If you judge a person by their dogs or cats, then Sumer Quickenton is a kind and sweet person with a great heart.

If you gauge a person by their stories, then Sumer’s life is one tragic explosion after another. She is fortunate to be alive.

She is 28 years old. I met her today in her apartment and liked her. She is articulate, honest, and in great need, with a horrific family and life history.

(above, Sumer with her dog Sally)

It is common for poor and younger people to get snared in the great American corporate legal and financial system. Once in, it takes luck and hard work to get out. Sumer is in.

She plans to get out.

I will write regularly about her and how much a food pantry means to her and many others in the coming weeks.

I am grateful she agreed to meet and talk with me as I enter the rapidly growing world of Food Pantries and the Army Of Good.

I’m writing because my small town has a small food pantry that feeds hundreds of people every week, and I want to talk to Sumer to understand better what drives so many people in my town and elsewhere to food pantries to feed their families and to hide it from the world.

Also, to support the pantry, the heroic effort of a small-town pastor to help the poor was a Christian idea often lacking in modern-day Christianity.

Although the pantry is booming, if that’s the right word, it’s something of a secret. Nobody who goes there is at ease talking about it. I respect their privacy; I intend only to bother them if they want to be bothered.

I’ve already established a great working relationship with the competent new Executive Director, Sarah Harrington. She gets it.

(The Cambridge Pantry Amazon Wish List we put up yesterday started with 17 items (multiple needs of some), sold out, and is now up again and down to nine. Please consider the new and remaining items.’

The Army Of Good has always succeeded in finishing off a wish list for a good cause, and this is a good cause, as is the Mansion and the refugee children. You can find the remaining items here. The list is different from yesterday; it lists food items that are not available from other sources:  vegetable beef soup, creamy peanut butter, Bumble Bee Chunk light tuna, Progresso bread crumbs, Grated Parmesan cheese, Canned Shunk Chicken Breast in water, Kraft Ranch Dip & Dressing, French’s Classic Yellow Mustard, Zep Streak-Free Glass Cleaner.)

(Sumer with Jack)

A government report issued last year 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.

I understand why people are embarrassed to speak of their food needs. They feel great shame about not being able to feed their families.

Summer is the only person who goes to the pantry weekly and is willing to talk to me and be identified. I understand that pantry customers are embarrassed; I get it. Summer agreed to tell her story without hesitation or constraint; I admire her for that.

The visitors span all ages and social structures.

Sumer is determined to stay healthy and talks about how vitally important the food pantry is.

She has one child but has lived with up to seven. She takes in kids of parents who need help with addiction and other problems. With the food pantry, she is sure they could all be fed.

“I depend on it,” she says. It makes a huge difference in my life. I’m not sure what I would do without it.”

She says she is still determining what she would do without it. They ask no questions and make no demands.

Sumer has a job now, which she sees as temporary.  It pays little.

She was a counselor for parents with troubled children in Vermont and loved the job. She briefly had some money to pay her bills.

There was trouble, and she had to leave the job. She needs a bit more training to get another job like that. There are many obstacles to that.

Like many young and poor people in America, she is snarled in a web of bills, fines, and obligations.

I know from my life as a reporter that when people get snared into drugs and addiction and legal issues, it is tough to get free and have the life they want. The system shuts them out and doesn’t like to let them back in.

Summer is brave and determined, but her face tells the story of her exhaustion, depression, and constant stress. It is no picnic living in America with debt and little income. The food pantry makes it possible for her.

“The pantry is so important to us,” she says, speaking of herself and her son Lucca. “The people there are very kind, and we can go every week, not just once a month. They have clean and nutritious food for us. I wish there were more meat available, but they do the very best that they can.”

She has suffered a great deal all of her life; she and her mother, who is dead now,  both suffered from drug addiction. “She was very troubled but was my protector; I miss her,” she said. It didn’t sound to me that Sumer had much protection from anyone for most of her life.

She sometimes feels like she is often losing “pieces of my soul.”

Sumer said she sometimes sold pieces of herself to anyone who would pay for it, and she has dreams about her all-night walks through downtown Albany selling her body to strangers, sleeping in the streets. Addiction is a nightmare, she says; it can eat you alive.

She had a severe drug addiction but has been drug-free for the past three years and lives with her seven-year-old son and a stream of temporary kids in a small apartment house not too far from our farm. Sometimes, she has to feed them all.

(Above, soap donated by Cindy Casavant, Goat Lady, to the Cambridge Pantry, where soap is in constant demand. I brought it there this afternoon.)

I’m not trying to save Sumer or tell her how to live. But she has much to teach me, and I want to learn it.

Sumer and I both understand the value of boundaries.

This is about my work,  the food pantry, and the Army Of Good. Sumer is a willing and articulate guide into this world for me. Maria came with me to meet Sumer; she had dogs and cats in her lap most of the time. They are what we call lovebugs. I said it was nice to see her smile, “the dogs usually do it for me,” she said.

We both left saddened at this young woman’s suffering.

I was touched by the fact that I only saw her wonderful smile when she had a dog or cat in her lap. Dogs are reliable judges of character to me; you can tell how they have been treated.

There is a lot of warmth and love in Sumer, but life has not given her a chance to experience much of it.

Her family and personal history are a horror story that I don’t need to detail.

I will join Sumer occasionally when she goes to the Cambridge Pantry to get food for her and her family, and  I’ll stay in touch with her. I did fall in love with her adorable dogs; they both ended up in my lap, too.

I learned much about food deprivation, how it works, and how good people work hard to help others.