Canned Food You Can Believe In

This morning, our family went out and about in southeast Portland, gathering cans for the Oregon Food Bank. This was not my idea. Or Christie's. Or Wrig's. We were invited by our neighbor who organized an Obama Service Event in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

So we served.



First, let me give you the narrative: The sun shone brightly - as it ought to on a day of national service - but it was nasty cold; we are in the midst of our annual two week stretch of bitter east wind. We gathered at a local elementary school with about 125 adults and kids, where we heard poetry and mumbled through a couple of folk songs. We bumped into our friends Abigail, Asher, and Ezra, and their friends Sara and Isaac. After we apologized for bumping into them, we joined forces, grit our teeth against the wind, and started knocking on doors.



It felt very much like a daytime version of Trick or Treat. The kids raced ahead, banging on doors, waiting a fraction of a second for people to not answer, then racing on ahead again. Lots of people weren't home (vacation? brunch? gathering cans for the food bank?) but we managed to gather two full bags of food (in addition to the bag of broth and beans we brought with us). The kids did the lion's share of the work. As soon as the door would open, Asher would shout out "Give us food!" Wrig, in her calm, quiet way, would say "We're ... um ... gathering cans for ... the Oregon Food Bank" and Asher would then chip in "So that the whole city can have food!" They were very persuasive and we received far more donations than rejections.



I'm trying to wrap my brain around the fact that my kid, who has trouble looking my colleagues in the eye when they say hello to her, fearlessly solicited two bags of groceries from total strangers. Go figure.






By the end of the day, the group of 125 or so adults and kids collected 125 or so bags of food. We filled a Subaru (of course) and a big ol' gas guzzling suburban with groceries. Not bad for a couple of hours work.



My parents - who constitute roughly 33% of the readership of this blog - have doubts about our newly elected fearless leader. Me too. I can only think of one elected official I've ever trusted (and she constitutes another 33% of our readership), but unlike Clinton - who only asked to feel my pain - and Bush - who asked me to go shopping - Obama has asked me to do better. My students, who are currently revising essays about society's obligation to the poor, have asked me to do better.



So today we served.