In the Rockaways, students from several CUNY campuses wearing special “CUNY Works” T-shirts cleared wreckage, did demolition and spread the word about relief efforts to businesses in part of Council Member James Sanders Jr.’s district. The team included students from the Ernesto Malave Leadership Academy and the CUNY Coalition for Students with Disabilities. They traveled from Manhattan in a double-decker tour bus arranged by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

Volunteer Maria Fabian weighs food to be given out at the West Side Campaign Against Hunger at the Church of St. Paul & St. Andrew on West 86th Street.

West Side Campaign Against Hunger passes goal in Thousand Turkey Challenge

West Side Campaign Against Hunger stocked a special item in their pantry this past week: a whole lot of turkeys. The nonprofit, located in the basement of the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew at 262 W. 86th St., co-sponsored the second annual Thousand Turkey Challenge, a turkey drive organized by local religious groups to provide holiday meals for at-need families.

“You’re seeing us at our most chaotic. We’re not usually this messy,” promised Stewart Desmond, incoming WSCAH executive director, as he gave a quick tour of the bustling basement pantry on Monday during the busiest meal time. Patrons pushed small carts and chatted mostly in Spanish while volunteers checked out finished shoppers and ushered in others seated in the large basement waiting area. Unlike a soup kitchen, Desmond explained, patrons at WSCAH’s pantry choose their meals from well-stocked shelves based on a point system that allows for a certain amount of grains, protein, vegetables and so forth. Then they cook the food at their own apartments.

“We live in a progressive community that wants to help people in the most progressive way possible,” Desmond said. “A pantry like this that gives people some dignity represents the values of the Upper West Side. We’re something the Upper West Side can be proud of.”

At the basement’s far end, a table with members of the Society of the Advancement of Judaism and West End Synagogue, the drive’s two founders, collected turkeys for the pantry from Upper West Side donors. Last year, the members said, the organizations collected several hundred turkeys and raised over $10,000 from cash donations, which allowed them to provide holiday meals for over 1,700 families. This year, Desmond estimated that they would raise over 1,000 turkeys from Nov. 15 to 21, the drive’s dates. He noted that they also provide hams and cooked chickens to smaller families.

Chris Gill, a volunteer at a check-out counter who has been involved with WSCAH for about 10 years, said that the pantry was providing an essential service to the city’s community in hard economic times. “Famine is serious,” he asserted. “If it wasn’t for pantries, they’d have to open more jails. There’d be a lot more crime. The rate of unemployment, the lack of food stamps—that would cause havoc. There would be a lot more policemen standing in front of doors.”

Many shoppers agreed that the pantry was providing a good service. Bronx resident and pantry regular Roger Beddoe complained that the 1.5-hour line this time of year was “crazy, ridiculous,” but perked up at the prospect of turkey. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s worth the wait.”

Every year, around this time, people start thinking about all the turkey they’re going to eat, the days they will take off from work to be with family and other small gifts for which they are grateful, and they remember those less fortunate. Local soup kitchens and other downtown nonprofits prepare for this outpouring of good will with plenty of special Thanksgiving week volunteer opportunities. We’ve compiled them here, along with ongoing volunteer efforts that could use your help this Thanksgiving and all year long.

The Bowery Mission’s Red Door Hunger Drive
The mission? Serve 9,000 meals to the homeless and hungry during Thanksgiving week. They are also collecting food and donations for “blessing bags” full of practical cold-weather items, which they give to each guest who passes through. They already have all the volunteers they need to serve meals, but you can still register to raise funds as an individual or with a team. Visit support.bowery.org to sign up or find out what to donate (you can drop off food at the Bowery Mission 24/7).

Feeding NYC says ‘Adopt a Box’
This nonprofit delivers complete meals to thousands of families living in shelters around the city on Thanksgiving. They already reached capacity for volunteers, but you can still “adopt a box” of food by donating money. Visit feedingnyc.org to find out how.

