This Woman’s Innocent Comment About Food Donations Says a Lot About Poverty in America

An eye-opening look at who's really going hungry in America.

Last Halloween, there was a food drive at the school where I work. Strolling by one day, I checked out the bins. There were gluten-free crackers, rice pasta, olive tapenade, artichoke hearts packed in seasoned oil, and quinoa. Another woman happened by. She smiled, then said this: “Too bad they won’t know what to do with most of it.”

It was one of those moments in life when your ears hear something but your brain can’t quite process it. I asked, “What do you mean?”
The woman turned toward me, still smiling. “Those people won’t know what most of that stuff is. I mean, really. Quinoa?”
Yep. I’d heard correctly. Those people.
At that moment, it had been eight months since the last time I had gotten groceries at our local food pantry. Eight months since the long-overdue child support from my ex-husband kicked in. Even though it wasn’t much, it made the difference between being able to buy enough food for the five of us and having to supplement from a food pantry. For that, I’m grateful.
Those people. I can still vividly recall my first time visiting the food pantry. I’d driven by many times, trying to work up the courage to pull into the parking lot. I’d whisper “I can’t” and keep driving, home to the barren refrigerator and the “Old Mother Hubbard” cupboards. Until desperation overshadowed my pride.
Once you get past the hardest part, which is walking through the door, being at the food pantry isn’t so bad. Sure, there’s the heat on your cheeks as you fill out the paperwork, giving these strangers your life history. Explaining what you do for money, how much you get, and what you spend it on. But you get used to having hot cheeks.
I quickly learned that food pantries are hit-or-miss. Some days the shelves are full, and with really good things. Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese. Organic marinara sauce. Fresh vegetables. Whole chickens in the freezer. Brie from Trader Joe’s that’s only two days past the expiration date. Other days, you have to scramble to get near the required weight. (You get a certain number of pounds of food depending on the size of your family.) Dented cans of creamed corn. Spoiled produce. Individual sleeves of saltine crackers. But beggars can’t be choosers, right?
I visited the food pantry a total of five times over the course of 11 months. When I told my kids, I expected them to laugh or get angry or be embarrassed. Instead, they helped me put the groceries away, quietly. I can recall almost all the meals I made with food pantry goodies. Oven-roasted chicken with quartered rosemary potatoes. Turkey chili. French toast. More mac and cheese than I care to admit. One of my favorites was an organic risotto, flavored with mushrooms and olive oil.
Those people. I wanted to walk up to that woman in the hallway, grab her by the shoulders, and shake her as I yelled at her, “You don’t know a thing about how it feels to walk into one of ‘those’ places and be one of ‘those’ people. You’ve never looked at your kids and had to hide your tears because you had no idea how you were going to feed them.” I wanted to say that, but I didn’t. Instead, all I could muster was:
“I like quinoa.”
To which she replied, “Well, yes, of course. You’re not one of those people.”
If only she knew.

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One of the World’s Most Iconic Ships Sailed Straight Into Hurricane Sandy. Sandy Won.

The HMS Bounty experienced its final moments during Hurricane Sandy. Did any passengers survive the wreckage?

Lieutenant Wes McIntosh of the U.S. Coast Guard was watching Sunday Night Football with his seven-person flight crew on October 29, 2012. Around 9:30 p.m., his phone rang. It was the Coast Guard command center, alerting him that they’d received a call from the owner of a ship that was floundering in a ferocious storm off the coast of North Carolina. It was taking on water, having generator problems, and requesting assistance. By 11 p.m., McIntosh and crew were airborne in their turboprop plane, heading east.
Locating the ship on radar would be impossible in such rough weather, so McIntosh and his copilot, Mike Myers, pulled on night-vision goggles. The skies were clear for the moment, a full moon fixed above, but directly ahead, McIntosh could see a sharp wall of dark clouds rising from the surface of the water to 7,000 feet.

