Food Pantry Blog – Peggy’s Take Outs – Guy, Rich, Jamie, Prasida, Father Nicholas, the Anderson Crew
Peggy organized delivery teams. Guy Oddo delivered food to four clients. Rich and Jamie Allen had a delivery. Prasida Kay had three deliveries. Laura Rose had two deliveries. Father Nicholas had three deliveries. The Anderson Crew had six deliveries.
Andrea from the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley came out one day and spent over two hours conferring with Peggy and answering all her questions.
Peggy had special food sources for her take out clients. Anyone who donated food to the pantry was donating to Peggy’s Take Outs. (So many people were using the pantry that only case lots were used in the pantry room itself.)
Peggy had absolutely no problem calling up a church and asking for food.
“Hello, this is Peggy Johnson. Can I talk with your pantry representative?”
“Hello, this is Peggy Johnson. We’re really short of toilet paper for our shoppers this month. Can your congregation get some toilet paper for our take outs?”
“Hello, this is Peggy Johnson. It’s your congregation’s month at the food pantry. Can you organize an Items of Dignity drive for the pantry? We really need toilet paper, tooth paste, and razors.”
Nothing stopped Peggy.
Not rain
Not sleet
Not snow
Not 100 degree afternoons
Not power outages.
On a couple of occasions when there wasn’t light in the storeroom, Peggy used a spelunker’s flashlight hooked to her head.
Every Tuesday morning, promptly at 9:01 a.m., Peggy walked into the Woodstock Reformed Church hallway and set up long tables along the wall on which would be placed donated food from the Hurley Ridge Market.
By 9:15 a.m., Barry Greco brought the food from Hurley Ridge Market over. There were usually six to ten boxes in his Jeep: fresh vegetables, fruit, bread, and baked goods.
Peggy, Jamie, Prasida, Laura, Amy, Marvalene, and Leticia went to work immediately, working as fast and furiously as possible. By 11:00, every bit of this food would be sorted in bags for delivery to homebound households. The bags had to all be packed and loaded in cars by 11:30 for delivery because the fresh produce had to be removed from the building by noon.
Hallway tables were total chaos on Tuesday mornings. The Take Out team was stationed in front of the tables packing bags with produce, bread, while the Anderson Crew, along with other volunteers, were moving up and down the halls with carts filled with cases of canned beans, cooking oil, mayonnaise, canned fruits, canned vegetables, crackers, cereal, pasta, etc. Leticia worked quickly to get as much food into the pantry room as possible before the Anderson Team arrived but there was always food which still needed to be brought out by the team.
“Look out behind you Prasida!”
“Hey Jamie, here comes a cart!”
“Where are the oranges? My client loves oranges. I know I saw some earlier!”
Empty cardboard boxes piled up. It took several volunteers working together to break them down. Tony Cannistra, Marcos and Jonah from Anderson, Richard Allen, Guy Oddo, Dr. Tom Dallow, and everyone else we could get to do it, broke down boxes and then, finally loaded them into Vanessa.
The fact that there was never an accident with all the commotion in the hallway on Tuesday mornings proves there are guardian angels and they don’t sleep on the job.
By 1:00, we all changed hats. The pantry shelf stockers in the morning became the afternoon take out crew and packed next Tuesday’s bags with cans and boxes.
Peggy supervised every item that went into these bags. It was no easy task.
It didn’t matter to this crew.
This was a very cohesive, dedicated team of people who realized that if the food didn’t go out the recipients wouldn’t eat.
The food went out.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – Peggy and the Take Outs
“New people somehow suggest to you that your world is really not as narrow as maybe you believed it was. You’re not so limited by your psychological environment as maybe you thought you were.” – Leonard Michaels
The next series of chapters focuses on a very important part of the pantry life which we have not yet touched on: our Take Out Department which served food to homebound residents.