Day-after-Thanksgiving Celebration at Visions
After you’ve already feasted, you can help blind and visually impaired tenants of this specialized building celebrate their Thanksgiving. Help decorate, assist seniors and serve meals. Friday, Nov. 23, 3 – 8 p.m. Visions at Selis Manor, 135 W. 23rd St.
646-486-4444.

Hurricane Sandy Recovery Efforts (various locations)
You’ve seen how bad things are in Far Rockaway and other areas, and you’re eager to get on the ground, get your hands dirty and help out. The best way to get involved is to contact shelters and resource distribution centers that have been helping to coordinate the aid efforts. Their information is below:

CAAAV
This Chinatown-based organization has been on the ground since day one of the hurricane and has since focused its efforts on sites that were hit harder than the Lower East Side. They will announce volunteer opportunities on their website, which may include events during Thanksgiving week.

Occupy Sandy Recovery
This group is linked to many local organizations and recommends that before visiting a site that requires volunteers, you visit one of the two main volunteer intake and distribution centers, located in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, and Sunset Park, Queens, respectively. These sites collect donations as well. After orientation, you can help at the distribution center or get dispatched to another site.

Visit interoccupy.net/occupysandy for up-to-the-minute information about what they need on the ground. You can also purchase specific goods in high demand to be delivered directly to New Jersey, Staten Island and the Rockaways by using the site’s “Wedding Registry.”

Turkey Day is the time to fly to small town America, where no matter how successful you’ve become in the big city, your family will find a way to ensure you haven’t gotten too big for your britches. For your own arsenal, offer to tend bar and use these cocktail recipes to soothe the beast in everyone. You may even learn to not regret having made the trip.

1. The Granny Slammer: Grandma’s been up since 5:30 a.m. with her hand up the backside of the turkey. Hence she’s already downed half a bottle of sherry.  If she’s going to go the distance, (i.e. finish cooking your dinner) she’ll need sustenance. Solution: One large glass of water with a shot of sausage gravy on the side.

2. NFL Win-Win: Dad’s getting his annual exercise, sitting in front of the TV screaming “Run, bastard, run” to the running back on the football field. Make sure to have a chilled pony keg of Labatt’s and an I.V. hookup. Serve with Swedish fish and Cheetos. With luck, by the second half, he’ll be pacified.

3. Mother’s Little Helper: Mom doesn’t drink, so serve her a Long Island Iced tea (1 oz. of tequila, vodka, rum, gin and triple sec, splashes of lemonade and Coke, shake well.) By the time she’s complained for the eleventh time about you not being married, she’ll change the subject to “that’s sure some good iced tea, hon.” Smile and nod, smile and nod.

4. Aunt Margie’s Aneurysm:  Auntie’s been chattering incessantly about everything from her bunions to the neighbor’s thyroid, and if she doesn’t shut up soon, you’re going to drive up to Make Out Point and throw yourself off the cliff. Time to calm her down with a Bloody Brain. Make this in a travel cup with a lid. Using peach schnapps as the base, slowly pour Bailey’s Irish cream to curdle like a brain. Add a dripping of Grenedine or Tabasco for the blood. Your choice, but remember she did show you the oozing sore on her thigh.

5. Brother Joe’s Boogie Monster: Your brother hasn’t gotten off the couch since 1989. Mix one bottle Ginsing extract, one Monster energy drink, and 2 shots low quality bourbon. Serve with a smile and mention quietly that if he doesn’t rake the leaves by dinner time, you’ll blab about the blow up doll he’s got stashed under the bunk beds.

6 & 7. Nap Time Jello:  For Carter and Jackson, ages 5 and 7, who have pushed crayons in their every orifice and eaten all the wax fruit off the table centerpiece.  Make up a batch of Nyquil Jello. Serve in Dixie cups. Assume there are no ill side effects in conjunction with the turkey’s tryptophan. Watch them sleep til Saturday.

