inspections in the Good Neighbor Food Pantry in Woodstock
“As I finish writing about this unpleasant part of my life, I tell myself that was then, and there is now, and the years between now and then, and the then and now are one.”-Lillian Hellman
As the coordinator of a Food Bank pantry, I was trained by, supervised by, evaluated by, and inspected by the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley.
THESE INSPECTIONS WERE ALWAYS INFORMATIVE, INTERESTING, AND A RELIEF TO HAVE BEHIND ME. I categorized them in several “Stages”.
A STAGE ONE INSPECTION was pre-arranged by either the Food Bank or myself. The representative from the Food Bank showed up at the appointed time, carried a clip board with a form which was filled out. After the inspection, we all signed the paperwork, made small talk and the person left.
The questions dealt with the food on the shelves, how clean the room was, how far the shelves were from the walls. The Good Neighbor Food Pantry never passed this 6″ limit but no one ever said anything. The pantry room was simply too small.
A STAGE TWO INSPECTION WAS A PHONE CALL.
“Thurman, how are you doing? I’m calling because we’ve received a complaint. Someone called and reported a shopper standing outside the pantry crying. What happened?”
“I don’t know. I’ll get back with you as soon as I can find out?”
“When do you think we’ll hear from you?”
“As soon as possible. I’ll ask some volunteers and get a handle on the situation. Thanks for calling.”
At a Stage Three inspection, someone called, wrote, or visited the Food Bank with enough venom, concern, clout (you choose the word) to cause a person to get up from his/her desk, go out to the parking lot and drive to Woodstock to inspect the situation in person on the same day.
MY FIRST STAGE THREE INSPECTION WAS THE RESULT OF A PHONE COMPLAINT, I THINK. I never knew for sure. Things were urgent enough that a USDA inspector came out from Albany in a State of New York car. He was a handsome young African American man (in his 40’s) wearing a white shirt and conservative necktie. The minute he walked in the door, I knew something was up. After all, who ever comes to the pantry in Woodstock wearing a shirt and necktie?
When he left two hours later, he knew “what color my skivvies were” as my grandmother used to say. He went over inch of the pantry, asked a million questions and took a kazillion notes. This man not only found out everything there was to know about the pantry, he realized early on that I was a brand new coordinator.
HE BECAME A WONDERFUL TEACHER AND I LEARNED A LOT ABOUT HOW TO MANAGE A PANTRY FROM HIM. I asked him a million questions back and also took a kazillion notes. When he left, I felt I had a friend and the knowledge I gained gave me confidence in my performance. Needless to say, my score was wonderful.
When in Albany the next week, I told one of the Food Bank employees about my recent inspection. Her face blanched as I talked. This gentle, well mannered, kind young man was the nastiest inspector on the circuit. He was only sent out when someone was really messing things up and needed to be “taken to the woodshed.”
A NOTE TO WHOMEVER COMPLAINED THAT DAY: the inspection was thorough, fair. I passed with flying colors. Thanks!
One important thing I learned from him: It’s not necessary to ask shoppers for identification. No one is required to show anything to get food. The people do need, however, to share their names, the number of people in the household and how many seniors, adults, and children are in the household.
HE ESPECIALLY LIKED THE CHAIRS LINING THE HALLWAY AND THE FRESH PRODUCE IN THE PANTRY.
As he left, he had one suggestion: get office space in the pantry. He and I both knew that it wasn’t going to happen. The building committee finally allowed me to store records but I couldn’t use any space as an office.
AND, OF COURSE, BOTH THE CHAIRS AND THE PRODUCE WERE VERY CONTROVERSIAL.
AFTER I FINAGLED STOREROOM SPACE, I REQUESTED AN INSPECTION. I wanted to avoid a confrontation further down the road if the room didn’t meet Food Bank standards. We passed that inspection.
EVERYTHING WAS CLEAN, SAFE, AND SANITARY.
ONCE WE BEGAN OUR TAKE OUTS, A FOOD BANK INSPECTOR CAME OUT AND SPENT ABOUT TWO HOURS WITH PEGGY JOHNSON. She answered all Peggy’s questions, got a very clear understanding of what Peggy was doing, how she was doing it, and who was receiving the food. When she left, Peggy was confident in her role of Take Out Manager for the pantry.
