Some Lettuce and Tomato

November 8, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

Mel was hoping he’d score some lettuce and tomato. And thanks to Guido’s, Mel and friends offered 108 people salad with the chicken dinner Ski Butternut donated.

I joined Mel Greenberg and Jürek Zamoyski on their weekly rounds to gather food for People’s Pantry and the Berkshires Bounty dinner.

Jürek’s airbrushed birds, flowers, and animals are alive and electric. His paintings of Bob Marley have traveled the earth on God knows how many t-shirts. But for artists like Jürek, it is sometimes easier to imagine and render unique universes than make one’s way comfortably in this money-matters-most-of-all universe.

These days Jürek is stretching the boundaries of his art. Putting aside the photorealistic style he mastered in favor of the abstract. A new way of seeing and painting, a daunting but invigorating challenge.

Jürek met Mel at one of his dinners. Partaking, then volunteering. And he quickly became one of Mel’s most important helpers.

They are an odd pair. Jürek’s white hair is prodigious and anarchic. A large, tall Pole, he can loom over Mel. But Mel, even at eighty, is in incredible shape, and his energy seems limitless, a flesh-and-blood dynamo.

Together they pick up bagels from Barrington Bagel and bread from Big Y, produce from Guido’s and meat from Hilltown Pork in Canaan, NY. Jürek’s favorite stop is the Donut Shoppe.

Mel brought his big heart with him when he came to the Berkshires in 1996. In Hempstead, NY he had been involved in the local pantry. Then helped to create the first homeless health care clinic. Thirty people came the first day. Now it serves two thousand people a week.

Everything they do is real. So much else is rhetoric. The blah-blah-blah of TV and radio, the incessant lies of the politicos, and the unrelenting, uninspired commentary of the pathetic pundits. The shutdown stupidity.

I haven’t seen my friend Anthony lately but over these last many months I’ve come to share his contempt for government. Those who “represent” us fail us with such regularity it is maddening. So very bad for what little remains of my mental health. I’m unable to watch or hear them without wishing they were sentenced to ten years of listening to themselves.

It was a big deal many years ago to suggest that there are two Americas. Some took offense at the suggestion that the rich lived different lives. Earnest sociologists searched for the disadvantaged to study: took the train to Harlem, drove to East L.A. or flew to Appalachia, There were graduate school courses on the poor. Who they were and where they lived.

Well, the poor have multiplied and are everywhere amongst us. The once thriving middle class has shrunk, the jobs have been sent across the seas, while the rich thrive, a million Ozymandias, many kings of kings.

You might imagine that I’m talking about somewhere else. But you don’t need high-powered binoculars to see the two Americas. Some of us, without a moment’s hesitation, will spend seventy-five dollars to see the great Taj Mahal sing the blues, while others can’t escape them.

Mel and Jürek know that good people are hungry. Mel and Jürek know that there is something we can do about. And without fanfare or reward, they do it.

They drop off food at People’s Pantry at Cavalry Christian Chapel on Route 41. Sadly because there’s no public transportation, the Pantry now serves 40 to 50 families a week, down from the 70 to 80 families who came to St James in Downtown GB.

“You know I believe in balance,” Jürek told me. “We take and we give. Without balance, we cause suffering. I grew up in Poland under Communism. With a similar philosophy, but it was so corrupt, and violated its own philosophy. I don’t wave flags, but I believe giving is more important than receiving. I believe our purpose is to make this a better place.”

Mel has had a successful life manufacturing commercial lighting. Like Jürek’s images of Bob Marley, he has travelled the world.

“I met Jürek at dinner,” Mel said. “He’s my friend and a constant help. I help a little bit in a society that often doesn’t care as much as it should. Most problems have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But poverty only has a beginning and a middle …”

Mel can’t see a problem without imaging a solution. Mel turned to me: “Do you know last year there were more than 10 homeless teenagers in Great Barrington? Please talk to the Railroad Street Youth Project.”

Yevin Roh told me “Many homeless youth are running away from bad home situations that may be abusive, or have irreconcilable differences with their parents/guardians … So we are looking for community members with a spare bed for youth to stay on a short term basis.”

A spare bed, some lettuce and tomato.

A better America.