"Ya Hear Me?"

Saturday

Now for a little on my lodging. It is Nancy's house that I am staying at, an old three story house, that had a massive fire in it many years ago. Nancy has rebuilt the house, though much of it is still in disarray. You know those people that have tons of things in different unorganized piles but know exactly where everything is? This house isn't like that. There are random things all over the house, but as many people as have come in and out of the house over the years, a lot of the junk is unaccounted for. On the first floor what might have been the family room has been converted into a woodshop. In the back is a two-room apartment that Rick stays in, and on the side is a kitchen and a living room with a piano. The second floor has an office, and a sort of an apartment with a common space and two bedrooms, one of them being mine, and Nancy lives upstairs (I haven't been up there yet). Everywhere are books and screws and pennies and scraps of hardware and tools and pieces of furniture. Five cats and a small dog roam the house. The basement is another woodshop, and all around the outside of the house are piles of lumber that Nancy uses for the benches that she builds to put around the city (Seats of Consciousness), and other wood projects. When I get a chance I try to arrange or fix up bits and pieces of the space (it really wasn't until Wednesday that I had finished moving into my room.

Today I took a break after the first delivery site, so I got home around 2:30. Nancy had a project for me though; she is building a clubhouse fort for the Riddles' kids (2 and 5). She had me put the back and roof on, then build a ladder on the side, build a seat inside, put the front on, add a top to the roof, cover the windows, then move lumber, dismantle a large wooden crate, and denail the boards. Time off isn't time off if Nancy knows you're around.



Jim

"I'm Having a Food Baby"

Friday

Today I went to Edy's.

While it was technically the second time, last time we were in a rush, so it didn't really count. Edy is one of our lovely Cape Verdian farmer friends who enjoys taking our compost and keeping her friends well fed. Jason, his girlfriend Mary, and I stopped by at the end of a long day to deliver a load of compost, and she and her husband invited us in to eat. First she gave them each a Heinekin, and me a ginger ale, then brought out the cauliflower/squash/meat soup (made from Monday's haul of cauliflower). This was followed by fish, and chased with a plate of rectangular samosa-like items. Then she brought out plantain fritters.

Edy wouldn't take full for an answer, insisting that we finish the items. Between the three of us we ate everything but half of the soup, which was enough of an appeasment, though I'm sure she would have preferred if we had polished that off, too. Edy is just an overwhelmingly generous person, and I look forward to interacting with her further, even if our communication is limited.

Time to sleep so we can get a nice 5:45 start tomorrow!

Jim

"Come Into My World"

Four times today people shared their food with me. The dock workers gave us one of their pepperoni pizzas this morning, At our second site someone brought us some Italian subs, at the last site one of the restaurants gave Jason and I Vietnamese subs and seasame balls for dessert. Then dropping off the days compost with our Cape Verdian friend on the way home, we were blessed with some delicious fish, beans, and rice for dinner. You may have noticed the variety of nationalities that were represented here. Boston is a very diverse community, with Cambodians, Hatians, Cape Verdians, Bengali, Brazilians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Polish, Russian, Portugese, Italians, and Lithuanians just to name a few. Jason speaks a little of about half of these, at least enough to haggle. Having studied Spanish all these years it is finally really coming in handy. Turns out that with Spanish I can sort of get by in Portugese and Cape Verdian for free. The different cultures lend not only to language differences, but also to differences in food preferences. At some sites, depending on the predominant nationality, we may get more requests for lettuce, potatoes, mangoes, or perhaps onions. The differences in preference help us too, since if we have a large variety, we can usually find someone who will want just about anything that we are offering.



Some folks buy a whole load of lettuce for a big salad. Some folks only want the prettiest vegetables since their kids are picky. Some folks don't mind taking the worse looking tomatoes since they are making sauce. Some folks will take a load of vegetable waste since they need it for compost. Some folks are glad to sort through a bin of slicers (potatoes chopped in half by processing machinery) to find the easiest ones to cut up for home fries. We try to find a use for everything, but without all the incredible people we work with none of this would be possible.



Jim

"Optimism is a Good Disease"

There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but after three days here I have still received a lunch we didn't make ourselves every day. The generosity shown to Fair Foods is tremendous. Monday the neighbor Miss Jacobs brought us some macaroni salad, yesterday we got a vegetable dish at one of the sites, and today, a lady at one of the sites brought us chips and hot sandwiches.

Nancy tries to take care of as many people as she can, but neighbors are always given priority. We routinely bring home some of the scarecer items and spread them around the neighborhood, as well as giving away two dollar bags or anything else they may need.

There is also a bit of a bartering system, as the mechanics and other folks who work with us love getting some fresh vegetables. Yesterday we picked up a pair of nails in the driver side tires of the small van, and the mechanics plugged them for a few cases of tomatoes and strawberries.

