It has been just over a year since I learned about the site Free Rice. I got addicted, then forgot about it. Now I am reminded of it again and getting readdicted.

Free Rice is fun and feeds the poor around the world. You play educational games and for every answer you get right, rice is donated to feed the hungry. Last night my wife and I had a nerdy good time with world capitals, chemical symbols and famous paintings, and in the process donated some 16,000 grains of rice to feed the hungry. Given that sometimes I get addicted to this kind of nerdy game anyway, it''s nice to be able to feed some people as well.

Do you know the capitals of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan? How about the difference between a Fanz Hals and a Bruegel? Learn math, science, Spanish, French, famous paintings, etc. while helping to feed the hungry. What could be better?

I was talking last night to some food pantry workers and community organizers. One had just returned from a trip home to Nairobi – where, he said, a third of the city’s 3,000,000 were living in shanty towns with no water, sewers, etc. Hunger in NYC is not like starving to death in Kenya. Even so, if you are the forty-second person in line at the pantry around the corner, you are out of luck and food for the day. More than 1.3 million New Yorkers depend upon soup kitchens, pantries and the like because, even with food stamps (if they get them) there’s a shortfall. And as food prices rise, the shortfall gets bigger and more people turn to food pantries.

Unfortunately, declining federal aid and rising food prices have sharply reduced the amount of food available in NYC. For example, a few days ago, Winter Miller, writing in the NY Times reported that pantry shelves are bare .

At its sprawling warehouse in Hunts Point, in the Bronx, the Food Bank is storing about half what it housed in recent years. Instead of distributing 5.5 million pounds of food a month to food banks and soup kitchens, the Food Bank now offers 3 million pounds. So rather than having 10 trucks on the road at any given time, there are now only 3 or 4.
“It’s the first time in a few years that I could walk into the warehouse and see empty shelves,” said Lucy Cabrera, the president and chief executive of the Food Bank, which helps feed about 1.3 million people a year.
Officials at the Food Bank say the bare shelves stem from a steady decline in federal emergency food aid, though a farm bill stalled in the United States Senate could increase that aid.
According to a study to be released today by the Food Bank and Cornell University, New York City receives a little more than half the amount of emergency food annually from the federal government that it did three years ago. The shortfall is occurring as the number of families and individuals relying on soup kitchens and food pantries in New York City has risen to 1.3 million from 1 million since 2004.

Update at the end.

Do you remember Franz Kafta's haunting very short story "The Hunger Artist?" (Click here for an etext). I thought of it while Queens Council Member
Eric Gioia tried to live for a week on an average food stamp allotment of $28. Was it a publicity stunt? Well yes, but in a good cause. The cause, however, is in danger of getting lost.

As it turns out, the way food stamp allotments calculated has not changed in a long while leaving their value diminished and recipients on line at the food pantry. The progressive Fiscal Policy Institute has issued

In a sea of 30,000 bright spandex butts , Sunday May 6, I rode in the 42-mile Five Borough Bike Club tour. As a volunteer, my job was to help riders who were in mechanical, logistical or physical trouble (fix flats, find bike shops, offer drink & encouragement, call backup). Keep the riders safe and happy. It was a crisp bright day – perfect for a moderate ride. One rider’s story of past tours, which captured the flavor well, I thought, appeared in the NY Times City Section . See some of this year’s photos here. You can still sign up for the smaller, shorter Tour de Brooklyn on Sunday June 3, 2007 sponsored by Transportation Alternatives . It’s free, not too taxing and experience is not required. Online registration, it has been said, will close May 31, 2007 -- so do it now.

The Minimum Wage has not gone up –- it’s still stuck where it’s been all these years.