24th Week Update - Miles Neighborhood Food Collection Project

Hi Folks,

Great Leads from the Sam Hughes Neighborhood Folks
On Tuesday evening I made my One Can A Week presentation to the board and interested neighbors at the Sam Hughes Neighborhood Association. At the end of my talk when I asked if they could suggest people who might want to initiate One Can A Week in their neighborhood, they were quick to give me some direction.

One person they were really high on was Gabriela Head who recently organized and managed a Quality of Life Survey for the neighborhood which involved lots of volunteers and data collection. The good news is I am going to meet with Gabriela on Wednesday to discuss ways we could work together.

KVOA Channel 4 News on Sunday and Monday
Friday afternoon I got a call from a news producer at KVOA who said a videographer would call me to schedule a time Sunday to shoot my Miles Neighborhood food collection. So the rest of the day Friday and all day Saturday I hoped that nothing would explode or fall down because my shoot would be cancelled for sure.

About 9:30 Sunday Robert Dingwall the KVOA videographer called
and we decided to meet at 11:30 in front of my home. As he set up his camera…a terrific, high end Fuji I might add…we chatted about community service and why I started One Can A Week. Robert admitted that he liked doing community stories more than accidents and fires. “They don’t have the drama,” he said, “but they are very important.”

Every Sunday Edward and Liz Altamirano (pictured on the right above) greet me at their front door along with their spunky pup Kahlua. This Sunday was different. Edward was out and when Liz, spotting Robert Dingwall, the videographer from KVOA Channel 4 News, she started out on the timid side but if you saw the One Can A Week story on Sunday at 5:30 and Monday at 5:00 you can tell Liz got it together pretty fast. She and Lopita who lives on the corner of Miles and Highland were both very articulate in their on camera debut. And neither needed a teleprompter.

Robert shot everything. The can pickup, the Thank You note placement, getting in the Cabriolet, getting out of the Cabriolet, driving down the street and lots of walking up to the houses. When he interviewed Lopita, Liz and me, that big lens shield was no more than 10 inches from our faces. I immediately thought of the Seinfeld episode on “close talkers” because we did the same thing Elaine and George did. We kept our feet firmly planted but we bent back a bit.

The images Robert made, which were incredibly clear, and the angles he used made us look great. I’m pretty sure we could get used to the closeness of the lens—that is, if KVOA wanted to do another story on One Can A Week down the road—especially since it’s just a lens and there is no hot, pungent breath blowing in our faces like on Seinfeld.

The Food Keeps Flowing
Even though it is summer vacation time and Father’s Day was celebrated on Sunday, we still collected a terrific amount of food. We had 124 lbs. of food and 34 lbs. of some very plump grapefruits. We already collected twice as much food this quarter as we did last quarter and we still have a week to go.

See you next Sunday.

Peter