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Food for thought from Food For Thought
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Volunteers at Food For Thought.
It’s funny how some foods conjure memories. Last night, while visiting friends, I helped myself to a piece of saltwater taffy from a small bowl in their living room. OK, I helped myself to several pieces. The taffy came from a shop in Bodega Bay, the bucolic fishing village on Marin County’s Pacific coast famous as the place where Tippy Hedren did a little bird watching in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. Even more important to me, however, is that Bodega Bay is where my friend Stewart Scofield lived.
Steward died earlier this year but not before making a profound impression on the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of people in rural Sonoma County and San Francisco. Stewart was the volunteer coordinator for Food For Thought, the food bank for Sonoma County residents living with HIV and AIDS. What’s particularly significant about this was Stewart’s – and the food bank’s – approach to supplying people in need.
“You cannot give away food without there being an emotional, and even spiritual, component to your act,” Stewart said. “This is the real reason we do what we do.”
Food is about more than minerals and vitamins and 3 grams of fiber. Food is about life, and the pleasure of being alive no matter what the circumstances. Food For Thought does more than supply food, it offers reassurance and dignity; FFT tells its clients “you matter, and your happiness is a vital part of your health”.
The New York Times once suggested that FFT is “a rare kind of food bank, and just maybe the hippest”. From its vegetable garden and chicken coops outside to the interior which is more like a combination living room/corner grocery, the staff of FFT work hard to remove the stigma so often attached to food banks – and to the people who rely on them. FFT’s clients are people, not just statistics or so many cartons of canned peaches.
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