The Curse of the Spectating Class - David Loftus

As I write this -- the morning of Friday, June 11 -- a little boy has been missing in the Portland, Oregon area for seven days. Not an unusual occurrence, sad to say, and it’s not surprising that Kyron Horman’s disappearance has dominated the local news for the past week. What is unusual is that the seven-year-old second grader disappeared without a trace from inside his elementary school on a crowded public day, and the story has made the national news.

The sweet, shy little boy, whose stepmother brought him to Skyline Elementary on the morning of Friday, June 4 with a display about red-eyed tree frogs he made for the school’s science fair, was last seen at 9 a.m. when she dropped him off. When he did not come home on the school bus at 4 p.m., she called the school.

Portland Police were notified shortly thereafter. By 9:45 p.m., about 20 searchers were combing the area around the school (located in a rural, forested area in the hills just west of downtown Portland). More than 100 volunteers were searching the next day, and the FBI was called in toward the end of the second day. Eventually, Facebook pages and new Web sites buzzed with breaking news and proposals to help, the local sheriff was being interviewed by Matt Lauer on the “Today” show, and I saw the story linked from the news feed on my Earthlink account by the middle of this week.

I won’t rehearse the many other details, which you may Google yourself. I don’t have any particular connection to the case: I have no children, and I don’t know any of the principals -- although I do know where Skyline Elementary is (about 2 miles west of where I sit typing this) because I performed there with my English morris folk dance team one sunny May Day morning more than a decade ago.

What inspires me to comment is some of the local reaction to the developing story, as embodied in the comments to each new story on the local paper’s Web site. You are probably familiar with the abusive, name-calling, overly personal and inflammatory comments that follow many news reports on almost any American newspaper’s Web site. They typically turn a local news story into an illustration of some political, ideological point, or make something personal about every national news story and any other comments made about it.

This is the sort of thing we Internet surfers used to see only on Usenet (in the mid 1990s) and then on various fan blogs (after the turn of the millennium). Now it has spread to more public forums, where it naturally shocks newcomers and the general public (not to mention established writers who have not been longtime Web surfers).

Leonard Pitts, the estimable columnist for the Miami Herald, published a piece on March 31 about how anonymity protects posters and probably encourages them to be disrespectful and abusive. His column ran in our paper that same day. Comments in my local paper immediately proceeded to prove his point. Pitts is an excellent, thoughtful writer, but conservative readers in Portland manage to find something “racist” (Pitts is African-American) about nearly every one of his pieces. (Having hunted down the column in Pitts’s home paper, I note that the general quality of comments in response to the piece there is not as bad as it was here -- perhaps because Pitts is local and readers are used to seeing him as a real person and a “neighbor.”)

In the case of little Kyron Horman, some comments immediately guessed at the possible guilty party. They accused the stepmother of kidnapping her own son, wondered whether his birth mom (divorced from father and living down state) might be to blame, suggested the stepmother’s 16-year-old son from a previous marriage might have done something sinister (he was actually on a Boy Scout camping trip with his father that weekend), blamed the school for not having security cameras operating all over the building, demanded other policies and practices on the part of the school district, and so on.

As the days have passed and the story plays out, strangers have found fault with various parents’ behavior (why aren’t they out searching night and day? … why have they not made more public comment? … why did the stepmother blithely report on her Facebook page that she was going to the club to work out that night? … etc.).

Clearly, it is a matter for suspicion that the boy disappeared from a public but fairly closed facility, which suggests he left with someone he trusts. Each day that passes and he is not found fallen in a hole, trapped in a custodial closet, or maimed or electrocuted, increases the likelihood he was indeed abducted, and by someone he knew.

But why can’t people restrain the urge to toss out hurtful theories and lay blame in public when a family is suffering over the disappearance of their beloved child? Citizens who have no connection to the case are treating it as if it were an episode of “Law and Order” or “Without a Trace” (a widely circulated photo taken of the boy the morning of his disappearance unfortunately shows him wearing a “CSI” tee shirt!); in other words, it’s just another piece of entertainment for them.

Too many Americans treat almost everything, even their own lives, as if it were a show. This reaches its deplorable zenith with the war(s), wherein citizens both thrill to and jeer news reports of complicated and deadly developments as if they were no more than points scored in an athletic contest (and a badly umpired one, too), and then lose interest and stop caring what their government does, largely because the “show” has become repetitive and boring. (Meanwhile hundreds of young American boys and girls, and thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, continue to die and suffer loss of health and limbs for no damn good reason!)


This is not a game show. It is not an entertainment. It is reality -- yours and those of other human beings who happen to be caught at a particularly vulnerable time of their lives. They are not actors or politicians accustomed to being questioned, judged, evaluated, pilloried, or even just noticed in public, by the media, in front of their neighbors. So stop treating them like fictional characters, and quit behaving like this is a piece of entertainment. Learn to reserve judgment; wait for better information; keep your nose out of matters that don't personally concern you and your loved ones.


Otherwise you're just indulging in public gossip and bullying.

Safe Summer Fun - Nikki Lorenzini

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 400 people die each year from the heat. The National Weather Service says that excessive heat was the number-one weather-related killer between 1994 and 2003 -- beating out floods, lightning, tornadoes, hurricanes, winter storms, and extreme cold.  Everyone is at risk for getting sick from the heat, but children and the elderly are most susceptible. How can you tell if you are getting sick from the heat? Nausea, dizziness, flushed/pale skin, heavy sweating, and headaches are all signs of heat illnesses. According to the Red Cross, if you are suffering from any of these illnesses, you should move to a cool place, drink cool water, and apply ice packs or cool wet cloths to your skin.

