Leave the gun take the canoli

The weekend after Valentine’s Day is even more melancholy for those isolated by illness or advanced age.    Sunday’s movie night at Rivington House started off rather low key.    My  NYCares crew,  Jeff, Marissa and Stephanie arrived at 6:20 to help me serve chocolate cake and snacks as we watched a documentary on John Coltrane with the residents.    

At 7 the movie started.  It  featured  Coltrane playing “My Favorite Things” at every milestone in his career.  The tranquility of the music  was wasted on me as the caffine from my  afternoon cappachino started to kick in.   When  I’d heard the first few notes of “My Favorite Things” for the third time my mind flipped to the  Blues Brothers movie and  the song “Rawhide.”     

I sat next to Baby Girl, one the youngest residents.  She had a million questions   ranging from who did the research for this documentary to where I bought  my boots.     ”My Favorite Things” started up again and I took it as a cue to launch into one of my favorite things.   I signaled to Jeff, pointing to the chair on the other side of Baby Girl, made a brief introduction and circulated around the room.    A few seconds later the rest of us were whispering and giggling with several  of the residents. 

The energy level in the room spiked.  My buddies were smiling and so were my volunteers.     

 A little flirting does wonders for the immune system.          

January is a cold, cruel month.  The philanthropic spirit of the holidays vaporises around the time that Christmas trees become mulch.  The midnight oil burns in board rooms of non-profits as exec’s brainstorm ways to find donors and fill seats at their spring fundraisers.   This is the month when the dilettantes sleep in on Saturdays,  leaving   preeminent volunteers from Caring Community and New York Cares  to brave the weather and visit the shut-ins of Manhattan.

This week my NYCares crew and  a dozen members  from  Kingston  Church in Michigan joined my fantastic five,   Lauren and Marciano Estigarriba, Tom Vilar,  Ginger (Wild Hearts) and Joel Mejia (Things Are Changing),  as they helped alleviate hunger and loneliness in Greenwich Village.             

 The fantastic five  use their time  and talents to spread compassion, social  justice and benevolence around the city.   Like any true super hero, their cool, yet mild mannered exteriors  offers no clue to their powerful  commitment to  making the world better for the next generation.

Lauren  and Marciano assist an organizations that serves teenagers.  Tom is devoted to helping  disabled and autistic youth.  Joel empowers kids by teaching with technology.  He teaches them the photography and video skills they need to create multi-media projects.  Ginger is  the creative consultant of my inner circle,  offering marketing tips and   brilliant strategies for promoting  worthy causes.                         

The best gift you can give anyone is your undivided attention.  Five minutes of your time is  precious  to someone isolated by illness, dementia or loneliness.     On Christmas Day, 86 exceptionally generous New Yorkers, my favorite couple from the U.K.  and my three new Australian friends gave their time and energy to the  clients of Caring Community.

 Co-ordinating volunteers for Christmas Day was  like assembling an all white jigsaw puzzle.  Tom Marrone organized the delivery routes  to accommodate my penchant for overbooking volunteers.   A normal delivery route has 7 to 10 clients.  But for Christmas he divided each route so that the volunteers could  spend a few minutes engaging every  client in a conversation. 

Tom had asked for 40 people and was expecting a mere 31, but I  can’t say “no” to someone  who wants to do a good deed.  So, by 10 a.m. we had  a crowd of   smiling faces  eager to cheer up the   shut-ins of Greenwich Village with a hot meal and a small, brightly wrapped gift.

My best regulars, Lauren and Marciano Estigarribia, Charity Diaz and Fredrick helped me organize my New York Cares team and  the City Meal On Wheels crew.   New recruits, Joel Mejia from Things Are Changing , Dara Shinler and  Amanda, Anita and Barney  were quickly teamed up with someone who could show them the ropes and sent out to spread good cheer.            

 By noon all of our jovial  volunteers had returned.  Many of them had anecdotes about our colorful clients. 

 Amanda, Anita, Barney and   I  went over  to Our Lady of Pompeii Church on  Carmine Street to serve at Caring Community’s Christmas Diner.   Every year the basement of the church is transformed to look like a restaurant with large round tables  that seat eight.           

We joined  Ginger, from the Wildhearts, and Jane Graley  who were already  hard at work waiting on tables.      I made my way around the room talking to each guest as I served the salad.    The faces were familiar and I was happy to spend yet another holiday with my extended Caring Community family.

As a New York Cares team leader, I got to take the bow for the 300+ clients we fed and greeted on Christmas.  But my friends, and fellow volunteers from City Meals On Wheels and New York Cares deserve a standing ovation for helping to allievate lonliness in NYC.       

