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STOCKTON, Calif. — Jackie Hoffman sifted through a laundry bin filled with aging loaves of bread. Like nearly a third of the first 50 customers to arrive at the Emergency Food Bank of Stockton that morning, Hoffman was new to the pantry. But since she lost her sales job at a local newspaper in December, she has not found work. “I’m down on my luck,” Hoffman said, squeezing and sniffing the bread. “And food is going through the roof. I need help.”
Hoffman, 55, is one of the growing number of “nontraditional” food-pantry clients across the country. They include formerly independent senior citizens, homeowners and people who used to call themselves “middle-class” — those who are not used to fretting over the price of milk.
In Washington state, “We’re hearing dozens of these stories every week,” said Shelley Rotondo, executive director of Northwest Harvest, which distributes food to 300 hunger programs statewide and operates a food bank in downtown Seattle.
“A lot of working folks are coming to us, people who were making it, but they’ve been pushed over the edge because of the cost of food and the cost of fuel,” Rotondo said.
Rotondo said food banks are “getting squeezed on both ends,” weathering sharp increases in food and fuel costs at the same time the need is increasing. The number of clients at the Seattle food bank has risen 10 percent in the past three months, while the agency has had to pay “fuel surcharges” adding up to 50 percent to the fuel cost of some shipments.
“What scares me the most is the uncertainty about where this is going to stop,” Rotondo said.
April saw the biggest jump in food prices in 18 years, according to the Labor Department. At the same time, workers’ average weekly earnings, adjusted for inflation, dropped for the seventh straight month.
To meet growing demand, America’s Second Harvest — The Nation’s Food Bank Network, pressed lawmakers for the past year to increase the annual level of funding for The Emergency Food Assistance Program, (TEFAP), from $140 million to $250 million annually.
A survey it conducted of 180 food banks in late April and early May found that 99 percent have seen an increase in the number of clients served within the past year. The increase is estimated at 15 percent to 20 percent, though many food banks reported increases as high as 40 percent.
The money was included in the Farm Bill recently approved by Congress but won’t be available until the next fiscal year, which starts in October.
“The way it’s going, we’re going to have a food disaster pretty soon,” said Phyllis Legg, interim executive director of the Merced Food Bank, which serves 43 food pantries throughout foreclosure-ravaged Merced County in California.
Food banks across the country are in similar straits. Some have had to cut back on how much food they give, or how often.
“If gas keeps going up, it’s going to be catastrophic in every possible way,” said Ross Fraser, a spokesman for America’s Second Harvest.
Stories of want and need are mounting. In informal surveys, America’s Second Harvest has found a growing number of food banks in crisis mode.
• In Albuquerque, N.M., the Roadrunner Food Bank reported that the pantries it serves are turning people away.
• In Baton Rouge, La., the public school system has found students hoarding their free and reduced-price lunches so they can bring them home and have something to eat at night.
• In Merced, the food bank is planning to curtail a brown-bag program, which supplies groceries to senior citizens, from once a week to once every two weeks, Legg said.
Even in San Francisco, a city that has been relatively unscathed by the foreclosure crisis and economic downturn, food pantries are seeing hundreds of new clients.
“We’ve gone from serving about 450 to 600 clients a day since Christmas,” said Sara Miles, director of The Food Pantry.
“This is one of the worst times that our food banks have experienced in recent years in terms of the level of need and our ability to meet the need,” said Vicki Escarra, president and chief executive officer of America’s Second Harvest.
The Emergency Food Bank of Stockton, which operates out of a warehouse at the fringe of town, now finds customers lining up several hours before it opens at 10 a.m.
That’s because, clients say, the best food — the fresh meat and eggs — goes first.
“If I get here too late, I’ll be left with Marshmallow Fluff for 14 days,” said Sondra Pearson, a mother of seven. “Not,” she added, “that I’m going to turn that down.”
[Via - SeattlePI.Com]
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Food Banks Are Running Into Troubles | Breaking Bad News
Breaking Bad News: Violinist Smashes $1 Million Fiddle
breaking bad news
LONDON (AP) ― Can his fractured fiddle - a million-dollar Guadagnini - be fixed? It’s too early to tell.
David Garrett, a former model who has been called the David Beckham of the classical scene, said he tripped while carrying his 18th century violin as he was leaving London’s Barbican Hall after a performance, smashing it to bits.
“I had it over my shoulder in its case and I fell down a concrete flight of stairs backward,” Garrett said Thursday. “When I opened the case, much of my G.B. Guadagnini had been crushed.”
