Today was a non-stop work day: blogging, taking photos, running errands, and going to the food pantry to take some pictures. Today, we continue with Day 3 of our Week Long Feed The Children Of The Cambridge Food Pantry Campaign. Today’s food is Campbell’s Condensed Chicken Noodle Soup, 10.5 Ounce Can (Pack of 12), $15.65.
I thank you for your support. You can read more about it here.
Daffodils
Gerber Daisy
Daffodils
Today marks the third day of our impactful Children’s Food Support Week. Each day, we’ve been able to provide food support for 66 families and 188 children, all thanks to your generous contributions.
Your support has been instrumental in ensuring these families don’t go to bed hungry. Let’s keep this momentum going until Friday.
Fruit Juice is arriving today; Instant Oatmeal is coming tomorrow, and we hope that Chicken Noodle Soup will come the day after, followed by Cinnamon Life Cereal and Chicken Ramen to end this particular week, a commitment to help these families caught in hard times. (Above, all of the food that came from the Regional Center today.)
It’s about compassion and empathy, something our country desperately needs. We are sending a message.
Today’s food choice for children is Campbell’s Condensed Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup, 10.5 oz can, Pack of 12, priced at $15.99.
With this donation of $15.99, we can provide most families with a hearty and nutritious dinner, just like the ones grandmothers used to make, ensuring that no child in the pantry goes to bed hungry.
Each can of soup can feed at least two children in a family, which means 24 children get Chicken Noddle Soup with each pack purchased.
I went to the Pantry this morning to see the weekly delivery from the Regional Food Bank for Southeastern New York. Volunteers from here drive an hour or so to pick up the food while other volunteers wait to get it off the truck, record it, and store it in the appropriate places—shelves and refrigerators. It’s hard work, a fraction of the weekly work at a food pantry.
The volunteers say the food coming from the Regional Bank is getting smaller all the time, and today’s supply is smaller than usual. At the same time, more and more families are coming for help with food. The process is complex and physical.
This is before and after the food is sorted and placed on shelves. I have more photos to put up tomorrow, Wednesday. I have yet to meet half of the pantry volunteers.
The bottom line is that the pantry is running low on food; as always, demand is growing, and subsidies are being cut. Families and their children need some support. This, I believe, is part of the coming Compassion Revolution. The Army Of Good is on the front lines.
We decided to focus on the children this week. This food campaign aims to ensure they have enough to eat today, tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday through the weekend. We hope to cram those backpacks with good food.
Tomorrow’s food for the Feed The Children Campaign: Life Breakfast Cereal, Cinnamon, 13 oz, Boxes 3 Pack, $8.19.
Thanks again for your support and encouragement. Doing good feels good—small acts of great kindness.
To see the Cambridge Pantry’s Full Wish List, go here.
I woke up this morning with a choice. I could go on my Iphone and see Donald Trump whining and lying again, or I could go outside and see what the sun was doing with my flowers. I made the right choice.
I felt peace and contentment seconds later.
When I look at a sunrise, gasp at the beauty of nature, or sit with a cat on my shoulder purring, the beauty around me touches and lifts me deeply.
I can go online and read some cruel message about my dyslexia or my writing “Bud” when it should be “Zip,” or I can sit with Bud on my lap or Zip on my shoulder and feel the love of animals and their mystery.
It’s a choice. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is a choice.
I can read the news and learn of the disasters, cruelty, and greed that beset the human race, or I can get my camera out and capture the beautiful landscape around me.
I can grieve the greed and ignorance of humanity’s slow but study ruin on our earth, or I can get in touch with the beauty of nature around me and concentrate more deeply on the sunset that will reveal itself to me. I can look at flowers.
I can write and read angry messages on social media or feel my happiness grow tenfold in seconds.
There is beauty before me and everyone else if we want to stop, think, and look for it. There is healing and happiness in doing good; the more good I do, the less worry and anger I feel.
When I take a picture of a beautiful flower, I feel my body react, my anxiety melts, and my anger floats away. The sound of a songbird is as beautiful as anything on Apple Music, much as I love to listen to songs there in the evening.
It’s a choice. I can choose what is before me. I can love my wife, daughter, and granddaughter instead of just the news.
This is the practice of joy and beauty. I always have a choice: turn to the dark or the light. I feel my breathing slower, calmer, and more profound. I find myself and my heart gentler and full of compassion and gratitude. It’s a choice, my choice.
It’s my choice, and I make it every day, often more than once. I am responsible for my life, not any politician, priest, or broken person with a computer.
I never knew that these choices influenced my body so clearly and intensely. I can feel it every day.
The Spring sun is here, which is good news for a photographer. It lights up our windows and the succulents and flowers Maria keeps putting in them and moving around to catch the light and sun. She also always arranges and re-arranges the flowers. She knows I will spot them and photograph them sooner or later. Here are four I took this morning. Live and learn. I hope you enjoy them.
Our windows are an art gallery of their own; Maria is the curator; I never see her move them or put them up or arrange them. But they are always there.
I love the light in the vases and the plants.
This one caught my eye from across the room.
