Making a Mélange of Vegetable Soup
with a Touch of Curry

Peter Meah
President of the Meriden Soup Kitchen
June 2, 2009

Serving up to 200 complete dinners a day (and occasionally more), the Meriden Soup Kitchen faces the daunting task of providing nourishing food to Meriden's hungry. With no paid staff (except for a custodian who cleans after hours), more than 120 volunteers come together to make it happen.

Speaking to 67 Y's Men of Meriden on June 2, Peter Meah, President of the Meriden Soup Kitchen (MSK), first described its history, including its beginnings in 1983 at the Main St. Baptist Church. After that church closed, the MSK found a home at the Salvation Army, and then following a brief stay at the First United Methodist Church, it settled in at the Unitarian Universalist Church. In 2002, it moved to its present location at the First Baptist Church which remarkably provides the space, including utilities, at no cost.

The soup kitchen used to purchase a large percentage of its food supplies from the CT Food Bank, but much less is available there today due to increasing demand, forcing the MSK to purchase fresh meats and vegetables wherever prices are best. Many area residents donate fresh produce, and home gardeners are encouraged to "plant an extra row" (to be delivered to the MSK Mon.-Fri. from 8:30-10:30 am). The National Association of Letter Carriers food drive each May provides a large stock of canned and boxed food items, along with food drives at numerous other organizations. Generous donations of breads and pastry items from Stop & Shop, Panera Bread and BJ's Wholesale Club significantly assist the MSK mission.

Some 35,897 meals were served in 2008, eclipsing the 2007 total by more than 5000. Volunteers are drawn from seven organizations; St. Rose Church, St. Joseph's Church, Bonnie's Angels (a secular group), First United Methodist Church, Holy Angels Church, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church and an Ecumenical Group (members from multiple churches). Splitting into cooks and servers, they provide a daily full meal from 11:00 am - 12:30 pm Mon.-Fri. Meals generally consist of salad, hot soup, entrée (usually hot), vegetable, carbohydrate, dessert and beverages.

Financial support comes from numerous generous donors. Those wishing to help may send a check to the Meriden Soup Kitchen, PO Box 2138, Meriden CT 06450.

Adventures in the Panama Canal

Anselm Schurgast, M.D.
Y's Men member
May 26. 2009

"Make the dirt fly." With this rallying cry, an aggressive Teddy Roosevelt in 1904 launched an historic engineering project, the building of the Panama Canal. After failure by the French during the previous two decades to construct a sea-level canal, doomed by disease, inadequate financing and poor technology, America purchased the rights for $40 million and proceeded to create a canal with locks and artificial lakes, completing the project in 1914 (two years ahead of schedule).

Speaking to 59 Y's Men of Meriden on March 26, club member Anselm Schurgast, M.D. presented a description of the project and a video, based on his transit of the Canal in March 2009. The challenges in constructing the Canal were formidable; diseases including yellow fever, malaria and dysentery, as well as wild animals (jaguars and poisonous snakes), natural calamities such as landslides, and accidents caused nearly 30,000 deaths (the majority during the French attempts). By 1905, funeral trains were returning cadavers from the work areas.

But since completion at a cost of $987 million, the Canal has enjoyed remarkable success. Sea travel from New York to San Francisco now covers 6000 miles, as opposed to 14,000 miles if a ship were to pass around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. The 51-mile-long canal contains three sets of locks and passage through several lakes, and passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean actually goes in a southeast direction.

In 1999, Panama took control of the Canal from the United States. Today, about 15,000 vessels traverse the Canal annually, pulled through the locks by 350-ton towing machines. And it's not cheap; Schurgast's ship, the Island Princess, paid $235,000 for the 10 hour transit. (The least expensive toll ever was 36 cents for American adventurer Richard Halliburton who swam the canal in 1928). Each lock chamber is 110 feet wide and 75 feet deep, with each gate weighing 745 tons.

Twice in Southern jails, for freedom

Rev. Ralph Lord Roy
Retired United Methodist minister
May 19, 2009

Why would a white man, raised in the "whitest" state in the country (Vermont) and in a town (Swanton) with not one African-American, end up imprisoned in a southern jail for civil rights demonstrations? The answer was provided to 71 Y's Men of Meriden on May 19 by the Rev. Ralph Lord Roy, as he initially described his mother's disgust on a family trip to Oklahoma City where a restaurant displayed a "We reserve the right to re-seat customers" sign, resulting in one room for whites and one for blacks. With his mother passionate about civil equality, Roy was perhaps destined to move into a life of civil rights activism.

Following undergraduate years at Swarthmore College and a brief stint at Columbia Law School, Roy began Seminary studies during which time Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery AL (Dec. 1, 1955). And then in 1961, following a U.S. Supreme Court decision the previous year outlawing racial discrimination on interstate travel, Roy joined the first Clergy Freedom Ride. The 18 passengers on this bus ride faced increasingly hostile receptions and were unable to get into restaurants. At their final destination in Tallahassee FL, the restaurant was locked "for cleaning" upon their arrival. The following day, 10 were arrested and jailed.

