I have some exciting news—another work of good to go in our basket.

We’ve  helped the Mansion residents, the Albany refugees, Sue Silverstein’s art students, a couple of persecuted farmers, Ukraine refugees, autistic children seeking work, people with no winter shoes and clothes, healthy breakfast foods for refugee kids,  and some dreaming entrepreneurs.

I want to add the issue of epidemic food needs all over our country, allegedly the most prosperous in the world. I want to help a desperate mother and a food pantry that gets busier every month.

I’m adding another need to our good work while adhering closely to our creed of small acts of great kindness. We don’t have much money to toss around, and I don’t wish to get larger, but we have a lot of heart. With their permission, I want to help the Cambridge Food Pantry and peek at the lives of some people who need it so badly. I can count on the Army of Good; it has yet to fail on any project.

A federal report found that 44.2 million people lived in households with difficulty getting enough food to feed everyone in 2022, up from 33.8 million people the previous year. Those families include more than 13 million children experiencing food insecurity, a jump of nearly 45 percent from 2021. It’s believed that number is much higher today.

(SOS:  I asked Pantry Director Sarah Harrington what items were most needed, and she sent me a list of 16 items. We have yet to get a link to Amazon, but these are simple, readily availble items not availablee to the food pantry from grocery stories or other sources. If you can please send these things in any amount, cases are the best but smaller amounts are welcome. The need is urgent. The items should be sent c/o Sarah Harrington, Executive Director, The Cambridge Food Pantry,  24 East Main Street, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.If you need a phone for Amazon, 518 677 7152)

Here are the items: chicken noodle soop, mustard, mayonnaise, relish, windex or other window cleaners, vanilla extract, chunky peanut butter, salt, baking powder, black pepper, grated parmesan cheese, bar soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, baby formula.)

We are working on an Amazon Wish List that makes it simpler to choose items. In the meantime, I hope you’ll be able to help. Chicken noodle soup is the most asked-for item.

Food depravaton is increasingly common among children,  young families and the elderly.

If only billionaires carried as much about hunger as they do about making more money and wrecking our political system. Think what Elon Musk could do with his money.

Most people who go into food pantries wish to keep it private. They are often embarrassed for their needs to be known. Sumer can only afford to do that, with the food pantry, she and her family need help eating.

I understand and respect that. I will only take photos of people eating in the building or picking up food there. No one will be photogoraphed withou theri permission. But it is essential to my work.  I’ve learned that people help people, not institutions.  I want to focus on people who use the food pantry, I am confident I will earm their co-operation as has happened elsewhere. When I talk to Sumer, I know she needs assistance as well – small acts of great kindness..

Sumer, her son Lucca, and their two dogs. Summer says hey have saved her sanity she says, she brought them with her from a disastrous time in Florida. She was washing them when we talked. She has a lot of dog love in her. Jack is the darker one, Sally the blondie.)

The pantry has been looking for people in the community who will talk to me and agree to be interviewed and photographed. Most people said no. Summer said yes, of course.

They found just the right one.

Sumer has said yes to talking with me and being photographed. She is a very needy 28-year-old woman who has a biological son and six or seven children needing care during family distress, ranging from drug abuse to extreme poverty.

She comes every week to the Cambridge Food Pantry, desperate to feed her son and the other children living with her at times. She has one child but takes in any child in need while their parents fight to get better and healthier.

I spent more than an hour on the phone today talking to Sumer; she lives about 20 miles from me. She has one son living with her, and the number of children she cares for varies from one to seven. She admits she can’t afford to feed this many people but won’t abandon those children.  She manages to do it with the help of the food pantry.

Sumer, who is impressive in her talk and thought,  has just taken a job in the kitchen of an assisted care facility, but it pays little, and her life has been a nightmare. The kids in her house usually come and go. So many families are in drug related crisis.

She has been a drug and addict for much of her life; she has been “clean” for three years and has suffered some unimaginable setbacks, violence, mother troubles, and numerous conflicts with the police. She seems intelligent, determined to get her life together, and open and honest about her troubles. We connected easily.

She has had a brutal life since birth; it was hard to hear it.  I’m going to retake her photo this coming week. She texted me the ones used here today.

The food pantry contacted me a couple of weeks ago – the new director, Sarah  Harrington  –  to ask if I could help advocate for the town’s food pantry (whose traffic has nearly doubled in recent years) and help raise awareness about the pantry and the people who need it. She said if there is any way we can help, it is greatly needed. I’m sure there are ways we can help, we need to know more. I’ve asked Sarah Harrington to make up a list of inexpensive things the pantry might need.

She’s working on an Amazon Wish List.

I told Sarah I could do it but only if I stayed within the lines of the Army Of Good, which has been so successful in recent years.

Sumer is the perfect one to talk to in order to illuminate this awful crisis. The economy is making many people rich but also making many people poor. I’ve seen the prices in the grocery stores.

Sumer is not ashamed of needing the help of a good pantry or her addictions and trouble with the law.  She makes no excuses for herself or her anger or addiction issues.  She is working very hard to get her life back in order. I liked talking with her. Before her current job, she worked for a program helping troubled children in Vermont.

I look forward to meeting with her on Thursday. I will only photograph her son, not anyone else’s.

I’ve carefully navigated photo-taking at the Mansion, Bishop Maginn, and Bishop  Gibbons. I never photograph anyone without written permission.

This idea is new to me, and I’m still figuring out how it will work.

It’s valuable to write about how a food pantry works and the many new people flooding these food pantries all over the country. I like the idea of singling out one or two people to focus on and tell the story that way. It could be said anywhere in the country right now, and it is right up the Alley of Our Army of Good.

I think an Amazon Wish List has real promise for us and the pantry.

Summer understands that we don’t have the money to turn her life around, but I suspect there are small ways in which we can help her and spread the word about food pantries that are in need nationwide. There might be some specific needs we can help her with. We’ve been doing this for years.

I’ll be writing about this more in the coming week and, at times, about the pantry itself. This is the right cause for me and the Army of Good. The food crisis needs to get the attention it deserves here and everywhere; the media is too obsessed with politics. The Army of Good has been one of the great successes of my life and one of the greatest joys.
I look forward to meeting Sumer and writing about her and the pantry.

Our philosophy is the same. Small things that make a difference. It would be great to help a desperate mother who wants to turn her life around and a good pantry that has been feeding the hungry for years and needs some recognition, like food pantries everywhere.

I’m happy to advocate for this pantry, which is doing so much good.