Meet a Few of Your Woodstock Neighbors
One shopper always visits the pantry without shoes. “Take these bags and wrap them around your feet.” instructs Guy Oddo each time he comes by.
At first, we were made uncomfortable by this situation. However, over time, most of us adjusted to Shoeless Joe’s situation and realized this is just (ho hum), another pantry event. Once we became more comfortable with the situation, he did too.
The female homeless shopper is in a special category because most of them take such care with their skin and hair. Where do they shampoo their hair?
And, of course, the homeless family is, for me, so tragic. It’s hard enough for a homeless man or woman to keep clean but what about the kids, the baby? How do they do it? And, yet, the families come into the pantry looking the best they possibly can to shop for their three-day supply of food.
We had one family, a mother, father, 3 children, who lived in a small camper throughout one summer. They were living at a campground and doing their weekly shopping at the pantry.
One week the mother related: “I’m really stressed out today. I don’t know where we’re going to go. We got evicted because I don’t have the money to pay the camping fee. The lady next to us gave me $5 for gas because we had to leave.”
I don’t know what happened to them. I never saw them again.
Thanks for reading this blog. There are many, many stories to share here.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
Everyone is Different – at Least in Woodstock, Anyway: 26 Reasons For Homelessness
For a time, our trusted Gene Huckle was even homeless. His partner, Nancy died and her children didn’t want him in the house he and Nancy had lived in together for many years. He fought them for over a year with a lawyer, several trips to court and the whole enchilada. He finally moved out and ended up homeless for a time. Gene eventually got housing through a homeless veterans program. I helped him move his clothes and things over to his new apartment in Saugerties.
Homelessness cannot be generalized. Each homeless person is a special personality and has a special situation which s/he deals with. So here’s my rule about homeless people:
if you’ve seen one homeless person, you’ve seen one homeless person.
They come to be homeless for many reasons:
abusive relationship
addiction
being kicked out of home or feeling unwanted at home
decline in available public assistance
domestic violence
eviction
family breakdown
gambling
home foreclosure
lack of affordable child care for low income families
lack of affordable health care
lack of availability of suitable housing
lack of employment opportunities
lack of ongoing support services
loss of benefits
mental illness
overcrowding
poor or no communication tools to include cell phone, computer access, physical address for receiving mail
poor credit
poor or no transportation
release from jail/prison
release from military service
sexual abuse
significant illness in the family
substance or drug abuse
lack of affordable childcare for poor working families
Thank you for reading this post. In the next post, we will learn about yet another homeless person and a homeless family.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock
Meet a Special Woodstock Resident
In the last post, I introduced you to Fancy Pants.
After Fancy Pants explained about his kitchen being in his shirt pocket, we tried to keep individual serving cups of applesauce, jars of peanut butter, boxes of crackers, individual serving cans of food with pop top lids, cereal bars, etc. The HPNAP people made sure we had access to fresh fruits and vegetables that can be eaten raw such as apples, blueberries, apricots, carrots, celery, bell peppers, strawberries.
Some of these homeless shoppers were shy about their situation and didn’t want the world at large to know about their lifestyle. Unsuspecting congregational volunteers in the pantry often urged the homeless shoppers to select food which they couldn’t prepare. Rather than reveal their living situation to the volunteers, the homeless people would take the food.
Occasionally, we found it on the ground outside the pantry at the end of the day. Other times, they took the food to friends with kitchens.
I finally made the decision that our volunteers in the pantry room needed to be a permanent team of people who would know the shoppers more intimately than someone who just showed up once or twice every year or two. This was a real turn off to some of the congregational volunteers and the congregations themselves and I was criticized throughout the community for it. However, I felt it was necessary for the dignity of the shoppers. This was just one more in a long line of decisions that made me no friends in the community. However, the volunteers who worked in the pantry on a daily basis understood.
Not all homeless people shopped at the pantry weekly like Fancy Pants. Arlen came to our pantry periodically when he was in town. Arlen was a very well educated gray haired gentleman with a poly tail.
