I Don't Mind Telling You I Cried Myself To Sleep Last Night

Yesterday a few volunteers from my church took 100 small backpacks to a south Kansas City school.  These backpacks were full of food - ready-to-eat items that kids can prepare with no supervision, that don't require heating in a microwave or oven.  Obviously it's processed food, but some of the recipients only have electricity and/or gas in the winter when the utilities are required by law to provide them.  They did each get a banana, 100 of which cost $35 in Kansas City in case you were wondering.

This is part of the BackSnacks program at Harvesters, which is a community food bank here in Kansas City.  It serves around 10,000 children now, up from just 30 when it started five years ago.  The backpacks are given to children who are enrolled in the free/reduced lunch program at their school, and then further identified by staff as being particularly food insecure.

See, teachers today get training on how to identify children who are hungry.  They ask to take extra snacks home with them, especially for a younger sibling.  They eat the stuff the cafeteria serves that other kids don't eat, and they linger over their empty tray trying to think of ways to get more.  They have a hard time paying attention in class.  They're tired and worn out.

Yesterday the first words out of the school's BackSnack coordinator were "thank you so much!"  The next sentence was, "we need 25 more each week."  We're pretty sure that Harvesters simply doesn't have the resources to provide the backpacks and food for 25 more a week, so we've decided that we're going to get it done somehow.  I swear to God it'll happen.  And if they ask for 25 more after that it'll by-God happen too.

Giving these kids just a little more food - even processed stuff like Chef Boyardee - will help them make better grades.  It will help them fight off infections and viruses and allow them to attend school more regularly.  Sometimes all a kid needs is a little step up, a tiny bit of help to get to the point where they can make it. 

So if you can, give some money or food to a local food bank.  Even better, get in contact with them and show them the BackSnacks program.  Talk to your newspaper about it, or some club or other organization you belong to.  Maybe you could start with 30 kids - 30 kids whose lives could radically change just because they had some cans of food and an apple or banana to eat on Saturday and Sunday.

And let's keep fighting, each of us in our little or perhaps big ways, to create a better world for all of us, but especially for those who are least among us.

Comments

[litbrit]

Hear, hear.

It is disgraceful--utterly disgraceful and, well, evil--that there are so very many children going hungry in a nation where some folks, this weekend, will host unimaginably lavish birthday parties for their children in their own back-yard zoos after flying in private planes between their various luxury homes. And it's that much more disgraceful and evil that these are the same characters who are fighting healthcare reform and demanding to keep in place all of George Bush's inexplicable and irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy.

So yes, everyone: give as much as you can this fall and winter--many schools are hosting food drives, as are churches. The need will be greater than ever.

But also keep in mind that we must also address the root causes of this dire situation and fight like hell to boot out the politicians who do the foul and filthy bidding of those aforementioned overlords. It's long past the time for them to go. All of them.

[ari]

Thanks, Stephen, for sharing this.

[kathy a.]

stephan, this is such a wonderful, directed effort. "Sometimes all a kid needs is a little step up, a tiny bit of help to get to the point where they can make it." yes, that is true.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

And, Stephen, this is what makes your church so different from so many we read about. I'm sure your members weren't even thinking about 'slipping' a "Come to Jesus" pamphlet into the backpacks, that no one asked questions about the beliefs -- or orientation -- of the recipients, I doubt your minister called the photographers before you arrived at the church, or that he charged the project 'Administrative expenses.'

No, it was a simple act of 'Christian charity' and it reminds me that I should never use the word 'Christian' as a simple pejorative, and that you and your congregation must despise the hypocrites, the theocrats, the publicity hounds, the humanity-hating Calvinists, the sex-haters and the 'liars for Jesus' who try to claim sole ownership of the word.

Thank you for what you did, and damn those who made it necessary for you to do so.

[Sir Charles]

Stephen,

That
s a sad tale. It's astonishing to me that we as a country are comfortable with the fact that such a huge percentage of children are living in poverty. (I suspect once again the issue of race rears its ugly head.) No other industrialized country would tolerate this kind of situation.

Alas, in a nation filled with Republican asshats I guess we have no obligation to the weakest members of society. Once,n of course, we have insisted that they be born.

