day without food or day without a home

canon digital rebel xsi

This is the question I pose today: Would you rather go a day without eating or a spend a day on the streets?

I ask because as the holiday season is ramping up to full speed ahead, this is the time of year many people give to their local food banks. And while that is great, what I have become painfully aware that we often feed people, only to send them to the streets to sleep. And while there are many food and clothing drives, I have never heard of a housing drive for the homeless.

So again I ponder the question, which is would be more difficult? Certainly it is true that if you go without proper nutrition for long enough, it will kill you. But so can life on the streets, even with adequate food.

Going for a day without food would affect your body, mind, and spirit. Your stomach would grumble. You might also feel tired and even cranky. Your blood sugar would drop. You might feel dizzy. All of your energy would be focused on when you might get your next meal. You definitely would not be at your best.

Putting you on the street, would do something entirely different. It might feel like the rug had been pulled out from under you. That your safety net was gone. You might feel alone, not to mention frightened. Your body might feel cold as the temperature dropped after the sun set. Your mind might race as you tried to find somewhere safe, or thought of all the possible things that could happen if you let yourself close your eyes and drift off to sleep. You would probably end up feeling tired and maybe even dizzy. As for your spirit, it might be broken, or at least a bit drained, depending on what you saw during your time on the streets. It is hard to say.

I was fortunate that we never went hungry when I was growing up. There were some close calls. I remember one period where my Mom made a pot of spaghetti sauce that she had added too much red pepper flake, last well over a week. There were other times when the cupboards were pretty bare or we made some strange things with what we had on hand, but we never were without food.

The closest we came to homelessness was the night we fled from our father. We drove across California all night. We arrived in Los Angeles in the morning, but by evening had a roof over our heads.

When B and I came back to California the second time, we were living in an extended stay for a while, on and off. When we would change locations, we would usually need to be out by noon, but couldn't check into our next hotel until mid-afternoon. Those few hours left me feeling woozy. I would worry about all sorts of things. All of our stuff was packed in the car - would someone try to steal it? It is hard to explain, but I would feel off kilter. I would often snap at B for no apparent reason. I know it is not the same. I only mention this because I imagine actually being on the street so much worse, and cannot even imagine.

I stumbled upon SLO Homeless' blog today. He posted today about how we need to work as a community to make sure the homeless have access to a rod and reel, so they can leave homeless behind. I think he is onto to something.

I also don't want you to think I am saying helping the homeless around the holidays is a bad thing - it isn't. You can leave a comment on this post, and $10 will be donated to Second Harvest Food Bank. Land' End is also accepting gently used coats until November 30. So far they have collected over 8,000 coats!


on the night stand :: Juliet, Naked by Nick Horby.

in which i get a dm from scott simon

canon digital rebel xsi

Really, I was only trying to help get the word out about an amazing story. I am a big fan of NPR, and Weekend Edition, and Scott Simon¹. I am still not sure what exactly happened, or if anything more will come of it. I still love Twitter, and I think it is a very powerful tool. Maybe I need to use this experience to harness it's power a bit better.

Oh, and for those that don't use Twitter, DM stands for direct message. As the name implies, a direct message is a tweet that is only seen by the person you send it to. It's a way to communicate with someone without cluttering up your friends' Twitter stream.

Last night I saw a tweet from Scott Simon, host of NPR's Saturday Weekend Edition, about an group in New York raising money for Thanksgiving dinners for the needy of New York.² Here is the link. I had also seen an earlier tweet by Mark, the head of Invisible People, talking about how we tend to go crazy this time of year feeding the homeless, but forget about what they need even more - housing and jobs.

So I tweeted this, thinking maybe something might happen. And boy did it ever. I think in part because Mark tweeted this. Oh dear.

And suddenly I found myself in Oz. Right around that part where the Scarecrow starts making snide comments about the Apple Trees to get them to give up their fruit. I saw a notification that I had received a direct message. I was shocked to see it was from none other than Scott Simon.

I tried to message Mark, but Tweet Deck was having issues. Instead, I tweeted this, since I couldn't direct message Scott Simon, as he doesn't follow me.

Then I saw a tweet from Mark, asking if I had heard something. I tweeted back that I had, and that his tweet about Scott Simon not being real or engaging got his attention.

I should point out that in between Mark's initial tweet, and the message from Scott Simon, I tweeted this. Of course I made the mistake of not mentioning the actual Twitter account, so it probably wasn't seen by Scott Simon.

There was also a bit of a discussion about how people should use Twitter. I tend to agree that there aren't any rules, and people can use it how they wish. I learned this from following Warren Whitlock, co-author of Twitter Revolution. Mark feels differently, and that's okay too. I honestly can't imagine trying to manage a Twitter account with a million followers.

I ended things with this tweet. My heart was still racing.

As I said, I don't know if anything more will come of this. I would like to point out though that Scott Simon recently gave a speech at TedxMidAtlantic about the art and importance of story telling. You can view it here. Ironically that is exactly what Mark has done with InvisiblePeople.tv - he has allowed homeless people to tell their stories. Mark traveled the country, talking to homeless people, with no more than an iPhone, and about $100 (along with a few sponsors like Ford and Hanes).

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¹And I hope I haven't left a bad impression, because Scott Simon is friends with Daniel Pinkwater, and that would just be awful.
²I later found this tweet from Soraya Darab, of the New York Times, about the NY food drive and retweeted it.

on the night stand :: The Yggyssey by Daniel Pinkwater.

your name here

I thought this was great for two reasons - the first is obvious: there are people out there right now who don't have the means to keep warm this winter, so why not donate a coat you are no longer using. The second is that the video they sent me in my email had my name in the coat the woman puts on at the end. I wasn't expecting it, and it took me a second to realize, "hey, that's me."^* It really sent the message home. Talk about personalizing video!

