I Read Feeding the Other Because We Are Entitled to Food

Feeding the Other: Whiteness, Privilege, and Neoliberal Stigma in Food Pantries by Rebecca T. de Souza
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I normally try to live (unsuccessfully, but I try!) by the mantra that I store my books at the public library, ahem, but this is a book that I wish I owned, because I wanted to highlight and underline and marginalia the ever-loving snot out of it!

As a middle-aged, mostly stay-at-home white woman with lots of experience volunteering, with lots of that volunteer experience having taken place with food provision programs, I quite resembled some of the remarks de Souza made about the practice of volunteering at food pantries, and I’ve also witnessed most of what she noted, both good and bad. I did think that her first-person perspectives leaned too hard towards overtly religious programs, because as a devout atheist I’ve mostly worked with secular programs, but in most parts of the country part of the problem IS that most/all food provision programs are overtly religious. Still, I think that spending more time with secular programming would have given de Souza a more nuanced perspective.

But regardless of whether the food provisioning is done through religious or secular means, the point of de Souza’s book is this: are we or are we not entitled to food?

If we ARE entitled to it (and I’d say that we are, as the “life” part of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”), then we should have entitlement programs that enable us to receive it with dignity and enjoy it and thrive from it. If we’re not entitled to it, as we’re currently acting like we’re not, then it becomes the province of charity, and all the meanings that the word “charity” entails.

Here’s what de Souza claims that charity entails:

“Charity depoliticizes the issue of hunger, making it a personal and a private issue, not a public one [...]. Unlike entitlements, charity does not confer upon people guaranteed rights, but rather traffics in the language of gratitude. Charity legitimizes the distribution of substandard products and services and makes it impossible to question the giver or the gift. [...] Charity reinforces social distance and hierarchy between givers and receivers and Us and Them [...]. Consequently, charity silences civic participation and resistance from those on the receiving end by creating subject positions that furthers their political and communicative disenfranchisement.”

Instead, de Souza advocates looking at hunger from a social justice standpoint, in which everyone is entitled to healthy, culturally appropriate, palatable food, and if some of us lack that, then it is because there is something amiss in the structure of our society and it must be addressed.

It’s interesting to see a societal blindspot just laid out like that, and it reminds me of other American ideologies that many people seem to blindly believe without cognition: patriotism, for example, and the fervent nationalism at its extreme end. The idea that with hard work and determination, your dreams will come true. Racism. Xenophobia.

Also, the ideology that “free” food, food you didn’t actively earn the money to buy through your hard work and determination, doesn’t need to be palatable, fresh, “fancy,” or desirable in any way. There’s a collective belief that people can “donate” the weird food they don’t want to eat, or expired food, or the absolute cheapest schlock they can find at the grocery store, and the recipients ought to be grateful to get it. Fuck them if they were craving fresh strawberries, or want to bake the same exact birthday cake their grandma used to bake them, or got food poisoning once and now have a healthy fear of products past their expiration date. If food is an entitlement, then you’re entitled to food that makes you feel satisfied both physically and emotionally. If food is charity, then you get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit.

Although de Souza spoke a lot about this, and about the low nutrient density in the highly processed, industrial food that’s the staple of most food provision programs, and how many people who wish to eat healthier, fresher, more natural food can’t access it through food provision programs, I think there’s much more to be said about how this type of food is also ruining the palates of generation after generation of children. Remember when Michelle Obama put more nutritious lunches in front of schoolchildren and lots of people pitched that fit? I mean, yes, most of that was racism, but there actually was a good bit of food refusal going on with kids who were all, “EW an orange!” and then came home and told their parents who are all, “EW they gave you an ORANGE?!?” Because when you’re used to the flavor and texture of highly-processed, overly salted and high fructose corn syruped industrial food, then fresh, healthy, nutritious food, even though it’s delicious and so much better for you, is not going to taste right in your mouth. And if you keep not choosing it, then it’s never going to taste right in your mouth. And that’s another win for the huge industrial food manufacturers.

If we have to have an ideology, then, let it be that all of us are entitled to food that is healthy, palatable, and culturally appropriate. We’re entitled to fun food. We’re entitled to fancy food. We’re entitled to comfort food. We’re entitled to both locally-grown sweet corn and novelty chicken nuggets, a bite of black truffle because we’re curious to know what it tastes like and a bowl of Top Ramen because that’s the only thing that sounds good when we’re sick. To legislate from that ideology, then, we need to increase minimum wages. We need to lower rents. We need to streamline access to food entitlement programs like SNAP and WIC so that half the purpose is no longer to stigmatize the recipients. We need to slap down political machinations and racist and sexist narratives the second they leave a politician’s mouth.