[Stephen]

Prup,

Thanks so much. And you're right, no one thought about slipping in pamphlets or trying to preach at anyone. I've been in the church all my life, but I've never run into a group of people like this. If my family hadn't found this congregation, we wouldn't go anywhere.

it reminds me that I should never use the word 'Christian' as a simple pejorative, and that you and your congregation must despise the hypocrites, the theocrats, the publicity hounds, the humanity-hating Calvinists, the sex-haters and the 'liars for Jesus' who try to claim sole ownership of the word.

Yeah, most of us tend to use the word 'Christian' as a pejorative as well. It's an odd bunch.

[kathy a.]

i'm not a religious person. don't believe a good deal of what i was brought up on, but i do believe in fairness and caring for people -- those ideas came first from my church, which didn't always practice what it preached, but those thoughts stuck.

it's been a little while since i went down to a community center nearby that can use everything that can be donated. wish i'd gotten things together for the start of school, but the needs are always there.

[kathy a.]

well, i went looking for something similar to your "back snacks" program in my area. the city bordering on my middle-class town [we share a school district] has a huge amount of need. the focus of efforts is very much on the many homeless people and families. i know that is the tip of the iceberg, that kids are going hungry even when their families have someplace to live. nearby city [richmond, CA] also has an astonishing rate of violence, so many of these kids also live in fear in their own neighborhoods. my religious friends belonging to churches that do good -- they also focus on feeding the homeless, at shelters or soup kitchens, or through grocery drives.

can't blame anyone for triage. but kids depend on the adults in their lives. schools need to do backup when parents aren't in a position to fully provide, because the kids often have no other reliable other adults.

your effort really touches me, stephen, because i've heard a good number of adults raised in poverty talking about the hunger. mayonaise sandwiches; shoplifting food; begging on the sidewalk; looking in dumpsters. how they loved a neighbor or relative who brought food. how embarassing it was to be on the free lunch program -- some hated the meal tickets that pointed out how poor they were, some hated that they were only allowed the food that other kids despised. adding insult to injury, the poorest neighborhoods do not have supermarkets; the only food available within walking distance is fast food, or marked-up crappy food at a corner store.

trying to think of what i can do. maybe i'll look for the worst-off local school, and see who i can join up with there.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Something that just hit me -- and this cold I've got keeps me from knowing if it makes sense at all, so I'll just throw it out. What about arranging with a school to start an after-school cooking club -- insisting that it is for both genders, not just for 'girls.' The kids would get nutritious meals, but of things that fit their cultures -- and that they could afford to make for their families, there'd be cross-cultural teaching, and kids would have the feeling of doing something for themselves, not just being 'helped because they are poor' with the stigma that could come with that.

It'd be tricky, possibly impossible to set up, but maybe there would be some way of doing something similar, and as a lawyer, you'd know where to research the necessary permits and waivers.

Just a thought.

[kathy a.]

actually, that's a wonderful idea, prup, for a lot of great reasons: good nutrition; learning life skills; cross-cultural; happy times with caring adults; the kids can contribute to their families. and i know for a fact that boys like learning to make meals.

that would be more than a one-person project, though. i'm too flaky to be the one/main person. but maybe it's an idea worth looking into, once i figure out what is already going on with the local schools.

alice waters [creater of chez panisse, a berkeley restaurant known for fresh organic california cuisine] started an "edible schoolyard" program at a middle school in 1995 -- the kids grow a lot of the food they eat in the cafeteria. in some ways, i think that is along the same lines -- getting the kids involved, teaching skills, helping them feed themselves well. but here is a world-class chef, and she is only starting a second edible schoolyard this month, 14 years after the first. i guess that points to the need for as many adults as possible to do what they can locally -- she has a lot of sway, but the progress is slow.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

If you add 'shopping' to the cooking club -- with careful adult supervision so they don't learn the art of the 'five-fingered discount' -- it would have even more usefulness. Teaching them comparison shopping -- which even throws arithmetic in the mix -- would be a lot more useful to most of them in their daily lives than growing vegetables -- where?

And again, taking them into ethnic stores, letting them see, say, the range of Shan spice mixes and the -- usually very inexpensive -- meals they make, or seeing a row of Thai curries, or chorizos and carne enchilada -- imagine some of that in a standard meat spaghetti sauce -- etc. Letting different students actually teach the other kids about what they'd have at home.

Maybe it was a pretty good idea after all.

[litbrit]

Prup, I applaud your idea! So many skills can be learned (and taught) via food.

