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'Food for Thought': Praise for Food Service Workers!

Diane Blick, food service employee at Dorothy Height Elementary School. Photo: J.M. Giordano
Diane Blick, food service employee at Dorothy Height Elementary School. Photo: J.M. Giordano

Since March 2020, most of us have a deeper grasp of who is an “essential worker.” The Baltimore Museum of Industry is featuring a show about those who are indispensable to our young people: Baltimore City school food-service workers. Like Sheila Alston, who helped feed students for more than 30 years:

“We are part of the learning process with the kids. Because a child cannot learn if they’re hungry.”

We learn more about the audio-visual exhibit from the B-M-I’s director of interpretation Beth Maloney, and from photographer J.M. Giordano who created the black and white portraits:

“These are people who do a fantastically important job, so I wanted to make them look like superheroes almost.”

Links: Food for Thought, online at BMI, J.M. Giordano, Night Work at Goucher College Rosenberg Gallery.

Sheilah Kast is the host of On The Record, Monday-Friday, 9:30-10:00 am.
Melissa Gerr is a Senior Producer for On the Record. She started in public media at Twin Cities Public Television in St. Paul, Minn., where she is from, and then worked as a field producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland. She made the jump to audio-lover in Baltimore as a digital media editor at Mid-Atlantic Media and Laureate Education, Inc. and as a field producer for "Out of the Blocks." Her beat is typically the off-beat with an emphasis on science, culture and things that make you say, 'Wait, what?'