Last month I wrote an article and used the analogy of jigsaw puzzles.  Well, just like those folks who do actual jigsaw puzzles – and once they get started they just have to finish it – I have had numerous phone calls from people who have questions raised by the article.

We are having a meeting addressing hunger in the area at 6 p.m. Thursday  in the Rainier Room at St. Elizabeth Hospital (it was postponed from January due to the snow and ice storm). But some folks just didn’t want to wait for the scheduled meeting, or couldn’t make the meeting, or just couldn’t believe some of the things I wrote.

So, here are answers to just a few of the most-asked questions. No, Meals On Wheels, in western Washington, does not mean a hot meal delivered to a home-bound senior.  It is a prepackaged frozen meal, available to seniors 60 years and older.  It takes up to a week or longer to set-up a senior on these meals.  In Enumclaw, Meals On Wheels are delivered only once a month.  Why, you ask?  Because Enumclaw is so rural, Senior Services doesn’t want to drive all the way out more than once a month and deliver the meals to our senior center.  If you are approved the day after we place with Senior Services of Seattle/King County, it will be more than a month before we can order again – more than a month before the senior receives the frozen meals.

Yes, the Enumclaw Senior Center still serves a hot meal to the door of home-bound seniors in our community.  The center has offered this great service for 32 continuous years.  It’s a great program that has made a difference for decades.  This program may be coming to an end in 2012.

No other senior center in King County or Pierce County offers a hot meal program, only the frozen Meals On Wheels.

In deciding to have the Thursday meeting, we want to ask the community:  is there a desire as a community to form a group around hunger, nutrition, feeding those who have not?  We may start with hot meals for home-bound seniors, but this group could certainly look at summer lunch or weekend lunch programs for children.

What about those in our community who are homeless?

See you Thursday.

Jobyna Nickum, who wrote the article above, is manager of the Enumclaw Senior Center.