Back in the day, Home-Ec was standard in the public schools, just like Phys-Ed. Now, at least in Florida, you don't hear much about either program. The kids who are headed for college football or basketball or baseball teams, yeah, they get their sport on. Everyone else gets less fit, more overweight, and more stressed.

Home-Ec, as I remember it, taught kids how to plan, shop for, and put together tasty and affordable meals. One time, we did a cost and taste comparison of Hamburger Helper and a dish with home-made sauce, egg noodles, and ground beef. The home-made one was much tastier (of course) and it cost considerably less. These days, we'd also be pointing out how it was lower in sugar and salt and free of fake, cheap ingredients and things like preservatives, MSG, and HFCS.

And Home-Ec gave us a chance to learn about the foods of other cultures, too. You wouldn't believe how cheap it is to make a big pot of black beans, and how tasty it is, too. And yeah, the Asian, Caribbean, and Hispanic markets are wonderful resources for the things you need to make delicious "peasant food". Sadly, Italian markets have become so trendy, they've lost touch with the frugal origins of Italian peasant food and filled their shelves with pricey infused oils and similar. Still, the philosophy remains the same: use meats as flavorings, not as the main focus of meals, and rely on herbs, garlic, and spices to enliven pasta, rice, and potato dishes.

Anyway, bravo. And thank you for the cooking club idea--food for thought, so to speak.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Aorry to keep blabbling about it, but I keep seeing other ways this idea would be useful -- along with the primary idea of getting kids fed and giving them the skills to help out -- or, for some families, take over -- in the kitchen.

But things like learning about allergies -- or, for that matter, religious exclusions -- and deciding whether to cook something everybody can have, or something that leaves out a couple of people, and how they should be compensated, or how you decide what dishes to cook, (simple majority rule, or making sure everyone has a chance to choose, or what variant) or simple questions like get a costly meat -- and less of it -- or something that stretches.

There are a lot of ways a skillful teacher can make this into a solid learning lesson -- but make sure he/she never loses sight of the first priorities.

[kathy a.]

well, i'll go ahead and nominate prup for ruler of the universe, because all kids need to learn how to cook a little something, then how to make a healthy meal, how to comparison shop, and the delights of sharing different tastes and styles.

my own kids were incredibly lucky. their montessori preschool had kids doing little food tasks as part of the everyday choices, and one of the teachers helped the extended-day kids bake and cook easy things. their [private] elementary school also had such projects, particularly around the international day festival. and so on. i remember field trips to the grocery store, just to learn about fruits and veggies; and also to japanese and indian stores, to learn more about what people from those cultures use in cooking.

comparison shopping: everyone needs to know that and practice it. i really don't know of schools that teach it. when my youngest sister was 17 and about to start college, we had her make a list of everything she would need, and spent hours comparing prices. she is now the shopper extraordinaire.

[kathy a.]

posted before i saw the last couple of comments. love litbrit's thoughts about home ec. it wasn't offered at my small school, nor at any of the schools my kids attended in HS, and back in my day schools offered it only for girls. can we agree this is important? and i'd argue for starting much earlier than HS. and not calling it home ec.

meats, fats, sugars, and salt are vastly over-represented in easily available junk food. it's not that hard to make yummy food that lasts AND is healthy.

[oddjob]

it reminds me that I should never use the word 'Christian' as a simple pejorative

Indeed.

I like the practice Sully has adopted for those who wrap themselves in the flag while pinning a cross on their lapel, in the most prominent place of all so that all know what they believe with regards to their "conservative" politics. He calls the people of the religious right "Christianists" rather than Christians.

I like that. It's completely consistent with my own belief that such people go to church on Sunday not because they care about the teachings of Jesus Christ (which, frankly, are damn difficult to live by if you truly take them to heart!!), but because they want to be associated with a particular societal tribe.

[litbrit]

kathy, we had Home-Ec at the bilingual school--co-run by Mennonite and Baptist missionaries (!)--in the mountains of Honduras which I attended in the middle school (then, Junior HS) years. Home-Ec was taught in 7th, 8th, and 9th grade. The Mennonites were an extremely frugal culture, but they loved their home-made sweet goodies, so we not only learned how to make dinner, but also things like pies and cookies from scratch.

