Last Monday at the Reservoir Food Pantry
It is not necessary to advertise food to hungry people, fuel to cold people, or houses to the homeless.” – John Kenneth Galbraith
TWICE AS MANY FOUND US THIS MONDAY AT THE RESERVOIR FOOD PANTRY AS FOUND US JUST A FEW WEEKS AGO. We’re not trying to hide out or anything but each week, the number of people shopping at our pantry grows.
We’re open Monday afternoons from 2:00 to 4:00 up the hill behind Robert’s Auction. They trickle in, slowly, (some a little hesitantly), trying to figure out how to act at a food pantry. Soon, they’re visiting, chatting, getting to know one another over apples, asparagus, lettuce.
“How much of this can I have?”
“Look at this! I haven’t had an orange in ages.”
“Wow! What beautiful lettuce!”
The fresh produce comes from Migliorelli Farm, Shandaken Community Garden, and the Food Bank of Northeastern New York.
The bread comes from Bread Alone.
This event could have sent inexperienced volunteers into total confusion mode. Not this crowd. Everyone is experienced so we just went into expansion mode. Before 3:00, we were discussing where we’re going to put the new shelves we’re buying for the shed that just got delivered.
We were discussing where the new refrigerator and freezer that we so desperately need are going to go.
The shed had one level of need last week. This week is a totally new picture.
BECAUSE, WE ALL KNOW THAT NUMBERS GO UP IN A PANTRY. They don’t go down. The Boiceville area has needed a pantry for awhile so we’re prepared to expand to meet the demand created by increasing numbers of shoppers.
Our updated shopping list includes one refrigerator, one freezer, four sets of industrial shelves, and $280 more each month for gasoline to drive to Latham for food to feed the hungry.
Last Saturday saw Prasida, Bob, Sean, and Bonnie outside the Boiceville IGA asking for food or funds. Either was just fine. All the money donated went right into the grocery store for food. We bought everything on sale: canned tomatoes, canned tomato sauce, salad dressings, mustard, canned beans, soups.
We’ll be back at the IGA at the end of September we hope. We’ll be asking for holiday foods: canned pumpkin, canned green beans, canned cream soups, stuffing mix, gravy, instant mashed potatoes…as much as we can get for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Prasida and Bob will be outside the Kingston Walmart on August 13, 14, and 15th again asking for food and funds. Without the generosity of the IGA and the Walmart managment and shoppers, our pantry would be a very different place than it is now.
THANK YOU TO EVERYONE: VOLUNTEERS, STOREKEEPERS, DONORS. We are here today, serving the hungry, because you care.
Thank you for reading this blog/book.
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Thurman Greco
Peace and food for all.
Peace and food for all.
The Wednesday Afternoon Farm Festival in Woodstock
In typical Woodstock fashion, the town fought over the farm festival for years before it finally happened.
FIGHTS LIKE THIS HAPPEN IN WOODSTOCK ALL THE TIME. Every community improvement takes years of fighting before it becomes a reality. And, while this entertains many people, it holds up progress.
Those years of fighting represented lost revenue for a town that really doesn’t have a lot of options for income.
Oh well, I’m getting off track here.
THE WEDNESDAY WOODSTOCK FARM FESTIVAL MEANT SOOO MUCH TO THE PANTRY.
But, not how you might think. Symbolism is important here. As people go down the path toward the pantry, they begin to lose their connection to the community. This happens mainly because they have no money to participate in activities and they’re depressed, embarrassed, sad about being broke, sick, out of a job, going through foreclosure, etc. You put in the words here.
Every situation is different, but the process is the same for the people going down the path.
So, the pantry shoppers, for the most part, didn’t have the money to participate in the farm festival.
MIGLIORELLI FARMS OFFERED A SMALL MIRACLE AT THE END OF EACH MARKET AFTERNOON. Several volunteers from the Good Neighbor Food Pantry were allowed on the grounds in the final few minutes of the market to load up a car with some of the veggies. We then took them back to the pantry and stacked them to distribute on Thursday.
WHAT A GIFT! Migliorelli Farms offered a real emotional boost to our many shoppers as well as delicious, nutritious food. Migliorelli fed the body as well as the soul.