8. Uncle Mervin’s Monkey Gland: The only classic on the menu from the 1920s. Merv the Perv will enjoy the gin, O.J., grenadine and anisette concoction. Maybe tie him to the chair next to Aunt Margie. Serves him right. Then again, he has to live with her.

9. Yours Truly,  aka “I need a damn drink”:  You know very well the liquor stores in your home town only stock Frexinet and Korbel, not champagne. Buy a few bottles of each, add vodka and sit in a long, hot bath with Calgon. Dream of going home. Pass out. Repeat as needed.

10. After Dinner Digestif : Everyone gets a perky mélange of Pepto Bismal and dark rum. Just think, only 33 days ‘til Christmas! Happy Holidays.

On the Monday night following the long Thanksgiving weekend, New York City’s independent film community gathered in Lower Manhattan for the Gotham Awards, an annual fundraising event for the ever-vital Independent Feature Project [Full disclosure, I serve on the nominating committee for the Gotham Awards’ Documentary Film category]. The ceremony put the Gothams first on the awards calendar, a somewhat controversial move that saw them slide ahead of The New York Film Critics Circle (who announced their award winners the next day) and The National Board of Review, an organization whose awards have traditionally kicked off the season.

If there were hostile whispers about the move, it didn’t seem to matter on the night; the celebrities were luminous and out in force, with Charlize Theron, Alec Baldwin, Gary Oldman, Tilda Swinton, Stanley Tucci and Christopher Plummer providing the paparazzi the famous faces upon which to train their lenses. The ceremony itself was brisk and full of surprises, with winners in categories like Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You (Scenes of a Crime), Breakthrough Actor (Felicity Jones) and Best Ensemble Performance (Beginners) signaling just how unique the event really is.

The Gothams did a lovely job of balancing glitz and mission, celebrating established names with the same sincerity with which they announced the arrival of new voices. Film award season has a lot in common with political campaigning; teams of handlers and publicists racing to get their contenders out in front of the masses, industry power players serving as a sort of electoral college, their votes courted in private screening rooms, lavish luncheons and exclusive cocktail parties.

Awarding organizations can also function in a familiar way, moving their events up and down the calendar like states jockeying for primacy in a mad scramble to be first, to set the agenda for the season and expand influence among the big names in the business. And of course, the goal is to win, because winning means money, prestige and power.

To the casual observer, awards for films may seem not only superficial but a wholly subjective waste of time, free of reasonable criteria (what defines the best actor in a given year?) and generally bucking popular taste in favor of critical acclaim (the disparity between box office popularity and award accumulation is usually vast).

As cultural access grows more and more democratic, anyone with an opinion and a computer is able to broadcast their thoughts and enter the conversation, yet most organizations awarding films have built an exclusive firewall around the process, maintaining a secret ballot for select groups of voters, maintaining the power to fascinate and frustrate the masses. It seems odd that perhaps the most democratic and populist of art forms still celebrates itself with the glamour and gusto of a segregated aristocracy.

But how else to maintain the illusory power of the cinema? Celebrity gossip dominates the narrative as movie stars and their teams struggle to maintain control of their images, and with the rise of social media, audiences are given access to the lives of celebrities who broadcast their daily experiences in real time. It’s growing harder and harder to suspend disbelief, to remove the business of film and publicity from the pleasure of the work itself.

In this context, award season feels almost decadent, a chance to bask in the old-school autobiography that the movie business continues to write. If anything, this is the season for re-establishing Hollywood’s self-image, one that continues to move further and further from the emerging power we have as movie lovers, harkening back to a simpler time when movies dominated our dreams and everything was under control.

By Gavin Aronsen

Hunger is on the rise on the Upper West Side.

Volunteers at the West Side Campaign Against Hunger prepared for one of its busiest periods of the year on a recent Tuesday, as they managed their final delivery of food just before Thanksgiving week.

The holidays are one of the busiest times at the West Side Campaign Against Hunger. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

The campaign runs an emergency food-pantry program located at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew on West 86th Street. Last month, representatives from the food pantry said that it saw a 31-percent rise in people from the same period a year before to more than 8,200 this year, and this month is expected to be even busier.

