Best Happy When We're Helping

Saturday morning I headed up to the Bronx, near Yankee Stadium . . .

To participate in a service project helping with a City Harvest Mobile Market distributing produce.  I think they said we had 30,000 pounds of food to distribute that day?  Something like that.  There was a really great turnout for distributors and distributees, so I'd believe it if we really did work with that much produce.

I worked with fine people like JJ and Molly at the watermelon station.

We bagged and gave out about a dozen giant boxes-worth of watermelons that morning.  

I just bagged and bagged and bagged watermelons all the live-long morning and loved it.

The other foods on hand were: Carrots by the 50 lb bag,

Potatoes!

Sweet potatoes.  Or yams?  (Or are those the same?)

Workers on hand included: Ben, back from a European summer.

Steph!  (with her hands up,)  Emily, Lauren, Taylor (working).  Not that I'm saying Steph wasn't working!

Mark.

Kim!

During the occasional watermelon lull I worked with the carrot people.  Here I am sneaking a bag off to  deliver at a Rabbit Rescue Center to continue my efforts to make up for having eaten a rabbit the other week.

WARNING!  THE FOLLOWING IMAGES MIGHT BE DISTURBING TO SENSITIVE READERS!

We get pretty used to a certain shape of carrots.  A carrot-shape stereotype forced upon us by the media and society.  Sometimes we forget how weird carrots can look.  For example:

Or:

(And take a look at the image two pictures above again if you didn't notice the two-legged carrot doing the splits)

Anyway, Saturday's service activity was just great.  I really loved getting up early and putting in a good morning's work, and it was great to be with all the volunteers working so hard.  Sometimes we just spend time with each other when we're being lazy, it's nice to see each other when we're actually putting our shoulders to the wheels and noses to grindstones.  Two days later my back is so sore from tossing around melons!  This is so great!

Additional things I saw in the Bronx Saturday:

Did the school where we worked have the best mascot? 

This poster at this restaurant says they're looking for good-looking girls to work there.  Really.

Building absolutely does not look like a New York building at all.  I bet you thought I was in Brazil again when you saw it

Nice little church and field.

One more time: Thanks to everyone that came out to the service project!  And to Abby for organizing it.  And here's a link to learn more about City Harvest, the people in charge of the market, and many other great projects throughout the city.