Tag: food

Feed the Hungry

September 15th, 2026

There are millions of people in the world who starve every day. There are reasons why this population lacks food. Wars, droughts, floods, and political turmoil all play a role. So, do we do anything about famine? Governments and NGOs get involved, but what are individuals supposed to do?

In the Catholic tradition there are the seven Corporal Acts of Mercy. These actions are derived from the Christian scripture (Matthew 25:31-46). Catholics are supposed to perform these acts to satisfy the physical needs of others, and to alleviate their suffering. The first act on the list is to feed the hungry. It would seem like a simple thing to do, but apparently, it isn’t because people still don’t have enough to eat. There are many ways to feed the hungry both locally and far away. It doesn’t matter much how a person fulfills this obligation. What matters is that a person does something.

Over the years, my wife and I have tried to alleviate hunger in our community. For a long time, we helped serve meals at a soup kitchen run by the St. Vincent de Paul Society. During Covid, we delivered meals to folks who were isolated and homebound by the pandemic. We have donated to food pantries. I have taken a homeless person to a sandwich shop and bought them lunch. We have tried to do small acts of mercy.

The primary objective with feeding the hungry is to give them something to eat. That should be obvious. A person who lacks food may not care that much how you feed them. They probably don’t care a lot about why you are feeding them. They just want to eat. So, give them something.

However, feeding the hungry is not just about giving food to people who are literally starving. There is more to it than that. We have to first fill their stomachs and then fill their hearts. It actually does matter how you do this, and it matters why you are feeding them. The spirit of the act matters.

Kahlil Gibran wrote,

“For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.”

When Karin and I helped out at the meal program that fed the homeless population in Milwaukee, the folks from the St. Vincent de Paul Society were adamant that we do more than just serve them food. We were strongly encouraged to sit and eat with them. We were there to share a meal with our guests. It took me a while to understand, but eventually I figured out that the people coming to the soup kitchen for supper wanted more than just food. They wanted respect and companionship. They definitely didn’t want our pity. They needed to enjoy a sense of human dignity that they couldn’t find anywhere else. For maybe an hour or so, they wanted to know that they mattered.

When Karin and I first became Asher’s foster parents, we were overwhelmed. We were both retired persons, and suddenly we were new parents again, trying to care for a baby only a few weeks old. Somehow, we managed, but it was a drastic life change for us. We got some help from people in our church. One man in particular comes to mind.

Jim is our age, or older. He is active in the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and when Karin and I began to raise Asher, Jim was involved with a meal program several miles from where we live. Jim volunteered at that soup kitchen every Tuesday evening. He decided to make sure that we got meals from that site. So, every Tuesday night, for a year, Jim brought us meals. We ate whatever the homeless people got for supper at the meal site. It was wonderful. Jim filled our bellies, but he also filled our hearts.

Could Karin and I have cooked something for ourselves? Or could we have ordered takeout? Sure, we could have done those things. But Jim knew how busy we were with that little baby, and how heavy a load we carried. He brought us food, but he also brought us love and compassion.

Yesterday, I cooked a meal for some friends of ours. Their daughter was a classmate of Asher’s last year in school. The little girl was very recently diagnosed with leukemia. Karin gave the meal to the family when she picked up Asher from school. It was a small thing for us to do, but we wanted to help them in some way.

What did we actually give this family? Yes, we fed them. We gave them food. We also made it clear that they are not alone in their struggle. We let them know that we care. We gave them love. We fed their hearts.

My Kind of People

March 15th, 2026

I was at The Daily Bird a couple days ago. I had to drop off somebody who had an interview at Meta House a few blocks away. I didn’t know how long the interview would take, so I wandered into the café to get a cup of joe and a breakfast sandwich. I also brought a paper tablet with me so that I could write a snail mail letter to a friend in Pennsylvania. I like doing that sort of thing.

The Daily Bird is a scruffy, working-class kind of place. It’s totally not Starbucks. It’s not much like anything else either. Years ago, that coffee shop was called the Fuel Cafe. That particular business was also rather informal. The Fuel Cafe had a strong motorcycle vibe to it (the owners of Fuel sponsored the annual “Frozen Snot Ride” at the tail end of the Wisconsin winter). Daily Bird keeps a bit of the biker motif, but the proprietors lean heavily into the theme of drug prevention and recovery. That makes total sense to me, and it is timely.

