The Dragon's Head Blog: A Tai Chi Ton

A Tai Chi Ton

 

How much is a Tai Chi Ton? Several years ago when I started at the St Petersburg center there was an old laundry bin in the corner that had a sign on it for Food Donations I noticed that it occasionally would have food in it and every now and then it would be empty. In 2017 one of our participants asked about it. She told me her husband volunteered at the local food bank and could she start dropping the food off. Soon she was telling the classes what kind of food they needed. She started bringing in the receipts with the poundage that had been collected. We bought a small white board and started tallying the weight collected  At the end of the year we got a Thank You from the food bank telling us we had donated 1433 Pounds of food that year.

 

So in January 2018 we said lets see if we can reach a Ton of food. So soon more and more people would come into class with bags of food to donate. By summer time we had surpassed our previous years total. It was beginning to look like we might make our Ton.  We began to talk it up even more. Some time in November we hit 2000 lb. We had our Ton! So we decided to go for a Metric ton 2205 lb. Well we hit that mark in early Dec and went for the Imperial or Long Ton 2240 lb. we passed that quickly Since we had run out to tons to go for we decided to go for the Tai Chi ton. We kept collecting and collecting and by Dec 31 we knew that a Tai Chi ton weighs 2525 lb.

 

The story doesn’t end there. We brought in 600 lb in so far this year so we’re on our way to set a new Tai Chi record. Through the efforts of our participants, the St. Petersburg Branch is the most consistent donor to the local food bank.