Once a week, Beth and I take a trip to the Food Hub where we pick up meals to be delivered to food insecure families and individuals. The sponsoring organization, A Single Bite, has been feeding people weekly since early in the pandemic.
Food delivery is not a difficult or time consuming job for us. Usually, we’re done in about an hour, sometimes two if the locations are on the other side of the county. What makes the job a bit challenging, though, is seeing some of the structures people call home. A lot of them are neglected, run-down shacks that you wouldn’t want your dog living in, let alone a fellow human being. That can be gut-wrenching.
Despite the poverty and the horrific conditions, Beth and I like doing this job. We enjoy the smiles, hearing the “thank you’s” or just knowing that we did our little bit to help that week. Y’see we’re part of a team that includes donors, administrators, coordinators, cooks and volunteers – everyone working to do their part of the plan.
In a sense, this is what’s happening in small towns, cities and counties to address problems too big or nuanced for government or corporate do-gooders alone. As Hilary Clinton said, “It takes a village.”
I am inspired every day by what I see in Sullivan County. There’s something here that I didn’t see in my home county of Westchester. Perhaps it was there below my radar, but my sense is that most of the upper middle class people I knew spent the lion’s share of their effort getting ahead and staying there. And in their spare time, it was much more common for people to take care of their property, go clothes shopping or have dinner with friends. There’s nothing wrong with any of that stuff, but in hindsight it wasn’t the right mix for me. After years of living that life, I wanted a more rural and traditional life.
I feel a bit uncomfortable pointing my finger at the place where I was raised or any big city where materialism reigns supreme. But that’s what comes with speaking one’s truth. When we transform into something new, we leave an old self behind. We shed a skin and move on.
As Bruce Hornsby sang, “That’s just the way it is.”