Daily Bird has all the old tables and ancient wooden booths left over from the Fuel Cafe. The only real difference now is that the new owners painted damn near everything, both inside and out, in a godawful bright yellow. I will grant you that the color scheme makes it easy to find and recognize the coffee shop. A person can see it from blocks away. It’s definitely an upbeat hue. It’s hard to be depressed in the café. However, I think it might be rough on a person who is already wound tight. I have to believe that they got the paint for free. I can’t imagine paying money for gallons and gallons of lemon-yellow paint.

Next to the counter is a table covered with brochures and pamphlets. On it there are free samples of Naloxone (Narcan), an opioid receptor antagonist. Narcan can save somebody who has overdosed. There are also free fentanyl test kits. And there are pregnancy tests available. As I mentioned, this is not a typical café. The owners are concerned with wellbeing of the local community in a very hands-on sort of way. I think it’s kind of cool.

I had to use the restroom halfway through my mug of coffee. I noticed quickly that there was no mirror in the room. Instead, written above the sink in bold, black letters was this:

“You look GREAT! Now, wash your hands!”

Sage advice.

The coffee was good. The breakfast sandwich made fresh, and I appreciated that. The music played in the coffee shop was eclectic. The baristas probably picked it out. I took some time to observe the folks who came into the place. I suspect that they were almost all locals, denizens of the Riverwest neighborhood. I bet that the customers all have interesting stories to tell. They looked intriguing. They looked real. In other places, say in a Starbucks, people sometimes come in dressed to impress. Not so at The Daily Bird. It seemed obvious to me that the clientele has no desire to put on a front. They are who they are and that is kind of refreshing.

A portion of the customers got a coffee and immediately went out the door and lit up a cigarette. Keep in mind that it is still winter here in the north country, and the weather was cold on the morning I visited the café. I have to assume that at least a few of them were down to their last two acceptable addictions, and they were making the most of the opportunity to feed their need. So be it. Caffeine and nicotine usually don’t result in a fatal overdose. The long-term effects are a different story.

I sat for a while and then I had to pick up the person with the interview. I had finished my letter and my coffee. I enjoyed the time at The Daily Bird. I plan on coming in again. They are my kind of people.

Not Home for the Holidays

November 30th, 2025

“All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?” – from “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles

Three of us sat at the dining room table for Thanksgiving dinner: Karin, Asher, and me. Our holiday meal was simple. We had chicken, a green bean casserole, zucchini fries, and a yogurt dessert that Karin had dreamed up. I think Asher, our nearly five-year-old grandson, actually ate mac and cheese, but at least he ate with us. Karin and I have three children. None of them were able to be with us on Thanksgiving. Our tiny gathering in no way resembled the Normal Rockwell painting from The Saturday Evening Post in 1943. I suspect that almost no Thanksgiving dinners look like what Rockwell idealized.

Thanksgiving is a strange beast. It is officially a secular event with all the trappings of a religious holiday. It commemorates the first Thanksgiving in 1621 when Pilgrim colonists in Massachusetts shared a feast with members of the Wampanoag tribe. The original gathering has a symbolic and mythical status. The current holiday is supposed to be an occasion for people to share food with others and express gratitude for what they have. It is also an opportunity to overeat, binge-watch TV, and then buy unnecessary consumer goods the following day. Thanksgiving is a day full of contradictions. As such, it is profoundly American.

Karin and I said a Christian prayer before we ate our meal with Asher. Then we recited a Japanese Buddhist verse that we learned from our friends, Senji and Gilberto, long ago. We chanted “Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo” three times, and then we joined hands with Asher and said, “Froelich heisst beim Abendessen: Guten Appatit!” (a German phrase that Karin learned as a child that roughly translates to: “Happy means at dinner ‘have a good appetite'”.

Years ago, before Asher entered our lives, I used to go with a small group of people from the American Legion to visit patients in the psych ward at the local VA hospital. We went there every Tuesday evening for a couple hours to spend time with the vets. Around the holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas, the ward was packed full of patients. Holidays that emphasized being with family and friends were particularly painful for veterans who had no loved ones. The loneliness that these vets could somehow keep in check during most of the year overwhelmed them, and they wound up in a hospital ward loaded up with strangers who felt equally forgotten. I’m glad that I had the chance to spend a few hours with these men and women. We shared our common humanity for a little while, and I learned things from them.

