Meals on Wheels America’s figures show the gap between need and funding, and a twenty-year-old Floridian drives a route with a poem in her pocket
Dear Diary: 46,000 Seniors Are on Meals on Wheels Waiting Lists, and I Have a Cooler Bag and a Full Tank
Meals on Wheels America’s figures show the gap between need and funding, and a twenty-year-old Floridian drives a route with a poem in her pocket
By Lotte Heidenreich, poet and Meals on Wheels volunteer, Florida
Monday, 9am, Parking Lot
Dear diary, I am twenty, I live in Florida, I write poetry and I deliver lunch to seniors on Mondays. This morning, before I loaded my cooler bag, I read a Meals on Wheels America story that is dated 24 September 2025, though the page shows a later modification date of 9 September 2026. It says about 46,000 older adults are on Meals on Wheels waitlists.
I want to give the figures carefully, because a delivery driver who gets a number wrong is a poor advertisement for the thing she is delivering.
The Numbers
The story says about 2.5 million seniors could benefit from these services but are still waiting, and that Meals on Wheels serves over 2 million seniors each year. Eliminating one local waitlist costs about 600,000 dollars per year on average, it says. It adds that 94 percent of adults age 60 or older have at least one chronic condition, and that half of older adults who live alone say they cannot afford basic needs.
These are the organisation’s figures, from an advocacy group, and I mark them as such. They are not the work of a neutral statistician, and the story is a year old.
The Waits
The story names individuals: Rodney, six months on a waitlist; Betty, four months; Henry, six months; and Mynette’s sister Donna, on an 800-name waitlist. It gives no surnames. I read those names slowly, like lines in a poem. A first name in a list is a thing poetry has done for centuries.
The story attributes no quotes to a named person. Its quotes come from unnamed providers, including one in South Carolina who says they are 40,000 dollars in the hole because the state pays 80 cents less per meal than it costs to make.
Texas and the Daily Count
In Texas, according to the story, one provider’s daily meal count dropped from 950 to 600 because funding lagged behind costs. A North Carolina provider says of Rodney’s case: “If we had the funds, we could easily create the routes.”
I do not know these providers and I cannot check the figures. They are the group’s examples, chosen to make a point, and I give them in that spirit.
The Ask
The story says lawmakers should protect and expand Older Americans Act Nutrition Program funding in the fiscal year 2026 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill, and that the House and Senate Appropriations Committees should make this a priority, since current levels leave providers choosing between existing clients and new ones.
I am not a lobbyist. I am a driver with a cooler bag. I know that fiscal year 2026 is the year we are in, and I do not know what Congress did. I would check, and I suggest you do.
On the Route
My route has eleven stops. I will not describe them, because the people on it have a right to be left alone. I will say that one door opens before I knock, and that behind it is a woman who tells me the weather every week as though I had not seen it.
She is a better meteorologist than the channel. I tell her so. She says the channel pays more.
The Poem in My Pocket
I write one line a day on the back of a receipt. Today’s line is about a cooler bag, which is a modest subject and therefore the best. It says only that the warm thing goes in the cold thing and arrives warm. I am not sure it is a poem. It is certainly a method.
If you have a spare hour and a driving licence, ask your local Meals on Wheels what it needs. They are often short of drivers.
Dusk
The cooler bag is rinsed. The tank is nearly empty. The line on the receipt is, I think, finished.
Goodnight, diary. May the waitlists be short.
Porch Reading
Between delivery stops I read the comic papers, because the car park is hot and the radio is bad. This week the big joke was property: Manila News on slow condo sales in Cebu, the London Prat on retirees asked for character references (it is at https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and Bohiney on a realtor with unsellable beachfront listings. Exaggeration all the way down, but anchored to a real market story. More at prat.uk and bohiney.com.
Note: Philippine authorities are examining unproven allegations about Thomas Markle Sr., who lived in Cebu until earlier this year, as GMA News and the Guardian have reported. No charges have been filed. Child protection is a serious matter; the jokes here are about a property market and the paperwork.
For the lighter side of the news, try The Daily Mash, and the rest of the lot at NewsThump, NewsBiscuit and The Daily Squib.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/