Thanksgiving is generally a hectic time at a food pantry, helping families get the food they need and processing extra donations. However, the lead-up to this Thanksgiving was extra crazy at the Community Center of St Bernard where I've been volunteering. First, one of the mainstays of the organization, an extremely bright but volatile fellow got into a nasty after-hours altercation and was arrested and put in jail. And it that weren't enough, the Parish swooped in and shut us down altogether the Monday before Thanksgiving just as we were doing both a USDA Food for Seniors distribution and our Thanksgiving Turkey Give-Away. Lots of unhappy people and a warehouse bursting at the seams with donated food unable to reach its intended target. Code violations are one thing but the timing could not have been worse.
In any case the parish produced its list of demands and a timetable the next day and the rest of the week went off without a hitch. Things have settled down considerably since then. The center is plugging away at meeting the Parish's requirements and I've been trying to help get the warehouse a little more organized. After a couple of work disasters the last two years at Nature's Classroom and the hostel in Hawaii it's nice to do something I'm good at and twenty years in retail has served me well in getting stuff out to the people who need it.