“Can I volunteer at your pantry tomorrow? I know about food and can help you” Arlen asked politely one summer day as he visited our pantry for the first time.
We’ll learn more about Arlen in the next post. Please join in.
Thanks for reading this blogged book.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
The Homeless Shopper – Part 1: How Do You Cook Without a Kitchen?
THE HOMELESS SHOPPER
“Homeless is not a category of people. It’s just a situation that happens. It can happen to anyone.” – Salvador Altamirano-Segura
This post is the first of 8 focusing on homelessness.
Woodstock has more than its share of homeless people. One reason, I feel, is the community has a way of respecting or not respecting a person regardless of whether or not a roof is involved. Some of my absolute favorite shoppers were homeless shoppers who visited the pantry weekly.
One of the Good Neighbor Food Pantry’s regular homeless shoppers came into the pantry one day during a lull and taught me the rules of feeding the homeless. I suppose he was tired of coming to the pantry and not finding enough food to take away with him because Fancy Pants visited the pantry weekly and depended on what he found in this small room for his food. He was a very upbeat guy who saw as much positive in life as he could in spite of the fact that he spent the nights of his life on the floor of the bathroom in Town Hall. The place had no heat so he definitely was cold in the winter. However, even with the cold, hard floor, he was protected from the rain, snow, sleet.
His girlfriend came to the pantry with him each week. They made a date of it. He really loved her. This beautiful woman had a multiple personality disorder and was a different person with each pantry visit. And, of course, that was exactly what Fancy Pants loved about her.
Fancy Pants kept himself well hidden behind a lot of facial hair and baggy clothing. It was definitely hard to tell what he looked like underneath all the costumery. However, try as he might, he simply could not hide his intelligence, his outgoing attitude toward the world he lived in, and his love of life in general.
“The dietary needs of the homeless are different from those of people in all other categori
Meet Woodstock’s Food Pantry – Part 4 – Trouble Rears it’s Head in the Pantry
In the last post, I discussed Bread Alone and it’s connection to the local food pantry.
Everyone else in town goes across the street to Maria’s, a local restaurant owned by an Italian family who also has a very upscale pasta factory, Bella Pasta. Maria is a lovely lady who treats everyone as if we’re guests in her home.
Maria was a great supporter of the pantry. She donated cases of Bella Pasta to the pantry weekly. She was also an important cameo participant in the Tom Pacheco Concert, Gioia Timpanelli’s Storytelling Production, and Father’s John’s story. All of these events will be covered in future posts.
During the days after the fall of the economy in 2008, I learned to categorize the hungry in many ways: artists, crazy poor, elderly poor, employed poor, generational poor, homebound, homeless, ill poor, infant poor, messed-up poor, musicians, newly poor, poets, resource poor, situational poor, transient poor, underemployed poor, unemployed poor, veterans, writers.
I learned that different congregations had differing attitudes toward these people. They ranged from “There shouldn’t even be foot pantries” to “the hungry will be fed. But not the unworthy hungry”.
In all instances I followed the direction of the Food Bank that “the hungry will be fed”. Period. Not long after I became the coordinator, I learned of a rule handed down by the Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP). I learned that, among other duties, it was my job to see that the pantry offer a 3-day supply of food without exception to the worthy and the unworthy hungry. Whatever. It didn’t matter.
Thank you for reading this blog/book and this post. In the next post, I’ll begin a series of posts about homelessness in the pantry.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
Meet Woodstock’s Food Pantry – Part 3 – We Meet at Bread Alone
In the last post, I wrote about a Korean War Veteran.
The second man – tall, handsome, had a generous head of solid white wavy hair. He came up to me one day in Bread Alone.
“I want to shake your hand. I worked all my life. When I was laid off recently, I realized that I’m never going to work again. If it weren’t for your efforts in the pantry, I would be going hungry.”
George, while he had white hair, was not yet old enough for social security. So, he relied on unemployment, food stamps and the pantry. The hope in these cases is always that the unemployment insurance will last until the social security kicks in.