They approached just above the clouds but were unable to see down to the ocean’s surface. Hoping for visual contact, McIntosh lowered the plane into the storm. The plane lurched and shook violently. Hard rain pelted the windshield. McIntosh wrestled the controls, guiding the plane lower until the clouds shredded and revealed a churning black ocean. They circled, holding at the lowest point they could. “Anything?” McIntosh asked. “Yeah,” said Myers. “There’s a pirate ship in the middle of a hurricane.” HMS Bounty was one of the most recognizable ships anywhere in the world. Built in 1960 for the MGM film Mutiny on the Bounty, it was a scaled-up replica of the original on which Fletcher Christian led the revolt against Captain William Bligh in 1789. The modern Bounty was a classic tall ship. Its three masts rose more than 100 feet, supporting 10,000 square feet of sailcloth and laced with more than two miles of line. It was 120 feet long—30 feet longer than the original—and built of hand-hewn Douglas fir and white oak.
In recent years, however, the ship had fallen into disrepair; it was plagued with dry rot and leaks, and its owner had struggled to keep up with the expensive maintenance. Tired and sagging from 50 years of sailing and dock tours, the ship was now en route from New London, Connecticut, to St. Petersburg, Florida, to entice possible buyers, give dockside tours, and host an event for a nonprofit organization supporting kids with Down syndrome.
The crew of 16 ranged from first-time volunteers to career mariners. Among the most recent to join up was Claudene Christian, 42, a professional singer and a beauty queen from California who claimed to be a descendent of Fletcher Christian himself.
The captain was Robin Walbridge. Soft-spoken and gravel-voiced, he wore wire-rimmed glasses and hearing aids, and bound his flyaway gray hair in a short ponytail. The Bounty’s owner, New York businessman Robert Hansen, had hired Walbridge in 1995, and Walbridge had since helmed hundreds of voyages on the Bounty up and down the Atlantic coast, in all kinds of weather. Walbridge was considered a good sailor, but he also had the reputation for being something of a cowboy. A few weeks prior to setting sail, he’d told an interviewer, “We chase hurricanes … You can get a good ride out of them.”

A few weeks prior to setting sail, he’d told an interviewer, “We chase hurricanes … You can get a good ride out of them.”

On Thursday, October 25, the Bounty departed with clear skies, light winds, and all 16 crew members on board. As darkness fell on Sunday evening, the Bounty sailed straight into one of the worst storms ever recorded in the Atlantic. Dubbed Superstorm Sandy, it stretched almost 1,000 miles across, covering an area nearly twice the size of Texas. Out at sea off the coast of North Carolina, winds gusted up to 90 miles per hour. Earlier that day, a gust had ripped the ship’s forecourse, one of its 16 sails, which is crucial for maintaining stability in storms. As daylight faded, conditions deteriorated. Four feet of water sloshed around the engine room, overloading the pumps. The cabin’s overhead lights flickered until the generators and engines gave out entirely, leaving only the ghostly glow of the emergency lights. Below decks, Walbridge made his way to the communications room. He moved gingerly; earlier, a powerful wave had thrown him across the cabin into a bolted table, severely injuring his back. He took a seat near the communications console with Doug Faunt, 66, a volunteer who worked as the ship’s electrician. The storm had rendered their cell and satellite phones useless. Walbridge and Faunt were attempting to e-mail the Coast Guard to alert it to the grim situation. Walbridge had instructed anyone who wasn’t on watch or tending to a crisis to hunker down and, if possible, try to rest. It was going to be a long night. Another crew member, Adam Prokosh, 27, had also been injured, breaking three ribs, separating his shoulder, and suffering trauma to his head and back when the ship was rolled by a wave. Several other people were severely seasick. In the dim communications room, Walbridge and Faunt hunched over a makeshift transmitter, tapping out an e-mail message with their coordinates, praying it would reach someone on shore. In the skies above, McIntosh banked hard, looking down at a sight unlike anything he’d ever seen. Below was the Bounty’s hulking black shadow, its giant masts listing at 45 degrees. From the aircraft, the mission system officer radioed down on the emergency channel. The response was instantaneous: “This is HMS Bounty. We read you loud and clear!” It was John Svendsen, 41, the first mate. He explained that the Bounty was still taking on water at the rate of a foot an hour, but he felt they could hang on until daylight. McIntosh had hoped to drop backup pumps to the vessel, but conditions were too dangerous to get close enough. His flight crew had been taking a severe beating too. Several were airsick.

