[BES Friends] This coming Saturday afternoon

[Stephen Meskin]

Movable Feast still needs volunteers from 1 to 5 pm this Saturday.  Join 
Cathy, Susan, Beth and Susan's and Beth's daughters portioning out and 
packing up meals for the homebound.  Please let me know ASAP if you can 
come. Tell me what times in the 1-5 time period you can work and whether 
you need a ride.

The last of these Movable Feast messages will be sent next week related 
to Thursday May 18 from 10 to 3.  After that we will go back to very few 
e-mails.  This situation has arisen because of the coincidence of two 
Movable Feast events in May that will shut down their normal 
production.  Movable Feast will be out of production for three days due 
to the bike-ride across Maryland fund raiser and then two more days for 
long Memorial Day weekend.

BES did very well at Movable Feast last Saturday, the first time we 
volunteered there as a group.  There were eight of us -- 5 members and 3 
friends.  One of us left early at about 11 am being replaced by two who 
arrived at about that time.  Production ended at about 11:30 and was 
followed by a volunteer orientation.  There were about 10 other 
volunteers for a total of about 15 including a group of students from 
Towson U. and a woman from Laurel who came through a volunteer reference 
organization. 

The work was a well organized production line.  It did require being on 
one's feet, walking, and manual effort to portion out the meals from 
large pots, putting tops on containers, putting labels describing the 
meals on the tops of the containers, boxing up the completed meals, 
cleaning the tables and preparing containers for the next meal.  Each 
meal contained vegetables, a starch, and protein source.  Then 5 
different meals were stacked and placed into plastic bags to be frozen.  
We must have done at least 200 such bags or a total of 1000 meals.  It 
was work but it was fun.  Everyone was pleasant and motivated and one 
could see the results of one's effort.  I felt good when I left.

Steve