Now, the shoppers at least had a small connection to the farm market festival.
Until…one day a member of the Farmers Market Board of Directors called me up and pulled the plug. “You can’t have any more of the produce Thurman. People are not shopping at the market because they’re waiting until Thursday to come to the pantry to get the food free.”
“HOW CAN THIS BE? The pantry shoppers don’t have the money to shop at the farm festival. Have you seen the people who shop at the pantry?” I was shocked to hear such words from a person who had never set foot in our pantry.
“Don’t even try to talk me out of this Thurman. Our Board voted on this. The Migliorelli food will be donated to an agency in Kingston. It will not be wasted. You will not get any more of the Migliorelli produce.” And, with that, she hung up.
I was stunned. I felt as if someone had hit me.
AND, IT WASN’T THE FOOD THAT DID IT. Our pantry was going to continue to have enough food. The Food Bank offered beautiful, fresh, organic produce every week, all year around. All we had to do was go up and get it. And, go get it we would. Our pantry commitment to fresh produce was serious.
The pantry shoppers, many of whom had absolutely no money at all were being denied participation in a local event that anyone could get in to…all it took was money.
Then, somehow, I’ll never know how, a miracle occurred. Someone (some people) spoke to someone (some people) and attitudes were adjusted.
WE WERE ALLOWED TO GET PRODUCE AGAIN.
I never knew how this happened. And, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that some person (people) fought for the pantry. And, they didn’t care whether anyone else knew what they did. They just wanted the produce to stay in our community. They just did whatever was necessary to get the food to the hungry. Rules were changed. Votes were changed.
FOR THAT, I’M ETERNALLY GRATEFUL.
Whoever brought about this change created a positive energy ripple effect.
Whoever brought about this change definitely made me realize that all is not lost in this world.
In spite of this, I never felt comfortable with the farm market food again. I felt each Wednesday’s gift from Migliorelli’s Farms might be the last. I held my breath as Guy drove the van over for the produce. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw it return with fresh produce.
When the farmers’ market returned the next spring, I waited (quietly apprehensive) to hear words from Rick: “Thurman, Migliorelli is going to share its produce with the pantry this summer”.
Even as I heard those words, I didn’t believe them until I actually saw the produce. I always had a well formed Plan B ready in case we had to start making extra trips to Albany on Thursday morning. The need for fresh produce for our shoppers was great.
For the most part, these people were all in the process of losing so much. It was up to me to keep Thursday produce on the agenda at the pantry.
At the Reservoir Food Pantry, we are extremely proud to have Migliorelli Farms sponsor us. Our shoppers have beautiful, fresh Migliorelli vegetables every week . What a beautiful gift!
Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.
ON BEHALF OF THE MANY SHOPPERS WHO USE THE PANTRY, THANK YOU FOR READING THIS BLOG/BOOK.
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Peace and food for all.
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
Spaghetti Sauce – That’s what it’s all about in a food pantry.
I’ve always had issues with spaghetti sauces.
MY MOTHER NEVER PREPARED A SPAGHETTI SAUCE. She cooked in the classic French manner. Her family was one of the first settlers in Texas and had one of the largest ranches in the state so beef was on the table every day. Her meals focused on extremely thick steaks, composed salads with chopped apples, raisins, nuts arranged on a bed of lettuce in the middle of a salad plate and dressed with her own specially prepared poppy seed dressing.
The steaks were always at least two to four inches thick and were cooked at least medium rare. My mother learned the cooking and nutritional rules of her day and lived by those principles until she died.
SHE NEVER TAUGHT ME TO COOK. “I want you to do other things with your life than cook. We’ve got can openers now. I’ll show you how to operate one of those when you get married.” True to her word, she did and I did.
As I set up my own kitchen right after getting married, one of the first things I taught myself to prepare was a tomato sauce to be served on spaghetti. It was easy, cheap, and just my speed.