As the early hours of Monday morning dragged on, Walbridge positioned himself at the Bounty’s helm, leaving Svendsen to communicate with the Coast Guard plane. Svendsen told McIntosh that they were planning an evacuation at daybreak. Around 3 a.m., Walbridge and Svendsen directed the crew members to the stern and briefed them on the plan. “No one panicked,” Dan Cleveland, the third mate, recalled later. “The mood was calm, professional. I was really impressed.” For the next hour, the crew members tended to tasks—gathering their “Gumby suits” (bright red neoprene survival suits) and assembling supplies for the life rafts—or tried to find a place to rest, survival suits at the ready. Claudene Christian took care of the injured Adam Prokosh, helping him move to the high side of the ship. By 4 a.m., Walbridge told the crew to put on the suits. They would depart from the rear of the ship at first light. The water was coming in faster, at around two feet per hour, and the bow was now submerged. It was too rough to stand up on deck, so the crew crawled along the boards on their hands and knees. Those who didn’t have a particular task preparing supplies simply clung to fixed objects. Doug Faunt wedged himself against the deck rail firmly enough that he briefly dozed off. Around 4:30 that morning, the Bounty was broadsided by a massive wave that rolled it a full 90 degrees. A few people screamed. Several crew members were tossed through the air and into the sea. Some slid across the soaked deck, hitting the low rail and toppling into the water. Others, fearing the ship was capsizing completely, jumped from their perches into the ocean. The Bounty now lay on its side, masts in the water, surrounded by a web of tangled rigging. John Svendsen was near the radio and grabbed the handset. “We’re abandoning ship!” he shouted into the mic. “We’re abandoning ship now!”

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Welcome to “Bomb Dog U,” Where Pooches Are Trained to Thwart Terrorism

When I first meet a young Labrador named Merry, she is clearing her nostrils with nine or ten sharp snorts before she snuffles along a row of luggage pieces, all different makes and models. They’re lined up against the wall of a large hangar on a country road outside Hartford, Connecticut. This is where MSA Security trains what are known in the security trade as explosive detection canines, or EDCs. Most people call them bomb dogs.

The luggage pieces joined shrink-wrapped pallets, car-shaped cutouts, and concrete blocks on the campus of MSA’s “Bomb Dog U.” Dogs don’t need to be taught how to smell, of course, but they do need to be taught where to smell—along the seams of a suitcase, say, or underneath a pallet, where the vapors that are heavier than air settle.

In the shrouded world of bomb-dog education, MSA is an elite academy. Its teams deploy mostly to the country’s big cities, and each dog works with one specific handler, usually for eight or nine years. MSA also furnishes dogs for what it describes only as “a government agency referred to by three initials for use in Middle East conflict zones.”

Strictly speaking, the dog doesn’t smell the bomb. It deconstructs an odor into its components, picking out the culprit chemicals it has been trained to detect. Zane Roberts, MSA’s former lead canine trainer and current program manager, uses a cooking analogy: “When you walk into a kitchen where someone is making spaghetti sauce, your nose says, Aha, spaghetti sauce. A dog’s nose doesn’t say that. Instinctively, it says tomatoes, garlic, rosemary, onion, oregano.” It’s the handler who says spaghetti sauce or, in this case, bomb.

MSA’s dogs arrive at headquarters when they are between a year and a year and a half old. They begin building their vocabulary of suspicious odors by working with rows of more than 100 identical cans laid out in a grid. Ingredients from the basic chemical families of explosives are placed in random cans.

Merry works eagerly down the row, wagging her tail briskly and pulling slightly on the leash. This is a bomb dog’s idea of a good time. Snort, snort, sniff, snort, snort, sniff, snort, snort, sniff. Suddenly, Merry sits down. All bomb dogs are schooled to respond this way when they’ve found what they’re looking for. No one wants a dog pawing and scratching at something that could explode.

“Good dog,” says Roberts. He reaches into a pouch on his belt for the kibble that is the working dog’s wage.

It would be tough to conceive of a better smelling machine than a dog. Thirty-five percent of a dog’s brain is assigned to smell-related operations, whereas a human brain lends only 5 percent of its cellular resources to the task. In her book Inside of a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz, a psychologist at Barnard College, notes that while a human might smell a teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee, a dog could detect a teaspoon in a million gallons of water—nearly enough to fill two Olympic-size swimming pools.

Where bomb dogs have really proved their mettle is on the battlefield. Before joining MSA as vice president of operations, Joe Atherall commanded Company C of the Marines 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion in Iraq’s Al Anbar province. The unit had three dog teams attached to it.