Here are some tips from the Red Cross for how to stay cool during the summer months:

- Wear light-weight, light-colored clothing. Lighter colors reflect some of the sun’s energy. Also, wear hats or use an umbrella.

- Drink lots of water! Drink constantly even if you don’t feel thirsty, and avoid drinking alcohol and caffeine, which tend to dehydrate you.

- Avoid high protein foods because they will increase metabolic heat.

- Avoid strenuous activity, but if you can’t avoid it, do it between 4 and 7 a.m., which is the coolest part of the day.

The Web site of the American Academy of Pediatrics has a list of summer safety tips. Here is a quick list.

For pool safety, make sure there is a fence at least four feet high around the whole pool, with the gate opening out from the pool that has a self-close and self-latch. Never leave children unattended in or near the pool or spa area. Large inflatable pools are usually exempt from local pool fencing requirements, but an extra fence might a good idea, since children can lean on the soft sides and fall in.

On bug safety, use of scented soaps, perfumes, or hairsprays will attract the bugs. Stagnant pools of water, uncovered foods, and gardens in bloom have a higher population of bugs. DEET is needed to prevent insect-related diseases such as ticks that can carry Lyme Disease and mosquitoes that carry West Nile Virus. Ten-percent DEET provides enough protection for about two hours. For more information on child safety, visit: http://www.aap.org/advocacy/releases/summertips.cfm  .

If you’re a sun lover, keep an eye out and use your sunscreen. SPF stand for Sun Protection Factor and it refers to the product’s ability to block the sun’s harmful rays. For example, SPF 15 allows you to be in the sun 15 times longer without being burnt. Dermatologists recommend using an SPF 15 or greater year-round for all skin types. People with fairer skin and who burn easily may want to use a higher SPF for additional protection. You will want to use a cream or lotion, because oils do not contain a sufficient amount of SPF. Also, use a broad-spectrum sunscreen that protects against UVB and UVA rays. UVA rays penetrate deeper into the skin and are the reason in premature aging and wrinkling of the skin.

Have a fun and safe summer. If you have any other summer safety tips, please comment and share the summer love!

Recycling, Part 3: Down to the Loading Dock - David Loftus

My apartment is located among an unusual mixture of permanent residents -- well-to-do and not-so-affluent -- and white collar transients.

When the place was built, about ten years ago, the developers cut a deal with the city that probably involved some financing or tax breaks in return for a promise to rent a certain number of units to low-income folks.

A portion of the residents -- let’s say half -- are happily permanent (which includes my wife and me); but a variety of folks pass through for only a month to a year or two at a time: home buyers waiting for a purchase to close, employees of high-tech companies and hospitals in town on temporary assignment (last summer, this group included Aldis Hodge, a star of Timothy Hutton’s TNT cable series “Leverage”), and students at the adjacent university.

Since many in that mix are from out of state (even from outside the U.S. -- I’ve heard German, French, and Oriental chatter in the elevator), perhaps some of them are simply ignorant of the practice of recycling in Oregon. You’d think they could read the signs on the doors and walls of the recycling rooms, but judging by the cardboard in the paper bin, the glass in the aluminum and tin can bin, the plastic in the glass bin, and even food in both, that is too much to ask.

Twice a week, on Monday and Thursday night, a custodial employee wheels all the blue recycling bins to the ground-floor loading dock for pickup the following morning. You might think this would make scrounging easier: everything’s gathered at one spot rather than spread out between six different floors.

But that’s not necessarily the case. By this time, most of the bins are stuffed, so you have to do a lot of digging through paper, tin cans, and un-recyclable glass and plastic (such as an increasingly popular Lipton Green Tea with citrus drink; only beer, carbonated soda, and bottled water containers qualify under the law, remember) and possibly even risk a close encounter with stale food or broken glass. Also, you have to wrestle the bins around the concrete floor because they’re all jammed up against one another.

Another feature of the loading dock, since the trash chute feeds from all six recycling rooms on the floors above and into the enclosed dumpster down here, is the occasional sound of the neighbors' trash sliding down the metal chute into the huge metal container. It's a surprisingly soft and gentle sound, but it still startles you since you don't expect to hear evidence of anyone else in the place.

So, partly depending on my time (whether I have plenty to spare, or my watch says it’s near or after midnight) I strike a medium between visits to the various floors and the loading dock, and how far down into the bins I choose to dig for Coors Lite and Rockstar cans, and plastic Coke and Aquafina water bottles.

So far, I would imagine most of what I've described sounds pretty mundane. You may have collected bottles and cans for redeeming yourself; even if you don't live in a state that has a bottle deposit for returned containers, you could easily picture most of what I've discussed. But the next stop is the recycling room, with the machines that devour cans and bottles and read their bar codes automatically, where you'll be stepping on the wet sticky floor and sharing a small room with homeless men and women. How many of you have done that on a regular basis?

Next: the recycling machines

Read part 1, the project overview

Read part 2, diving for cans and bottles in the recycling bins

They're Taking Over! (Aren't They?) - Ryan John

Picture this scenario: The most powerful people in the world, also affectionately known as the Global Elite, are meeting right now in Barcelona, Spain for their annual conference, known as Bilderberg, from June 4-10 like they have for more than fifty years. Kind of sounds like something out of a comic book, if you ask me. But it’s a reality and it’s a reality that doesn’t get much attention in the mainstream media.