Garrett said he bought the 1772 violin for $1 million in 2003, and he is now hoping to get it repaired in New York, where he is based.
“I hope and pray that it can be fixed, but if it can’t, I hope my insurance policy will let me buy another great violin,” the 26-year-old musician said. He told The Associated Press that other published accounts saying the violin was a Stradivarius were incorrect. Guadagnini is believed by some to have been a student of Antonio Stradivari.
The accident occurred Dec. 27 but only became known this week when he returned to London for another concert at the Barbican and told British reporters what had happened.
For his Valentine’s Day concert there, he is playing a Stradivarius that’s been lent to him.
Garrett gained attention as a child prodigy. Before he was 10, he played as a soloist with the London Philharmonic, according to his Web site.
When he studied at the Juilliard School in New York, he became a part-time model to help supplement his income.
[Via - CBS.Com]
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Breaking Bad News: Crazy woman makes 10,000 calls to ex
A dumped girlfriend plagued her ex with more than 10,000 calls and text messages in 65 days, a British court has heard.
Timothy Mortimore, 37, received the equivalent of one call or message every eight minutes, Britain’s Daily Mail reports.
His 23-year-old ex, Lee Amor, reportedly ignored police warnings about her behaviour after the end of a six-month relationship.
Pregnant, and wrongly convinced the baby was Mr Mortimore’s, she contacted him an “astronomical” number of times, the paper says.
The Daily Mail report says Amor appeared before South Devon Magistrates’ Court and admitted harassment “in texting, sending mobile video messages, telephone calls, and in person”.
She was given a two-year conditional discharge, told to pay £200 costs and made the subject of a restraining order barring contact with Mr Mortimore.
Mr Mortimore, of Torquay, told the court the experience had caused him “physical and emotional fatigue”.
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Breaking Bad News: We would like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loudly.
breaking bad news
LONDON (Reuters) - An official announcer for London’s Tube system has been sacked after making spoof messages mocking American tourists, peeping Toms and sweaty commuters.
Voiceover artist Emma Clarke, 36, recorded the announcements in the same smooth tones that have warned millions of passengers to “Mind The Gap” and posted them on her Web site.
The messages include:
* “We would like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loudly.”
* “Would the passenger in the red shirt pretending to read the paper but who is actually staring at that woman’s chest please stop. You are not fooling anyone, you filthy pervert.”
* “Would passengers filling in answers on their Sudokus please accept that they are just crosswords for the unimaginative and are not in any way more impressive just because they contain numbers.”
* “Here we are crammed again into a sweaty Tube carriage … If you’re female smile at the bloke next to you and make his day. He’s probably not had sex for months.”
Clarke said it was “just a bit of a laugh.” But Tube operator Transport for London (TfL) failed to see the funny side and dropped her, after eight years.
“London Underground is sorry to have to announce that further contracts for Miss Clarke are experiencing severe delays,” a TfL spokesman told the Evening Standard Monday.
[Via - Announcer sacked over spoof messages]
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Breaking Bad News: Hailstorm Sets Off Bomblets in Lebanon
BEIRUT, Lebanon - The season’s first hailstorm Tuesday was a blessing in disguise for cluster bomb-infested parts of southern Lebanon, triggering blasts from previously unexploded bomblets. No injuries were reported.
After a long dry spell across Lebanon, hailstones as big as walnuts hit villages and struck undiscovered bomblets scattered across the landscape, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center (MACC), confirmed that many cluster bombs exploded when they were hit by hailstones in villages near the town of Marjayoun.
[Via - NewsDay]
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Breaking Bad News: Indian Man Forced To Marry A Dog
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A man in southern India married a female dog in a traditional Hindu ceremony as an attempt to atone for stoning two other dogs to death - an act he believes cursed him - a newspaper reported Tuesday.
P. Selvakumar married the sari-draped former stray named Selvi, chosen by family members and then bathed and clothed for the ceremony Sunday at a Hindu temple in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, the Hindustan Times newspaper said.
Selvakumar, 33, told the paper he had been suffering since he stoned two dogs to death and hung their bodies from a tree 15 years ago.
“After that my legs and hands got paralyzed and I lost hearing in one ear,” he said in the report.
The paper said an astrologer had told Selvakumar the wedding was the only way he could cure the maladies. It did not say whether his situation had improved.
Deeply superstitious people in rural India sometimes organize weddings to dogs and other animals, believing it can ward off certain curses.
The paper showed a picture of Selvakumar sitting next to the dog, which was wearing an orange sari and a flower garland.
The paper said the groom and his family then had a feast, while the dog got a bun.
[Via - Speed Dating News]
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