Since the recession in 2008 there has been a nearly 50-percent increase in the number of people seeking food at the pantry, according to Doreen Wohl, the program’s executive director.

“People’s need for food is all year round,” Wohl said. “The wider community only wakes up to this at Thanksgiving and at Christmastime.”

Most weeks, the pantry is open Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, with Tuesdays reserved for receiving new shipments of food. But next week, it will be open Monday through Wednesday and closed Thanksgiving Day and Friday so volunteers and staff have time to spend with their families.

People in need of assistance come to the pantry once a month, where they are given their choice of healthy foods to last about three days. It is disbursed based on a point system designed to provide a proper balance among the different food groups.

A chef nutritionist, Mark D’Alessandro, runs a 12-week cooking course to teach those interested how to prepare meals, who in turn help others who come to the pantry in need.

Stewart Desmond, the program’s development director, said despite perceptions that the economy has taken a turn for the better, the need for food among low-income people continues to grow, even on the generally well-off Upper West Side.

He predicted that next week would be “overwhelming” but that staff and volunteers would be prepared.

The pantry, one of the city’s largest emergency food programs, relies on city, state and federal funding as well as cash and in-kind donations from community members and religious organizations. Still, Wohl said the demand for food has overwhelmed the program’s budget.

Shirley Brevard, a 15-year volunteer with the program, said she expects to see lines stretching a block away to Broadway next week as eager families hope to receive Thanksgiving turkeys.

“You’re going to hear them asking tomorrow,” said Carrie Fair, who has volunteered at the pantry for the past 12 years.

Although Wohl said the resources do not exist to provide everyone a turkey, she said staff and volunteers are working to ensure that healthy meals will be available next week for those in need.

Said Brevard, who is used to seeing wall-to-wall lines even on typical days, “We don’t really disappoint them.”

“Next week is going to be crazy, but we love it,” she said.

Wohl said the pantry is typically busier around Thanksgiving than Christmas because more places tend to provide food assistance for the latter holiday.

For more information, visit www.wscah.org.

Too much to crunch into this column, too, but here goes: Yorkville’s mighty thankful that the Cherokee Post Office has been saved—but use it or lose it. And here’s hoping that all-out civic “endeavoring” will now be directed against some too-little assailed chronic oppressors, like:

1. Crimes of traffic. And hey, why is this “foremost champion” against them never consulted? (To quote a 2006 tribute from Rep. Carolyn Maloney.)

2. Noise pollution still gets a pass, where we live (neighbors!) and walk (horn-blowing and over-loud emergency sirens) and ride (the artic buses’ oppressively loud “climate controls” and most buses’ piercingly shrill kneeling step “warners”).

3. The over-drinking, because it can so adversely alter behavior, should be more feared than the hugely deplored over-eating and smoking. Open AA meetings need universal attendance so drinkers can learn how hazardous even one over-indulgent time can be.

4. Ah, but Sexaholics Anonymous may be the most needed of all self-help groups, even for one seemingly morally upstanding champion golfer. A famed rocker just joined. Let’s hope Gov. Eliot Spitzer is a member. Would that only males were “what’s love got to do with it?” addicts. And an ever more “lustualized” society needs some indicting.

Undermining other home front devotions is the usual flood of how to survive “the dreaded and dreadful family-of-origin reunions,” where elders are often the heavies. My two “not fit to print” letters to the New York Times’ home and science/health sections rued both their one-sided view and their failure to include “get along” communication/skill rules. Yes, Virginia, they do exist and “how to” manuals should be a life-long required study and practice. Lesson number one: share the talk—so nobody is left out.

Related: the food, clergy and volunteer hospitality at St. Stephen of Hungary’s first community Thanksgiving dinner were simply four-star. But my table’s three twentysomethings’ acting-related shoptalk never tried to include their two elder tablemates.

