Catholic san Francisco
(PHOTO BY JOSE LUIS AGUIRRE/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)
Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper
Catholic school on the rise Second-grade students are pictured at Our Lady of the Visitacion School. Enrollment is up 35 percent at the parish school in southeast San Francisco, in part because of the closure of other parish schools in the area and because of rising interest by alumni and parish families. See story on Page 10.
‘Humbling, difficult’: Bay Area rep’s week on a food stamp diet By George Raine You can learn a lot about nutrition and how to stretch a food stamp dollar, as Rep. Jackie Speier did, when you’re limited to $4.50 per day for food, as food stamp recipients are. Oatmeal, beans and peanut butter are key staples, and a tuna-noodle casserole may be good for a week. You can better understand, too, the struggle of the poor, even the working poor, like the woman who wrote to Speier during the week she ate on a food stamp-limited diet to tell her that she had to rub the tummies of her children when they didn’t have food because they were in so much pain. “That put tears in my eyes,” said Speier, D-Hillsborough, who participated with other House Democrats in a “Food Stamp Challenge” the first week
Rep. Speier’s breakfast, Nov. 2
of November to call attention to the food stamp program facing a possible budget reduction in Congress. Now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – in California it is called CalFresh – the program that feeds some 44 million low-income Americans is threatened. At least one senator, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, has recommended to the bipartisan super committee trying to identify $1.5 trillion in federal savings by Thanksgiving
that members reduce the food stamp program budget significantly. He said in a letter Nov. 7 that the nutrition assistance program is an “unmonitored welfare program” and that even modest reform to it “can save many billions of dollars over the coming years.” “I would like to take a big whack out of his salary,” Speier said of Sessions. “I don’t think anyone in Congress should be allowed to cut this program unless they have lived on $4.50 a day for a week.” Speier called the experience of living on $4.50 a day “humbling and difficult.” She said she found herself constantly thinking about food and controlled stomach growling by eating popcorn. She also learned to be a crafty shopper: She found three bunches of Romaine lettuce at Trader Joe’s and two cans of chicken noodle at Walgreens for half the price at Safeway. The popcorn came from the Dollar Tree store. At Safeway, she didn’t have enough cash for one of three tomatoes and one of two cans of chili in her basket. Back they went. On the fifth and final day she had one carrot and half a container of yogurt. “What if I had to go another day?” she asked. “It made me appreciate so much what we are not doing as a country,” said Speier. “That we have really become compassionless, almost like it is acceptable. FOOD STAMP DIET, page 13
INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION News in brief. . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Advent ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Thanksgiving roundup . . . . . 7 The new missal is here . 14-15 Father Rolheiser . . . . . . . . . 21
Golden Gate and Jones ~ Page 4 ~ November 18, 2011
Dispatch from Mogadishu ~ Page 16 ~
1 in 5 men 25-34 living with parents ~ Page 23 ~ ONE DOLLAR
Book reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Classified ads . . . . . . . . . . . 27
www.catholic-sf.org VOLUME 13
•
No. 37