THE RECIPE INCLUDED TWO 28-ounce cans of diced tomatoes, a 6-ounce can of tomato sauce, 1 cup water. It was seasoned with a teaspoon of dried basil, 1-1/2 teaspoons of salt, and 1/8 teaspoon of dried oregano. I put 1 clove of crushed garlic in a large pot along with 2 tablespoons olive oil and browned the garlic. Then, I added everything else and let it simmer for about 30 minutes.
I CAN’T SAY I’M A COOK. However, I can say that, like my mother before me, I lived with a set of guidelines learned about nutrition, food safety, and how to follow a simple recipe to the “t”.
YEARS LATER, my second spouse took cooking classes on Tuesday evenings at L’Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda, MD. It was glorious. He never really cooked a pasta sauce either. He finally ended up in what was for him a dream job as a vegetarian chef for Marriott and I never complained. After all, he did all the grocery shopping and cooking. What was there to complain about? Life was glorious!
MORE YEARS LATER, IN THE GOOD NEIGHBOR FOOD PANTRY, I ENCOUNTERED YET MORE ISSUES WITH SPAGHETTI SAUES. For one thing, there weren’t any. Pasta was available maybe half the time. But, the traditional jars and cans of spaghetti sauce were very difficult to find on the order list. It’s a shame too, because homeless or near-homeless people lack kitchens and to be able to open a can or jar of spaghetti sauce and heat it up in a pan over a burner or in a microwave would have been a real treat.
At one point, the USDA inventory included a low salt spaghetti sauce loaded with sugar. People took it home but we all knew that if they had diabetes, life could get complicated. This sauce certainly met the requirements for a low-salt product.
FINALLY, IN 2012, Progresso came out with a series of canned cooking sauces. And, following their policy of generous donations, they sent a huge shipment of them to the Food Bank.
HURRAY! I was able to buy these sauces for sixteen cents per pound which was well within my budget and many cans were available. And, buy them I did. One of them, Fire Roasted Tomato, appeared to be adaptable to a simple pasta sauce situation. While they were certainly not the traditional spaghetti sauces, they worked.
THAT’S REALLY WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT IN A PANTRY. We get the best fit we can based on what’s available. The shoppers take it home to wherever that is (tent, camper, room, apartment) and fake it. Welcome to the world of those who have no money for food.
Peace and food for all.
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Thurman Greco
Treasured Belongings in the Food Pantry
IT HANGS ON A WALL IN MY LIVING ROOM, MY DAUGHTER’S SELF PORTRAIT. .
Larger than life, the piece shows one eye, her nose and mouth.
Just beginning her studies at the Corcoran, Jennette wasn’t comfortable painting an entire face.
A photography major, she was painting for the first time in her life.
Sometimes I sit in my chair with my three Chihuahuas and just look at the painting for several minutes when I come home from the pantry. So much of this painting is relevant to what I’m doing now, what the pantry shoppers are experiencing.
As people travel the path to a pantry, they lose things. One shopper recently gave me three paintings. He was offloading personal possessions and just didn’t want to see them go to the dumpster.
I ALSO HAVE PAINTINGS GIVEN TO ME BY OTHER SHOPPERS. If I stay in this business long enough, I’ll end up with a whole gallery. That actually happened to Dr. Wayne Longmore, the absolute best physician in the area.
THERE’S A MORAL IN THIS STORY SOMEWHERE FOR ME. I’m just not sure what it is yet.
Dr. Longmore, an Emergency Medicine specialist, was a Woodstock physician. He practiced by himself, without the help of a receptionist or nurse. He was favored by artists, writers, musicians as well as many other people from around here. Many felt he was the best physician in the area. The artists went to him with their health issues and he treated them with dignity and respect, whether or not they had money. Most of them had no money so, when he worked to make them well, they brought over paintings.
DR. LONGMORE FINALLY HAD THE BEST LOCAL ART COLLECTION IN THE AREA. Then, the paintings and sculptures, given to him over the years by artist patients with no money, disappeared from his office after he was arrested. I never learned the real story of what happened.
The public story was that he prescribed too many painkillers…too much Oxycodone. The FBI Report referred to the product as hydrocodone. Well, the public stories in the papers aren’t always the whole story or even a piece of a story. I know that from personal experience.