WHEN MIRIAM’S WELL WAS ON THE ROAD, WE HAD AN INSPECTION UNDER THE TREE AT ST. GREGORY’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH. No one was ever more excited about that inspection than I. We were proud of Miriam’s Well and how the shoppers were responding to the experience.
WE HAD ONE DISTURBING STAGE THREE INSPECTION. I pulled into the parking lot one pantry day afternoon to find a Food Bank representative waiting for me.
“Thurman, we’ve received some serious complaints about a volunteer stuffing her vehicle with food while hungry people are lined up and waiting to receive their food at the Mass Food Distributions. What is the story here? Is this a fair distribution of food?”
“I’ll look into it immediately.”
OVERALL, OUR INSPECTIONS WERE POSITIVE. The only negative one was the inspection in the parking lot of the food pantry.
Peace and food for all.
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Thurman Greco
They Named Me Miriam’s Well
But, that’s not the beginning of the story. My story began in 1996 when Ford manufactured me and sold me to U-Haul. I worked for fourteen years hauling people’s belongings and treasured possessions around the country. I moved people across town and across the nation. What a life. For the most part, everyone was stressed out and worried their things were going to break or their checks would bounce or that the credit card wouldn’t work.
I did my best. I broke down very few times and quietly endured a lot of abuse from overstressed human clients and rental employees.
Finally, in 2012, I was retired. The mechanics refitted me with a new transmission, brakes, tires, etc., and put me on the lot in Kingston, New York, to sell. I sat out on the lot, dejected, rejected, and lonely over the winter.
Then, one day, some men from Woodstock, New York, showed up. What a crew. They stood around, looked me over from stem to stern, asked a lot of questions, and bought me.
But, not before lots of talk and some serious haggling. Three men and two of them named Richard! Can you imagine that? With ALL the names in the world, two of them were named Richard. Guy was the third one. They talked a lot and they touched everything and checked everything. I fell in love with them immediately. They got the price down and I was very excited for them. They were working for me. After months of loneliness on the lot at the rental store, I began to feel useful again…and wanted…and needed.
Sure enough, one day they returned. Richard Allen did most of the talking. They paid the price and off we went. Then, of course, the transmission started acting up and back we went. A lot of haggling continued and finally the Ford people fixed the problem and I was driven over to St. John’s Roman Catholic Church where a special parking place was made just for me. Imagine that!
Then, those three men really got to work. Rich and Rich and Guy did all the paperwork for the insurance, the registration papers, the permits, and everything else anyone could imagine.
And, finally, Rich Spool took me over to Upstate Signs and negotiated with Chester for my sign and now I’m the most beautiful truck in the whole world. Well, maybe not the most beautiful truck in the whole world but there’s a woman that they talk about sometimes and SHE thinks I’m the most beautiful truck in the whole world. Whenever Thurman looks at me, she gets all choked up.
Anyway, soon after we got the sign, a bunch of people came and got trained. Imagine that. Imagine getting trained to drive a U-Haul truck. For over ten years people drove me every day and nobody, absolutely nobody got trained to drive me at all. Now, they all have to have a drivers license, and special insurance, and a training class. Richard Allen does the training. He’s got a fancy title for all the things that he’s doing for me and for the things we do with me. He’s the Truck Master.
Guy Oddo is in charge of keeping track of everybody. He’s also got a title. He’s a Route Master. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I’m so proud. I’m going out on the road almost every day. But, I’m not carrying furniture and stuff anymore. And the people who ride in my cab and come by to visit when we’re parked are definitely not stressed out.
Now, Rich Allen gets a couple of other people every day and off we go for food. We go to Albany every Wednesday and return to Woodstock completely loaded with food for our local food pantry. Occasionally, when we go to Albany, they get so much food I have to stretch my body to hold it all. Sometimes the truck crew notices and sometimes they don’t. When they notice, they whisper that it’s magic. Well, call it what you want. I’m doing everything I can to help keep the people fed.
Once a month we go over to Kingston to bring back food from the Food Bank monthly shipment. Rich Allen has a special crew and I really have to stretch my sides for this one trip. The Food Bank offloads over 10,000 pounds of food each month and there are several other cars and trucks joining in. I’m so proud to be a part of this pantry. And, of course, all the food gets packed up and goes to the pantry. And, when we get to Woodstock, Thurman is there waiting for the food and she gets all excited. It’s a beautiful day when the food comes over from the Food Bank.