As a pantry, we never planned to deliver food to homebound people in the Woodstock area. But, to make a really bad joke, the building committee of the Woodstock Reformed Church made us do it.
This is the story: Pantries are required to have volunteers available to serve shoppers on an emergency basis if they call and can’t make it to the pantry when it’s open. Well, Good Neighbor Food Pantry volunteers weren’t allowed in the pantry except during select hours on select days. So, we needed an alternative acceptable to the Food Bank. We created a Take Out Department to deliver food to homebound households.
Our Take Out Department became enormously successful. It was also a tremendous amount of work for the volunteers. We began with insufficient structure and a few volunteers lost sight of the guidelines and rules. One volunteer felt that the 10-mile limit included all of her friends living in an area around Route 32 north of Saugerties. She also felt her mother who lived several hours away was on the route and that a three-day supply of food for her mother included everything she could fit into her car on the way up. She was also lax with the monthly reporting.
Peggy Johnson took over the Take Out Department.
Peggy organized all the Take Outs. she called every household monthly to see how things were going. She made great lists of all the foods they would, could, should eat and great lists of all foods they would not, could not, should not eat. Peggy knew her clients better than they knew themselves.
Peggy was strict with the rules. She didn’t have even one client who lived beyond the 10-mile limit imposed by our Board of Directors. Peggy was strict with her volunteers also. She insisted everyone follow the HPNAP guidelines exactly. And…Peggy demanded proper manners in the pantry. One month Peggy dismissed a volunteer on the monthly delivery day. Whew!
We had one young volunteer who was a computer whiz. She really didn’t want to work in the take outs. What she wanted to do was completely computerize our pantry and be some kind of “Jedi” for our lists, etc. Her hope was to computerize our pantry and use this experience to launch other projects for other pantries. (I honestly don’t think she realized how poor pantries really are.)
It was a good idea but never materialized because on one monthly delivery day Peggy caught her comparing tattoos with one of the Hudson Correctional Facility volunteers. Peggy spoke with her and she never saw her again. We never saw her again either.
In our next post, we’ll focus on the volunteers who made the take out department possible.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
hunger/homelessness/food pantry – all in only 7 months!
It seems like a blink of an eye – Bonnie and Sean talking about opening a pantry in Boiceville, NY.
Well, it happened…and on September 9, 2013 we opened the Reservoir Food Pantry. From that day until now, April 7, 2014, we worked our fingers to the bone. (Not that we’re not continuing to do so.)
We spent months not only distributing food but processing mountains of paper work, having weekly training classes at JOMA, talks at the library, food drives at the IGA and Walmart, etc.
But, finally, on April 7th, exactly 6 months after our opening day, I felt truly at home. Why?
Seven of us were stuffed in our storeroom shoving cans and boxes of food on shelves in a fairly cramped space. For my money, in order to be a pantry – for real – it’s necessary to shove too many people in too small a space and stack cans as quickly as possible to get the job done as soon as possible.
We were really in that zone. It felt like we were all stuffed in a VW bug.
“Does this can have a bulge?”
“Nah. That one doesn’t have a bulge…the one over there does, though.”
“What about this dent?”
“Be sure and separate the soup cans.”
“Where does the cereal go?”
We’re home. At last!
I offer a special note of gratitude to Bonnie and Sean and their two schnauzers, Prasida Kay, and everyone in the Reservoir area who supported us while we got everything together: The Olive Town Board, the IGA, The Community Bank, JOMA, area residents who donated and are continuing to donate food and money.
I offer a special note of gratitude to the hungry who are checking out our pantry and who are returning.
People who have never visited a pantry before experience many things: fear, apprehension, embarrassment, curiosity, and finally, relief.
Residents in the Reservoir area are all being extremely supportive of our efforts. Thank you for your donations of food and money and time.
One last word: Hang onto your hats everyone. I think we’re on a wonderful ride. Join us if you can.