Since 1954 world leaders in government, media, and commerce have met every year to discuss important world issues. This year’s topics include the future of the European Union, the US troop presence in Afghanistan, the collapse of the United States dollar, the Iranian and Russian alliance, and Japan’s economy, to name a few. According to some, this meeting is setting the stage for world government, with the slow but deliberate merger of European powers and the Anglo establishment of the United States and England. In 2008 Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama were attendees.

Now, I am fascinated by conspiracy theories and those who perpetuate them. Alex Jones is the most prominent spokesperson for conspiracy theories and often my go-to guy. If he says it, you can believe others are following right behind him. He is totally convinced there is a secret world conspiracy working toward global governance and the transformation into a New World Order.

Analyzing politics is a funny thing for me. The highest person I know in politics is a county commissioner in Pennsylvania. He may not even know my name, come to think of it. So I have nothing but an outrageous curiosity, the Internet, and a gut feeling that I know how things work -- a totally false sense, perhaps, but a sense I believe nevertheless. I think the Republicans and Democrats work for the same machine and each party respectively plays its part to advance whatever agenda this country sets forth. I don’t believe the country’s agenda is set by President and an administration that comes and goes every 4 to 8 years. Absolutely not. I think those gentlemen are essentially figureheads for someone or something bigger that the American people don’t see and hear.

Maybe I give people too much credit.  But I can’t believe George W. Bush invaded Iraq and toppled Sadam with no reason other than the possible possession of WMDs that were eventually unfounded. “Whoops, my bad,” we were told.  I didn’t buy it. Although W. has a hard time putting sentences together, it’s not because he’s dumb. It’s because he has to watch what he says. If the man could speak from the gut all the time, he’d be engaging and enlightening I’m sure. But he can’t. We are not kept informed by the government or the media. My gut tells me we are those prisoners trapped in the cave in Plato’s famous allegory. We aren’t given the truth. Rather, we’re given whatever images that Somebody Unidentified wants us to see. The global elite, possibly? I don’t know. But with the convenience of the Internet, we’re getting more and more of our fellow prisoners feverishly trying to tell us what we don’t know or can’t see. And when I hear these things, it makes more sense than what I see on the 6 o’clock news.

Upload Girl, She's Been Living in an Upload World - Nikki Lorenzini

As I write this, I am logged onto Facebook. I check it in the morning before I go to work. I log on during my lunch break. I log on after work at least once. Depending if I am doing Facebook chat, I can be online anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. I found my best friend from grade school and ended up deleting her. I had people who found me from grade school but I dont’t even remember them, and had mutual friends who tried to add me when I never met them. I immediately add people when I have just met them. It seems like everyone’s lives revolve around our Facebook accounts.

I remember when I first signed up for my account. That was approximately 6 years ago. (Yes, that long ago!) When I first logged on, I did it kind of hesitantly. I didn’t want to have one because I thought “everyone” had one. That makes me giggle now. At the time, it was only for college students, Facebook only allowed you to upload photos, and there was no chat and no applications. Facebook was the safe alternative to MySpace (remember MySpace?), which seemed always to be on the news for something along the lines of children being kidnapped.  

Now it seems that Facebook has taken over our lives. It’s on the news for its privacy settings (and when we have an oil leak that could take months to clean up). 7-11 is teaming up with Farmville, one of the more popular applications on Facebook, to promote a line of Slurpees. I heard a story about a person actually receiving a kidney transplant contact via their Facebook status update, another of people getting married after meeting on Facebook, and a father and son reconnecting on Facebook. I’ve heard of people getting fired over pictures and statuses that were posted. Companies have their fan pages to help spread word of store openings, and charitable organizations have pages to show where your money is going.  

I look back to a time before Facebook. Granted, I am only 27 years old, but I can still remember when the Internet was just starting to come into people’s homes. I remember my first AOL screen name. That was dial-up, now we have Verizon Fios. MySpace never existed, we just had creepy chat rooms where you talked to a 50-year-old pedophile without even realizing it. Sure, MySpace and Facebook are probably a step up. I just do not think that our Internet profiles really need all this attention. Are we really so bored that our lives revolve around Facebook? To get to it via on our phones, our TVs, and, oh yeah, our computers? I guess I’m not any better since I’m blogging about Facebook.

I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg thought that Facebook would be such a huge hit, that even the news would have report about privacy settings. I mean, is anything really private on the Internet?

The Pennsylvania Senate Race Follies - Ryan John

The Pennsylvania Senate campaign has gotten pretty interesting. First of all, it was surprising that Arlen Specter wanted another term after 44 years as a Senator. At 80, he’s pretty old, has battled cancer, and has taken enough criticism and praise during his public service to last ten lifetimes. I would think he might have wanted to enjoy his old age and success for a while. But apparently he wanted it so bad that he was willing to change his political affiliation again (he switched from Democrat to Republican while running for district attorney of Philadelphia in 1965, and then back to a Democrat last year) just for another potential term. He seriously jeopardized his political legacy in the process. Even though he received the White House endorsement, he still went on to lose last month.

There was a lot of buzz surrounding his primary opponent, Democrat Joe Sestak, whose navy career was called into question by the Specter camp. Sestak claimed to have received a job offer from the White House in exchange for agreeing not to run against fellow Democrat Specter in the primary. Sestak used the potential White House controversy to his advantage and went on to beat the veteran Senator.

Now people want to know the “who, what, where, when, and why” of the White House job offer. The people of Pennsylvania are rightly wondering about Sestak’s integrity before they go into the voting booth in November. And the American people should be interested to know their federal government may be secretly using such tactics to cherry-pick Senators. This is something that can’t be talked out or dismissed by, say, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs (shown above), who denies all these claims. Either Sestak fabricated the job offer to reclaim an honorable image that was potentially damaged over his Navy discharge; or the White House staff is trying to pull some strings they shouldn’t be pulling.