In 1962, Roy attended the trial of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Albany GA, and visited him in jail. During the next week, Roy and a rabbi friend were turned away at three churches, but managed to speak at several locations about civil rights, including the Shady Grove Baptist Church which was burned down three nights later (one of many arsons committed). Dr. King, who was convicted but given a suspended sentence, and Roy shared several meals together during this time, with Dr. King asking Roy to organize a prayer pilgrimage.

Roy returned home and promptly organized 75 clergy and religious leaders for this venture. There were three requirements to join: you must have $200 cash (for bail money), you must have no arrest record that could embarrass the movement, and you must agree to be non-violent (even when provoked). Following a prayer meeting in Albany GA, all 75 were arrested and jailed, the largest imprisonment of clergy in this country's history.

Notes Roy today, "I am an intensely patriotic person. This and my religious beliefs have been the driving force behind all I have done."

Roy (front right) and fellow clergy
waiting to be booked at Albany City jail (1962)

This was Afghanistan

I. Willard Abrahams
Ophthalmologist and Y's Men member
May 12, 2009

With nearly 12 million inhabitants in 1967, Afghanistan had a mere 58 doctors, and of these, all but one lived in the capital Kabul. No surprise that the government asked for foreign assistance in dealing with extensive health issues within its population.

Ophthalmologist I. Willard Abrahams, M.D. spoke to 72 of his fellow Y's Men of Meriden on May 12, describing his role in studying epidemiology and providing treatment during two trips in 1967 and 1968. He first reviewed the history of this troubled nation, noting its first humans lived more than 50,000 years ago and its eventual conquest by Alexander the Great in 320 B.C. Buddhism propagated beginning in 77 A.D. until the land was invaded by Muslim Arabs in 624.  In 1219, the barbaric Genghis Khan ordered the slaughter of all living things and total destruction of the cities. More recent history includes British presence during the 19^th century, invasion by the U.S.S.R. in 1978 and the U.S. led invasion in 2001.

Abrahams' 1967 trip began in Kabul where he first encountered deplorable sanitation conditions; the central river was used for washing, disposal of excrement and as the main source of drinking water. A common practice by fruit merchants was to inject melons with river water to increase their weight, thus creating a perfect bacterial culture medium.

Living in tents along the way, he then traveled to Kandahar over a road originally built by Alexander the Great, and soon experienced the deep-rooted tribal system that dominates Afghanistan to this day. It was here that a mullah insisted that Abrahams repair a blind eye in a woman; he removed the eye but needed an implant to fill the socket, solved by finding (and then sterilizing) a loose marble that had been rolling on the floor of his vehicle for several days.

A larger medical crew came in 1968 and visited four locations around the country, allowing Abrahams to complete 1200 eye examinations. He contracted malaria while in the north, but also encountered the ravages of severe conjunctivitis resulting from poor hygiene and ever-present flies, along with tuberculosis, syphilis and extensive amoebic infections. One cataract operation required an emergency airdrop of a pair of cataract glasses the day after surgery.

Eye problems encountered in Afghanistan

Glaucoma: the Silent Thief of Vision

Timothea Ryan, M.D.
Ophthalmologist, Advanced Eye Physicians
May 5, 2009

It comes silently, stealing your vision. It usually has no symptoms and you likely won't even be aware of it unless you have had a recent eye exam. Glaucoma, the second leading cause of blindness worldwide, affects 3 million people in the United States but only about half of these know they have it.

Speaking to 70 Y's Men of Meriden on May 5, Timothea Ryan, M.D., an ophthalmologist with Advanced Eye Physicians (located in Meriden and Cheshire), described the many facets of this disease that causes so much injury. Glaucoma's damage to the optic nerve is sneaky because it first affects the peripheral vision, and only in late stages damages the central vision, alerting the patient to the loss. Risk factors for glaucoma include being elderly, increased intraocular pressure, a positive family history, African-American or Hispanic or Asian ethnicity, large refractive error, and use of topical (near the eyes) or systemic steroids.

Diagnosis in the ophthalmologist's office begins with finding an elevated pressure in one or both eyes or spotting an abnormality of the optic nerve during the retinal exam; these may lead to visual field testing and OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography) testing which looks for damage to the optic nerve. It should be noted that some individuals may have elevated ocular pressures but no sign of glaucoma damage, and thus are followed every six months but not placed on any treatment. Others may have a "normal" eye pressure but demonstrate evidence of damage to the optic nerve, requiring therapy for "normal tension" glaucoma.

Glaucoma is divided into "open angle" (commonest in this country) and "narrow angle" (commonest worldwide) forms, depending on whether the angle between the peripheral iris and cornea is narrowed. More than 80% of glaucoma cases can be controlled with eye drops alone, but the remainder require either laser treatment or surgical intervention. Dr. Ryan noted that the best protection from glaucoma damage is to see your ophthalmologist every 1-2 years after age 40, more frequently if you have the risk factors noted above.