He was the first pantry shopper to speak to me outside the pantry. Such was the stigma of the pantry. I called it the “Shame Factor.” I began fighting this condition by going into Bread Alone every day and getting a cop of coffee. After a while, pantry shoppers began to say “hello.”
Hurray!
Bread Alone, the local coffee house, is owned by Dan Leader, a very upscale baker who bakes bread and pastries not only for Woodstock but all over New York.
Dan Leader and his family moved to Boiceville in 1983 to bake organic breads in a wood-fired oven. Five years later, Bread Alone included a café, a pastry room, and a cook book he wrote and published.
Bread Alone is visited by wealthy tourists and upscale residents. Pantry shoppers also visit Bread Alone in the mornings in Woodstock and sit around a table in the back enjoying the warmth of the room, the good coffee, a comfortable place to sit and talk.
Thank you for reading this post, this blogged book. I hope you are enjoying the story. The next post will be the last part in the section introducing the food pantry. This post will offer a peek at trouble brewing at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock
Bread
Meet Woodstock’s Food Pantry in 4 Parts – In Part 1 we Learn About the Economy of Hunger, and the Taboos of Money
GET TO KNOW THE COORDINATOR
“Most of us, I dare say all of us, resent change. Perhaps, at first, we laugh at the stranger in his odd clothes. Then, step two, we begin to fear him. Finally, we hate him.” – Robert Newton Peck
My total job duties took about 2 hours a month as I handed the key to the incoming congregation volunteer each month.
The food pantry system is a huge network of agencies throughout the nation mandated to feed the hungry. In Woodstock, some people felt that the pantry belonged to the congregations. Others, because of my presence in the pantry, felt that it was “mine”. They were both wrong.
The Good Neighbor Food Pantry is an agency member of the Food Bank. To belong to the Food Bank, an agency must be a 501(c)3 organization “serving the ill, needy, or infantile”. Members must either serve free meals or provide free food to the needy, and have proper facilities for storage. The food bank monitors these agencies regularly to make sure the food they handle is both safe and sanitary. Emergency feeding programs (food pantries, soup kitchens, and emergency shelters) which are members of the Food Bank provide monthly statistics on the number of people they serve to both the Food Bank and the State of New York through its Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP).
The Food Bank of the Hudson Valley is, itself, an independent 501(c)3 organization. The Food Bank of the Hudson Valley is not a government agency and doesn’t receive government money for daily operations although its staff administers several government food programs providing food for member agencies. The Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP) provides the funds for the Food Bank to supply food and operating support to agencies.
As the coordinator, I was trained, supervised, inspected, evaluated by, and report to the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley. Both the Food Bank and I reported to the HPNAP people.
In the beginning, this position had little or no effect on my personal life other than for me to learn how to get to Latham on a regular basis for training classes. Fortunately, (or unfortunately depending on how you saw the situation), I began to take all the pantry classes offered at the Food Bank of Northeastern New York in Latham because the economy tanked and by 2008 I was definitely putting in more than 2 hours each month. I took classes on nutrition, food safety, menu planning, emergency preparedness, fund raising. As I learned things I could use in the pantry, I returned to Woodstock and tried to implement them. After awhile, I felt as if my car could drive itself to the Food Bank.
My new job required that I deal with increasing numbers of shoppers as well the prejudices and traditions of the community congregations. I became intimately involved with the rules surrounding feeding the hungry, the economy of hunger, the biases of people about pantries, and the taboos of money. All these issues revealed themselves incrementally as the numbers escalated in the pantry as people began to need food.
In the pantry 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, the various ministers, and the church volunteers.
Thank you for joining me on this journey. It was then, and is now, an honor and a pleasure to do this work.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
Fight Hunger 9 Ways
FIGHT HUNGER
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL FOOD PANTRY
Donate Instead of Dumping
-Grow fresh produce and donate it to your local food pantry.
Give Generously
-Donate reusable shopping bags for your pantry volunteers to share with shoppers
Organize a Food Drive in August
-Pantries are traditionally very lean in August.