DR. LONGMORE AND I KNEW A LOT OF THE SAME PEOPLE. He healed them. The pantry fed them. Without even trying, I knew more or less who was on what. How could I not know? I saw them every week under fairly intimate circumstances.
I ONLY KNEW TWO PEOPLE ON OXYCODONE. And, one of those two was trying to sell the stuff. So, they can’t blame Dr. Longmore for that.
He was sentenced to six months house arrest, three years probation, two hundred hours community service, and fined $200,000.00. The real punishment went to the poor in Woodstock who now have nowhere to go for a doctor. It puts a lot of pressure on the Healthcare as a Human Right group.
HIS OFFICE, JUST DOWN FROM LORI’S CAFE, SITS EMPTY…the office at 104 Mill Hill Road. I think of Dr. Longmore every time I pass by. I remember his beautiful art collection, all the down and out people he served, all the good the man did for Woodstock.
The place has a for sale sign, a monument commemorating those in Woodstock who unfailingly give of themselves. Frankly, I don’t care if they ever sell it.
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Thurman Greco
Eat – Share – Give – at the Reservoir Pantry in Boiceville, New York
When we opened the Reservoir Food Pantry in September 2013, we served about 50 households the first month. That, in itself was a large number. This June, 2014, we served 450 households consisting of 429 adults, 329 seniors, and 207 children.
ADD THOSE NUMBERS TOGETHER, AND THE TOTAL APPROACHES 1000 PEOPLE.
Our food pantry is supported by an all volunteer group of people from the community at large. We’ve received much help from local businesses: Boiceville IGA, Boiceville Inn, Bread Alone, Roberts Auction, Wastewater Treatment Plant.
We’ve received help from local friends and neighbors who help our mission. We’re proud of the way our pantry volunteers have responded in these hard times.
WE ARE ALL ONE TRAGEDY AWAY FROM LIFE ALTERING CIRCUMSTANCES. Sometimes it’s a health issue, an accident, the loss of a family member or a hurricane.
The gift you give makes a significant impact, helping us provide much needed food to give to people in our area. You help us transport this food from the food bank to our pantry weekly…a vital part of our pantry operations.
THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO OFFER SUPPORT.
BY CHECK: The Reservoir Food Pantry, P.O.Box 245, Boiceville, NY 12412
BY INTERNET: Go to http://www.reservoirfoodpantry.org/donate.html. This link will take you right to the place on our website where the donate button is.
BY PHONE: The Food Bank of the Hudson Valley accepts donations by phone. Just call 845-534-5344. Our pantry number is 2539f. When you call this number and donate, you are giving to the Food Bank Adopt-a-Pantry program which is, by far, the most value you can receive for your generosity. The Adopt-a-Pantry program gets you $10 dollars in food for every $1 dollar you give. This is the most direct way to be sure that your hungry friends, neighbors, and relatives will receive the most food possible. Please tell Donna that you want to adopt the Reservoir Food Pantry and that our number is 2539f.
BY WILL: That is one way you can be sure that the Reservoir Food Pantry will be around for future generations.
Thank you in advance for your generosity. Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco-
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Bread Alone, the Women of the Woodstock Jewish Congregation, and the Food Pantry
The women volunteers of the Woodstock Jewish Congregation went out to the Bread Alone Bakery in Boiceville and returned with bread each week when it was their tour in the pantry. After the third tour, Neshama, a volunteer, came up to me quietly.
“Thurman, our tour is finished here next week. If you’ll send a car out each Wednesday, you can continue to get this bread. Show up at Boiceville at 4:45 and you’ll get everything you need.” With that statement, Neshama melted into the background. I never even got to really properly thank her for this gift. What a Mitzvah!’
I called Ann King. “Hey Ann, can you help me out here? You’re connected with Bread Alone. Can you go out and get bread for us on Wednesdays?”
“Of course, I love to. When do you want me to start? I’ll call out there and get the ball rolling.” To me, Ann King is the single most connected person in Woodstock.