And Montessori! It was an absolute joy for my three, who all attended in their early school years. Part of Maria Montessori's eduactional philosophy was to train the fine motor skills early on (her earliest charges, when she became the first Italian woman awarded a doctorate, were severely mentally disabled children--they hoped to discourage her; instead, she devised completely new approaches to training the brain). Montessori had the children grate carrots, chop things, sort and de-pebble small beans and peas, things like that. In the process, she sneaked in things like counting and number sets; it was always paramount, to her thinking, that one trained the mind and body simultaneously (this was an early example of what is now thought of as "building neural pathways").

The other brilliant thing about Montessori schools, to this day, is the focus on the individual child as a part of the entire globe. At age five, my kids could identify most countries on the globe and tell you about the languages, foods, and religions of the people therein. (In other words, none would grow up to claim they could see Russia from their houses, ha!)

But back to food...I think it would behoove any of us who can to advocate for "food skills classes" (or something similar) at the middle school, or even elementary school, levels. Good nutrition is inextricably tied to good health, and if we're going to reform health care, we must also reform the way we feed ourselves, starting with the obvious: make sure everyone in America, especially her children, actually IS fed, and fed well.

And this, in turn, is tied to reforming our very fucked-up agriculture policy. Another post for another day.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

oddjob: A couple of things about Christians. As I tried to discuss once here, I think there is a somewhat different explanation for "Christianists' (yes, I love Sully's term too) than yours. Many Christians, particularly conservative Protestants, tend to pay more attention to 'who' they think he was (to the point of "He is my S*A*V*I*O*U*r whoImustbelieveintogettoHeaven -- and, oh, yeah, he said some stuff too.") while more liberal Christians, pay more attention to his words.

Meanwhile, many people would argue that the reason his words are "damn difficult to live by if you truly take them to heart!!" is because they were spoken by someone who was truly an 'end-time preacher' who expected 'this world would pass away' during his lifetime. "Don't worry about debts, oir what you'll wear, or settling petty injuries -- you don't have time to waste on things like that."

Certainly the early Christians and Paul spent a lot of time explasining why 'it hadn't happened yet.' And that 'this generation shall not pass away...' line takes a lot of fancy explaining to justify.

The fascinating thing is that, unlike practically every other 'end-time preacher' -- including his contemporary rival, the Baptist, and the Essenes and Qumran -- he does not ever preach asceticism or renunciation of physical pleasures. 'Money bad,' but never 'wine and food bad.' In fact his first 'miracle' involves both wine and -- by implication -- sex.

(A subversive thought for you. Isn't it likely that 'the Wedding in Cana' was, in fact, his own wedding? In the culturew, almost no man would have remained unmarried after 18, not to mention until his thirties, unless he were a)totally gay, or b)was a member of something like Qumran. The first is possible, but unlikely -- I doubt that the Pharaisees, who were like modern liberal Jews, would have condemned him for it, but I doubrt if he would have gotten followers. The second is more unlikely, or it would have been part of his preaching.

(Therefore, the odds were that he was, or had been married. -- This also explains the mystery of why he suddenly became a 'god-obsessed' preacher. Perhaps it was a response to sudden widowhood?)

[Thus endeth the sermon for this Sunday morning. Please be generous when the ushers pass the plate.]

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Deb: You posted while I was working on my piece. Yes, Montessori is great -- for those few who can attend them, and I'm all for spreading her ideas more widely -- though there were some very ingteresting popular books on education in the late sixties that are worth looking at. Holt became a bit too radical later, but reading someone like James Herndon raises some nice topics for discussion.

But let's face it, maybe .1% of kids will have the opportunity to go to Montessori schools -- and if they become more common, the odds are that a lot of the new teachers 'taking it up' will be, as with any similar idea, people who 'can play the notes, but don't hear the music.'

(And ironically, most kids who go to Montessori schools 'don't need them' to the same extent, because they already have parents who are intelligent, open-minded, and who care about their kid's education for the kid's sake and not just so he'll become 'their own personal Mini-Me.)

But I'm more concerned -- as a non-parent -- in improving the chances, the thinking skills, and the openness of the other 99.9% -- particularly those who go to public schools.

The 'religiously home-schooled' are hopeless until -- if they are lucky -- the world breaks into their protective bubble. So too for those who are in certain types of religious schools -- madrassas and Christianist private schools. (And most Catholic School and Yeshiva kids probably get better educations if you can scrape the -- frequently thin patina of -- religious coatings off.)

This is one reason I've been hoping we could get into more discussion of education, and mostly of education for those not lucky enough to have you guys as parents.