But also, we’re not nearly there yet so, you know, keep donating to your local food pantry.

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Four Little Kittens and Their Mama: Our Foster Litter is Two Weeks Old!

Dill

Welp, I couldn't actually get a hole in my head, so I did the next most unreasonable thing: I picked up the phone even when my caller ID clearly stated that the call was from our local animal shelter's foster program.

And then I did the NEXT most unreasonable thing, which is agree to take four two-week-old kittens along with their mother.

Welcome, Ginger, Clove, Dill, Fennel, and Sage!

Clove and Fennel

Ginger and family, with Dill in the foreground

All we know about them is that they were removed from unsanitary conditions in a hoarding situation. We're not even sure if Ginger is the kittens' biological mother; apparently, there were three mother cats and a lot of kittens all found in the same area, so the shelter workers estimated ages, grouped the kittens accordingly, and offered each set to a mother. Ginger accepted this set of four who were thought to be about two weeks old, so now she's their mama, they're her babies, and they're all here with us!

Dill

Clove

I've assured Ginger numerous times since then, though, that if she's missing any babies, they're with the other mama cats in other homes and having just as nice a time as she and these kittens are with us. I don't want her to worry.

Sage getting weighed, with Ginger growling at Jones on the other side of the door

Ginger and family

Kittens with their mama are a lot easier than kittens without, and for the first few days, they were a LOT lot easier. The mama takes care of all of their input and output, and it's only in the last couple of days that we've really had to think a ton about litter boxes and kitten food. They're definitely starting to get a lot messier now, but I don't think they'll ever be as messy (I hope!) as that litter of six four-week-old kittens last summer. How we managed without just burning the house down behind us, I do not know.

Fennel

That litter did inspire some new innovations for this time, however. I started them right off with lots of small, shallow litter boxes to explore, and lots of these puppy pee pads laid down everywhere. They're really not too messy yet, but it is SO infinitely easier to toss a pee pad than it is to wipe pee off the floor.

Dill

Clove, Dill, Fennel, and Sage

And now that the kids' bathroom has its new shower and new flooring--all tile! No cracked linoleum!--it's a great place to tuck away the entire family. In the mornings when I come in to clean and sanitize, I shut Ginger and the kittens into the shower and she scrabbles at the shower door, outraged, while I pick things up, sweep and steam mop, and restock, lecturing her the entire time that if she just kept the room tidier, it wouldn't take me so long to clean. I'm pretty sure that every time she's in the litter box, she picks up a couple of paws-full of litter and flings it across the room.

Dill

Ginger and family

The family has to stay quarantined away from our family pets for two weeks before we can even think about letting them out into the rest of the house, and even then I'm not quite sure how we'll manage that--I don't trust four-week-old kittens to be out of sight of their litter box, and I can already tell that Ginger won't get along with our adult cats. So let me know if you've got tips! They're also under ringworm watch at the moment, as they were definitely exposed to it in the hoarder's house. Fortunately, none of them are showing symptoms, but it does mean that we also have to change into foster family-only clothes when we visit them and change immediately when we leave, so it'll be VERY nice when that additional annoyance is done. 

Dill

Ginger

It's such a treat to have kittens in the house again, though! These are by far the tiniest babies we've ever had, and when you look at them in relation to someone holding them, they're so unbelievably small that it looks like the perspective is off somehow. I am loving every second of giving them a safe place to grow and spend a few more precious weeks with their mama. 

Clove and Sage

Fennel

I sure wish Ginger would stop flinging her damp litter around the room, though!

If You Can't Get a Hole in the Head, Get Five Four-Week-Old Foster Kittens

Syd and I are going to be playing around with idioms next week in her Creative Writing study, so it's relevant that I tell you that I needed five four-week-old kittens like I needed a hole in the head.

But to be fair, I did tell her that she needed to choose a regular volunteer commitment this year, and I did tell her that it should be something that she's passionate about. After all, those college application essays aren't going to be writing themselves!