“One day, intel directed us to a school, but we didn’t find a lot. Then we brought in the dogs,” recalls Atherall. “There were French drains around the outside of the school, and the dogs started hitting on them. When we opened them up, we found an extensive IED cache, small arms weapons, and mortar rounds, along with det cord and other explosive material.” Detonation cord is the dog whistle of odors, with nearly unsmellable vapor pressure.

“I loved those dogs,” says Atherall. “They were lifesavers.”

It is hard to imagine a more high-hearted warrior than a dog. The canines work for love, they work for praise, they work for food, but mostly they work for the fun of it. “It’s all just a big game to them,” says Mike Wynn, MSA’s director of canine training. “The best bomb dogs are the dogs that really like to play.”

This doesn’t mean that war is a lark for dogs. In 2007, Army veterinarians started seeing dogs that showed signs of canine post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We’re seeing dogs that are over-responsive to sights and sounds or that become hypervigilant—like humans that are shaken up after a car accident,” says Walter Burghardt, of the Daniel E. Holland Military Working Dog Hospital at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Caught early enough, says Burghardt, half the affected dogs can be treated and returned to active duty. “The other half just have to find something else to do for a living.”

Because of the emotional wear on the dogs, scientists have been trying to build a machine that can out-smell the animals. At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, scientists are working on ionization technology to “see” vapors the way a dog does—the same basic technology used by security officers at an airport but far more sensitive.

On the other hand, says Robert Ewing, a senior research scientist, dogs have been doing this job for years. “I don’t know that you could ever replace them.”

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The Utterly Brave Way a 9-Year-Old Student with Autism Saved His Teacher’s Life

A little boy who adores superheroes had an opportunity to become one.

An average school day at Oak Grove Elementary in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, took a deadly spin last April when fourth-grade teacher Madonna Kenser suffered a near-fatal allergic reaction to a dry-erase marker. Kenser inhaled the fumes while teaching the class using an overhead projector, when suddenly her throat began to close.

“I was having an asthma attack,” Kenser told KFVS12.com. “The students were watching and I knew I had to get to my desk [where my inhaler was].”

As the classroom of terrified nine-year-olds looked on, Kenser stumbled across the room but fainted before she could reach the device.

The class was stunned. Thankfully, one youngster, Brendon Garman, knew what to do. He jumped from his desk and darted toward the purse his teacher had been reaching for. Finding her inhaler, he then gave a woozy Kenser her first life-saving gasps.

It was a fearful moment, but Brendon credits his quick thinking to a scene he remembered from the movie Are We There Yet. In the scene, one of the main characters has an asthma attack and collapses. Another character rushes to his aid with an inhaler and is able to revive him.

“If I didn’t see that movie, I wouldn’t know what to do,” says Brendon.

After the rescue, he said, “You know Mrs. Kenser, TV’s not so bad, huh?,” Kenser told the news station.

Although she praises the entire class for their calm reaction, Brendon’s is the one she’ll likely remember most. Brendon has autism, a disability that can limit communication and social skills. She and Brendon’s family hope this experience will send the message that children with autism are gifted and hold the potential to do extraordinary things.

After all, Brendon’s actions saved Kenser’s life.

“I went to the doctor and he said 5,000 people die from the things that happened that day,” Kenser told KFVS12.com. “[If it weren’t for Brendon], there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be here.”

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Warning: You Will Want to Adopt an Orphaned Baby Squirrel After Reading This

Our children learned to cherish life, no matter how small, by caring for an orphan baby squirrel.

My husband, Shawn, and I enjoy seeing life through the eyes of our five children. It’s amazing to watch as they discover their world.

While we were outdoors last summer enjoying the sunshine, our oldest daughter, Kaytlin, called me to the porch. Beneath the steps was a baby red squirrel.

We watched it from a distance, not wanting to disturb it or scare off its mother. But after a long wait—and looking all around our property for traces of a nest or a mother—we realized the tiny squirrel was likely an orphan.

Shaking terribly, he was frail, thin, and hungry. We tried to find an expert to help, but the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife website showed that there were no wildlife rehabilitators in our county. After some quick research, we concluded that the best way to give the squirrel a fighting chance was to care for him ourselves. So a trip to the local Tractor Supply store for puppy formula and supplies was in order.