Volunteer
-There are many jobs to be done at a pantry. Find a pantry needing your skills.
Help Set Up a Closet Pantry
-Churches/Synagogues/schools need small, closet pantries.
Participate in a Backpack Program
-Give food to the child who doesn’t eat on the weekends.
Get Organized
-Clean out your kitchen and donate healthy items to the food pantry.
Be a Friend to a Pantry
-Give a little throughout the year by donating food monthly.
Contact Persons of Influence
-Encourage elected officials to support food pantries.
The Beginning – Part 3: Matthew Gives His Job Away
Hands down, the most enthusiastic congregation was St. John’s. They usually had 4-6 volunteers each week when it was their congregation’s turn and managed to get the most donated food. It helped that St. John’s had the largest congregation of all the churches in town. It also helped that Fr. George always came to the pantry when it was St. John’s turn and enthusiastically brought food.
The Coordinator of the Good Neighbor Food Pantry was Fr. Charlie’s partner, Matthew. Fr. Charlie, the priest at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church, got a fancy new job in the Bloomington, Indiana, area.
One of the first things he and Matthew did, even before they spoke about the new job to the congregation, was get new wardrobes, new hairdos, put their houses on the market, and assign the job of pantry coordinator to me.
“Hi Thurman. Come over and sit by me tonight.” Matthew said as we ate the potluck supper after communion one Wednesday evening. Matthew had never, never, never asked me to sit by him. But, what did I know?
“I’d like you to be the next coordinator at the pantry. I have a box of files right here for you. It’s actually very easy. All you do is pass the key from one congregation to the next every month. I’ll call the Food Bank and give them your name.”
I was totally delighted! “Matthew, I’m flattered! Thank you for this opportunity. Do you have any advice for me?”
“Yes, actually, I do. Never give away the key. No matter what. Isn’t this quiche delicious?”
Thanks for reading this post. I hope you found the story so far to be interesting. Looking back on this whole story, I ask myself: If I’d known then what I know now, would I have been so flattered, so ready to say “Yes. Or would I have run off faster than Speedy Gonzalez?’
Then answer to my question is this: “I would’ve stood my ground.”
How Woodstock’s Food Pantry Fit Into This Beginning: Introduction – Part 2
From the start, it was fairly obvious that I was a poor match for the congregation. However, I kept going because of the pet thing. Soon I was volunteering at the local food pantry two months a year when it was St. Gregory’s turn. By 2008, the economy had tanked, the lines at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry were getting longer and Vicar Gigi was going around telling anyone who would listen that “Thurman is out of control over at the pantry” because of the number of people shopping at the pantry and the 3-day supply of food they were getting.
Good Neighbor Food Pantry opened in 1990 and served about two dozen people a week on Thursday mornings. The shoppers, mostly single homeless men, a few local colorful characters such as Jogger John, Rocky, and Grandfather Woodstock, and an occasional family would come into the pantry and pick up a box of cereal, a can of tuna fish, and a can of soup. Other things might be available but weren’t considered staples.
Only one shopper, Marie, focused on the other things. She loved to come in to the pantry and scarf up every “extra” on the shelves. She took the occasional jar of olives, cooking oil, sugar, salt…anything she could find.
Several congregations rotated the management of the pantry: St. John’s Roman Catholic Church, St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church, Overlook Methodist Church, Shady Methodist Church, Christ Lutheran Church, Woodstock Jewish Congregation, Woodstock Reformed Church, and Palden Sakya.
Each congregation stocked the shelves with what their members donated and the shoppers got what they got. The congregations were content with the arrangement. They took their monthly turn twice yearly, brought in the food, found volunteers from the membership who sat in the pantry visiting with one another for two hours every Thursday morning while serving the hungry.
Thanks for visiting this blog and reading this post. I hope you found it informative and interesting. As the story unfolds in the next post, the “beginning” will move into the story itself. If you read a sentence, paragraph, or even an entire post that you feel is untrue, rest assured that this memoir/blog is very real. Everything written in every post actually happened. It’s my story.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