Also related, here’s to Logos Book Store, on York between 83rd and 84th, featuring communication skills in its monthly “Kill Your TV” free book discussions. And let the Monday children’s story hour stress positive intergenerational interaction. This most gracious of stores has a wide collection of philosophical and all-faith books, along with pretty much G-rated secular ones. May the community, especially faith groups, strongly support it.

And if ever all-out civic action were deserved, it’s for Assembly Member Micah Kellner’s bill to assist small businesses ravaged by Second Avenue subway construction, by giving landlords a property tax break for reducing rent (see Nov. 26 story, “Subway Construction Updates”). Mayoral opposition has it stalled in the State Senate. Affected business owners are asked to call Kellner’s office at 212-860-4906. So should those businesses that will eventually be affected. Surely a just society does everything possible to protect people and places from any hardship caused by a public interest project; it’s bad enough when it’s the private, for profit, kind.

Lest we forget, the Park Avenue memorial trees honor all who gave, and alas, are still giving, their lives in this nation’s wars. This most meaningful and reverently lovely city tradition was begun by several New York women whose sons were killed in World War II. And so many thanks are due the now-retired Marge Ternes, for her 40-plus years of directing the all-year, private donor-supported, enchanting Park Avenue Mall plantings and, of course, the truly wonderful memorial trees. n

dewingbetter@aol.com

Again, I maintain there’d be far more to be thankful for if we just smiled. I dared to nod at the stony-faced stranger sitting next to me at a recent funeral. Although she looked startled, she not only nodded back, but smiled.

There might be more to be thankful for if more were said about the last years of an elder’s life—period—than that which is said at funerals and in obituaries. So little is said about what is often the most difficult time of our lives, and obituary photos usually show the departed at a much younger age—and smiling.

The Nov. 16 New York Times special obit about a former Times dance and art critic who left this life at age 87 showed a much younger man, and the story was about his successful career. As usual, little is said about the “retirement years,” often so stressful for males especially, or about his debilitating lung disease.

At the funeral, younger family members, sometimes through tears, but more often with laughter, recalled a mother, aunt and grandmother walking so briskly one could hardly keep up with her. Surely endearing were the recollections—all the birthdays and other shared celebrations, often in another city, where her family had moved. But I’ve come to believe we also need to know about “last years” and about the women who made them livable for the woman remembered and mourned. We need to hear how the departed’s long life and failing health does not lessen the loss felt most keenly by those who were so much a part of her life, especially her sister-in-law, with whom there were at least lengthy weekly get-togethers. And the women who took care of both elder women, they too feel so very bereft.

The elder womens’ doctors often said how very fortunate they were to have such “quality caregivers.” Infinitely more should be said on a public level why this is considered so “very fortunate.”

Let’s say infinitely more about the myriad and concurrent disorders, mental and physical, that often occur in later years, especially in an age-segregated society obsessed with the physical and looking young. Only then will the most dread failure of the mind get the research and treatment it deserves, and socially acceptable jokes on “losing it,” heard even on Oprah and The View, are seen as a hurtful kind of hate talk.

Incidentally, only the departed’s sister-in-law needed a wheelchair, and I was the only one at the funeral needing a cane. How often this happens, and at functions like civic groups’, where the citizenry airs grievances. How to overcome them? You get the message.

And faith groups, of which I am a staunch advocate, also overlook the need some have in just getting to services. But it’s Thanksgiving, and I’m so thankful for these groups’ existence. I hope many note the example of St. Stephen of Hungary, which is holding its first Thanksgiving dinner for those in the congregation and community who may be alone on this very “inclusive” national holiday. Although they may not be used, I bought two $5 tickets (affordable!) because I so believe in faith groups concerned with the “family-less”/”family-poor”—and not only on holidays.