And was that part of the deal when Specter supported Obama’s stimulus package in 2008? We’ll never know if Specter was being an Obama puppet to gain his endorsement, but at least we should know if a job offer was made to Sestak. If it was, we have a serious problem in the White House when a man whose main campaign theme was Change is digging the political-credibility hole even deeper. My guess is, from now until November, this controversy will continue to brew, but that Sestak will not provide any further information regarding the alleged White House job offer and ultimate damage his credibility. Therefore he’ll lose in November to the very conservative, standing-to-the-right-of-Rick-Santorum, Republican Pat Toomey.

Memorial Day - Nikki Lorenzini

Memorial Day, formerly known as Decoration Day, commemorates the men and women who died while in the service for the United States. It was enacted to honor Union solders from the Civil war and celebrated near the day of reunification after the war. The first celebration was held by former slaves at the Washington Race Course in Charleston, SC, which was used as a temporary Confederate prison camp as well as a mass grave for the soldiers from the Union army. After everything had ended, freed slaves exhumed the bodies and reburied them properly in their own graves. On May 1, 1865, after the work had been completed, the local paper reported that a crowd of about 10,000 people went to the location and held sermons, singing, and a picnic.

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on May 5, 1868 by General John Logan. However, the first state to recognize the holiday officially was New York, in 1873. By 1890, all the northern states recognized the holiday. The South refused to take part, and honored its fallen soldiers on separate days until after World War I. It was only then that the holiday changed from honoring just those who had died in the Civil War to include soldiers who died in any war. The name Memorial Day was first used in 1882, but didn’t become common until after WWII, and was finally made official in 1967. The following year, Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill, which moved three holidays to the dates they now occupy, and create three-day weekends, including Washington’s Day (now Presidents Day), Veterans Day, and Memorial Day.

Traditional observances include visits to cemeteries and memorials. There is a national moment of remembrance at 3 p.m. local time, as well as the practice of flying the flag at half-staff from dawn until noon. Members of the Veterans of Foreign wars take donations for poppies before Memorial Day. The significance of the poppies is from the John McCrae poem “In Flanders Fields.” The Indianapolis 500 is the longest tradition associated with Memorial Day, dating from 1911. The National Memorial Day Concert is held on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol and broadcast on PBS and NPR. Memorial Day marks the unofficial start to summer.

Recycling, part 2: Indoor Scrounging - David Loftus

Portland is a proudly “green” city. We have a national reputation as being one of the most livable metropolitan regions in the nation – due, among other things, to (comparatively) progressive zoning regulations, a (comparatively) impressive array of green office buildings and alternative fuel use (in April, Oregon was chosen as an electric car test site, so charging stations will be installed across the city and up and down Interstate 5), and a (comparatively) high rate of recycling.

I inserted “(comparatively)” because, being an on-site observer, I’m less impressed -- more aware of how far we fall short than of how far beyond the rest of the country we may be. Familiarity breeds content, as a blogger would say.

First stop is the recycling and trash room down the hall from my apartment. It contains two upright blue plastic recycling bins, and a trash chute that feeds to giant dumpsters on the ground-floor loading dock.

There are signs on the door and on the wall above the bins that explain what should go in each bin and what should not. The rules are pretty simple: one receives glass only; the other takes paper, plastic, tin, and aluminum. Cardboard should not go into either bin but should be broken down, folded, and carried to a huge cage-dumpster on the ground floor loading dock. Food is also prohibited; bottles and cans should be rinsed out.

Some of my neighbors apparently can’t follow these simple instructions. I have run across:

· Glass bottles in the paper recycling

· Plastic and aluminum in the glass recycling

· Cardboard in both (including full-size boxes not even broken down and therefore taking up far too much space)

· Foodstuffs in the paper recycling, from residue inside tin cans to half-eaten slices of pizza

It looks like most of my neighbors never rinse bottles and cans after drinking the contents. Many of the “empties” I have retrieved still carry soda or beer. Often, my fingers grow sticky with sugar and alcohol.

Collecting the containers is a matter of taking the elevator to each of six floors, going to the recycling room, and rummaging in the blue bins. Sometimes the paper/tin/aluminum/plastic bin is so stuffed that I can only dig partway down to some of the loot and leave the rest. Sometimes the glass bins have busted bottles in them (slammed into the bin, or broken back in the apartment? hmmm . . . ) so I have to pick out the recyclables with care. Once, I cut the side of my hand and drew blood.

There are occasional windfalls that add joy on the hunt: plastic bottles or aluminum cans already sorted into a bag or box so I don’t have to pick them out one by one, for example; or empty beer bottles tucked back into the six-pack carrier in which they were purchased.

Less pleasing are plastic bottles and aluminum cans that have been crushed -- inadvertently by other trash, or purposely and carelessly by their consumers -- so that I have to pull, squeeze, or blow them back open in an attempt to make them presentable so the recycling machines can read the bar code on them. Worst of all are glass and plastic containers on which the code has been defaced, or the label completely torn off, which makes them a dead loss (for me, anyway).

Over the course of several weeks, I learned to take along a small metal shopping cart to organize and carry the weight of 30-40 glass beer bottles. A few relatively clean paper and plastic shopping bags -- especially the big boutique-style ones with handles from Nordstrom’s or Storables -- make the plastics and aluminums easier to carry, as do collapsible cardboard six-pack containers for the glass bottles. Except for the cart, I have scrounged all these carrying tools from the recycling barrels as well.