Today we left for the market at twenty after seven, and brought back a full load with the big van of potatoes, celery, oranges, strawberries, radishes, and plenty more. After dropping that off at the warehouse, we loaded up the van to the max with a load of pre-made mixed bags and a many cases of other fruits and vegetables to include on the side or mix and match, this included the remainder of Monday's cauliflower. We came back at the end of the day with an empty van but for a few cases of the cauliflower (since we had so much we had been giving cauliflower away for free). And at roughly two dollars a bag we had brought in $264.62 to help pay the bills.

In the morning I was at the market working with Derek and Richard, the other two full time workers this summer besides Jason and myself. Derek and I got into a discussion over optimism. Derek and Richard are both from around these parts, and have spent most of their lives right around here. Derek doesn't think that we can really do anything to change or improve the world, to make it a better place. I explained that I do think change can happen if slowly. Of course this world can never be a perfect place, but I don't believe that that should stop us from loving our neighbors and encouraging them to do likewise, as Jesus did. The conversation continued back at the warehouse while Jason was around, and as we went to sites in the afternoon he told me that such a pessimistic attitude is quite common around here, and that while he remains optimistic, after doing this for several years, his optimism has diminished.

Thoughts or comments are welcome, of course!

Jim

"Taking Care of Business"

This is the end of day two at Fair Foods. You can skip ahead to the next paragraph if you already know what Fair Foods is, but read on if you haven't seen Fair Foods in action, heard me explain it, or would simply like a better explanation (which I can give after spending just two days here). There is a large shipping center for produce (known as 'the market') here in Boston that has a lot of food that would ordinarily be wasted. In the morning, every day the market is open, Fair Foods collects as much surplus as they can, and takes it back to their warehouse. At the warehouse, the food is stored, and made up into mixed bags loaded with whatever produce is currently available. These bags are taken to various sites around Boston where they are sold for two dollars each.
So far, I have met tons of great people: housemates, neighbors, workers, volunteers, market workers, and customers. I plan to go into more detail about the people I've met later. For now though, I'll tell you what I've been up to since I got off school.

After exams finished, I had the pleasure of helping the rest of my RA staff kick everyone out of the dorm. Once everyone was gone, and we were exhausted, I had to kick myself out. Upon finding myself out-kicked, I headed home to Ohio. Not only were my parents home, but my grandparents on my father's side were there, and so was my sister. I had a wonderful, though altogether too brief time visiting at home, playing games, unpacking, packing for Boston, hitting some tennis balls, and generally soaking up the love that I am so blessed to be drenched in from my family. Then, I hit the road for the second time, this time going out to Maryland. There I arrived just in time for my cousin's college graduation, and again had a wonderful time visiting with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents on my mother's side; playing Wii, Uno, and a little more tennis; and going out to eat spaghetti with mushrooms, Chinese vegetables, and Slurpees (though at separate meals). Now back into the car for the third leg of the journey. I arrived in Philly and was greeted by my brother. I was able to make a few deliveries (like a bike!), and we went for a terrific run in Fairmount Park, the largest Urban Park in the US. After sharing some girl scout cookies, I headed off Sunday morning (unfortunately the pre-order tickets for the techno show in NY we had planned to go to were sold out), and finished the fourth leg of my trip up to Boston.

Monday was memorial day, but that didn't mean a holiday. Jason (currently the main heart of the program (though Nancy is the founder)), and I went out to the market, where a few places were open for business. These businesses work in such huge quantities that when a shipment is slightly lower quality than they had wanted, when there is a delay on a pick-up, when they are overstocked, or when any one of a hundred different things goes wrong, these businesses are inclined to dump pallets and pallets of perfectly good food into the dumpster. In fact, as we walked into the tomato place, the boss jumped up and ran around the corner shouting at some of his workers to stop, since they were about to dump 12 cases of tomatoes and the boss thought we would be off for memorial day. Since many of the businesses were closed for Memorial Day, we went to our next tactic, rooting through the dumpsters. The cauliflower place must have been overstocked, for they had filled two regular sized dumpsters (think business place, not construction site size) to the brim with still wrapped, perfectly good heads of cauliflower. We grabbed a stack of onion bags out of a nearby dumpster, and saved as many as we could use. Since Uncle George showed up with his pickup, we had a minivan, a car, and his pickup. The big van was in for repair while they welded one of the shocks back on.

The produce includes: potatoes (of many sizes and colors), tomatoes (of many sizes), lettuce, bananas, apples, plantains, celery, summer squash, oranges, grapefruit, onions, and cauliflower, to name only what I have seen so far.

For every one of these products, and really any produce you can think of, literally tons of this food is going straight into the dumpster every single day. I have heard that only half of the food that is grown in our country actually gets eaten, and this is easier for me to believe every day.

Today I got to go to distribution sites, but more on those later as well. Internet is spotty here, and so is free time, so I don't know how regular this will be, but I will try to keep it updated (not usually this long though, I promise), including photos eventually.

Jim