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benefit from a few more beta carotenes
Monday, December 24 2007
The state of reality at the end of 2007: I saw the following photo on the homepage of NewYorkTimes.com this afternoon and initially thought it was an article about video games.
But it's actually to illustrate the uptick in tourism in Bethlehem this Christmas season, the product of recent calm in the West Bank.
Every year Penny and David spend the day before Christmas working at a soup kitchen (a fairly common ritual for Jews in America). Their kitchen of choice is in the basement of a Methodist church on Clinton Street in Kingston. They'd asked Gretchen and me if we'd wanted to help out this year and Gretchen had the perfect excuse: she couldn't bear seeing all the animal carcasses that would be served. I had no such excuse, so somehow I ended up agreeing to help out.
When I arrived at the church (a half hour after I'd said I would), I discovered that I'd forgotten a bag of things Gretchen had given me to bring. The basement of the church, a large room with wooden floors, two basketball hoops, and an adjacent industrial kitchen, seemed disturbingly bleak when I arrived and I needed some time to steel myself for an evening spent entirely outside my comfort zone. So I drove all the way home just to get that one bag. I tried to justify the unnecessary trip by looking extra diligently for salvageable firewood on either side of my route, but there was still too much snow on the ground to see anything. I had my camera with me and I was finally able to take a picture I've been wanting to take for years, the eastern escarpment of Hurley Mountain with all the snow melted away except for the extensive network of deer trails, which it highlights.
The network of deer trails on Hurley Mountain, viewed from Wynkoop Road just to the east.
The Esopus Valley, circa 3:50pm, looking south from Hurley Mountain Road just north of Dug Hill Road.
Back at the Methodist church, I did what I could to stay busy, which didn't seem easy at first given all the volunteers (which included David's friend Ian from London, the guy I'd met yesterday). Eventually I settled on working as a bartender. Now I don't know if any of my readers have ever had the experience of working as a bartender in the basement soup kitchen of a Methodist church, but let me just say straight up that the work didn't involve the mixing of any fancy drinks or preparations containing alcohol. The palette for my creations was a cooler of half-gallon generic store-brand soft drinks and a couple cans of apple cider (almost no one wanted the latter). The only mixing was of ice cubes with drinks (no one ordered any mixes between two softdrinks). At first I didn't have any ice cubes for adding to drinks and was taking them from the cooler itself, a practice that would prove nasty if continued. So Ian and I went on a stroll down Clinton to buy proper bags of ice. On the way there we were stopped by the church's pastor (a non-nonsense woman in her late-30s whom Penny says used to work as a bartender). She said she had a bunch of ice back at the church, so we rode back with her. The key to getting this ice was on the pastor's keychain, and only she'd known it was available.
Eventually the pastor announced to the assembled that they could queue up for food. And as they did so, she thanked each of us volunteers by name, rattling through a long list without ever needing to glance about the room to remind herself of our faces. She even thanked the guy who had been playing the piano. Then she went on to stress the importance of everyone going upstairs to the sanctuary after dinner for services. She said she didn't care how people were dressed or how much money they had in their wallet, just that it was important to gather and worship "Christ Jesus." Finally she led everyone in prayer. Interestingly, the pastor and some in the congregation prayed not by clasping hands but by holding up the right hand, eyes wide open, as if taking an oath. I haven't been surrounded by praying people for many years, and this struck me as something of a novelty for an activity generally regarded as resistant to change. The religious pitch was straightforward and concise and, on the spectrum of such things, not especially grating. I would have (of course) preferred a fully-secular pitch that emphasized time-tested earthly ways for the poor might improve their lot and the lots of those around them, but this was, after all, a church, which has its own indirect ways of getting there.
As the the queue filed past, I worked in perhaps the easiest part of the line, behind the tubs of salad. Everyone was eager to get animal proteins (ham and turkey) and perhaps carbohydrates (white flour buns and macaroni salad), but there was decidedly less interest in green salad or even, for that matter, in fruit salad. When I noted that no one was taking any green salad, I began preparing bowls of it ahead of time, garnishing them (on David's suggestion) with a slice of tomato and a carrot. When people could see the salad as a prepared and appetizing unit (as opposed to a vast tray of lawn clippings), they were much more likely to ask for it. I felt like I was doing my part to promote better nutrition for a demographic that looked like it could benefit from a few more beta carotenes.
I'm normally somewhat shy around strangers, but something about the simple, straightforward nature of the food line interactions made me outgoing and jocular in a way that I rarely get (particularly sober, which I was).
The people taking advantage of the free meal were mostly white, very polite, and better dressed than I would have expected. Many were overweight, but not more so than is average in Kingston. There were also a few people who were either there because they are part of the congregation or because they have a fondness for free food. One guy seemed to be fresh out of college, with a good haircut, glasses, tidy clothes, and an educated demeanor. The food was far from gourmet, but it would do if one was a bachelor living alone on a Christmas Eve.
In some ways the serving of the food reminded me of how a wedding dinner is served. There was the mechanical efficiency, the tight scheduling, and a smiliar array of options. Where it differed most dramatically from standard wedding protocol was the "no seconds" policy. It was hard to turn down people (particularly ginormous people) who had obviously not had enough, but Penny didn't want to get yelled at by the pastor, who (judging from tales of Christmas Eves past) has to keep a lid on things to preserve order and rein in the impulses of those with self-control issues.
At one point in the afternoon I'd remembered my digital camera, which I'd left on the passenger seat of my unlocked car directly in front of the church. I ran out to retrieve it and was delighted to find it hadn't been stolen, and that my wallet (which had been lying next to it) was also still there. Perhaps this says a little something about why some of those in attendance tonight continue to have issues with poverty: they don't see (or fail to take advantage of) opportunities right in front of them.
When everyone had been fed, we were free to eat from the leftovers. There was still a lot of ham and turkey, although the baked asparagus and white bread buns were pretty much gone. (I'd gotten the sense that many of these people hadn't had a lot of experience with asparagus.)
While the diners were all herded upstairs for their USDA-recommended dose of God, we the volunteers cleaned up. There was a fairly large amount of leftover food, and though the kitchen serves a meal every day to whomever needs it, there were things that couldn't be preserved, particularly the boxes of cakes decorated with glowing Chernobyl colors.
After having done our civic good for the entire year, Penny, David, Ian, and I retreated to Snapper Magee's in Uptown Kingston, which surprised me by being open (we'd considered going to the Hurley Mountain Inn, but that place later proved closed). Snapper Magee's is a nice approximation of a local dive bar. It reminded Penny of being back in college but (as I pointed out) without having to be the oldest person there. For all the lonesome alcoholics drinking away their Christmas Eve, the staff had put out a spread of free turkey with all the fixin's.
We drank some beers, David and Ian played eight games of pinball, and at some point everyone (including the bartender) busted out their digital cameras and started photodocumenting the evening.
The dessert table, with its fighteningly-glowing cakes.
Penny with the daughter of one of the parishioners.
The scene. The guy in the foreground is the kitchen's head cook.
Ian and David snacking after working the line.
Penny takes a picture at the appropriately-named Snapper Magee's.
Ian takes a picture with his tiny British cellphone at Snapper Magee's.
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