"Live and Learn"

Friday

There's a first time for everything, and I had quite a few firsts today.  First time in court, first time drinking coffee, and first time getting ripped off by fake lettuce.

In the morning, I was Nancy's chauffeur to court where she was one of two witnesses in a case involving a thirty-eight year old black male who had worked for her at Fair Foods in the past (the other witness being his partner).  The fellow had been convicted of something more than ten years ago, but had stopped checking in with his probation officer about ten years ago.  Thus there was a warrant out for his arrest.  A while ago he told Nancy that there was a warrant out for his arrest, and they discussed it.  They decided that she would write a letter and send it to the court.  He was picked up about a month ago at a store, when during a random check he was asked for some ID, and he informed the officers that there was a warrant out for him.  The fellow has five kids, and hasn't been in any additional trouble for the last ten years.  Nancy says that if she, as a white woman, hadn't gotten involved he might have ended up with 3-6 years.  As it was, prosecution asked for 18 months.  By the way the judge was talking, it sounded like he might take 18 months, so it was a bit of a surprise when he announced only 60 days.  9 days that he has already served count towards that, and he may get about half time, so he might be back to his family within a month.  Nancy was ecstatic. If it really is true that having a white person vouch for you makes a bigger difference than a black person, then that is disgusting.

At the second site today we were brought two iced coffees with some cream and sugar.  Since it was given to me, I decided I would drink it.  Tasted the way Dannon coffee yogurt tastes, which is to say, Dannon coffee yogurt must actually taste a little like coffee.  If I have coffee again some time I'd like to try it black, just so I know what it tastes like on its own.

Our third site on Fridays is right on a busy road.  In one car that was sitting, waiting for the light to change, the kid in the passenger seat flagged me down with a bill.  After giving him his $48 dollars in change and a bag of produce, I came back in the van, and Jason told me to check and make sure it was real.  I now know both that it is general Fair Foods policy not to accept fiftys and Benjamins, and why.  If you were looking at it closely, it was easy to see that it was counterfeit, but it was just not something that had ever crossed my mind.  Well, this is my first job where I deal with money on a regular basis.  At least nobody was too worried about it.  After all, as Jason said right afterwards, "It's only money."

Jim

"Bobriñe"

Thursday

Today was a slow day at the market, but we got a lot of zucchini or 'Bobriñe'!  I should point out that my first day at the market, being Memorial Day, was a bit atypical of how we ordinarily operate.  While there is a lot of food that goes into the dumpsters, ordinarily we don't need to pull anything out of dumpsters.  There are perhaps forty companies that operate at the market.  The market consists of four main buildings laid out in two parallel lines (http://www.terminalmarkets.com/neweng.htm). On the inside of these two lines there are over one hundred loading sites.  Some are permanently occupied by tractor trailers that have been converted to storage facilities, and others are in a constant state of flux as shipments come and go on 18 wheelers.  There are no definite lanes or traffic control rules inside the market, some of the vehicles are large and some small, some going forward, others in reverse.  Because of all this, at times the market is the closest thing I have ever seen to a live version of the traffic jam game where you have to slide the red car out.  While there are dumpsters around, some aren't very conveniently located to some of the companies, so many employees simply chuck garbage off the edge of the dock and onto the ground.  It is no wonder that we have already picked up three nails in our tires since I have been here.  Up on the docks, many of the workers are latino, they are almost exclusively men, and everyone seems to be hard at work.  You have to keep your wits about you, as there are pallet jacks loaded with onions, strawberries, melons, or any one of a hundred different fruits and vegetables (and some fungi too) zipping by at top speed.  We push through the flap doors, find the go-to guy at that particular site, and see how he responds.  Many times it's, "Not today fellas" and we assure them that we will be back again tomorrow.  Sometimes they do have a few cases or a pallet for us though.  The reasons are as varied as the pallets fruits and vegetables we get.  Some of it is surplus.  Some of it is the wrong size (we get potatoes that are too big, and potatoes that are too small).  Some of it is byproducts (we get the outer stalks of celery from celery hearts).  Some of it is moldy (we get trays of beef steak tomatoes where just one or two are growing mold).  Some of it is ripening too fast (we get bananas that are ok today, but would be bad by the time they are sold (several days from now) since we can sell them the same day).  Some of it has outward blemishes (we get oranges that are flat on one side or have too many spots on the peel).  Some of it doesn't live up to its name (we get vine-ripe tomatoes that are no longer on the vine).  Anything that would make a product unsaleable in the supermarket can lead to us getting it.  The companies are actually happy to give us the food though, as we act as a free disposal service for some of their waste that they would otherwise be paying someone to dump.  

