Holiday 'Hustle' and Bustle

Merry Christmas, everybody!

I hope this holiday finds you happy and healthy with friends and family around you. As I write this, It's a Wonderful Life is playing in our VCR, and Taylor and I are aspiring to make a bigger impact on the world in 2010.

Speaking of impact, some local businesses have made a tremendous impact on the local community by way of food drive donations. I don't have the complete tally from Monday and Tuesday's pick-ups with me, but here are some of the more memorable stops we made:

Hobsons, which I believe is an educational recruitment company in Mason, made a contest out of their food drive. They requested 10 barrels, and what do you know, they filled all of them and then some. This is just a sampling of what we found on Monday when we arrived to pick up their barrels:

Multiply this by 5 and you can imagine how full Gus was from this single pick up. In fact, we couldn't fit all ten barrels and the overflow food in the truck, so we had to come back on Tuesday to retrieve the rest. Hobsons collected just under 2000 pounds of food--amazing! Well done!

Other pick ups included but were not limited to:

• College Suites, an apartment complex where I used to live when I attended Miami. In addition to food, the students were so generous to put clothes and an old ironing board in the barrels as well. Oh, there's just one problem, though. You can't eat those things. Hmm.
• Indiana Wesleyan in West Chester. They really surprised us with more than 900 pounds of food! Great job!
• Valco Cincinnati, a company specializing in electronic monitoring systems and strong, durable adhesives for packaging, right here in Fairfield. I don't remember exactly how much food they collected, but I do remember that their barrel was full and that Alex had a can of tomato juice leak all over her as we loaded the barrel into the truck.
  
• Showcase Cinemas ended their month-long holiday movie food drive last weekend, and we picked up their last round of donations earlier this week. Again, I can't remember exactly how much they collected, but the barrel was a lot heavier this time around than in prior weeks. That's always a good sign.
• And then there's a food drive stop that I will likely never forget. Just take a look below:
  

I can't remember how much food the adult novelty store brought in--I think about a barrel and 3 boxes' worth--which they collected by offering an incentive of some percentage off of patrons' purchases for every canned food item brought in. I even heard that other Hustler stores around the country participated in food drives in their respective communities this year, too. Actually, I bet you didn't know that Hustler has been a long-time supporter of the foodbank since its start in the 1970s.

To anyone out there clicking their tongues at this food drive, just remember that food is food, no matter where it is collected. And that's all I'll say about that.

You never know where AmeriCorps*VISTA will take you, especially during the holidays.