Repeated visits to the bins on the various floors of my building told me a little about my neighbors, as the study of any waste will do. Somebody loves those 24-ounce Beck’s “Super Size” beer bottles. I pick roughly a dozen of those out of the third-floor bin every week, and I have to think it’s just one person who drinks them, because I never run into any of those size and brand on the other floors. Somebody else on the third floor drinks a lot of bottled water.

And is it my imagination, or do the folks on the top two floors consume more wine and hard liquor as opposed to beer?

Read part 1, the overview

Read part 3, the loading dock

Our Parents Had It Easy - Shaun Hautly

Tonight, as Boston's “More Than a Feeling” came on in the restaurant, I realized that our parents (and grandparents, especially) had it WAY easier than we do. That’s because I had to DIVE into my pocket to check if my cell phone was ringing, because “More Than a Feeling” happens to be my ring tone. While this particular example is a little funnier, there are many pressures and expectations with which the previous generations never had to deal. We’ve become so connected and communication is instantaneous. Failure to communicate becomes a blot on your character: you get a reputation for poor response times, etc. Just as everyone has a friend who is “always late,” we also know which people never respond to text messages.

I was in a Frisbee game yesterday and there wasn't an e-mail sent out to inform us which field the game would be on. So I had to e-mail people at the last minute, and finally check the schedule on my phone, which was loading slowly. While this sounds like a stuck-up problem to have, it’s true that if I didn’t show up because I hadn't found the schedule online in my car, people would have been disappointed in me. The same rings true (haha) for a dead cell phone. People get ANGRY with me when my cell phone isn't answered because it’s dead. It’s almost scary. “What if we can’t get ahold of you?”

Lastly, the pressure to get spelling and wording right is higher than ever. A few generations ago, if you sent someone a letter, and the address was off or name was spelled wrong, they still got it. The mailman knew. However, today if one letter is off, MAILER DAEMON gets mad. Web sites won’t download if you don’t know how to spell them properly. My grandfather has NEVER asked the question, “Is that all one word?” Times have gotten complicated and pressures have risen to accommodate those complications. Our parents had it easy.

Homelessness in America 2; Doing the Numbers - Nikki Lorenzini

According to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, an average of 700,000 to 2 million people are homeless every night. Who are the people these numbers represent? According to a December 2000 report of the US conference of Mayors, 44% of the homeless are single men, 13% are single women, 36% are families with children, and 7% are unaccompanied minors. Racially, 50% are African American, 35% White, 12% Hispanic, 2% Native American, and 1% Asian.

In 1996, the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients did a study on the state of people who are homeless. They found that single homeless individuals that year reported an average income of $348 during a 30-day period, which is about 51% of the 1996 poverty level of $680/per month for one person. 44% of homeless people did paid work during the preceding month, and 21% received some type of income from their family and friends. 66% percent had problems with alcohol, drugs, or mental illnesses and 7% had been sexually assaulted. There were 38% who said they had had someone steal money or other things directly from them, and 30% had been homeless for more that 2 years.

There are two groups who might get lost in the mix of homelessness. One is children and families. According to America’s Second Harvest, 1 in 5 people in a soup kitchen line is a child. The U.S. Census Bureau found 1 in 5 children (more than 12 million total) living in poverty. The child poverty rate in the U.S. is higher than it is in most other industrialized nations. In 1999, there were approximately 12 million American children who were hungry or at risk of hunger, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Requests for emergency food assistance from families with children rose by 16% in 2000, the highest increase since the 1991 recession. Almost 9 million children that in working poor families.

The second group is homeless veterans. They have served in WWII, Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq, plus the military’s anti-drug efforts in South America. Nearly half of all homeless vets served in Vietnam. Two-thirds served at least three years, and one-third in a war zone. There are an estimated 107,000 homeless vets on any given night. The nation’s homeless vets are predominantly male, with about 5% females. They mostly come from urban areas, are single, and suffer from mental illness, alcohol dependence, and/or substance abuse. Homeless veterans account for about 1/3 of the adult homeless population.

There are several factors for their homelessness, from a shortage of affordable housing, a livable income, and access to health care. A large number of at-risk and displaced vets live with the lingering side effects of post traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse, in addition to lacking a support network. According to Understanding Homeless: New Policy and Research Perspectives, most housing money is devoted to helping homeless families or homeless women with children, with not enough money to help the homeless vets.

According to a report put out by the USICH:

23% of the total homeless population are veterans
33% of the male homeless population are veterans
47% served during the Vietnam era
17% served post-Vietnam
15% served pre-Vietnam
67% served three or more years
33% were stationed in a war zone
25% have used VA homeless services
85% completed high school/GED, compared to 56% of non-veterans
89% received an honorable discharge
79% reside in central cities
16% reside in suburban areas
5% reside in rural areas
76% experience alcohol, drug, or mental health problems
46% are white males, compared to 34% of non-veterans
46% are age 45 or older, compared to 20% non-veterans

Service needs cited include:

45% in need of help finding a job
37% in need of help finding housing

A Mosque at Ground Zero - Ryan John

When I heard they were considering building a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, I think at first I just dismissed it. I probably heard it, but I didn’t really look into it because I think I considered it nothing more than an inconsequential, exaggerated headline on some cable news show that was only used to get my attention.

I really couldn’t believe when I read that a New York City community board agreed to build a mosque and cultural learning center in an old Burlington Coat Factory two blocks from Ground Zero. The argument being made by mosque supporters is that a mosque presence reminds everyone that the true nature of Islam, which condemns the 9/11 attacks and fundamentally rejects the actions of the terrorist group that took down the World Trade Center, is of tolerance. Others argue that it is within historic Islamic culture, considered a sign of dominance or victory for Muslims when a mosque is erected at a particular location. I can’t help but agree with them regarding victory and dominance.