Twice weekly we deliver food to area families and households. We park in each location about an hour. We offer a three-day supply of food to the people who come over to us. But…that’s not all we do.
What we really do is offer a community experience which is completely unavailable in a pantry housed in a building. When we drive up, there’s no shame or embarrassment, no need to hide. Instead, people gather for a few moments in communal conversation and connect with their neighbors. The feelings of isolation so prevalent in a pantry are completely absent.
We’re hoping to offer this experience at other locations in the area.
I’m the happiest truck in the whole wide world. I love my new name which comes from an Old Testament story. And, frankly, I’m hoping they start looking for another truck for us soon. I hope they name her Goddess.
Peace and food for all.T
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Thurman Greco
In The Hallway at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry in Woodstock
One very cold winter Wednesday afternoon, we had a hallway full of hungry people waiting to get into the pantry. Inside the building wasn’t much better than outside and the outside was below freezing.
Prasida was checking in a man who wore only a sweatshirt. “It’s awfully cold in here today for just a sweatshirt”.
“I know” he replied quietly. “I gave my wife the coat.”
###
One Thursday morning I was in the pantry minding my own business when I noticed a man in the hallway who didn’t appear to be a shopper. The moment I saw him, I sensed that trouble had entered our pantry door.
“Hello. How can I help you?”
“I’m Ed Jabbs. I’m the head of the building committee and I want to see your files on the people who come to use this pantry.”
“I’m sorry sir, we don’t keep many files on our shoppers. We have a journal where we record their names and the number of people in each household. That’s all.”
“Well, you should. No one should be allowed in here who isn’t on food stamps. You’re feeding people who shouldn’t be coming here to get this food. You’re feeding the unworthy hungry.”
“I’ll have to call the Food Bank about getting that kind of information. I don’t have the forms and we’ve never done anything like that before. After all, we’re a Food Pantry, not the police.”
“Well, check into it NOW,” he said as he walked away. Mr. Jabbs smiled then, displaying a mouthful of large yellow teeth.
###
Although he was a regular shopper at the pantry, coming to shop every week, I considered him to be a volunteer. It was always a pleasure to see him. He had a lot of brown hair that was going grey, wore tortoise shell glasses and he sported a beard. He was intelligent, articulate, respectful, and always brought the latest copy of the newspaper which he published weekly. He wrote the stories and drew the illustrations. His stories covered local news and events in Woodstock.
“Hello Mrs. Greco. Here’s my paper for you this week. Keep it hidden. I don’t want it to get in the hands of the wrong person.” He spoke rapidly. “Rick O’Shea tried to kill me this week. But I’m not going to let him get away with it.”
“What Happened?”
“I caught him outside the soup kitchen telling lies again. He’s an informant of the FBI and the CIA and he’s spreading lies about me again”.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yes, he’s involved in the Exxon-Mobil scandal with the Iran Contras. But, he’s not going to get away with it. I’m an ex-Marine and an investigative journalist. I called the FBI on Rick and the whole bunch of them.”
“Good luck. Thanks for coming in. And…I LOVE your newspaper.”
###
Everytime I saw Paula Gloria in the halls, I ran up to her and hugged her. Paula always visited with her line neighbors, talking with them, finding out their problems, seeing how she could help. Paula helped people who were going through foreclosures or had problems with the police. When Paula had a court date of her own, several of her “line buddies” went to the courtroom and stood with her to offer support. Paula always gave more than she asked for.
Paula invited me to come on her popular public access TV show in New York City. I went down on two separate occasions to work with her. I had a show on Channel 23, the public access TV station in Woodstock. After spending two afternoons with Paula and watching her work, I totally changed the way I worked on my TV show. “Take This Bread” became a much more successful show with Paula Gloria’s assistance and influence.
###
One shopper, a local woman, always complained of multiple allergies, claustaphobia, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, etc. At every opportunity, Lemon Balm Betty left the pantry and ran around the parking lot yelling loudly “Thurman is a fucking asshole”. Then, one day, she brought in a large bouquet of mint and lemon balm. We put them out with the other fresh produce. Immediately, she smiled, was comfortable in the crowded hallway, and became the wonderful person we all suspected she was, when she hid behind her insults. Offerings of mint came every week during the summer from her.
