Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

The food pantry needs cleanliness and flavoring; hand soap is one of those things that people who don’t have enough money for food can’t afford to buy. They always have to make painful choices.

Yet, as any family knows, hand soaps are essential.

Sadly, soap is often bypassed in favor of food. The Nissin Ramen Soy Sauce is one of those favored flavorings the pantry has also run out of. We can help.

(Below are Sarah’s requests for today, Tuesday:

Softsoap Moisturizing Liquid Hand Soap, Milk And Honey, 7.5 Fluid Ounce, Pack of 6, $7.44.

Nissin op Ramen Soy Sauce, 3 Ounce (Pack of 12), $13.22)

I’m working to learn more about hunger and food insecurity. I’m touched and surprised by what I am learning:

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, More than 44 million people in the US face hunger, including 1 in 5 children. Millions of people in the US don’t have enough food to eat or don’t have access to healthy food. This is a big problem, but together, we can solve it.

A million more households with children (3.3 million households) experienced food insecurity last year than in 2021. The report found that more than 13 million children in the U.S. (18.5% of the child population) lived in food-insecure households in 2022.

Note. You can now access the Cambridge Food Pantry Amazon Wish List anytime by clicking the green button at the bottom of every blog post.

Join me in this simple act of kindness. When I often have trouble sleeping, I buy an item on the Wish List. It’s a small gesture, but it makes a big difference.

Try it. Doing good feels good; we’re doing this together and doing a tremendous amount of good.

Here’s one of my added requests; I know how popular it is:

VG Splash Orange Pineapple Flavored Juice Beverage, 64 Fl Oz Bottle, $2.28.

As many of you know (for some, it’s more than you want to know), I have been on a spiritual path, facing my faults and troubles and trying to figure out how to become a better human being than I am or have been.

One of the primary goals I seized on was to find ways to help people who could use the small acts of kindness I could give them.

That has always lifted me and kept me strong. Helping people who need help is the most satisfying thing ever.

This led to the Army of Good and my work with refugee children, the Mansion, various struggling farmers, and others whose lives I might improve in small, sometimes significant,  ways. This was how I committed to growing myself, giving purpose and meaning to my life, and working on the issues I needed to work on—anger, hiding, resentment, and intolerance.

Social media was an excellent way to work through those issues.

So far, I’ve been more successful than I ever imagined being. Along with the wonderful Army of Good, I’ve done a lot of good, and the Cambridge Food Pantry is a powerful example of what I have learned about how to make those small acts of kindness work and how I—and we, in most cases—can leave people’s lives better than when we found them.

Enter Lloyd, a kind-hearted and deeply troubled man who has become a friend. He is a Cambridge Pantry patron known for riding his bike to the pantry to help get food. He is not destitute; he receives some government support, but he is depressed and unhappy.

He lives alone and tells me that he can be very lonely.  He has not been able to work since his daughter died, and his world came apart. He is keenly self-aware and understands that his life is a mess.

Yet here is the curious part – we get along very well and seem to understand one another. He says he doesn’t want my money or anyone else’s.

I met him when Sarah, the pantry director,  told me about him and how he agreed to talk with me and be photographed so that my readers could better understand how so many people – surprising in some cases- end up unable to buy enough food to live on due to the rising costs of everything, including food. He did accept help in getting a bike basket.

Sarah connected me with Lloyd so that I could help him get a basket for his bicycle so that he could bring more food home when he came to the pantry. Lloyd needs a car or other means of transportation. We traded phone numbers. Floyd’s phone is rarely working, so we can only connect once or twice a week, and we do.

Lloyd came apart some years ago after the death of his daughter due to a chronic and protracted illness.  He never got over it and could not work again. Almost everyone else in his family is either dead or also sick. He is thinking of moving near his sister, who lives in Vermont. He likes his independence.

His real problem, he told me, was his severe grief over losing his cat Frankie, who was both his best friend and his primary reason for living.

Frankie died violently at the hands of a predator one night; Lloyd got him to a vet who had to put him down; his wounds were so severe.  He described them in great and painful detail.