 Organizing all of my holiday projects this year would not have been possible without the help of my good friend Barbara Genco and her daughter Bea.  They worked behind the scenes, entertaining my home-bound mother so I could wrap gifts, collect coats and run food drives.   Bea Genco  stops by after school every week to have tea with my mom.  The entire Genco family, Barbara’s  husband Mike,  son Micheal and even her brother Greg Johnson rallied together to help get my mom out to a party at their home on Christmas Eve.     

The kids at Team Green, an environmental project sponsored by New York Cares, are a savvy bunch of 5 th graders.  They’vs decided to  write and illustrate a book on ways to save the earth for their peers in a Sunset Park after school program.   Inevitably,  they’ve decided to devote a few chapters to global warming and the state of the world’s water supply.   Yesterday, they were researching the Arctic Ocean.  

“Is it true that their is no land on the North Pole? asked Jennifer,  as she flipped open several reference books and dropped a soft globe in my lap.    There was a black ink stain on the globe obscuring the North Pole.   Before I had the chance to respond,   Lourdes grabbed a book and read aloud a passage explaining that the North Pole was made up of ice and not land.   

“What does that mean for Santa Claus?’  Lourdes asked.   Jennifer looked dumbfounded.  The girls stared at each other for a second.   Then the girls got back to work.   Five minutes later they handed me the following letter and asked me if I could take care of this for them. 

Dear Santa,

Make sure you encourage people to stop global warming.  Because there is no land on the North Pole and you  are on ice and if it melts you will sink. 

 Santa, you really need to get the word out.

Yours truly,  

Jennifer and Lourdes

As the days grow shorter and darker, its wise to  live by Murphy’s Law.  Children of the City’s annual toy drive made a wrong turn onto an obstacle course last Monday when   scheduling problems caused a benefactor to  push back the delivery date on  a pledge for 300 toys.

Daniel Ramos had expended a considerable amount of energy   orchestrating every aspect of the drive from securing donations to  organizing a series of  gift sorting and wrapping events  starting on Wednesday.      The bulk of the toys were expected on Thursday.  Friday was set aside for a dozen  volunteers from NYCares  and Board Members who were also contributing toys.     Calculating the correct ratio of toys to volunteers, Daniel had everything planned  so that every volunteer would remain busy and engaged for each event.                

Grey skies and storm clouds caused further delays on Thursday, as a stormy mix of  snow, sleet and rain hit the tri-state area.  Less than half  of the projected deliveries made it to our headquaters that night.   Surprisingly, only a few volunteers bailed out of this project.   Since most of them lived just a few subway stops away, 60 willing wrappers from  Volunteer NYC,  Old Navy, and assorted high school students patiently waited  alongside  NYCares members Chris Peterson and Victoria Levin as the toys trickled in at a snails pace.  Suddenly, it dawned on Daniel and I that we had more wrappers  than presents to wrap. 

   We tried to stall by feeding the troops a buffet of buffalo wings, salad and chips.  We told our favorite anecdotes about making home visits.   Things were looking bleak until Board Member Rocco Basile   opened the door and asked “can I get a little help taking something out my car?”     When I started for the door, Rocco smiled and said “guys, I think she’s gonna need a little help here.”  

  The Baisle family car out classed Santa’s sleigh with a dozen  Razor scooters and popular toys  purchased by Rocco’s extremely  generous friends, relatives and business associates.       The volunteers marveled as they  wrapped  Hannah Montana, Barbie  and Bratz dolls.                 

 Rocco’s  impeccable timing and dedication to Children of the City  never cease to amaze me.  

The congregation of Village Temple is made up of wonderful people eager to preform a mitzvah when needed.   Twice a year they clean out their closets  so the clients at the soup kitchen can ”shop” for a new wardrobe.  The clothes are given away free to anyone who needs them, but the foyer of the temple is transformed to look like a store.

  On Saturday, my NY-Cares crew,  Linda, Mary Beth, Lindsay and  Neil  sorted through mountains of clothes,  matching up sizes and colors like professional stylists out to please the most discerning customer.      Determined that no one would go away empty handed,  they exhausted themselves combing the racks to find exactly  the right coats, jackets. suits,  and scarves to make our  clients   feel pampered and special.

At the end of the day we had helped dress 250   homeless and fixed income seniors.              

In the shadows of the fast food restaurants and construction scaffolding on Fourth Avenue, several  families share a single  two bedroom  apartment.   The effort it takes to keep a low profile exceeds the energy expended at coveted factory jobs or  the hours of hawking bootlegs on the corner.    South Brooklyn is like a jigsaw puzzle of sub cultures that tessellate into a   familiar image.   Transplanted mid-westerners are changing the landscape of the area formerly known as the premiere stop after Ellis Island.  Illegal immigrants are camouflaged by first generation Americans who retain the culture of their forefathers.  Luxury condos overlooking the cemetry add to the quirky charm  of a neighborhood where far too many of the neighbors are in need.   