After that, every Wednesday, Ann went out to Bread Alone in Boiceville with Prasida and returned with Vanessa totally packed with bread. The haul included baguettes, sliced loaves in plastic bags, enormous loaves sold by weight in the stores, small specialty rolls, ciabattas, French loaves, sourdough loaves, sesame loaves, multi-grained loaves. One week we did a cost analysis and the conservative total retail value of this weekly donation was $900. The annual total value of this donation came to over $43,000.
Thank you to everyone at Bread Alone for your generosity. Although I don’t know how many pantries exactly that Bread Alone donates bread to, my bet is that the number is large. My feeling is that this bakery feeds the hungry in the whole area.
ASTOUNDING.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Ann King and the Food Drives at the Sunflower Natural Foods Market
Once a month pantry volunteers sat outside the entrance at the Sunflower Natural Foods Market asking for food. One volunteer, Ann King, never came to the pantry to work but she was one of our most valuable volunteers.
Ann organized and managed our monthly food drive at the Sunflower Natural Foods Market.
Ann arranged the monthly date with Bob Whitcomb.
Ann scheduled the volunteers to come and sit at the table.
Ann had me arrive first on the day of the food drive with the table, chairs, sign, donation jar, and tent. I set everything up outside the front door and stayed until other volunteers came to sit at the table.
Ann taught us to make eye contact with every person coming to the store.
Ann taught us to smile and tell them about the pantry and tell them what we needed.
Ann taught us to introduce ourselves to strangers, exchange names and memorize them for the next time the person came to the table.
The event was extremely important to our pantry because we got enough boxed almond (or soy, hemp) milk for the people shopping at the pantry to get a box when they visited the pantry. Milk was a serious challenge for us because of our limited refrigeration situation.
When we needed it, we focused the food drive on cereal and received many bags of Arrowhead Mills puffed cereal. In this way, Sunflower Natural Foods Market became an extension of the pantry.
The food drives were always held on Saturday. After the food drive ended, Barry went to the Sunflower with funds collected and purchased the food. We picked it up on Tuesday morning when we could get it into the building.
We estimated once that Ann King’s efforts brought up $5000 worth of quality food every year. Thank you to every person who visited our table and dropped money in our donation jar. You helped a lot of people.
After several months of Sunflower fundraisers, Bob Otto joined in the effort. He stood in the doorway of the Sunflower with a large milk pitcher and spoke to everyone coming in the door. Bob was a one-person money generating machine. He was polite, personal, professional. No one could turn him down. As the customers came to the door of the Sunflower, they opened their wallets.
Soon, Bob Otto was expanding his efforts to include a raffle sale one summer. He spent every Saturday one whole summer in the Mower’s Meadow Flea Market entrance selling raffle tickets. I sat at a small table beside him and helped the people sign the raffle tickets. It was an amazing sight to watch.
We had food in the pantry in no small part due to the efforts of Ann and Bob.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Food, Sex, and Money In The Food Pantry
“We all come to our work, whatever it is, with our own peculiar set of biases, programmed into us by all we have experienced throughout our lives, including both everything done to us and everything we have done to others. – Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato
If I’ve learned anything it’s that there are three words/issues more concerned with a person’s core beliefs, emotions, and spiritual attitudes than anything else. The big three are: sex, food, and money.
THESE THREE WORDS OFFER RULES FOR EVERYONE. We each have core beliefs around these subjects with opinions about what’s okay and what’s not 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 may have attended classes on these subjects. Also, we have guidelines we’ve made based on life experiences.
Reduced to their lowest common denominator, these words are the same. They touch our core beliefs in ways going straight to the heart and soul.
Reduced to their lowest common denominator, our attitudes, opinions, and feelings about feeding the hungry may or may not be based on facts, statistics, or reality. Nor can our attitudes be changed by facts, statistics, information.
Finally, you have beliefs about who it’s okay to feed and I have beliefs about who it’s okay to feed. My beliefs are based on life experiences, facts, statistics. Your beliefs are based on your life experiences, facts, statistics. I may take classes, go to therapy. You may take classes, go to therapy. And, your reality about what’s okay and my reality about what’s okay may differ. In the end, no amount of conversation, arguing, books read, TV programs watched will change these two perceptions. In the end, I have my beliefs and you have yours.
