Islands of Sanity

These days, we all have to pitch in to keep each other safe and sane. Here, longtime amigos Pete and Kathi drop by with homemade pizza and humor therapy to boost our spirits.

So this pheasant flies into a pub, smacks headfirst into the wall, stuns itself silly, and falls onto the floor. As Good Samaritan r/CasualUK explained on Reddit, “My husband decided we should try and take it to a more ‘pheasant appropriate’ place in the car ... The plan was to wrap the pheasant up in his jacket and I was to have the pheasant on my lap.” All went well until her husband’s next kindly impulse: turning on the car’s heating system.
 
The sudden blast of air drove the pheasant berserk. “It was flying around the car, I was screaming and my husband was still trying to drive. It was flapping all over the car … pooping as it went. My husband pulled over … and we opened the door to get the pheasant out ... well, that was another 20 minute job.”
 
I can only imagine the pheasant’s side of the story: assaulted by the pub wall, kidnapped by giants, escaped by the skin of its beak. It’s always a matter of perspective.

"It was a nightmare, I tell you," the pheasant keeps saying to its mates down at the pub.

​On the same Reddit thread, biscuitboy89 told about sitting on a train and having a baby seagull wander in and settle on his feet. The conductor suggested the guard at the next station would “take care of it,” but that sounded ominous to biscuitboy89 (and doubtless to the baby seagull as well). So he took the youngster home, where he discovered it loved hot dogs, baked beans, and Cheerios. (Who doesn't?)

Eventually he took the bird to a rescue center run by “a pretty kind but very eccentric lady. Amongst all the cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, geese, goats, pigs, llamas, rabbits, guinea pigs and god knows what else, this lady had about 15 baby seagulls in a barn. They had a big safe area full of straw, with a heat lamp and loads of cat food to eat. She said she just feeds them and when they want to leave, they make their own way and fly off.”

A baby sea gull finds comfort and safety in a Minnesota rescue center.

​I love the randomness of this rescue story, and the selflessness of bisciutboy89 and the eccentric lady. They remind us that we never know when or where we’re likely to have a chance to do something kind for a fellow creature.

These are moments of grace, offering us the opportunity to be our best selves, to rise to the occasion with generosity and Cheerios. I have the good fortune to have one such opportunity 24/7 in my California neighborhood: a community fridge.
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San Anselomo's community fridge displays a poster by local school children with the motto, "Take what you need, leave what you can."

​Tucked away in a hidden corner of a church’s side porch, the refrigerator holds donated fruits, vegetables, milk, and other fresh food; next to it is a metal locker full of pantry goods: rice, beans, pasta, hamburger buns. Everyone’s invited to contribute. Anyone can help themselves to anything they need. No strings attached, no questions asked. Ever.

“If you see your neighbor taking five cartons of eggs,” said Sabrina Socorro, one of the founders of Marin Community Fridges, “you don’t ask why. There is no hierarchy and no policing of each other.”

The concept of community foodsharing sites took off about ten years ago in Germany then Spain. The first one I saw was the Kindness Wall in Kalamata, Greece in 2019. A Kalamata woman told me, “The important thing is that it’s anonymous, so neighbors in need aren’t shamed in front of the community.”

Sometimes called “freedges,” or “(N)ICE Boxes,” hundreds of community fridges popped up across America during the pandemic, mostly on private property. The Love Fridge Chicago — launched in 2020 using the slogan, “We all gotta eat, we’re all gonna eat” — now maintains 23 fridges throughout the city. New York has over 100. LA and San Francisco each have 16. My county, Marin, hosts a handful; my town, San Anselmo, is home to one.

Tatiana Smith organizes the community fridge outside her house in Jersey City during the pandemic. Photo: Ismail Ferdous/The Guardian

Because my town is not poor or urban, early on people questioned whether a fridge was even needed here. But constant usage demonstrates that these days hunger can happen anywhere, to anyone. Food insecurity — not having the financial resources to put three square meals on the table every day — affects 47 million Americans, including 14 million kids.
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“To truly address hunger at this scale,” wrote MIT Urban Studies professor Ezra Glenn, “would require food banks the size of supermarkets and a distribution network comparable to Amazon’s.” Instead, there’s a patchwork of charities and government food programs, many of which are on the chopping block right now.

Beyond that, it’s up to us.
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Lisa (left) and Sue explain how they organize the community fridge and pantry. For overflow, there's extra storage in the church kitchen. Supplies rarely get depleted, but if they do, donated funds are available to restock.

​This week I met with Lisa and Sue, who lead the handful of volunteers keeping San Anselmo’s refrigerator and pantry clean and tidy, weeding out the stuff they can’t accept, such as expired canned goods and opened packages. Both women are members of First Presbyterian Church, which bought the refrigerator, provides space for it on the porch, and covers the cost of electricity, about $30 a month. An electrician from the congregation helped with the wiring. Neighbors, businesses, and community organizations donate groceries.

“How many people take food every week?” I inquired.

“We get asked that a lot,” said Lisa. “We have no idea. We don’t keep track of anything like that.” What? No controls? No CCTV? That’s a shockingly loosey-goosey attitude! And yet it works, benefitting those who give as much as those who receive.
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​Nowadays when I shop, I often pick up extra rice or olive oil to donate, and this week the unopened portion of my latest Costco impulse buy — a massive supply of Quaker Oats — is heading over there. Stepping onto that porch is always a feel-good moment for me. I have learned that when madness roams the earth and threatens to overwhelm my soul, the surest way to dispel the gloom is doing something for others.

Our acts of kindness are how we maintain “islands of sanity,” according to poet Margaret J. Wheatly. “It is now too late to solve global issues globally to try to save the world,” she says. “We can only work locally to create islands of sanity that will preserve the best of the human spirit.”
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I thought about the Irish monks who spent the Dark Ages copying books, so the collective wisdom acquired over thousands of years would not be wholly lost. Today Wayback Machine archivists are copying endangered digital material; they've saved 835 billion webpages so far. The rest of us are entrusted with an equally vital task: preserving such intangibles as human decency and compassion.

​Not all our efforts have ideal endings. I suspect r/CasualUK won’t be relocating another dazed pheasant any time soon. But often the results exceed our expectations. Think of all the cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, geese, goats, pigs, llamas, rabbits, guinea pigs, and baby seagulls that owe their lives to that eccentric woman at the rescue barn.

It's comforting to know our small acts of kindness are not just helping those around us, they’re contributing to the preservation of the human spirit through dark and perilous times, as so many have done before us, keeping alive hopes of seeing brighter days ahead.
 

A young volunteer inspects a community fridge in the UK. Photo: Lucy Young

​Learn more and find a community fridge near you.
​
Curious about what it takes to start one?

Got a story about a community fridge or other acts of kindness?
​Let me know in the comments below.

​FINDING HOPE
This story is part of a series of blog posts exploring ways people help each other find hope in this worrying world. Know someone you think should be featured? Let me know in the comments below.
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