Peace and food for all
Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – Hunger, Homelessness
Do you remember the recent story about Mary-Faith Cerasoli? Probably not. In today’s world, it’s easy to forget a story with so much information coming at us all day long, every day. Well, for my money her story is one of the most important local articles to appear in the New York Times this year.
Ms. Cerasoli, an adjunct professor of Romance Languages at Mercy College in Westchester is homeless. Corey Kilgannon recently covered her story as she (Ms. Cerasoli) painted a sign – “Homeless Prof” – on a white ski vest, and went to Albany, alone, to lobby our politicians there with a protest against her working conditions.
Her story brought up many questions for me:
Did she make it to Albany?
If so, with whom did she speak?
How was her situation received?
How successful was this trip overall?
What kind of push back did she receive at work as a result of the publicity she received?
Is it possible, now, that someone in power will understand that many people are underpaid?
Is it possible, now, that someone will realize educational institutions need pantries?
Is it possible, now, that other employed homeless people will be motivated to go to Albany and lobby?
Is it possible, now, that she will find affordable housing as a result of her story being made public?
The very short detail in the New York Times pieceabout the unnamed psychology professor who gathers leftovers from departmental luncheons speaks volumes in its brevity. It highlights how little we, as a nation, care about those who teach our children and fellow adults.
Whatever the outcome, the important thing which makes this story so extraordinary, is that Mary-Faith Cerasoli protested. Finally, a hungry person is refusing to be voiceless.
With any luck, Mary-Faith Cerasoli has started a trend.
With any luck, more employed poor and hungry people will travel to Albany.
With any luck, some politician in power somewhere will realize how disgraceful it is that we treat our professors this way…and do something about getting more income for professors and teachers.
Peace and food for all.
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Thurman Greco
The Homeless…..A Few People Working to Change the Game
PETE CAMARATA – As a high school student, he helped collect day-old bread for the homeless
PAWEL ALTHAMER – Instituted a coat drive to benefit residents of the Bowery Mission, a shelter for the homeless in New York City.
ANDREA ELLIOTT – won the George Polk Award in Journalism in 2013 for local reporting for “Invisible Child”, a five-part series appearing in the New York Times which focused on a girl named Dasani, one of 22,000 homeless children in New York City.
ELI SASLOW – won the George Polk Award in 2013 for national reporting for articles about food stamp recipients that the Polk Award judges called “an indelible portrait of American Poverty.”
NORMA RAMOS – “There’s a strong connection between homelessness and prostitution, the endpoint of sex trafficking. All too often children in foster care already feel homeless and graduate into homelessness.”
In the face of New York’s mounting homeless crisis, MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO announced on Friday, February 21, 2014, that his administration is removing hundreds of children from two city-owned homeless shelters that inspectors have repeatedly cited for deplorable conditions over the last decade, official reported.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Hunger Blog – Hunger is Not a Disease at the Food Pantry.
In March, 2011, Mark Bittman of the New York Times wrote an opinion piece entitled “Hunger is a Disease.” The following post is my response to his story.
HUNGER IS NOT A DISEASE
Hunger is many different things to many different people…depending on the conditions they live in.
Because I’m the coordinator of a food pantry in Ulster County, New York, I see the many faces of hunger every week.
I see the hunger of the line as people stand outside the building, sometimes for as much as an hour, to get a three-day supply of food which must last seven days. I try to “pad the bill” as they say, by bringing in as many different kinds of fresh produce, dairy products, and bread into the pantry weekly as I can. My policy here: take as much as you can eat for three days.
The three-day limit is a Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP) guideline. And, it’s a practical one. The fresh produce really isn’t going to last much more than three days. So, everybody gets to take all they can eat in three days.
I see hunger in the condition of people coming to the pantry weekly with absolutely no money for food. These people, while receiving a three-day supply of food which will last for seven days, are doing without MUCH: salt, pepper, sugar, flour, fresh milk, cooking oil, coffee.
Often these people, like the members of the Flores family, are working 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. Period. No insurance. No food. No clothes. Thank God for the free clothes at the Family Clothes Closet.
When I think about it, I realize that everything they get is recycled: the apartment they rent is old and rundown. The family pickup is definitely used. The clothing is brought over to Family by people who no longer plan to use it.
The food, likewise, is recycled: the produce, dairy, and bread was definitely on its way to the landfill when it got diverted and sent to the Food Bank.
The canned goods were all diverted at the grocery store from the landfill. The cans are dented. Many are outdated. Some have no labels anymore.
The boxed goods are the worst…especially the crackers. A box of crackers is really a box of cracker crumbs.
No matter, the people are grateful for what they get. It’s better than nothing.
For the most part, the people shopping at our pantry are what the survey labels resource poor. Resource poor routinely choose between food and utilities, food and housing payments, food and medicine/medical care, food and transportation, food and gasoline.
And, of course, people in the resource poor category are also food insecure. They lack, at times, enough food for an active, healthy life for the household members.
It’s physically challenging to work three jobs on insufficient food. Hungry school children have a much harder time learning than their well fed classmates.
There are many articles, books written about global hunger. For me, global hunger is not a focus. What DOES exist is the hunger in my pantry, my neighborhood, my community.
Hunger is a condition. It accompanies malnourishment.
As Mark Bittman of the New York Times says: “Hunger can lead to starvation; starvation to death.”
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog: Guidelines for a Successful Pantry Visit
“But the most careful lives can be derailed – by cancer, a huge medical bill, a freak slap of weather, a massive failure of the potato crop. Virtue cannot prevent a “bad hand” from being dealt. And making the poor out to be lazy, or dependent, or stupid, does not make them less poor. It only makes the person saying such a thing feel superior.” – Timothy Egan
Try to arrive an hour or so before the pantry opens. This makes for a long wait but there’s a better selection right when the pantry opens. Also, while you’re waiting in line, you have an opportunity to make new friends and learn a few new survival skills if you’re new to the pantry experience.
Bring your own shopping bags. Some pantries don’t have enough of these necessary items.
Bring some ID. Some pantries require a lot: picture ID, proof of address, proof that other family members exist. This can be a bit of a challenge if you’re homeless. Two things you need to know: No one can ask to see your social security number. Some pantries require no identification.
Be prepared to wait in a line. Use this time to meet your line neighbors. They can be helpful if you’re trying to navigate your way through Department of Social Services, if you’re being foreclosed on, need your car repaired.
As you wait in line, try to learn how the pantry works from those around you in the line. You’ll want to know how long you’ll be in the shopping room, what foods are usually found on the shelves, what other pantries the people shop at, etc.
Don’t be afraid to let people know you’ve never been to a pantry before.
Once you find a pantry you can use, go every time you’re allowed. With luck, you’ll have a pantry in your area allowing weekly visits. Because pantry shopping takes so much time, shoppers sometimes just don’t go if they still have SNAP card money or if they have a few bucks remaining from a paycheck. Your best bet is to visit a pantry as often as you’re allowed. Most pantries have different food every week and you may miss out on some real savings by not shopping regularly.
Pantry shopping requires a totally new approach to cooking. So does cooking with only an electric skillet or microwave. Some pantries have periodic visits from nutritionists. Don’t be shy about asking him/her for any tips you might be able to use to help this adjustment easier for you. The nutritionist knows a lot about the food you are trying to cook with and s/he can answer any questions you have.
You may see fresh fruits and vegetables you don’t recognize. Be open to new taste experiences. Take the food home, find a cookbook at the library or go on the net and learn how to prepare the food. If you take one new food home each week, your kitchen skills will be vastly different in a year from what they are now.
Be open minded about this experience.
You’re going to be interacting with people you never thought in your wildest dreams that you would be around.
Know that most people in pantries, both volunteers and shoppers, are in a reconstructing and healing mode. We may not know it yet, but life is finally getting better for all of us.
Try to volunteer at your pantry. Volunteering at a pantry or soup kitchen offers you an opportunity to give of yourself. Giving away food and sharing smiles with those around you opens up opportunities you never thought possible. Your life is changing, healing. Give yourself the opportunity to go with this journey.
Sometimes people cry in the pantry. Well, it’s okay. Everyone cries at one time or another in the pantry, including me. This tells us all that the pantry is a safe place to be.
Peace and food for all.
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Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – The Weekly Trip With Prasida, Roseann, Gene, and Earl the Pearl
When you’re feeding the people, you’re feeding God.” – Desmond Tutu
Every Wednesday morning at exactly 11:30, two vans, each filled with about 1000 pounds of fresh produce pulled up to the pantry door. In order to get enough produce to feed the 500 or so shoppers coming to the pantry, one vehicle was driven North to the Food Bank of Northeastern New York in Latham. The other van was driven south to Cornwall-on-Hudson to the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley.
Each Wednesday, I waited outside the Woodstock Reformed Church building with three utility hand trucks to get a head start loading so we could get the food in the pantry room in the time allowed.
We loaded the carts with onions, potatoes, corn, peppers, salad greens, apples, lemons, baked breads and pastries, and, occasionally mushrooms, goat cheese, yogurt and vegetables donated by a farm, restaurant or grocery store. Much of the produce was organic. The Food Banks owned a farm which produced only organic foods and Hudson Valley farmers donated all they could.
Sunflower Natural Foods Market also donated boxes of produce and bread which was brought into the pantry at this time.
Smells of the fresh food immediately filled the pantry, turning the tiny space into a very inviting environment for the shoppers.
As we all worked furiously to get the food placed in the pantry within the time allowed, there were always the same sounds: Gene, a volunteer shouted “Wait! Wait!” to everyone as the carts were rolled into the building too quickly.
Prasida repeatedly yelled out “HaYAH” as she lifted bags or boxes weighing over 100 pounds.
While this happened, Roseann Castaldo reminded us of the time with “Tick Tock – 23 minutes remaining”.
One quiet person in this whole chaotic hour was Earl the Pearl, a homeless man who managed to hitch hike to the building every Wednesday morning about 10:00. Rain, shine, sleet, snow, 100 degree weather, whatever. Earl the Pearl would be propped up on the little bridge rail outside the building waiting for us to get to the pantry at 11:30.
Earl was a very slight man who, until we found a coat for him, didn’t have enough clothes to keep warm in the cold Upstate New York winters. But, no matter. Earl the Pearl was on hand to help get the food into the pantry. He had a positive attitude and loved being useful if even for a few minutes each week.
After being a pantry volunteer for several months, we noticed that his back was straighter, his voice stronger, and his smile bigger. On our way out of the door at 12:29 p.m., we always made sure he had something to eat for lunch as he sat on the bridge until the pantry opened at 3:00.
One of the regular shoppers got to know Earl and they became friendly. The other guy had a shed and Earl moved in!
The pantry room, a small 12′ x 16′ space lined with industrial shelving, was kept as cold as we could make it to keep the produce and pastries as fresh as possible. From April to November, the air conditioner was set at 60 degrees. After that, the room was cold all on its own because there was no heat. Some of the more outspoken volunteers wore two hats in the winter.
I was always cold to my bones with all my fingers frozen in the winter. Never once did I complain for fear one of the shivery volunteers would quit.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Mike and Mike and the Air Conditioner
The pantry made demands on all of us. For one thing, there were guidelines, rules, boundaries, and no-nos, handed down by not only health codes, the Food Bank guidelines, HPNAP guidelines, but the building rules.
The building committee had strict rules about what hours we could be in the building, where the cardboard could go, when and where we could use what portion of the parking lot, where the people could stand in the overcrowded hallway, what food could or could not be stored where, when the produce and bread could come in the building, how many chairs could be placed in the hallway, etc.
I was in the pantry arranging the produce on the shelves one summer evening in the month before the building committee limited our hours in the building so severely.
The night was warm for Woodstock and I put a box fan on the sill in each of the 3 windows to keep the air moving in the pantry in an effort to retard the rotting of the produce, the lettuce, tomatoes, greens, and herbs.
Mike Cooter stomped in the room with a serious scowl on his face. His body posture shouted “anger”. Cooter was a member of the building committee and everyone connected with the pantry and the church knew that the building committee assumed total control over every detail of what happened in the building.
“Get these fans out of the windows.” he said.
“I’m trying to keep some of the produce from rotting so we’ll have fresh food for the shoppers tomorrow” I replied. “We lost 50% of our produce last week. We need the fans to keep the food cool.”
“Get the fans out of the windows NOW” he yelled. Cooter had gone from disapproving to threatening.
And I was scared.
Luckily for me, Mike Lourenso was standing in the shadows. He stepped out into the light.
“Back off Cooter” Mike said with an air of authority. “I was a Brooklyn cop for 23 years. Calm down now or I’ll take you down.” I wasn’t sure what “I’ll take you down” meant but I really liked the sound of those words.
Cooter took a deep breath and backed out of the small room. He took another couple of deep breaths and appeared to be accepting what he had just heard from Mike Lourenso.
Cooter returned to the room. “We need to fix this problem now Cooter. She’s driving 90 miles round trip every week for a truckload of produce and then losing half of it here in this room because of the heat.
Can we have an air conditioner?”
Cooter appeared to be thinking about – and considering – the request.
“Okay” said finally. He appeared to have reluctantly come to terms with the situation.
“Get those fans out of here now and get an air conditioner in a window now. Put it in that window” he said as he pointed to a specific window.
“Now? It’s after 9:30.”
“Yeah. NOW.”
“Okay, I’ve got one in my home. I’ll go get it and we’ll put it in tonight.”
And he did. He drove to his home, took a window unit out of a bedroom, and returned to the pantry with the unit and an electric drill. Together, we installed it at 10:30 that same night.
I, for one, was grateful for many things that night.
First, I was grateful for a volunteer who knew how to be a cop.
Second, I was grateful we could get our hands on an air conditioner fast – before Cooter changed his mind.
Third, I was really grateful that we were going to be able to have a better quality of fresh food to serve to our shoppers.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock
Bad Back Bob
Bad Back Bob was a shopper/volunteer always available to help. A veteran with disabilities, he suffered from nightmares, serious spinal issues, an occasional seizure, PTSD, migraines, etc. He often came early to the pantry on Wednesday to help unload the food. We all felt that he shouldn’t do this lifting because of the back issues but he really wanted to feel like he was helping in some way.
“Leave my back to me Thurman. I’m here to help. I just want to be a part of this pantry.”
At one point, because of the seizures, Bob was unable to drive to the pantry so he got a ride or hitch hiked over from Motel 19 to help.
Bob rode with us to Latham to the Food Bank whenever we asked.
Bob worked in the garage distributing meat whenever we asked.
Bob helped break down hundreds of boxes on Wednesdays whenever we asked.
Bob helped get the food in the pantry on Tuesday mornings whenever we asked.
Bob worked in the pantry during the monthly food delivery whenever we asked.
In short, Bob did everything he could to help keep the pantry going, whenever we asked.
When Bob finally returned to Model 19 after a shift, he would cook up the food that he shopped for and share it with other residents who couldn’t make it to the pantry that day.
It’s important to note here that Veterans have special needs. They return home from wars with illnesses, injuries, and they need housing, employment, counseling, health care. They and their families have many adjustments to make as they get to know one another again after the vet has been in this terrible struggle in Afghanistan and Iraq. The recovery can take years. We still see homeless Viet Nam vets.