WITHIN A YEAR AFTER I BECAME THE PANTRY COORDINATOR, EVENTS CHALLENGED FOOD AND MONEY TABOOS IN OUR COMMUNITY. Prior to this time, pantries weren’t expected to raise money. With the economic downfall of 2008, Food Bank employees realized that pantries were going to need more than they could get from the Food Bank. The solution? Raise money!
And, raise money I did. Using my own funds, I drove to Rowe in Vermont and took a Kim Kline class. I also bought, and read, her books.
SOON AFTERWARD, I WAS OUT ASKING FOR MONEY EVERYWHERE.
Volunteers sat at a table weekly at the summer farmers’ market. Volunteers were in front of the Sunflower Natural Foods Market monthly. We rented a post office box. Mailers went out. Tom Pacheco held a concert. Scott Petito, and Leslie Ritter gave a holiday concert one Christmas. (When they tried it again the next year, a snow storm interfered.) Gioia Timpanelli organized a story telling evening. Inyo Charbonneau sponsored a dance. Harriet Kazansky produced a music festival.
The first large donation came in at $500. It was a generous donation made to the Good Neighbor Food Pantry after I made a strong appeal to the Town Board. It was my first public attempt to educate people about the plight of hungry people in our area. I took the money, divided it among the different pantry congregations, and gave it to the pantry representations of each church.
“I raised this money. Here is your share to use when it’s your congregation’s tour in the pantry.”
Carmen Adler at the Christ Lutheran Church graciously accepted the money.
A woman at Overlook Methodist Church took the money, stared at it, then stared at me and then stared back at the money again.
When I went to St. John’s, the pantry representative received the funds for her congregation and asked “What can I use this money for, Thurman?”
“Use it for whatever your congregation needs in the pantry when it’s your congregation’s turn” was my naïive answer.
When it was St. John’s tour, the volunteers all sported fancy new aprons embroidered with “St. John’s” on the front.
Thereafter, when the pantry received donations, I took the money to Pastor Bode of the Woodstock Reformed Church. He opened a bank account. I spent money for food, office supplies, and gas used in pantry activities. I took the receipts to Pr. Bode for reimbursement.
Money spent on gas was used to get the food from Latham and Cornwall to the pantry weekly. And, thanks to the generosity of local residents, we kept the pantry well stocked with food. This is extremely important when one realizes that a round trip to Latham costs about $45 to return with 1200 pounds of absolutely free produce. AS FAR AS THE PANTRY WAS CONCERNED, 1200 POUNDS OF PRODUCE COST $45 AT THE FOOD BANK. What a deal!
We set aside money for a building. I finally decided, privately, that the funds needed came to $500.000. A committee headed by Peggy Johnson began looking high and low for a building. She finally came up with the same number. It seemed as if the building owners in the Woodstock were sitting back, rubbing their hands together and waiting to see which building owner was going to win the money we were trying to raise from the townspeople.
OUR BIGGEST CHEERING TEAM, I THINK, WAS THE WOODSTOCK REFORMED CHURCH BUILDING COMMITTEE.
Those people acted as if they were soooo tired of having a pantry in their building.
Those people acted as if they were soooo tired of having Thurman Greco as the pantry coordinator.
Those people acted as if they were soooo ready for their pantry to return to the glorious pre-2008 days when the pantry was open a couple of hours one morning a week, with a parking lot that was not overcrowded, and the unworthy hungry weren’t in the hallway.
Whatever. We raised money. And, thanks to the training provided by the Food Bank of Northeastern New York, our pantry weathered the storm following the downfall.
Food – That word caused more problems than any other for me as a pantry coordinator.
Who is it okay to feed?
How much?
When?
What?
How dare you serve that kind of food to this kind of people?
How dare you serve the unworthy hungry people?
How dare you feed people from outside of town?
Money – That word caused the second most problems for me as a pantry coordinator.
How dare you ask people for money at the farmers market?
How dare you send mailers out asking for money?
How dare you have fundraisers?
Peace and food for all.
Thank you for reading this blog/book.
