Loaves and Fishes is a lifeline for many of the homeless in New Milford. Their soup kitchen feeds about 100 people dinner each day.
It is easy walking distance to the HART bus stop, and also to the camp that the homeless have set up in recent years near the Housatonic bridge (which I am told the police regularly raid, and the homeless for some reason regularly come back to. Don't they have better places to be?)
Since February, the mayor of New Milford has been trying to move the soup kitchen to a location 6 miles from the center of town. Does she think that this population needs a 12-mile walk each day to stay fit? The poet Neil Silberblatt compared the Mayor's proposal to Jonathan Swift's modest proposal to eat the poor. He notes that most of the homeless "are residents of New Milford and are no less residents than those who have gorgeous country homes in that town."
In the words of Rachel Sampson:
"There but for the grace of God go I" -- anyone could be in need of social service assistance, even the mayor, some day.And in the words of my Aunt, Penny O'Gorman:
My son is Major Robert Kitchen, a New Milford High School graduate who went into the U.S. Air Force and became a high-ranking, highly decorated officer and veteran of two wars.
Recently, my son passed a homeless man on the street while he was on his way to work. He brought the man to a coffee shop, bought him breakfast and chatted with him.
I am as proud of him for that action as I am of his many military accomplishments.