Today we got 3 papaya, 8 banana, 8 plantain, 30 lettuce, 3 potato, 3 orange, 1 celery, 37 zucchini, 9 tomato, 3 mushroom, and 1 onion.  What can one person do with 37 zucchini?  Not much.  What can a bunch of people with a van who see lots of people in a given day do?  Stuff three good zucchini in each two dollar bag, sell dollar boxes of good zucchini, give away a lot of free, slightly damaged zucchini, give some to Agnailu to compost, and save the rest for tomorrow (each of these methods took about 1 fifth of today's zucchini, and we got it all off of our hands!).  Rick claims that Jason's favorite word is saying zucchini in Spanish, and Jason doesn't deny it.

Jim

"Right"

Wednesday

This morning I was at the market with Uncle George, an old-timer who helps out at the market sometimes and has been running a site since Fair Foods started. Uncle G. is a veteran of three wars, drives an old navy blue chevy pick-up whose glove-box opens every time you hit a bump too hard, and wears a ball cap with his Silver Star patch sewn on the front. I think he's about 85, and a little hard of hearing. Today we were driving and he asked Richard if we should turn left or right, Richard said "Left." and Uncle G. repeated back to him "Right." While we were picking up a few cases of oranges from the orange man, we came back out of the building to see Uncle G. had whipped out a can of blue spray paint and was keeping the hood looking good. Uncle George still comes out and does his thing, pitching in where he can, offering his abilities as a driver and as someone who can run a site. He met Nancy when she started Fair Foods since he worked on some of her vehicles. Although there is currently just a big van and a mini-van, there used to be two big box-trucks, and there have been several other iterations of vehicles as well. It's just great to see the wide range of people who are willing to help out. Nancy was telling me that a while ago the father of a fellow she knew from a different country (I forget which) passed away. She wanted to get a plane ticket so that he could go home for the funeral, and she told Uncle George that she needed $700 more. He went inside and about 15 minutes later came out with the balance. Nancy talks about unconditional love sometimes. I've certainly seen many acts of love since I've been here.

"Just Two Sir"

Tuesday

This morning I went with Nancy to the food pantry at 4th Presbyterian Church. After people were finished inside the church they many of them came over and picked up a two dollar bag of fresh produce from us. Today we had the bags filled with potatoes, one onion, a big tomato, a bunch of bananas, some romaine heart lettuce, a grapefruit, and celery. Folks could also pick up plantains if they wanted any. There was a kid named Nick, probably about 14 years old, who was there helping out with the food pantry, who has been there helping out for some time. Nancy insisted that he take me in and give me a tour of the system so I would know what they were doing. It was interesting to compare the two systems. Nancy used to just give away food, but at some point a minister stopped her, and led her to believe that that dehumanized the people who were receiving the food. Some folks who could use the food wouldn't be caught dead in a line asking for a handout, but will gladly pay for it (albeit at a greatly discounted price). At the food pantry the folks who were working seemed to be fairly suspicious of those coming in. After passing through the registration table, people were convereted into a number written on a small scrap of paper, representing how many people are in their household. Throughout the rest of the line the workers would watch strictly to make sure that no one took more than their number allowed. One worker even condescendingly commanded one of the people on the other side of the table to put her passport away while going through the line (which she had had out for identification) so that she wouldn't lose the passport.

Now I don't mean to bash the food pantry. These are good folks doing good work. And they do need to make rules about what people can and can't take so that the food is fairly distributed. We do the same thing, in that we often won't sell people what they want, even if we have it, since we want to fairly distribute our food. That is one of the several uses of the word fair that inspired the name Fair Foods. We often get requests for a dollar's worth of of onions, bananas, oranges, or tomatoes, which we have to turn down, even though we might have enough to do it. This is because when we have one of these items high in demand but low in supply we want everyone to get some, so we put a limited quantity in each two dollar bag.