Lloyd told me the cats he cares for—many of which live outdoors or are feral—were his primary reason for living. However, as most of them have died, he is struggling to stay grounded.

Lloyd had seen a counselor for years, but the local health care center canceled the program, and he would have to go to Glens Falls, N.Y., to apply for help; that is too long a trip for him, even if he had a car,  and there is a long waiting list.

He has a neighbor who will drive him places in an emergency, as when Frankie staggered home to Lloyd with his fatal wounds.

Lloyd accepted help with a basket for his bicycle, which I brought him today. He kept telling me I didn’t need to do that. I said if I needed to, I wouldn’t. He laughed. If I bug him a bit, I’ll find some things he will need. And I will pester him a bit.

He also gratefully received some dry and wet cat food for a kitten he has adopted and is coming to life. He is having a rough time getting past Frankie, who he considers the living thing closest to him. “I just can’t get past it,” he said. Besides the bicycle basket and cat food, Lloyd said he doesn’t need help with anything else.

I asked him a dozen times what I could do for him—nothing more, he said, just the cat food. I might pick him up some clothes at Wal-Mart; he only seems to have shorts. Sometimes, and often with men,  you must give them things and not ask or belabor them.

He did agree that he would need gloves and a winter hat when it started to get cold. “You are nice to me,” he said. He said his sister had brought him a winter jacket.

I said I was happy to bring him some cat food weekly and kept asking him what else I could do for him. He thanked me—a lovely man—and said he loved talking with me and appreciated the cat food, but he didn’t want or need anything else.

Lloyd is interesting. He wants nothing from the world and expects nothing.

I told him I had written a book about animal grieving, and he said he would like to read it and talk to me about it. He seemed severely depressed to me, and I said I was going to search for a way for him to get some counseling, even if it was only on the phone – his phone sometimes worked and sometimes not. He thanked me for that. Frankie was everything to him.

His cat’s death left a massive hole in his life.

He said he had heard I had a cat, so I might know how he felt. I assume he was talking about Zip.

In my search for good work, I’ve taken great pride in my rapid response and success at getting people what they need.  When someone at the Mansion needed shoes, I rushed out. When they needed art supplies, I got them at Wal-Mart or Amazon.

When Sarah says she needs some food, I jump at it. I rarely meet anyone who says they need nothing.

When Sarah said they needed a better way to store milk, I went online and instantly set her a meat basket with four different compartments. I did the same for the refugee kids, Sue Silverstein, and anyone else who needed help.

But it is much harder to help Lloyd. He has a safe place to live, and he likes riding his bike. He’d love to have a car, too, but he knows that is not possible for now.

He is not looking for anything from me but an occasional conversation and maybe some cat food. I left him today with a lot of affection for him and some sadness and helplessness. I said I wanted to come back next week and meet his kitten. He said he would like that.

We sat outside his apartment and talked for nearly an hour.  We were very comfortable with each other.

It was difficult, at first, to accept that Lloyd wanted nothing more for me and was not seeking the kind of help I usually provided—cell phones, clothes, food, etc. He just liked having someone to talk to.

That is not nothing, but it is not what I expected. Sometimes, the best you can do is nothing; it is as essential to respect and accept that as it is to buy something and get it there quickly. Instant gratification is for the arrogant or the narcissist,  not the humble.

The danger of doing good is selfishness.

While it feels good to do good, it’s equally important to know the limits of humanity and kindness. There is nothing I can do for Lloyd besides feed his kitten and talk about how best to grieve animals, which I can do.

I can be his friend(and make sure he has a hat and gloves for the winter). He said he likes talking to me, and he said it helps.

————–

Note: Some of you good people have offered to pay for cat food for Lloyd’s cat. I am not accepting any outside money for this.

I’m handling it and Lloyd also agrees that he doesn’t want other people to send money. I’m keeping an eye on this and if he needs assistanceI will provide it at my expense  with his permission.

I brought him a good size bag of moist and dry cat food today, he’s set. Thanks for your kindness.