And dear readers, I am most thankful for you, and this paper—all print newspapers. Let’s really support them—and small neighborhood businesses. Forget Costco! We’ll have more to smile about if we do.

dewingbetter@aol.com

“Why can’t it just be family?” I asked Dad, as he checked on the stuffing. “Aren’t we crazy enough?” “No, we’re boring. Besides, remember the year we invited the Nigerian prince Mom met on the street? That was so much fun,” he enthused.

“Besides,” Mom chimed in from the dining room, where she was polishing unmatched wineglasses. “It’s Jewish tradition to invite those less fortunate into your home on even an American holiday. It’s a mitzvah.”

“It’s not a mitzvah,” I replied, “if the mystery guests you invited massacre us.”

“That’s not a very positive attitude.

They’re probably just as frightened as you are. They probably think we’re a bunch of weirdos who will poison the yams,” Dad said, “Try to think of it from their point of view.”

“I don’t know who they are,” I reminded him, burning my tongue on scalding sauce.

Yet, I couldn’t stop obsessing over the cyber guests. My parents wouldn’t allow me to see their Craigslist post, or the emails they’d received in response. Thanksgiving was one of the only days in the year my father sat down with Babbi and Zayde, my beloved grandparents and his patronizing parents-in-law. I wanted us to laugh together over a 20-pound bird and give thanks our dysfunctional Hebrew clan was gathering in my parents’ living room surrounded by papiermché masks and antique furniture Dad rescued from Dumpsters. Instead, I worried the Internet—which had caused me enough stress already (Why had someone from my clothingoptional college days stolen my profile picture and made it his own?)—would ruin any chance at family redemption. Even if our mystery guests weren’t mass murderers out to slaughter a bunch of neurotic New York Jews, I reasoned no well-balanced person would attend a Thanksgiving dinner from an Internet ad on a notoriously nefarious website.

“Oh, you’re not the Craigslist people,” Dad said, disappointed, when he opened the door for my friend Lauren. She had just moved to Brooklyn from Orange County and I’d invited her so

I could have someone to get drunk with when the carving knives became deadly weapons.

“Nice to meet you,” she laughed. “I’m serious,” Dad said. “Where are the people from Craigslist? I’m going to go email them.”

“He’s not joking?” Lauren asked me. Babbi and Zayde showed up five minutes later with a crateful of Zinfandel and gin. Mom rushed around putting out cheese and crackers. My younger brother drank wine in his room. My uncle, Mom’s 54-year-old bachelor brother, rang the bell with six packs of beer, inappropriately smooched Lauren near the mouth, but didn’t mention anything about me blocking him on Facebook.The basset hounds barked, running circles around people’s feet and my parent’s house filled with the smells of roasted vegetables and cinnamon; Billie Holiday on the old record player; ice clinking in my grandparent’s gin and tonics. Just as I was setting the table, the doorbell rang.

“That must be them!” Dad shouted, running to get it.

He pressed the buzzer long and hard, grinning with excitement. Two stunning girls walked in.They both had dark pixie cuts and stylish pea coats. I never imagined hot people used Craigslist.

“Thank you so much for hafing us. We from Spain, so muchas gracias, we had nowhere else to go,” lisped one, her beautiful green eyes sweeping the room.

“Come in, have a drink, sit next to my sons,” Dad pushed the girls towards me.

“Who are those ladies?” Babbi asked Lauren.

“They’re from the Internet,” Lauren told her.

“I’ll have another gin and tonic,” Babbi decided.

All through dinner, I couldn’t help staring at our sexy cyber strangers, now sitting and laughing, passing stuffing around the table. By the end of the meal, my uncle had Green Eyes cornered and was drunkenly flirting, talking about his latest windsurfing trip to Maui. Babbi and Dad were avoiding each other at opposite ends of the table. My brother was heaping his plate for the fifth time and Mom was making coffee. I pulled Lauren onto the couch, spilling my Merlot.

“Thanks for having me,” she grinned. “No problem, you fit right in with my fucked-up family,” I said.

Royal Young just completed his debut memoir Fame Shark.

josh@pennilessepicure.com