I agree! Having had to have visited various food banks myself, some of them remind me of pictures of the Great Depression, people waiting in lines, hoping to be able to get to the front of the line before they run out of food. I have a family of four, yet, at some food banks, they will allow you ONE bag of food, and that’s usually every two weeks, some you can only visit monthly. Then there are others that will provide enough food for your family and then some. The most unique food bank I’ve visited was run at a Jewish Community Center. It’s limited to one visit a month, and you attend by appointment only. When you arrive, you sit down at a touchscreen computer, and “go shopping”. You’re given a certain number of points, depending upon family size. You use the points to “buy” what you want from what they have available. The points are issued in accordance with the USDA myplate program. So dairy/eggs, fruit and vegetables, proteins (meat/chicken/fish/etc) and so on. Often you’re limited to the number of duplicate items (like you can’t use all your protein points on ground beef) but beef, chicken, almonds would be acceptable. After you place your order, you wait a bit, and they’ll come out with a cart with your food in it. And since YOU picked the food yourself, you know much less will go to waste or be re-donated (like one time at a different food bank, in the bag they gave me, there were 3 cans of black-eyed peas, which no one in my family would touch) I don’t know where I’m going with this, except for sharing experiences that has absolutely NOTHING to do with vintage computers. On Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 7:20 PM Evan Koblentz <evan@vcfed.org> wrote:
It’d probably be better for the food bank to buy themselves a Keurig, and be able to offer their clients a hot cup of coffee while their “order” is being put together.
Good point. A simple gesture that would be a fine way for the food bank to make its clients feel, well, human.
-- Normal Person: Hey, it seems that you know a lot. Geek: To be honest, it's due to all the surfing I do. Normal Person: So you go surfing? Normal Person: But I don't think that has anything to do with knowing a lot... Geek: I think that's wrong on a fundamental level. Normal Person: Huh? Huh? What?