August 29, 2011
6. Newblog2011: 08/29/11 The Women's Lunch Place and The Old South Church
Before today, I’ve mentioned a few times to some of the staff at the Women’s Lunch Place that the communal food that they serve and the way that they serve it are both problematic. It’s never a good idea to put out large dishes of food, especially leftovers from previous days, and allow a lot of people to serve themselves, with one large serving utensil for each dish. Not only does the serving spoon or fork get handled by all of those people, most of if not all of the utensil gets into the food.
The Women’s Lunch Place usually sets out leftovers from previous days’ lunches for people to serve themselves in the morning, because the place operates from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., and lunch isn’t served until the middle of the day. Usually, there’s also hot cereal made that morning, unfortunately with the one, large serving spoon per tray of it. I’ve mostly been going for the cold cereal that at least is in a large, plastic container until you put it in the bowl.
If you eat communally served food at any homeless shelter, you are almost guaranteed to get sick. At the very least, you’ll get a cold that lasts for several days. The Women’s Lunch Place isn’t the only place that presents food to homeless people in the way I’ve just described. A lot of places are worse than that.
The Women’s Lunch Place serves lunch on individual plates to people; the goal of the place, from the beginning, has been to treat people with dignity. There are tablecloths on the tables, and flowers, too. In many ways, it has been an admirable establishment, one of the best service providers to the homeless that I’ve ever seen.
There are things about being homeless that I don’t mind and even like. For example, I like being around a lot of people most of the time, and you get that when you’re homeless. However, it can’t be denied that any population has varying habits for personal hygiene. For example, there are people in any population who don’t wash their hands after they use the restroom. Also, if all of the people who make decisions about how food is served to the homeless had ever seen the wads of toilet paper that some homeless women use to wash their anuses and genitals that then get thrown on the floor of the restroom after being used, those decision-makers might take more care with how they allow food to be served than they have so far.
There are also varying conditions of hygiene in the shelters where people sleep. Some of the shelters are not only extremely dirty but are genuinely, overtly degrading. For example, the Quincy shelter run by the Boston Public Health Commission doesn’t have any doors at all on the stalls in the women’s restroom.
Homeless people have to live through all kinds of conditions, and they bring the effects of that everywhere they go. Homeless people who aren’t particularly careful about their hygiene in the first place have more problems with it because of shelters and other service providers who also aren’t particularly careful about hygiene.
I wonder if someone who works at the Women’s Lunch Place took offense to my raising the hygiene issue last week. At that time, I didn’t go into all of the detail that I’ve just gone into. All I said was that I thought that serving any of the food communally probably wasn’t a good idea, that the large serving utensils that are always getting into the food from one end of the handle to the other and that are covered with germs from a lot of people using them, even when they don’t get into the food, also aren’t a good idea, and that it might at least be a good idea to put hand sanitizer out on the tables where the food is left.
This morning, I walked into the Women’s Lunch Place’s temporary home at the Old South Church. In front of the Old South Church, there were several “Caution” cones and a section had been blocked off with yellow “Caution” tape even though no effort had been made to clear away any of the branches in front of the church. It seems that construction or restoration is also being done on the front of the church; the cones and sectioned-off area are on the side of the church, and didn’t start getting cones and similarly offensive things until I got to Boston and started going there.
When I got upstairs, there wasn’t even a plastic container of cereal. Instead, there were individual paper bags, all of which said “B” on them, presumably for the word “Breakfast.” Here’s what was in the bag:
--A bagel in a small, white bag that said “Delicious!” on it in red writing.
--A packet of cream cheese, brand “Axelrod.”
--Caprisun “Splash Cooler,” with the picture of someone kayaking that the Caprisun people put on it
--Dole tropical fruit in 100% fruit juice
--A packet each of peanut butter and jelly, “Monarch” brand, with the logo of a lion on it.
--A container of Stonyfield, blueberry yogurt
Copyright L. Kochman, August 29, 2011 @ 12:03 p.m./addition @ 8:06 a.m., August 30, 2011--I thought I had forgotten to put the "Stonyfield yogurt" on the list and, in fact, I did. It was in the bag, though; in all the bags for all the breakfasts at the Women's Lunch Place yesterday morning.
6. Newblog2011: 08/29/11 The Women's Lunch Place and The Old South Church
Before today, I’ve mentioned a few times to some of the staff at the Women’s Lunch Place that the communal food that they serve and the way that they serve it are both problematic. It’s never a good idea to put out large dishes of food, especially leftovers from previous days, and allow a lot of people to serve themselves, with one large serving utensil for each dish. Not only does the serving spoon or fork get handled by all of those people, most of if not all of the utensil gets into the food.
The Women’s Lunch Place usually sets out leftovers from previous days’ lunches for people to serve themselves in the morning, because the place operates from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., and lunch isn’t served until the middle of the day. Usually, there’s also hot cereal made that morning, unfortunately with the one, large serving spoon per tray of it. I’ve mostly been going for the cold cereal that at least is in a large, plastic container until you put it in the bowl.
If you eat communally served food at any homeless shelter, you are almost guaranteed to get sick. At the very least, you’ll get a cold that lasts for several days. The Women’s Lunch Place isn’t the only place that presents food to homeless people in the way I’ve just described. A lot of places are worse than that.
The Women’s Lunch Place serves lunch on individual plates to people; the goal of the place, from the beginning, has been to treat people with dignity. There are tablecloths on the tables, and flowers, too. In many ways, it has been an admirable establishment, one of the best service providers to the homeless that I’ve ever seen.
There are things about being homeless that I don’t mind and even like. For example, I like being around a lot of people most of the time, and you get that when you’re homeless. However, it can’t be denied that any population has varying habits for personal hygiene. For example, there are people in any population who don’t wash their hands after they use the restroom. Also, if all of the people who make decisions about how food is served to the homeless had ever seen the wads of toilet paper that some homeless women use to wash their anuses and genitals that then get thrown on the floor of the restroom after being used, those decision-makers might take more care with how they allow food to be served than they have so far.
There are also varying conditions of hygiene in the shelters where people sleep. Some of the shelters are not only extremely dirty but are genuinely, overtly degrading. For example, the Quincy shelter run by the Boston Public Health Commission doesn’t have any doors at all on the stalls in the women’s restroom.
Homeless people have to live through all kinds of conditions, and they bring the effects of that everywhere they go. Homeless people who aren’t particularly careful about their hygiene in the first place have more problems with it because of shelters and other service providers who also aren’t particularly careful about hygiene.
I wonder if someone who works at the Women’s Lunch Place took offense to my raising the hygiene issue last week. At that time, I didn’t go into all of the detail that I’ve just gone into. All I said was that I thought that serving any of the food communally probably wasn’t a good idea, that the large serving utensils that are always getting into the food from one end of the handle to the other and that are covered with germs from a lot of people using them, even when they don’t get into the food, also aren’t a good idea, and that it might at least be a good idea to put hand sanitizer out on the tables where the food is left.
This morning, I walked into the Women’s Lunch Place’s temporary home at the Old South Church. In front of the Old South Church, there were several “Caution” cones and a section had been blocked off with yellow “Caution” tape even though no effort had been made to clear away any of the branches in front of the church. It seems that construction or restoration is also being done on the front of the church; the cones and sectioned-off area are on the side of the church, and didn’t start getting cones and similarly offensive things until I got to Boston and started going there.
When I got upstairs, there wasn’t even a plastic container of cereal. Instead, there were individual paper bags, all of which said “B” on them, presumably for the word “Breakfast.” Here’s what was in the bag:
--A bagel in a small, white bag that said “Delicious!” on it in red writing.
--A packet of cream cheese, brand “Axelrod.”
--Caprisun “Splash Cooler,” with the picture of someone kayaking that the Caprisun people put on it
--Dole tropical fruit in 100% fruit juice
--A packet each of peanut butter and jelly, “Monarch” brand, with the logo of a lion on it.
--A container of Stonyfield, blueberry yogurt
Copyright L. Kochman, August 29, 2011 @ 12:03 p.m./addition @ 8:06 a.m., August 30, 2011--I thought I had forgotten to put the "Stonyfield yogurt" on the list and, in fact, I did. It was in the bag, though; in all the bags for all the breakfasts at the Women's Lunch Place yesterday morning.