Saturday I received a utility bill for the sold property, dated out to a week after the sale. Between the realtor and the city utility department I was able to confirm the account was yes, closed a week after the real estate sale closed. But whatever, it's closed and done with and I'm not inclined to burn time quibbling over a $60 fraction of a bill in light of all the other expenses of the estate thus far.
Miss organized the pantry and set overages aside to donate to Brown Bag Ministry
Broke the little comb/brush that came with my Pinaud Clubman moustache wax
Cookie Clicker garden: unlocked duketater
Thai Lotus tom ka for Miss's flu, tom yum for me, split an order of pad thai and potstickers with spicy peanut curry dipping sauce. Watched an ep of Monk (s5e9, "Monk Meets His Dad")
When I googled Brown Bag Ministry, I learned they have a twice-a-month feeding event in Raleigh. One of the things Miss recently mentioned she admired about me was my heart to help the homeless; but aside from a few donations to various outreach orgs, I haven't been active in that since we moved. What I knew about "local" food and services support for the poor was reset to zero.
When I left SoFla, there was a pretty major development in the direction of a coalition of Palm Beach County churches and allied ministries collectively becoming a client of Feeding South Florida (FSF) to distribute food on the cheap to those in need. I learned that FSF was the local-regional cell of Feeding America. This was formerly Second Harvest Food Bank Network, name changed in 2008, so some regional distribution cells still bear the Second Harvest brand as part of their name, e.g. Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina serving the Charlotte NC area.
In the Triangle area, the regional Feeding America arms are "Inter-Faith Food Shuttle" (foodshuttle.org) and "Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina" (foodbankcenc.org). In Charlotte there's the aforementioned Second Harvest Metrolina org. In Fayetteville there's Second Harvest Food Bank of Southeast North Carolina (hungercantwait.org). In Winston-Salem there's Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina (hungernwnc.org). In Asheville there's MANNA Foodbank.
Feeding America is just the biggest, most successful hunger relief network. There are other needs and other local ministries - Dorcas Ministries, Dress for Success, Family Promise, many more.
At the end of the day, I'm not sure what my place is in all this anymore though. I did my time supervising volunteers, I'd rather just assemble sandwiches or wash dishes myself. I feel inadequate and discouraged when I think of the work of fundraising. What's left but to just write checks and cheer on the volunteers?
I feel like charity work is a dead end because the system of society is what's creating poverty. In 2017, WaPo reported that 90% of America's wealth is held by just 1% of the citizenry. In such an unbalanced system, particularly post-Citizen's United, it's practically guaranteed that the moneyed minority can literally afford to literally rewrite the rules to concentrate even more wealth in their own hands. I don't have a roadmap to correct that problem but that doesn't mean it's not a real problem.