New friends and old ones

Some years ago, Rose Nicks left a relatively fluffy white-collar job to run the Christian Cooperative Ministry in Madison.

"I'm a nicer person because of it", she says. "Before, I would look at the homeless people and I'd look at different people in the community and go: Why don't they get a job? Why don't they do something? but you never know what their story is. You just don't."

Smithville, UMC

Last week, as I mentioned before the holiday, I had occasion to go to Smithville, Tennessee, where people spoke highly of a food pantry volunteer there by the name of Betty Martin (aka my mom; don't worry it's only a little bit like The Twilight Zone). Betty helps out at the Smithville United Methodist Church and while she isn't the only person to make the place tick she plays a vital role in that it's her job to divvy up the food.

Like all the other pantry monitors (the ones I've met anyway), she has a pretty rigid system that appears to work beautifully. When it comes to box-, or in her case, bag-packing, they're all cut from the same cloth, these volunteers. They're typically reliable, super-organized, and happy to help. Betty is no different.

These days

Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. ~W.E.B.DuBois

Take all

Judy used to work third shift at Wal-Mart and then one day her husband had a stroke. From that point forward, misfortune came for both of them, in violent waves. The initial onslaught lasted about three years. He became a diabetic. She became a diabetic. He had vascular surgery - nine times. She became depressed and quit her job. He recovered. She had a heart attack. His back gave out. She had her leg amputated.
He died.

Miserable and angry, and convinced she'd never walk again, she sold her car one month, to pay the rent.

Now, ten months later, facing double bypass surgery, she's down to selling bricks. She asks a neighbor regularly, what point there is in living and the neighbor, try as she might, doesn't always have a good answer.




Judy, like Malea in an earlier post, recently received her second emergency food box.

Cedar Seniors

Looks pretty tame doesn't it? In truth, the Cedar Seniors Center (say that three times fast), in Lebanon, Tennessee wasn't serving lunch when I was there but it was a lot like being at someone's house. Someone with a pretty big dining room, that is. I guess they had room for about forty people. There was a jukebox too, with a painting of The Last Supper hanging right next to it. For obvious reasons, The Last Supper is pretty popular in places where people gather to find food. It is so popular in fact, that I'm adding a category for it here.



Bankruptcies Rising Among Seniors, from the New York Times