| My book just went off to the printer, and the last thing my publisher needed from me before sending it there was a correction on ONE footnote. They'd asked me for it several times. It was a sentence describing a program in Boston where food stamp recipients received vouchers to double the value of the food stamps they spent at a farmers' market. I had documented it with a link to a website, and the link was broken.
It was a link to a Boston Public Health Commission site. I looked all over their website for evidence of this program and found nothing. I emailed them and came up with nothing. In the end, we changed the sentence in the book, documented it with a recent Jane Black article describing a similar program in other cities, and left it at that. That was just a few days ago.
So how do you like this? The first thing I saw in my email box this morning was the headline: "Vouchers double value of food stamps at Boston farmers' markets." Aha! It was my elusive footnote!!! It said:
A new city program designed to expanded access to locally grown fruits and vegetables will give people vouchers to double the value of food stamps at 14 farmers' markets in Boston.
The vouchers, dubbed Boston Bounty Bucks, are now available at 14 of the city's roughly 22 farmers' markets. Shoppers will be able to swipe their benefit cards on portable credit card readers at the market to receive up to $20 in vouchers by spending $10 worth of food stamps.
A new program? I swear they did this before. I KNOW I didn't make this up. Even the name Boston Bounty Bucks sounded familiar! Further down the article they admitted that it wasn't entirely new, saying:
Late last summer, a pilot program that involved Boston Bounty Bucks added seven more farmers' markets, but technical hiccups prevented the initiative from fully taking hold, Greene said.
Great. At least I'm not crazy. |