She'd been making some noise about going back to volunteer at the little local food pantry we used to volunteer at weekly when she was a tot, so I thought that's what she'd be doing. Now that she's fully licensed she can even drive herself, so I could just sit my butt down in a quiet home for two hours a week while she built her leadership skills and logged service learning hours and created the foundation of a kick-ass college application essay about food insecurity.

But instead, somehow I found myself putting my name on a quite different volunteer application that she filled out, and then somehow I found myself going with her to pick up a litter of foster kittens. Another volunteer had already claimed the litter of four six-week-old kittens we'd originally planned to pick up, but the staffer said that another litter of five six-week-old kittens had just been dropped off that morning; would we perhaps like to take them, instead?

Five isn't that different from four, so fine.

As the staffer was examining them, though, she was all, "Hmmm... these don't look like they're six weeks old. I think they're more like five weeks."

Five weeks instead of six weeks means they'd spend just one more extra week in our care, so... okay, fine.

A few more minutes, and that became, "Actually, five weeks might be a stretch. I'm going to write them down as four weeks old."

And of course, by then I'd already been petting them, and seen that one is a tortoiseshell and one is a TORBIE!!!!!, so the news that we'd be coming home with one more kitten than planned and keeping them all at least two more weeks than planned sailed right over my head. An hour later, I was sitting on my playroom floor, holding both that tortoiseshell AND that torbie in my hands and giving them kisses on their little fuzzy foreheads!

Here are Socks, a tuxedo, and Athena, the torbie, the bravest of the litter and the first ones out of their travel crate:

The shelter gave them their first set of vaccinations before we took them home, so here are the other three tired babies sleeping off their shots in their travel crate:

And then Socks laid down for a nap, too:

Eventually, everyone was awake at the same time and whoa. It's been wild ever since!

Foster kittens are a LOT more work than it would be to spend two hours a week unloading produce at the food pantry. We've got to keep them isolated from the other household pets, and just sanitizing their area and keeping them cleaned up takes tons of time. They'll happily use the litterbox, but they'll also just as happily use the floor or their bedding--you will not BELIEVE what the kids' bathroom looked like this morning! I gagged, Syd literally almost fainted, and then five bad kitties had to get stuffed back into their travel crate while we spray cleaned and steam mopped and Lysoled the floor and walls. 

Seriously, the WALLS!!!! And then we had to come at each of the kittens with a warm washcloth, too. They were furious.

Thankfully, these guys are acting wolfishly healthy so far, wrestling and scampering and growling at each other over the bowl of wet cat food:

And they flock to Syd. Check them out sleeping and sprawling and fighting all over her lap:

A few years ago, a young friend's cat died, and in the condolence letter that I wrote to her, I told her that I believed that cats could sense when you were a person who had been loved by a cat, and she shouldn't be surprised if she found that cats were drawn to her even more now. Of course I didn't actually believe that; it was mostly just a pretty way to express to her that love is never wasted, and I wanted her to still feel like her Lavender's love was with her.

But looking at these five little foster kittens, happy and snug in a cuddle pile in Syd's arms--

--I swear I can almost feel the invisible spirit of Gracie standing there, telling five scared kittens, "Go over and climb on that kid right there. You're going to be so safe and happy with her."

And so they did. And I know that Syd actually has smiled since Gracie died--we've told jokes and had fun and things have, mostly, gone back to normal. She's definitely smiled and laughed, and she's definitely had her happy moments. But she hasn't yet been as happy as she'd been with Gracie, I don't think. I think she always misses her, and I think that remembering Gracie hurts her. I know it hurts me, and it hurts me to see my kid's grief, always just right there below the surface. 

So I'd like to imagine that the invisible spirit of Gracie really was there, that first time that those five foster kittens curled up in a cuddle pile in Syd's arms. I'd like to think that in some way Gracie, too, got to be there to see her beloved kid really, truly, genuinely happy again. 

Sports Legends and Space at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis

We've had a busy summer so far at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis!

The biggest news for US is that after spending a morning engaging children in space-themed activities (Will and another volunteer on another floor helped kids experience how difficult it is to perform fine-motor activities while wearing spacesuit gloves, and Syd and I got to man this super awesome gravitational orbits table and help kids explore gravity and movement)--

--we got to sit in on a lecture by former astronaut Mark Polansky!

He was so great. He walked us through a typical space mission, from launch to touchdown, using video taken from his own trips, and then he had a Q&A.

A Q&A for an auditorium full of children.

Yes, Reader, I DO now know what happens when you fart inside a spacesuit.