Unfortunately my winter coats are all in storage 2000 miles away, or I would donate. This also seems like a great way to save a little bit of money if your child's coat no longer fits from last winter.

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^*This could be because I am still not used to my married name.

on the night stand :: The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo.

poor in the usa

Today is Blog Action Day '08. This year's topic is poverty. The idea is to use your blog to talk about this topic in any way you choose, ideally in a way that fits your audience. It made me think about what it means to be poor in the United States, arguably one of the richest nations in the world. That doesn't mean I am not thinking about the impoverished living outside of the US. Instead I am writing about something I know a bit more about.

pov . er . ty : the state of being extremely poor.

My Mom told stories of growing up poor. The one that hit home the most was when her seven siblings and parents - 9 people - lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey. It didn't have a bathroom. The toilet was in the hallway, and they shared it with the thirteen people who lived across the hall. Toilet paper was truly a luxury. The "tub" was basically a large sink in the kitchen. Once a week, the women of the family took a bath. On a separate day, the men got the same privilege. They often went to bed hungry. A program at school provided lunch, but required students to present a large pink card, which got them teased. Often my Mom skipped lunch rather than be ridiculed for being poor. Certainly things must be better now over a half a century later?

In a land where it seems there is a television in every room and (at least) two cars in every driveway, who is really poor among us? Are the homeless the only true poor? In a nation where obesity is on the rise, how can there also be a hunger crisis? Who is really poor in America? If you believe what you see on the average sitcom, you would believe no one is poor. Of course that isn't the case, so who is living in poverty in America?

The truth is that the largest group of poor and homeless are children. Of course if you ask people to describe what the homeless population looks like, most often they will talk about the crazy drunk on the street, pushing his shopping cart, collecting bottles to recycle. And while no doubt this is part of the poverty story, it doesn't paint the whole picture.

One way the federal government defines poverty is in terms of household income. In 2008, a family of four was considered living in poverty if they had a household income below $21,200 (this number was slightly higher if the family lived in Alaska or Hawaii).¹ That works out to about $1700 per month. Of course that is before taxes, so take home pay is probably closer to $1200 per month. Trying to live on that anywhere in the US would be challenging to say the least, especially given that in many major metropolitan areas the average two-bedroom apartment is within that same range. Again though, this doesn't include everyone.

Recently I heard a piece on NPR about the growing number of homeless families and students as a result of the housing crisis. Many of these people facing homelessness were recent homeowners, so definitely not part of the impoverished in America. The story specifically talked about the impact homeless students have on the public school system. Students are protected by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which allows students to continue attending the same school before they lost their home. Of course not all families are aware of this law, and not all schools abide by it. Still to a homeless child, the routine of school can offer a sense of normal when the rest of their world is falling apart.

Of course, while not all homeless were poor, not all poor are homeless. Another story on NPR shows how easy it is to fall into poverty when unemployment knocks on your door. In this case a mother caring for six children (three her own, three her sister's) takes matters into her own hands and stands on the street corner in Las Vegas with a sign in an attempt to get their electricity bill paid. She was lucky and within a few minutes a social worker pulls up and by the end of the day her lights were on.

Oftentimes people find themselves in dire straits because one problem sets off a chain of events from which they cannot recover. For example, a family living paycheck to paycheck can't keep up with the rising cost of gasoline, and as a result, bounce a check. That bounced check leads to overdraft charges of a few hundred dollars, which results in not being able to pay the power bill. When the lights are turned off, the food in the fridge goes bad - yet another expense. Furthermore the electric company may require a deposit on top of the late and reconnect fees. Meanwhile, the rent is now due, and the family is several hundred dollars poorer, potentially facing eviction. It really isn't hard to get there, but can feel impossible to get out from under.

After hearing about my mother's childhood, I never felt that we were truly poor, although there were certainly tough times. One of the worst was after we "escaped" from our father. We had left Chico, California in the middle of the night and found ourselves the next morning in Long Beach. My sister, mother and I moved into a small one-bedroom apartment. We had remembered to toss our toys into the backseat of the Ford, but forgot our school shoes. The apartment manager found us a couch and a table and chairs. After my Mom found work, the first thing she bought was a queen-size bed. My sister and I took turns sleeping with my Mom. On alternate nights one of us slept on the floor, until we replaced the couch with a sleeper sofa from Levitz, and then both of us slept in the living room.

Technically were weren't even supposed to be living on that side of the complex, which was designated for single adults. The address was 5050 Linden Avenue. My mother thought it reflected our situation - that we had a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. She didn't know how close that was to the truth until one weekend we managed to take an overnight trip to San Diego. While we were away someone was shot not far from our front door. Thankfully we were able to move shortly thereafter to a better place, but times were still tough.

When my father stopped making child support payments, the system failed miserably because we did not live in the same state. So despite that my father worked for the same company for nearly two decades, it was still impossible for my mother to collect a dime.

On the other hand, when my Mom realized the local public school was merely a baby sitting service - and a bad one at that - she threw herself on the mercy of a nun who ran a local Catholic school. Both my sister and I attended St. Athanasius for two years at a significantly reduced rate.

There is hope. There are things we can do to change this. Education is key. Learning about poverty is the first step to ending it. With this knowledge, vote accordingly.

There are many people out there hurting because of the current state of the US economy. Small steps like cleaning out your closets and donating gently used business attire can make a big difference. With Thanksgiving quickly approaching (in the US), now is a good time to make a donation to your local food bank. Help a friend looking for work with her resume. Invite a family who is struggling to dinner. You get the idea - act instead of judging.

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¹Source: Federal Register, Volume 73, No. 15, January 23, 2008, pp. 3971-3972.




on the night stand :: How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum