A Politician Came to the House Today
I got a visit from a politician today, asking for my vote.
I simply couldn’t help myself so I told him about the hungry in America. It was easy to talk about the one in seven seniors in our country who don’t have enough to eat. And I talked about the one in five children in our country who don’t have enough to eat either.
This young politician is interested in the welfare of Americans and talked a lot about health care and jobs and equal pay. He talked about funding for seniors and programs for seniors. He discussed everything but food. Frankly, there was not one mention of food.
And, I stood there and listened to the speech and just couldn’t stand it any more.
Until this young man really sees hunger for what it is, he’ll never know the real situation for what it is. It may be years (or maybe never) before he realizes how hard it is for the elderly to get food when their shoulders and knees don’t work, they no longer drive, and they live in a food desert.
Routinely, seniors choose between food and transportation, food and housing, food and health care.
Few know about food pantries and hunger unless they work and shop in one. Beyond that, a food pantry is hidden. People shopping in one certainly don’t tell anyone where they get their groceries. And, those working in one don’t talk much either.
Pantry food distributed to families helps children learn better in school and help their parents work harder at the many jobs they hold down.
When people come to a pantry, they can forget for a while their situation often means they pay more for what they get if they live in a food desert. And that, at times, they simply get less because the food may not be available in their neighborhood.
Often, they do without if they have no access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Instead, they go through the pantry line and leave with foods they could not otherwise buy.
On behalf of everyone who shops or volunteers at a food pantry, I offer gratitude for the wonderful food available to the many hungry people who need it.
Thanks for reading this article!
Please refer this article to your preferred social media network.
Thurman Greco
Prayer for the Hungry – Number 1
O GOD
Allow me to serve the hungry with an understanding heart.
Give me the courage to distribute food without strings being attached.
May I never need to keep score.
Give me the physical strength to keep the shelves of the pantry stocked with as much food as we can pack on them.
Please help me to understand the many needs of the shoppers.
Never let me get so tired that I forget that we are all one group – Yours, O God.
Children of the Pantries – a tribute to Richard, Jamie, Robert, and Mikey
“Everything tells us that children who grow up in poverty are much more likely to be adults in poverty.” – Peter Edelman
The flier came in the mail last Tuesday – reminding me that, once again, school is starting. Immediately I thought of pantry shoppers everywhere struggling to get the kids ready for school.
I remembered my own childhood with my mother
sewing my school clothes
buying new shoes – saddle oxfords
buying sweaters and a coat
filling a special kitchen cabinet with school lunch snacks
taking me to the local Ben Franklin store with a list of needed school supplies.
2015 is sooo different! All the households I know are now:
scrounging for any and all free hand-me-down school clothes they can find
checking around to find out who has free school supplies to share
connecting with the schools to see if there will be any backpack programs and how school breakfast/lunch programs will be managed at their children’s school this year.
And, all the while, the parents are holding down 2 and 3 jobs. And, invariably, in the midst of all this activity, the car will break down…
Invisible almost, children come with their parents to shop at the pantry weekly for food. These children are beautiful, alert, intelligent. These children are so well behaved in the line and in the pantry. How they stand in the line with their parents/grandparents all that time every week and remain well behaved, I’ll never know. They come for a three-day supply of food which must last seven days. Shopping in a pantry usually takes a couple hours minimum.
As more and more household members work more and more hours at minimum wage jobs to pay more and more money for rent and gas to get to the jobs, more and more families appear in pantry lines. Every time I see a child in the pantry, I’m grateful for the efforts pantry volunteers make to get the most nutritious food they can find and bring back to the pantry.
This is especially important because many pantry families live in food deserts and have no supermarket nearby. People are forced to shop at a:
pharmacy,
gas station food mart,
convenience store.
Sometimes the hungry simply can’t afford the prices in upscale grocery stores and supermarkets.
One household of 4 came weekly to the pantry. The children, Robert and Mikey, came with their parents Richard and Jamie. We all smiled when the Allens arrived at the pantry. Rich drove in with Robert riding shot gun in a bright chartreuse repurposed ambulance which still had the sirens.
Jamie arrived in a 22-year-old red Ford pickup with a black camper top which Richard and Robert kept going.
Jamie:
helped assemble the food for the take out bags
helped pack the take out bags
assisted the older and infirm shoppers
was loved by everyone
Richard:
stood outside the building as the pantry opened
supervised the parking lot to keep the chaos to a minimum
managed the hallway
knew the stock in the storeroom
made sure the shoppers had help getting their food to cars
made friends with everyone in the shopper line
stood in the pantry room when the shopping line was overcrowded
was always on the lookout for anything which might upset the flow of people into the pantry
taught Robert to break down the used cardboard boxes
taught Robert to haul groceries out to the cars
Richard didn’t teach Robert to climb to the top shelf in the storeroom to retrieve much needed items. Robert learned that on his own.
Robert, 10, loved food…any kind of food. Whenever Robert wasn’t otherwise occupied, helping out in the pantry, he came to the pantry room and ate anything that didn’t eat him first…raw.
Mikey, 5, was never unhappy or trying to get into trouble. Mikey wanted nothing more than to help out in any way possible. Of course, being 5, Mikey invented ways to help if we didn’t give him direction. All in all, he was a gift to the pantry, smiling and greeting everyone who shopped. For many, this was transformational.
Mikey was therapy.
Children are important in a pantry. It’s estimated that 25% of the people receiving food at pantries are children. Hungry children experience more learning difficulties and more illnesses than their well nourished classmates.
If you can, a donation of food or school supplies to a nearby pantry will be extremely helpful.
Thank you for reading this blog. The stories are true. The people are real.
Thanks for your patience. I won’t be publishing articles on this blog quite as frequently while I work to get the reflexology book ready for the publisher.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Meet 7 Wednesday Shoppers in the Good Neighbor Food Pantry
The local bicycle shop owner visited regularly. If I were going to give a title of “mayor” to a member of the pantry shopping community, I would give it to him. Everyone loved visiting with him, chatting with him for a moment. His energy was calm, grounding. He knew everyone’s name, shared his energy with everyone he came in contact with. He embodied a real respect for the earth and its resources as he rebuilt used or discarded bicycles into beautiful, functional, desirable pieces of equipment to be used again, in another incarnation. One Christmas, for example, Jo Schwartz bought a bicycle for Robert Allen from him.
Some afternoons we saw as many as four or five of the more famous local poets lined up in the hallway together. I always felt honored to be in their presence. And, I was honored that they came to our pantry for food. I was, however, saddened by the fact that we live in a society with absolutely no consideration for writers, poets, artists, sculptors, musicians.
One angry man showed up at our pantry the day after he was fired. After that day, he shopped at our pantry regularly. And, of course, it was a situation where we all knew he wasn’t ever going to work again. It took him way over a year to calm down from the injustice of it all. He was quiet about his anger but anybody with a brain and an eye could see the emotions. He simply could not get his feelings off his face.
One famous artist came regularly for many months. He home was being foreclosed on. He maintained a positive mental attitude about the whole experience. But sorrow was unavoidable. After the foreclosure process was complete, he ended up in a shelter in Kingston. He still shopped at our pantry whenever he could get over to Woodstock for about a year afterward. Here was a man with an international following who could not make payments on a very modest dwelling in Woodstock.
Thank you for reading this blog/book. Tomorrow’s post focuses on the actual Wednesday afternoon opening ceremony of the pantry.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