Our culture and our technology encourage us to remain isolated. We need to be physically together at least once in a while. I give thanks for Asher and Karin for being in my life every day. I look forward to being with others too.

Back on Brady Street

August 25th, 2025

Asher starts kindergarten at Tamarack Waldorf School on September 3rd. This is obviously a big deal, both for Asher and for Karin and me. Going to school will open up a whole new world for Asher. He will get to know his teacher, and he will make friends. He will have to learn how to follow a schedule. He’s never had to do that before. Asher has mostly done what he wants when he wants, and for the most part we, as his guardians, have been okay with that. That all changes in a little over a week. He is going to have to get up early, eat breakfast, get dressed, and go to class for the morning every morning. I’m almost certain he will balk at this, at least until he gets comfortable in his class and starts looking forward to doing things with the other children.

I will mostly likely be driving Asher to class each morning. I am a morning person, unlike my wife. The Waldorf school is close to downtown Milwaukee, which means Asher and I will have a half hour drive to get him to class by 8:00 AM each day. Traffic will suck. My wife did this kind of thing with our own kids twenty-five years ago. We know the drill. Since Asher will only be there until 12:30, it is kind of iffy as to whether it is even worthwhile for me to drive back home once I drop him off. I might as well stay in area around the school while he is in class.

Tamarack is located on Brady Street on the lower eastside of Milwaukee. It’s close to Lake Michigan. Tamarack uses the old school building from St. Hedwig’s Catholic Church. The steeple of St. Hedwig’s towers over the other buildings on the street. It is the anchor for the neighborhood. The school building is ancient. It has classrooms with high ceilings, tall windows, and hardwood floors. The school has a feeling of solidity and durability. If you listen closely, you can hear the voices of previous generations of children laughing and yelling in the halls. For me, there are ghosts in the school. Even if I am surrounded by the new parents and their kids, I can still feel the presence of the people who taught and learned in that place a quarter century ago. The school contains echoes of the past, but it is also vibrant with the energy of the latest generation. It’s like life is coming full circle.

Brady Street is an interesting neighborhood. It always has been. Early on, it was an immigrant community of Germans, Poles, and Italians. St. Hedwig’s is named after a Polish saint. There is still an Italian grocery store (Glorioso’s) a few blocks away from the school. Peter Sciortino Bakery is across the street from Tamarack. During the 60’s and 70’s, Brady Street was a hippie hangout. Now, it’s a narrow road lined with bars that cater to a mostly hipster crowd, young people with money. But the neighborhood is still quirky. The community is very LGBTQ friendly. The area is ethnically diverse. Brady is a good street for walking and browsing. There is a paradoxical sense of permanence and simultaneous upheaval. It’s a neighborhood that is alive.

I came to know that area in the 1990’s. I used to go down the block from the school to the Brewed Cafe for coffee. Sometimes, I went there by myself, and sometimes with my wife. Brewed is not there anymore. They closed down a few years ago, and now the place is a Brazilian coffee shop. The new coffee house is nice enough, but it’s not Brewed. The Brewed Cafe had this scruffy, working-class, antiestablishment atmosphere. Once a person managed to get through the front door, which never really opened and closed very well, they would see numerous pamphlets and posters advertising upcoming shows by local bands or political events or art exhibits. The front counter was small and cramped. At busy times of the day, customers lined up almost all the way back to the door. Once at the counter, a person could order coffee or other beverages. They had beer (it’s Wisconsin-almost every establishment serves beer). There was a tiny kitchen in the back where people made vegan sandwiches and other dishes. The folks working at Brewed all had more than usual number of tattoos and piercings. I’m sure they worked for minimum wage, but they got to pick what music was played in the coffee shop.

Even when there were only a few customers, Brewed seemed crowded. Space was at a premium. The tables were small and wobbly. If you ordered coffee, you got that immediately. If you ordered food, it showed up eventually. The walls were covered with works by local artists. The bathrooms were microscopic in size, and the walls were plastered with graffiti and stickers for bands that I had never heard of. The place was clean, but cluttered. Over the years, it had accumulated a variety of objects that somehow lost their purpose and meaning, but remained there, nonetheless. Brewed was oddly comfortable. Going there for coffee or lunch was kind of like going into somebody’s home.

I miss that place. I will have to find another hangout on Brady Street.