Ho hum. It was just another pantry miracle. We had them all the time.
###
Many famous and semi-famous people were reduced to using the pantry regularly after the downfall of 2008. Because Woodstock attracted artists, musicians, and writers, many of them had second homes in the Woodstock area. Some of these creative and talented people saw their incomes totally dry up. I heard stories repeated many times over by different people.
They would, essentially, go like this: the person would have a home in the Woodstock area in addition to a place in New York City or Paris or Dubai or Miami or someplace, anyplace else. As the income dwindled, the person would look around, assess his/her situation and try to unload the most expensive place which was usually in the someplace else location.
Some were able to sublet. Others were able to sell. Still others underwent foreclosure. They came to Woodstock to live in the second home because it was cheaper only to find, in many cases, that there was absolutely zero opportunity to earn any money while out of the city environment.
So, here they were…down and out in Woodstock and Bearsville. Some even experienced foreclosure of the Upstate New York home.
The pantry line was filled weekly with intelligent, well educated, talented people who found themselves stranded because their support system was just not what it should have been. They, for the most part, made the best of it. What else could they do?
The refrain heard in the pantry line was “We gather at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry, where the elite meet.” I would see some of them in the line talking and joking together as they waited for food. What else could they do? Eventually some established new lifelines. Others ended up homeless.
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There was always casual talk about diabetes. Many, many people suffered with it. Some families had both diabetes 1 and diabetes 2 in the members. Although I never took a real count, it’s my opinion that way over 30% of the shoppers and volunteers suffered with this terrible disease. Even if we tried to determine the number, it wouldn’t have been accurate because so many people don’t have healthcare. They don’t know what diseases they have or don’t have.
Diabetes is one of the worst diseases a person can have. Many suffering from diabetes develop other diseases also: kidney failure, strokes, and blindness. Bad diet and stress help it move along. There’s no doubt that people in the food pantry line are stressed. Our pantry did everything possible to get the very best quality food to the shoppers. However, it’s difficult to feed a family when there’s insufficient money and the pantry only offers a three-day supply of food which needs to last seven days.
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Two neighborhood shoppers visited the pantry weekly. They shopped in the pantry for many years. Dorothy and her daughter Alice lived about a block away. They were a rare commodity in Woodstock: they were from Woodstock.
Dorothy and Alice weighed about 110 pounds together dripping wet. They came into the pantry, selected a few things and then walked away. Although they never got much, I always worried about how they were going to carry the food home because of Dorothy’s advanced age and light weight.
Dorothy and Alice didn’t have a car and there was really no other place for them to shop unless they went to the CVS, Cumberland Farms, or Woodstock Meats. They felt they couldn’t afford Sunflower Natural Foods Market or Sunfrost. For a time they caught a ride to Kingston to the Walmart every other week or so with a relative. After he died, they had no chance to leave Woodstock.
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An older woman came weekly to the pantry with a black canvas shopping cart which she always tried to bring with her into the pantry room. Repeatedly, we went over the same routine:
“May I bring my cart into the pantry? I really shouldn’t be doing any lifting.” As she said this, she tugged at her cart to position it in the narrow trail between the shelves and the produce.
“It’s extremely crowded in here today. Please be careful. I’m not even sure you and your cart are going to get through the pantry isle. Please try not to knock over the produce as you go around the room.”
One week she didn’t visit the pantry. The next week, when we saw her, she still had her cart but she looked a little tired.
“I’m sorry I didn’t make it last week. I had a heart attack”.
“If you had called, we would have delivered food to your home.”
“Well, I’m completely out of food so I was afraid to take a chance that you might not be able to find me.”
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One thing no one ever discussed in the halls was the past. They spoke about things that happened in the past week or so but never beyond. Whatever happened before the pantry came into their lives was just not on the agenda.
As holidays approached, no one ever spoke about the Thanksvgivings, Christmases, Hanukkahs, Passovers, Easters they had before their lives spun out of control. No one ever mentioned that there wasn’t enough money to get Passover food which was just not available in our pantry. No one ever asked a child what Santa was going to bring.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco.