The attacks on 9/11 were considered acts from Islamic extremists over our occupancy in their holy land. It just seems far too ironic that a mosque is about to be placed on the American site where these hijackers are considered martyrs by other extremists in their religion. I’d venture to say that the majority of the 3,000+ people that died on 9/11 were Jews and Christians. Maybe a small percentage were Muslim. If America and our capitalistic values are sacred to us, then that location near Ground Zero is sacred ground.

The attack on the towers, and their collapse, was an attack on our national principles, specifically our military and economic ambitions. These hijackers weren’t political extremists. They were religious extremists. The literal translation of Islam is said to be submission. That a New York City community group agreed to place a mosque so close to the World Trade Center cite for any reason is what I call an American submission.

What Is a Hero, Really? - David Loftus

Too often, I hear the media and bereaved families refer to soldiers, firefighters, and police officers (alive or dead) as heroes.

But they aren’t, not by my definition. Mostly, they’re just doing their job.

To me, a hero is someone who performs an action beyond the call of duty, a person who commits an act of courage or self-sacrifice when he or she didn’t have to; or at least an act that is beyond what would normally be expected of an individual in that situation. When a firefighter rescues someone from a burning house, when a soldier charges into battle, when a police officer gives chase to an armed suspect, they’re all just doing their job.

Granted, it can be dangerous. Certainly, it takes a fair amount of courage and skill. But these people were trained to do what they do; they’ve been taught not only the best methods of performing difficult and risky tasks, but trained to suppress their fears, questions, and doubts while doing them. To some extent, instinct and reflexes take over.

In addition, it shouldn’t take much reflection to realize there must be venal firefighters, corrupt cops, and cowardly soldiers out there. Some of the rest of us perform only the bare minimum of our work responsibilities and get by on laziness and kissing rears, so why should things be any different among a certain percentage of law enforcement, fire suppression, and military personnel?

This week, the Public Broadcasting System television series “Frontline” featured a documentary titled “The Wounded Platoon” that illustrates my point. The film follows the fortunes of a single U.S. Army platoon of infantrymen from Ft. Carson, Colorado: 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry. Since returning from Iraq, three soldiers have been convicted of murder or attempted murder, another for assaulting his wife, and another has attempted suicide.

Since the beginning of the war, 17 soldiers from Fort Carson have been charged with or convicted of murder, manslaughter, or attempted murder back in the U.S., and 36 have committed suicide. Whether their war experiences have driven them to such madness, or they were unstable to begin with, is immaterial. My point was, and remains, that nobody is automatically a hero simply due to his or her professional role.

This automatic tendency to refer to certain classes of trained workers as “heroes” simply by virtue of their position reaches the height of absurdity when soldiers in Iraq are killed by an anti-personnel device while patrolling in a HUMV -- or worse, shot by so-called “friendly fire” -- and identified in news reports as heroes. That’s as absurd as calling a dead policeman a “hero” because he was on duty and faithfully observing the right-of-way when an off-duty colleague, driving drunk, plowed into his cruiser.

It’s when a person has time to think about what he’s doing, when she isn’t obligated to step outside her daily routine, training, and duties, but goes ahead and chooses to act anyway, that a person becomes a hero.

Watch the documentary, “The Wounded Platoon” here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/woundedplatoon/view/

I Am Here - Nikki Lorenzini

Over the next month or so, I will be doing a four part series about homelessness in America.

I know that there are many faces and stories to the homelessness that is prevalent throughout our country. Often, these faces are ignored and just brushed away as drug addicts and alcoholics. However, I know that there is more to it than just that. I am sure if we just dig a little bit deeper that we can find more stories behind the faces that we so often just brush away. Here is just one.

Homelessness: the condition of a person who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence.

• According to a study of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, between 2.3 and 3.5 million people experience homelessness.
• According to a 2008 US Department of Housing and Urban Development report, about 671,888 were homeless one night in January 2007.
• The areas that had the highest rates of homelessness in 2007 were: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington state, and Washington, D.C.

I am sure if you go into any major city, you will find someone sitting on the sidewalk and panhandling. They rarely ever get paid any type of attention. They get ignored -- brushed off as drug addicts, alcoholics, losers, or lazy. Rarely do people invest in their lives.

Who can blame us for not wanting to invest in them? We do not know who we are giving out money to; we do not know how they got there. More often than not, we assume that if we give them money, the homeless will use it to get alcohol or drugs. However, there is an organization in Austin that is seeking to change how homeless people are helped.

The T3 agency and Mobile Leaves and Fishes have come together to form the “I am here” project. It focuses on one homeless man, Danny, by taking him literally off the streets. He was placed on a billboard catwalk, which is 50 feet above I-35, for 48 hours.

Danny and his wife Maggie’s story started when they moved to Austin because Danny got a job as an ironworker. That job eventually ended and they were low on money and decided to move into the Salvation Army. While their stay there, they were robbed, losing all their possessions, including their ID and what money they had left. They ended up living on the streets.

With no money, they couldn’t replace the IDs they had lost, and without ID, they couldn’t get any jobs. Without any family to reach out to for help, they were forced onto the streets. Things got worse five years ago when Maggie suffered a stroke. She has been wheelchair-bound since. They ended up living in a tent in North Austin, and their sole means of a living was panhandling.