On Monday afternoon I leaned against the traffic light and passed out flyers for yet another food drive.  Feeling frustrated by  the steady decline in donations to the local food pantry,  I wondered if I was wasting my time.  

 Then along came Jayson, a wide eyed five year old who tried to snatch a flyer from my hand.  He is only in Kindergarten, but already Jayson has expressed an interest in feeding the homeless.   His father  asked me for some information.  “My son wants to do this” he said, “just tell me where he can bring the food.”

On Friday,  Jayson returned with his father and a box full of groceries.  He had collected twenty pounds of rice,  a few boxes of cereal, as well as,  an assortment of canned soup and beans.     “I hope you get 100 pounds of food” he  said as he shook my hand.    We decided to weigh the food he’d brought.  Jayson had donated  38 lbs . Then we weighed the other donations.   Altogether Jayson and I had collect 115 lbs and 14 oz.   Not bad for week’s work.                             

You can never be too rich or have too many volunteers. 

 I’ve rewritten the old cliche to make it politically correct, considering the dwindling donations to food banks in the area and the spike in the number of households relying on emergency food for survival. 

The Thanksgiving holiday is the  one day out of the year that soup kitchens get such an overabundance of volunteers that they actually turn some away.  At Caring Community, Tom Marrone and I decided that we would find a way to put every volunteer who walked through the door on Thanksgiving morning to work.      New York Cares and  City Meals on Wheels each sent us a team of 40 volunteers to help us deliver  350  meals on  Thanksgiving to the home-bound in Greenwich Village.    Another six eager volunteers just followed the traffic to the Caring Community headquarters and offered their services.       

At first, I was slightly overwhelmed by the sight of so many people, but my regular volunteers, Tim Gibbons, Cindy Slater and Ginger from the band “The Wildhearts” helped me with crowd control , organization and clean up.       Together we set a record for rapid delivery as the troops hit the streets within 45 minutes and delivered the  hot feast to everyone on our list before noon.

Now, if there is someone out there who thinks that you can be too rich, please call me.  I’ve  got a charity for you.  

For those  who run in charity circles, the weekend before Thanksgiving  is the start of a marathon.  The race is on to mobilize  volunteers,  solicit donations and confrim the pledges of coats, canned foods, toys and turkeys. This year’s obstacle course comes courtesy of  the recent  recalls on toys made in China.         

Last weekend,  I pulled a double shift at Children of the City, arriving early on Saturday morning to oversee the Reading Partners Program and help out with he paperwork for our annual  “boxes of love” Thanksgiving dinner distribution.    My New York Cares crew,  ( Charity, Evelyn, Estella, Han,  Jennifer and Lauren) where having a great time with the kids while I struggled to help an Asian parent fill out a registration form.   I’d spent four years at NYU learning Mandarin so  I assumed that I could elicit some basic information from the guy.   The poor man was bewildered and frustrated as I rattled on in rusty Chinese until his daughter finally said “My father can’t hear or speak.”  As the weekend progressed. I realized that this guy was the least of my challenges.   Confusion and frustration ensued when a group of volunteers bailed on Saturday and a record number of  teenagers  showed up to help on Sunday.      

My fellow New York Care team leader,  Reine, was the model of composure as she led her team through the paces of greeting clients, taking tickets, translating and handing out “boxes of love” alongside  board member Rocco Basile and his family.     Over 100 families  received a holiday dinner on Sunday.  

Reine was kind enough to let me make a pitch for our annual toy drive and the  Winter Wishes Program at New York Cares.   Winter Wishes  is a project where children’s letters  are given to people  willing to buy a gift for a specific child.   My personal experience with  these letters has been heart wrenching.   Children in need rarely ask for things for themselves.   They usually want a coat for their mother or a toy for a younger  sibling.     It means a great deal  to these kids to get a gift that is wrapped and embellished with   ribbons or stickers.   Sometimes its the only present they get all year.                       

Making conversation with the homeless is easy.  Start with  a simple “how’s it going?” and you end up to with an hour of childhood memories and  war stories.  

Last Saturday,  I served coffee to three generations of homeless men at the Village Temple soup kitchen.  More than two thirds of the men that come in every week are veterans.  The older men served in World War II, the baby boomers were drafted for Viet Nam and the thirty somethings were in Desert Storm.   There are over 6,000 homeless vetrans in the five boroughs according to the statistics buried  in New York City’s  daily newspapers last week.   Sandwiched in between advertisements for Vetran’s Day coat sales and sports scores this news item was as easily over looked and forgotten as the homeless themselves. 

 Its no wonder that the suicide rate is so high in this population.  According to research from SPAN USA, veterans are twice as likely to take their own lives as men who have never served in the military.   SPAN volunteers launched a letter writing campaign to help  two survivors, Randy and Ellen Omvig gain support for the Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Bill.     President Bush signed the bill into law on November 5th.  One  small victory for the men who won the wars.