And there were two entire questions about going to the bathroom in space, not counting the fart question.

I want to tell you more about this gravitational orbit model, though, because it was so cool. It's a large PVC frame with a spandex-type fabric stretched over it. Syd and I were given several balls of various sizes and weights to use with it. You get all different kinds of kids at a museum, from toddlers to teens, of different abilities and interests, but on this morning it was mostly school groups, so we'd invite them to sit with us around the frame, and then I'd roll a ball to the kid across from me and ask all of the kids to describe its movement.

"It just goes straight across," they'd say.

Or, "It just rolls." Nothing special, obviously.

But then I'd put the heavy metal ball in the smack middle of the frame and invite the kid to roll the ball back to me. The kid would do it, and the ball's path would curve, usually spiraling towards the center of the frame, where it would rest against the metal ball.

The kids had a much more lively time describing THAT ball's path!

So I'd tell the kids that this was an excellent model for how planets orbit a star. The greater an object's mass, the greater its gravitational pull. Syd and I would hand out the various balls and invite the kids to explore, and I'd remind them a couple of times that it's more fun to take turns, so that everyone could see how their own ball acts. As they played, I'd verbalize observations, like, "See how your balls crashed into each other like two planets on an intersecting orbit?" I ready-referenced some questions, like how much mass various planetary bodies have--thank you, Google! If kids didn't get the idea on their own eventually to replace the heavy metal ball in the middle with a lighter one, I'd show them what happens when you do that--it's super cool, because if you try to orbit the heavy metal ball around the ping pong ball, what will happen is that after a lovely dance, the ping pong ball always ends up in orbit around the heavy metal ball. If kids were very engaged, I'd show them how to make a binary star system, or how to send a comet through, etc.

It was just where I liked to be, doing weird, open-ended science with a bunch of random kids.

So that was our big news and our good deed of the day. The Children's Museum's big news is that they've got a brand-new permanent exhibit, and it is the coolest thing that I have ever seen at a children's museum.

It's a kid-friendly, kid-sized, really-real-and-can-be-played-with, replica of several sports. Most areas are multi-sized, including real, though miniature, tennis courts and real, though toddler-sized basketball hoops. My kids are not the sportiest of kids, but nevertheless, every time we've gone they have freaked out with happiness at how fun this place is. Heck, I freak out with happiness, too!

 We're all dressed up because we just came from volunteering. That's the one downside of volunteering--we're never dressed in our play clothes here!

Here's Syd kicking a field goal in the football area. I love how this random employee is cheering her on:

Here's baseball on a different day. We'd come to the museum for the volunteer recognition dinner, and we got to play after-hours in Sports Legends first:

See how the baseball field is miniature? It destroys me with its cuteness!

I don't have many photos of the tennis courts, some of which are miniature, as well, because Syd absolutely fell in love with playing tennis on this half-size court and so that's what we did, forever and ever and ever!

Yes,  here we are on an even entirely different day, when the museum held a family party for all of its volunteers and staff. You get a lot of parties at the Children's Museum!

My personal favorite is the hockey rink:

I don't have any photos of us playing hockey at the family party, because we played two-on-two and it was highly competitive (I've told you that we're really competitive, right? We're really competitive), and then for some reason the actual Boomer the Panther, the actual mascot of the Indiana Pacers, randomly decided to join our game, I convinced him that he was on my team, and we kicked some serious butt. Obviously, I was not going to stop playing hockey just to take a photograph of myself playing hockey with Boomer the Panther. I might have missed a pass!

When you begin to fade in the heat, there are indoor parts of the exhibit, as well. This one is really interesting--this is inside the National Art Museum of Sport, and Syd is using colored chalk on blue paper to mimic the style of one particular sports artist:

And here she is rowing with a crew!

This shooting hoops game is my favorite thing on the planet:

Their climbable tree house reminds me a lot of the tree in Disney's Animal Kingdom:

Can you see tiny kids of mine in every photo?

The miniature golf exhibit, though, might be the most unique:

It's miniature golf, yes, but the holes are based on ones from REAL golf courses!

How cool is that?!?

Fun even for adults:

Because Indy is all about racing, there are pedal-operated race cars that you can race around a track or drag race with:

Here's Syd watching that previous video to try to see who won:

Don't tell her, but I think it was Will...

And then, I don't know, here are some random pics of us at the family party eating stuff and being weird:

I call our volunteer time here service learning, but all it really is is play.