Then Danny was temporarily located to a billboard, which was donated by the Reagan Outdoor, by the T3 agency, and by Mobile Loaves and Fishes Foundation. The billboards featured the declaration: “I am Danny. I am homeless. I am here,” along with a number to which drivers could text $10 to donate. Each text would contribute toward a home for Danny and his wife.

The house would be a park model that is offered as a part MLF’s “Habitat on Wheels” program. This billboard campaign also directs people to visit www.iamheremlf.org, in order to help other men and woman living on the streets to move into homes.

For every 1,200 texts, one mobile home can be purchased. Currently, both Danny and Maggie are both off of the streets and staying in a hotel until their home is ready for them to move into it.

Websites of interest:

http://www.mlfnow.org/site/PageServer

http://t-3.com/news/press_releases/i-am-here

http://www.good.is/post/i-am-here-billboards-against-homelessness/

Boycott Arizona?

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Laura Bush is OK with Gay Marriage and Abortion?

Nikki Lorenzini

Recently Laura Bush did an interview with Larry King while publicizing her new book, Spoken From the Heart. During the interview she stated that she is now supports gay marriage and is pro-choice on abortion, both of which policies her husband opposed during his presidency. I think that it is ironic that she is finally coming out with her different stances now she has a new book, and not while George W. was in office.

I am really questioning whether these are her real viewpoints and instead of statements made only for publicity's sake. With her stance on gay marriage, she said, “I think that we ought to definitely look at it and debate it. I think there are a lot of people who have trouble coming to terms with that because they see marriage as traditionally between a man and a woman, but I also know that when couples are committed to each other and love each other that they ought to have the same sort of rights that everyone has.”

I feel that this topic has already been debated, has been debated since her husband has been in office, so I am not sure where she has been. My real question is: if she felt this way when W. was in in office, and if she is so passionate about it, why did she not take a stand during the 8 years she was in the White House? I might not particularly agree with Gay Marriage, but I sure do believe that people need to take a stand for what they believe in. She could have dramatically affected people’s lives if she had.

Now with her stance on abortion, I totally understand. I am not pro-choice, and I really haven’t come to terms yet with how I feel about abortions in medical situations when the lives of both mother and child are in danger. Bush said she did not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned -- "and I think it's important that it remain legal, because I think its important for people for medical reasons and other reasons."

Now, I do not know what her “other reasons” might entail. But I do know that there are two parts that came out of Roe v. Wade: That the right to abortion is determined by the stage of pregnancy, and states cannot prohibit it before viability, which is 28 weeks. The second part is where Bush is having her hang-up: the state cannot prohibit the abortion if it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother when used the appropriate medical judgment. Again, I am not sure why Bush couldn’t stand up for this cause when her husband was still in office.

I wonder if she knows how many people actually try to take a stand regarding this issue, and would loved for her to have taken a stand. Why should she feel like she has to sit quietly just so her husband’s policies wouldn’t have been challenged? Does she know that people mocked his decisions frequently?

Even if she did not do it publicly, I am sure she seen him daily, and could have pleaded her case behind closed doors. I just think that it is ironic that she has a point of view now that she has a book to sell.

Links of interest:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/13/laura-bush-gay-marriage-s_n_574731.html

Recycling: the Good, the Bad, and the Struggling

David Loftus

For the past month, our neighbors have been paying for some of our necessities. Sometimes it’s deodorant or shampoo, sometimes it’s half-and-half or eggs. More often, because we buy them most regularly, it’s cat food and kitty litter. I didn’t ask the other people in the building for their financial assistance; they don’t even know they’re providing it. But it is their money, all the same.

Far from a tale of good neighborliness (or theft), this is a story of how good public policy and “green” legislation have ended up (once again) benefiting business, due either to citizen unawareness or simply our laziness; and how I took a little time to skim from the middlemen. But to understand the process, we must follow the trail from the recycling room on my floor through the intermediate steps to the goods paid for by my neighbors -- not to mention the money trail before and after.

The State of Oregon was the first in the U.S. to pass a Bottle Bill, ’way back in 1971, when I was starting the seventh grade. Vermont had passed a law in the mid 1950s that banned non-returnable bottles but the beer industry killed that after just a few years; British Columbia passed a beverage deposit law in 1970; but Oregon’s was the first in the nation to pass and stick.

The law requires all cans, bottles, and other containers of carbonated soft drinks and beer -- glass, plastic, and aluminum -- sold in Oregon to be returnable for a minimum deposit (usually 5 cents each). In 2009, the law was extended to bottled water containers as well. About 90 percent of all the containers sold get recycled in Oregon, as opposed to an average of 28 percent in states that do not have such legislation.

This law has been credited with reducing roadside litter and increased recycling. Materials that used to create 40 percent of litter now make up only 6 percent. We are so used to this set-up in Oregon that it’s surprising to be reminded that only 10 other states (Vermont, Maine, Michigan, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New York, Delaware, California, and Hawaii) have similar laws in place. Only Maine, California, and Hawaii also include bottled water containers.

Hundreds of people buy six-packs, twelve-packs, and “suitcases” of beer and soda and water at the supermarket on the ground floor of my apartment building every day. They have to pay a five-cent deposit on every single container at the cash register. The store passes all that deposit money on to the distributor who brings in those drinks by the case and pallet-load. Those five-cents-per-container deposits have to add up.

Back in mid April, while pouring trash paper in the bin at the recycling room on my floor our apartment building, I was struck by how many redeemable aluminum cans were in the bin, and glass beer bottles in the next one over. My neighbors who had drunk the contents of those containers could get that deposit money back just downstairs -- there’s a bank of bottle recycling machines at ground level, just around the corner -- but they weren’t doing it.

