A Call To Big Arms
A study entitled The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and its Environmental Impact found that we waste 1,400 calories per person per day which is enough food to sustain a very thin or small or old person or a regular biggish man-person if two people team up and waste food together. This is insane given the USDA's report that one-in-seven Americans did not have access to enough food last year. This sort of information, like the Times telling us that "many numbers of people use food stamps now: sadface," doesn't stay in my head because math is hard like reading books and shoplifting candy is so easy.
Anyway, over the last week I ate and drank 4,700-6,300 calories each day paid for by other people and their families and now actually feel something. The poor people are banging around under the door in the floor and I'm recalling all sorts of things about them because at an art show I ran into a young hipster photographer friend that I only thought had gotten more attractive-looking but had actually LOST WEIGHT from real-life poverty. Like, he's not even going to Art Basel.
So even though it's a thorny issue and I'm not suggesting pounding door-to-door in Williamsburg or the LES doling out a basketful of charity tubers dressed in little gingham waistcoats, I think all of us should go check up on the "most likely to be hungry" amongst our friends. Especially if they didn't make the best of career decisions and did rash mongo things like "go into print." Besides, you can just grab everything that's just shy of rancid in your fridge and drown it in a pot to make a hot cheap meal. If you use a little corn starch, the gruel gets to be murky, JUST LIKE REAL FOOD.
I sincerely hope that the included pic is from the sequel to The Nightmare Before Christmas.
For a minute I thought they were the tubers dressed in gingham waistcoats. Lindsey could be a little carrot. Nicole, a very small parsnip. But then I realized that neither of those dresses are gingham. Or waistcoats. And then continuing to look at the picture made me want to take my eyes out.
This is true.
Also, check in on divorced friends/relatives with children.
Look in their fridge when they are in the bathroom. If you never see any food, that means they never have any food.
Go to Costco, buy a bunch of food and stuff half of it in their freezer. You can say you bought too much (which is always true at Costco) and don't have room for the extra at your house. And nothing else needs to be said.
It really is a near impossible topic to broach. Especially if the person you're looking in on used to be higher than you on some sort of commercial hierarchy or if they're older than you. But I swear to God, every single one of us knows someone who can't afford to buy food or are subsisting on tinned food or a single, super-starchy meal a day. Especially creative types whose freelance has dried up or can't afford to rent equipment/fixed cost goods and gets ZERO govt assistance.
And I know it'd all be easier were they NOT wearing Maison Martin Margiela homeless chic but it is what it is and that money's long gone.
My youngest sister's friends are almost all in the arts or work in the restaurant biz. They get together a couple of times a month and everybody brings something…either food or paper plates or some form of entertainment. She says for some of her friends, this is their best meal of the month. It also sounds like they have a lot of fun…and everyone goes home with left-overs.
They've also started kind of an underground barter society. People hang art in exchange for hair cuts and colors. Someone will house-sit the dogs in exchange for a place to stay for a while, etc….It's the new economy.
Absolutely. This grey thing is definitely the new economy. The tragic thing is that my friends tend to clump almost entirely into arty groups or writerly groups when I'd just KILL for a dentist friend.
You should do a story on it…and sell it to the New York Times Style section as a "trend" piece. They'll think they're publishing something edgy and hip and you can get your teeth cleaned.
Everybody wins!
I was thinking about signing up for a "subscribe and save" grocery bulk-type order on Amazon for a former art school friend who is in a particularly difficult way. My obstacles have been 1) knowing whether it would be anonymous if I call it a "gift", 2) her veganism (choice freeze), and 3) the absurd postal situation in Chicago (could be more trouble than it is worth–she has to take the bus to the post office and can't afford it, and apparently there is some strange conspiracy with the post office there. They never attempt to deliver packages?!).
Hey Garge…
Here's an idea…spend some time on google and figure out what grocery store is near your friend (or maybe you know where she shops). Call up the place, talk to the manager, buy some gift certificates and trust the manager to send them directly to her address. She won't know who they are from and she'll get to buy what she wants. Good luck!
Thank you for this idea, which is especially possible since I actually went grocery shopping with her when visiting.
Actually, now it seems so obvious that I could send a gift card, anonymously, to Trader Joe's, which she does visit every month and calls her "shangri la." Here I was trying to run through permutations of nutrition-to-volume ratios, divided by shelf life.
Those two may not waste food, but they sure know how to waste away. And get wasted, too.
*sprays champagne
Funny as it is, the snark here is inconvenienced by the fact that, right now, people actually are starving to death near my Manhattan brownstone.
Do you rent or own? Also, you'll see my comments are sincere and mirth is merely the enrobing gel for the bitter pill that I was genuinely alarmed by and wanted to y'awl to know. As in, I KNOW. It's INSANE out there.
"Enrobing mirth gel" just sent me into paroxysms of fuck yessery.
No snark intended.
People are actually starving to death near almost every dwelling in the world.
I didn't read it as "snark".
Whip-Crack &Dang.
That syntax smarts.
As a newsblog entry, that shit reads like a nailbomb.
I mean that in a good way.
Kudos.