But there did seem to be a different approach and attitude at the food pantry. It seemed very 'us and them', formulaic and institutional. Watching Jason interact with Fair Foods customers is incredible, as it is very relational. He knows many of the customers by name. He is always trying to pick up a few more words or a new phrase in some language. We haggle and try to get people what they want, swapping items out for different fruits or veggies that they prefer if it isn't too busy. We don't check ID. We sell to anybody. We eat the food that we are selling. When I offered a bag to one woman this morning she told me, "Oh, no. I work here at the pantry."

Upon seeing one of our customers haggling with Nancy, Nick questioned why she would do this, expressing to me a "beggars can't be choosers" mentality. From what I learned from my interim class though, this mentality makes the problem harder to solve. My interim class was West Michigan Food Systems, and one day we took a field trip to the Feeding America Food Bank. We heard from the director of the food bank there who has done tremendous work with getting companies to donate the food that they can't use. He has analyzed many different kinds of food distribution systems. The ones that are the least helpful are those that simply assume that everyone needs to get x, y, and z, and put the same thing into every pre-made basket, rather than letting the people who are going to eat the food have a say.

Speaking of food banks (and this isn't a Josh Uitvlugt transition), Fair Foods has had an interesting relationship with the Boston food bank over the years. They used to work together, and Fair Foods simply acted as the produce arm of the Food Bank. However, differences in ideology caused them to split. They wanted to put Nancy on the board of directors, and pay her 80,000 a year. She told them to pay her 30,000 a year, and to put the extra 50,000 in Fair Foods budget. She also suggested that maybe some of the top, well-paid executives of the food bank (6,000ish a week anyone?) who are supposed to be interested in feeding people should do similarly. Well, that was the end of that relationship. So the Food Bank currently has a large multi-million dollar new building purchased by the city, while Fair Foods operates out of loading docks 7 and 8 at the Maxwell Flea Market building, and is trying to get a letter on the mayor's desk asking the city to waive the rent on the recently repossessed building (the city owns the Maxwell Flea Market Building).

Well, I apologize for the bit of a rant, but I am just trying to pass along some of my thoughts, which include some of the frustrations that Fair Foods goes through, that I do hear about.

"Four out of Four"

Monday

The word of the day is 'scarpetta'. I don't know if I spelled it right, but I think it is Italian. The word captures and codifies the idea of Maxwell house coffee's "Good to the last drop" into one word. 'Scarpetta' refers to the act of taking a piece of bread and using it to clean out the remainder of the container that the food was cooked in, so that none will be wasted, and as a compliment to the chef. Mary (Jason's girlfriend who helps out on occasion, and is around somewhat) cooked us a chicken with sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots in and around it, and we scarpettaed that pot like crazy. We had four fully loaded pieces of bread, and we decided that was the basis for the scale.

"Doing God's Work"

Sunday

I had a good conversation with Rick, the tenant on the first floor, this morning. He is a sporadically employed, middle aged, gay man with curious movie tastes, who will manage to describe the plot of at least one film in eighty percent of the conversations he is involved in. While some of them are classics from the 60s or earlier, many of them are horror or obscene. He is always trying to convince Jason to watch something with him, and Jason is always politely declining (though they may do a little switcheroo where Rick listens to some of Jason's music, and Jason watches something with Rick). Rick posts ads on craigslist, and finds jobs other ways too, so he walks dogs, acts as an art model, scrubs toilets, and puts in some time at Fair Foods. This morning we got to talking about religion a little bit, and Rick was telling me why he left the church when he was fourteen. Besides differences in belief about sexuality, he just saw too many hypocrites in the church. People who called themselves Christians and played up the Sunday act, but weren't living differently. He saw them living their lives against church teaching, and got fed up with it. He also said that reading broadened his perspective. He says that he still has a lot of respect for religious people though, and that if it helps them then that is great.

He made what I found to be a very interesting comment, which I will paraphrase as closely as I can remember: "I say this as a self-proclaimed atheist: You're doing God's work here."