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Thurman Greco
Abundance in the Food Pantry
Surrounded by abundance, poor people had trouble buying food that really nourished them. Fat was cheap and filling, vegetables were complicated and scarce, so salt, grease, and sugar reigned.” – Sara Miles
FOR ME, PANTRIES ARE ALL ABOUT ABUNDANCE. Abundance and gratitude. Churches see pantries as an outreach project. And, of course, outreach is a popular term.
Many congregations love to support feeding the hungry – especially if the funds go to feed a group of children in Botswana, Somalia, India. The farther away the better, it seems. It’s when the outreach is local that things get a little dicey.
FEEDING THE HUNGRY IN A FOOD PANTRY IS AN ACT OF GRATITUDE. When we feed people, we own up to the amazing abundance in and around us. We also face the fact that we are spiritually hungry. Feeding the hungry in a food pantry addresses this spiritual hunger issue head on. It also addresses the physical issue. Pantry shoppers and volunteers are both surrounded by abundance. There are millions of pounds of food available to pantries and soup kitchens throughout our fair land, all of it diverted from a landfill. There is absolutely no reason, no excuse, for anyone in the good old U S of A to go hungry.
Based on my experience in a food pantry since 2005, it’s my opinion that people having trouble with the spiritual issues begin to question who should get food and who shouldn’t get food. For some, feeding the “unworthy hungry” meant we were feeding freeloaders. But not all hungry people look needy. Some of the best dressed people in Woodstock never spend a dime on their clothes. For one thing, they have no money for clothes. For another, they shop in the free store closet at Family of Woodstock.
THE PANTRY HAD THREE SHOPPERS WHO ESPECIALLY DIDN’T LOOK THE PART. They were young women, with children, who drove late model SUVs. I don’t know if they knew each other but their stories were similar. Two of them had been married to men with influential employment and money. Neither one of them received one dime from the husband in the separation process.
The younger one had one son and couldn’t work because her husband seriously injured her when he threw her against a wall. Her recovery was slow. She always came with her eight-year-old son. I got the feeling they went everywhere together.
I noticed right away that she chose items from shelves where bending was not necessary. That left out many items but she wanted to be as independent as possible.
Another woman, Elizabeth, was a little older. She had a house full of children including a set of twins. She just couldn’t get it together to work. And, I doubt if she could have gotten employment in our area anyway. This lovely lady had a Ph.D. There weren’t many jobs available in her career field. And, of course, once a woman gets an advanced degree, the lower level jobs are just not open to her unless she hides the education. Sometimes education can be hidden. Sometimes it can’t. It all depends on the situation. The main thing is to get rid of it on the resume.
Elizabeth was very open minded about the food she selected. With five children, she basically took anything that wasn’t tied down. She qualified for cases of USDA. So, Elizabeth left the pantry with a case of pasta sauce, canned corn, green beans, vegetarian beans, refries, etc. Her kids ate everything. When she finished shopping, Robert Allen, our youngest volunteer, always brought out the cart to put her groceries on and wheeled them to her car.
The third person was in a slightly different situation. She was a volunteer in our pantry with a degree, a house, two adorable daughters, and a spouse with a job somewhere in Europe. The spouse decided he wanted nothing more to do with either her or the children. No money was coming across the ocean for her and the two children.
Laura was very happy to take the vegetarian items available each week. Her children loved fresh vegetables so there was much to choose from. Laura’s girls also looked forward to yogurt as a treat.
SO…HERE WE HAVE THREE FAMILIES with no money for food, (or much of anything else for that matter.)
So…here we have three households, single-headed households in need of food. If not for a couple of years, then at least for several months.
So…where were the fathers in all this? Not paying the child support, that’s for sure.
NONE OF THESE HOUSEHOLDS IS HOMELESS ALTHOUGH they might be when the tax collector comes to call.
None of these households is in rags although they might be when the clothes wear out.
None of these households is without transportation although they might be when/if the vehicle needs expensive repairs.
None of these household members look the part.
UNWORTHY HUNGRY? WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Thank you for reading this blog/book.
Please refer this article to your preferred social media.
Please send a comment.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