How many containers, how much money, could I amass if I scrounged them out of the recycling bins on all six inhabited floors of my building? Could I collect a hundred dollars from my neighbors by the end of the year? I decided to give it a try.

Read part 2, into the recycling bins

Read part 3, the loading dock

Nashville Flooding

By Jeff Weiss

There have been a lot of breaking news stories in the last few weeks, and a lot of it happened on or around the same time. There was an attempted terrorist attack in Times Square, the fallout of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the city of Nashville experienced a flood of Biblical proportions. I'm sure just about everyone has heard about the bomb scare in Times Square, and the news media has covered the oil spill so much that it seems as though they have spent at least one minute of air time devoted to every drop of oil that has spilled. But, what about the story of incredible tragedy and heartbreak in Nashville? It was covered on the news, but not as heavily as the other stories.

I'm not quite sure of the reason the Nashville flood didn't make headlines, but for those who may have heard about it but didn't get all of the details – here are a few bullet points:

* Nashville received 28% of its annual rainfall in two days between May 1st and 2nd.
* The Cumberland River 13 feet above flood stage.
* The estimated damage is at least $1.5 billion dollars (not including bridges and roads)
* 34 people lost their lives as a result of the flood

While local Tennessee television stations went live with wall-to-wall coverage of the disaster, the flood took a backseat on the major American television news programs, as the Times Square bomber and BP's Gulf Coast oil spill took center stage. Just when things started to quiet down about those others stories, coverage of the Nashville flood started to pick up – until the stock market tanked, and that became the story of the day.

Now, I understand that breaking news is urgent, and some stories will take priority over others. However, when human lives are in the balance – and our own neighbors and fellow citizens are suffering – that's when our country should come together to help. The easiest way to come together in this day and age in through information spread through television and the internet. In 2004, a telethon was organized for the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami within days of the tragedy. A year later, another telethon was organized within days of Hurricane Katrina's destructive hit to the Gulf Coast. Earlier this year, the same thing happened after the earthquake in Haiti. Those telethons were aired simultaneously on every major television network and cable channel in America. I understand that the flooding in Nashville is not as catastrophic as the tsunami, the earthquake in Haiti, or Hurricane Katrina, but it is nonetheless a devastating American disaster. On May 16, there will be a telethon to aid the victims of the flooding in Nashville. It will air on The Great American Country Television cable channel, a channel I admit I've never heard of and doubt I have access to view. Additionally, Faith Hill & Tim McGraw are doing a concert for flood relief in June.

Will you help our neighbors in Tennessee? You can start by logging into The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee's website, Second Harvest, or the American Red Cross and make a donation. Then, ask a friend to do the same.

All About Kagan

by Ryan John

It’s ironic that the policy Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan publicly refuted at Harvard will be the same concept that will get her elected to the highest court in the next couple of months. The Kagan nomination from President Obama creates an interesting dilemma. Biden set the tone when he supported Obama’s choice Tuesday while regurgitating the same talking points about Kagan she has during her career. But regarding her sexuality, I think Kagan is simply not telling, because nobody is asking. I think she has been a very strategic lesbian academic with political ambition who didn’t make her sexual orientation known because of its potential to be used against her.

I’m pretty convinced she is a closeted lesbian, but I don’t doubt that she supports the military.  It’s the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that had her so fired up at Harvard. I still think that a truly patriotic person wouldn’t sacrifice military recruits just to show her disapproval with “don’t ask, don’t tell.”  But hopefully that will be brought up at the hearings.

This leads me to question whether her sexual orientation should continue to be the non-issue it has been. We’re sure she is going to be super supportive of any gay legislation that comes up, but will she ever announce a girlfriend in the years to come? If so, by that time she’ll be on the Supreme Court for life. But will it be worthy of criticism then because of her lack of disclosure during her hearings in 2010? My guess is she’ll skate around that issue by saying, “well, I was never asked so therefore I didn’t lie.” By that time everyone will be too busy touting the historical significance of the first gay judge to sit on the highest court.

Then, I believe we’ll see a true victory for the gay and lesbian movement as democratic politicians reap the benefits from the typically financially well-off homosexual base. I mean geez, in Philadelphia one representative was “outed straight” by the lesbian incumbent who accused the young single guy trying to represent a predominately gay section of the city, of only saying he was a bisexual to win over the gay vote. Should Kagan’s sexual orientation be questioned during her confirmation?  Yes. But it would have to be done by a Senator ready to commit political suicide.

WE'RE BACK!

David Loftus

As Stan Freburg once said, we have received [ahem] many card and letter begging us to revive American Currents . . . to say nothing of countless phone call -- mainly from the same visitor, me . . . that we have decided to resuscitate the blog and put it on the Internet version of life support.

Seriously, several of our longtime commentators were interested in continuing to discuss the contemporary scene, but it would have to be on a somewhat looser basis. We will no longer -- or perhaps but rarely -- have several commentators address the same issue or piece of breaking news.

Subjects will probably be more free-ranging: we'll choose our own topics, and there will likely be a little more personal content than you have seen in the past, but we'll try to keep an eye on Jeff Weiss's original concept of a site that addresses the current American scene, whether in its political, cultural, economic, or social aspects. None of us wants to see a series of extended Facebook status updates or even FB notes pages.

Since we probably won't be cranking out quite as much copy on a daily basis, we're also willing to entertain the occasional guest essay, if it measures up to our (admittedly less than stringent) criteria of a modicum of thoughtfulness, relevance, and decent written English.

Send your proposals or finished pieces to me here, and I'll reserve the right to edit or clean them up, or reject them outright, if I see fit.