“I’m a naturalized Italian, but I’m from Ghana. I was abandoned by my parents and adopted by two angels. I suffer with racism everyday. I’m the first black to wear the jersey of Italy. I’m not angry, but my life experiences make me act differently from other people. Then, try to learn more before you criticize me.” - Mario Balotelli
This form of eucalyptus tree grows in Maui rainforests where the bark peels back to reveal a gorgeous range of colors.
10 Things Food Banks Need But Won’t Ask For
Some items are in high demand at the food bank and you may not realize it. Because they aren’t essentials, the staff doesn’t publicly ask for them. A survey asked volunteers what items people would be most appreciative of and we’ve listed the top 10 below. If you’re looking for an easy way to help out, pick some of these up while shopping and drop them off at one of our area food banks.
1. Spices.
Think about it. People who rely on the food bank eat a lot of canned food, rice, oatmeal, white bread, etc. They love spices. Seasoned salt, cayenne pepper, chili powder, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, oregano, basil and so on.
2. Feminine Products.
Can you imagine being worried about affording these? Pads, tampons, panty liners, etc. Recommended: Buy in bulk at Costco for donating.
3. Chocolate.
People don’t need it, but think about being in their shoes and how nice it would be to be given a chocolate bar or brownie mix along with your essentials.
4. Toiletries.
Grocery stores are great about donating surplus or unsold food, but they have no reason to donate toilet paper, tooth paste, soap, deodorant, shampoo, etc. Food stamps often don’t cover these.
5. Canned meats and jerky.
This isn’t true of all food banks, but some struggle to give users enough protein.
6. Crackers and tortillas.
They don’t spoil and everybody likes them.
7. Baby toiletries.
Diapers, baby wipes, baby formula, baby shampoo, baby soap, baby food, bottles, etc.
8. Soup packets.
Sometimes you look at rice, beans, instant potatoes, and cans of vegetable and think, “What do I make with this?” Hearty soup is a complete meal.
9. Socks.
From a former homeless person: “Socks mean the world to you. They keep you warm, make you feel like you have something new, and just comfort you.”
10. Canned fruit other than pineapple.
Food banks get a lot of pineapple donated. Their clients love it when other kinds of fruit are available.
And remember! Food banks love cash donations because it allows them to buy whatever they need!
As a sometimes food pantry user myself and with friends who rely on them to varying degrees - I want to specifically stress some of these:
- non-food items like tp and feminine products and baby needs are SO incredibly important because 1) they are rarely donated, 2) people who have food stamps can often afford their food staples but might still need help with toiletries and cleaning items, and 3) folks who are homeless especially need that kinda stuff!
- treats! Like, yes of course, if I am in need I am appreciative of canned goods and rice and pasta and stuff. That’s great for putting together healthy meals. But everyone needs a treat once in awhile - so when there is candy or chips or a nice expensive brand of organic something or other available at the pantry - it is just so incredibly exciting.
It can be a humiliating experience to visit a pantry, and it can make you feel very much less than. So to get a treat of some sort just really really makes a difference. And believe me - there are enough loaves of bread, cans of fruit, and dried beans to go around at these places. You won’t be starving someone by donating some microwave popcorn or chocolate chips now and again. I promise!
E suponho que são boas dicas para o Brasil também!
omfg why are these so scary
beans motherfucker
you all seem terrified but remember these children grew up to be your grandparents
explains a lot actually.
Adam Victor BrandizziDeu vontade de tentar
There is a game — in the 1950s it used to be played by members of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop — called ‘Smoke.’ It works as follows. The player who is ‘it’ chooses some famous person with whom everyone playing is surely acquainted (Harry Truman, Marlon Brando, Chairman Mao, Charles DeGaulle, for instance) and tells the other players, ‘I am a dead American,’ ‘I am a living American,’ ‘I am a dead Asian,’ ‘I am a dead European’; and then each of the other players in turn asks one question of the person who is ‘it,’ such as, ‘What kind of smoke are you?’ (cigarette, pipe, cigar — or, more specifically, L&M, Dunhill, White Owl) or ‘What kind of weather are you?’ ‘What kind of insect are you?’ or ‘What kind of transportation?’ The person who is ‘it’ answers not in terms of what kind of smoke his character would like, if any, but what kind of smoke he would be if, instead of being human, he were a smoke, or what kind of weather, insect, transportation, and so forth, he would be if reincarnated as one of those. Thus, for example, Kate Smith if an insect would be a turquoise beetle; Marlon Brando, if weather, would be sultry and uncertain, with storm warnings out; and as a vehicle of transporation Harry Truman would be (whatever he may in fact have driven) a Model T Ford. What invariably happens when this game is played by fairly sensitive people is that the whole crowd of questioners builds a stronger and stronger feeling of the character, by unconscious association, until finally someone says the right name — ‘Kate Smith!’ or ‘Chairman Mao!’ — and everyone in the room feels instantly that that’s right. There is obviously no way to play this game with the reasoning faculty, since it depends on unconscious associations or intuition; and what the game proves conclusively for everyone playing is that our associations are remarkably similar. When one of the players falls into some mistake, for instance, saing that Mr. Brezhnev of the U.S.S.R. is a beaver instead of, more properly, a crafty old woodchuck, all the players at the end of the game are sure to protest, ‘You misled us when you said “beaver.”‘ The game proves more dramatically than any argument can suggest the mysterious rightness of a good metaphor — the one requisite for the poet, Aristotle says, that cannot be taught.
– John Gardner, On Moral Fiction, 1978
I don’t like sports, but the Bearcats are my new favorite team.
I love how it gets more elaborate each time. These boys are thinking this through.
This comic took me seven months to write and draw, I hope it takes you just as long to read.
The American Studies Association landslide vote in favor of boycotting Israeli institutions is a milestone, a landmark event. As one commenter put it, succinctly, “history is being made before our eyes.” The vote put the BDS movement, growing in Europe and heretofore well known only to Americans who follow Israel and Palestine closely, on the American political map. The New York Times, which has long ignored the campaign, put the ASA vote on its front page.
A few discrete points:
Yes, the American Studies Association is not broadly representative of America. College professors are generally liberal, and ASA members are probably more liberal than most. Much of American Studies analyses, contextualizes, explores, deconstructs American ethnic relations, which is in great part the story of how America’s white founders and their descendants oppressed, marginalized, etc. immigrants and people of color. At many times in my life, I’ve found this discourse irritating, tiresome, latently oppressive. But it is also, in the main, true. And it is something that America can be proud of that it has (in real world comparative terms) traveled astonishingly far in fulfilling its founding ideals, which were not (explicitly) racist. I’m not an Angela Davis fan (the black former communist candidate for president is an ASA stalwart) but I’m glad that someone like her can have a prominent and influential career, rather than be denied it as she would have been in the America of my grandparents.
The vote won’t have any immediate and practical impact on Israel and the occupation. It was often argued about the boycott of South Africa that such activities “hurt the people they were supposed to help.” Perhaps in the short run this was true, but Israeli decision-makers are becoming increasingly conscious that they can’t forever occupy the West Bank and benefit from Western diplomatic support and all the economic and cultural benefits that entails. Israelis have voted increasingly for right-wing governments, supported the expansion of settlements, and are generally blithely indifferent to the occupation, whether it be the checkpoints, the destruction of Palestinian homes, the refusal to allow Palestinians to build new homes, the unrelenting bureaucratic restrictions on Palestinian travel, freedom of movement, and life. Growing international isolation will be Israel’s price for this policy. The ASA vote is the tip of the iceberg of an international campaign to sanction Israel for its refusal to allow Palestinian self-determination on even a small segment of the Palestinan Mandate territory. In Europe, major companies have pulled out of Israeli contracts, and Israelis have been provisionally denied access to EU funds and institutions which they have long been accustomed to accessing. The movement will grow slowly, but it will grow and Israel will change because of it. Just as South Africa did.
One talking point put forth by almost all opponents of BDS is to ask why Israel, of all the human rights violators in the world, is being “singled out.” This is typically a not so veiled accusation of anti-Semitism. Jeffrey Goldberg, using a favorite Israel lobby trope, claimed the ASA vote had the same “smell” as an anti-Semitic boycott of American Jewish businesses.
There are several powerful retorts to the charge that there is something unsavory about singling Israel out. Corey Robin notes that activism invariably focuses on selected and symbolic targets. Opponents of the Vietnam war didn’t protest against all wars; opponents of American segregation didn’t focus on all racial injustice everywhere.
A corollary to this point is that America, because of its “special relationship” with Israel, has a particular obligation to stand up against the injustices Israel is responsible for. I’m sure it’s possible to catalogue the human rights violations carried out by Moscow or Beijing and argue they exceed those carried out by Tel Aviv. But it is relevant that Benjamin Netanyahu received something like 29 standing ovations last time he was invited to speak before a special session of the U.S. Congress, as major AIPAC donors filled the spectators gallery. President Obama, in trying to find the political space to negotiate with Iran, has felt the need for he and his top officials to schedule scores of meetings with top Israelis, and with leading members of the Israel lobby. There seems no end to it. If, somehow, Israel were unimportant to American foreign policy, I can see that protesting against it would seem beside the point, and perhaps even anti-Semitic. If some Latin American caudillo were fawned over by Congress, while his fans played a hugely disproportionate role in American campaign finance, I would welcome a boycott of his country. But if one wants to change the policy which brought us the Iraq war, perhaps the most costly blunder in the history of American foreign policy, may bring us war with Iran, and was at least related to 9/11, one has to start with Israel.