More extensive research taught us how much to feed him, how to estimate his age, how and when to wean him, and that we should release him as soon as he could survive on his own.

Our daughters and I shared rotations of feeding “Squirt.” Kaytlin took on the most responsibility. She taught him to eat from a syringe, and she woke in the night for his feeds.

To our relief, Squirt soon began to thrive. Within a few weeks he became more alert and active. He would chatter for his next meal, playfully crawl around on the girls, and curl up on them for a nap. It wasn’t long before he was weaned onto solid food and reintroduced to the wild.

His first few visits to the great outdoors were comical. Just like a child, he would play in the grass some and then run back to Kaytlin for safety. Soon she had him climbing trees and finding nest material.

One day in the trees, he met up with a family of gray squirrels that was none too happy about his visit. They scolded and swatted at him, and he quickly learned some social skills. For several days he played all day in the trees surrounding our house but came down at bedtime.

And then one night, he didn’t. The rain pounded hard, and our girls fretted. But when the sun rose, there was Squirt, begging for a bite to eat. And that remained the pattern for a few weeks.

Squirt became well known in our neighborhood, and visitors knew to be on the lookout when they stopped by. But mostly he played in the trees, chattering away to anyone who happened to cross his path and occasionally swiping snacks from our toddler boys.

The experience was entertaining and heartwarming for our family. In the wild and somewhat silly moments of raising an orphaned baby squirrel, our children learned to value and appreciate life.

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My Father Was Dying in the Hospital. Then Another Patient Changed Everything.

When it came time to take my dad off of life support, I felt completely helpless. Then a perfect stranger made a heartbreaking situation slightly more bearable.

I got a call from my sister that my dad had taken a turn for the worse, and I needed to get home right away. I wasn’t ready for that. When I got to the hospital, he had already slipped into a coma. I had missed all the dramatic goodbyes that were said because everyone knew he was not gonna make it. So that was upsetting.

He was in a coma for a while. It was that weird place where everybody is connected by this thing and it’s killing us. After two weeks, I brought up the idea that maybe we should pull the plug. I don’t know where that saying comes from, ’cause nobody pulls a plug. Everybody stays plugged in.

But it was time. We all knew. I thought it would happen like on Days of Our Lives. I thought you would pull the plug, and there’d be a lot of crying for ten to 15 minutes, and then the person would pass, and you would be sad, but it would be over.

Instead, we waited for four, then five, hours. And you wanted to scream, ’cause it’s crazy. Right in the middle of this, they wheel another woman into our room, a woman who had just had heart surgery. I remember thinking, That’s not a good idea. My dad is dying. Why are you bringing in a woman who’s had heart surgery? That doesn’t make any sense. It’s bad management.

The woman was on a lot of medication and saying crazy things. She’s 80 and naked and kicking her covers off. I’m on this side of the room, with a curtain that is not very soundproof, sitting by my dad, saying, “I love you, Dad. I’m really going to miss you.”

From the other side, we hear, “Cinnamon.”

“You were such a great dad to me.”

“Cinnamon.”

“Dad, you were wonderful—”

“Cinnamon.”

Finally, you can’t help laughing, because your life is exploding in front of your eyes, and it’s that moment where you’re crying and laughing. Then my husband says, “Thirty ccs of cinnamon, stat!” It killed me, and we all stopped crying for a moment and laughed really hard.

Four hours later, the nurse says, “It’s probably time. His heart rate is lowering.” We are holding his hand, and she says, “Maybe if you tell him it’s OK to go, he’ll go.”

So we all say, “Daddy, it’s OK” and “We love you,” and my mom says, “John, you were such a great dad, and I love you, and it’s OK, I’ll take care of the girls.” And across the room from the old lady in the bed, we hear, “Don’t go, John.”

Yeah.

And I remember thinking, That’s what I feel. That was what was inside me. I think I gave that woman my words: “Don’t go, John. Don’t go.”

But he did. I had my hand on his chest and his heart stopped.

Later, we found out Cinnamon Lady—that’s what I call her, Cinnamon Lady—didn’t have anyone in her life named John. I thought, Wow, that’s crazy. But we also learned she was a baker. So we understood the cinnamon part.

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