Poverty is a big deal!

Over the past few months, I've been increasingly sensitized to poverty and why we all need to be concerned and get involved in doing things about it.

It's amazing to me how easy it is to go about life and totally ignore that significant parts of our city, country, and world live in poverty. Part of it is that we compartmentalize ourselves. My life rarely takes me to places where poverty is obvious. We have designed our cities to make it easy to avoid. Living in the suburbs, going to church in the suburbs, shopping in the suburbs, etc. tend to keep you from seeing poverty. In fact, we regularly avoid poverty areas because we correlate them with high crime -- places to avoid.

One of the things that can happen when you retire and begin to pursue other endeavors is that you begin to become more sensitized to the world around you. At least that is what has happened to me. Becoming more aware of poverty was not something I planned, but it has happened through several things that I have been led to for one reason or another.

1. When I started blogging, I found Larry James' Urban Daily. I wasn't looking for it, but found it as a link on some other blogs, so started reading it. His parents and my wife's parents were friends, so there is some feeling of connection to him. Larry relentlessly writes about urban poverty. Over time, it's begun to sink in. If you want to develop an understanding of how big a deal poverty is in the U.S., spend some time reading this blog.

2. Since retirement and starting my second career as a life coach, I've become a voracious reader -- primarily related to religion. As a result, I've become much more aware of how much of the Bible addresses serving the poor, the disenfranchised, and those treated unjustly.

3. We attended a dinner for Second Mile Ministry -- a local outreach to those in poverty in Fort Bend County, generally considered an affluent suburban county. My main insight from the event was how many people they provide services for. They are actually one of the largest customers of the Houston Food Bank. I knew there were people living in poverty in the midst of all of our planned communities, but had no idea there were so many.

4. I became involved with a networking group called "The Get-Together." Again, it wasn't something I was looking for. I was an exhibitor at a Halftime event in Houston (for my coaching business) and Barbara Elliott, author of Street Saints was also exhibiting.

• Street Saints chronicles faith-based efforts accross the country who are effectively serving the underserved. You'll find it encouraging.
• Barbara is the founder of The Center for Renewal. The collected my business card at the Halftime event and I ended up on the mailing list for The Get-Together. Eventually I attended one of the networking lunch groups. The purpose of the group is to provide "Stuff" six inner city ministries need.
  

5. Because of being on The Get-Together mailing list, I was invited to a meeting to consider starting a ministry in Houston similar to Cincinnati Works. Dave Phillips, co-founder of Cincinnati Works, came to talk about their success. The Cincinnati Works program provides job readiness and job search efforts that results in a person who is chronically unemployed or a member of the working poor becoming employed within a month. Then extensive effort is given to helping that person stay employed and to career advancement. The goal is to move people in poverty (defined by federal poverty income guidelines) out of poverty, which they define as an income 2X poverty level. Cincinnati Works has helped 3000 people in poverty become employed, and 900 are now at the 2X poverty income level. While they only are able to help 3% of the people in poverty in Cincinnati, their results are 30% of the total for the city. Virtually all other efforts get people ready to go to work, but do not actually place them in jobs or follow up with them for the years it takes to make sure they are stable and advancing. As a result, where average industry retention is 20%, Cincinnati Works can boast of an 80% retention rate.

Dave Phillips says poverty is the cancer of our society. I'll put more information in the next post to reinforce Dave's assertion.

Podcast Results Review -- July 11

Well, I've spent some time again this morning trying to get some understanding about how my two podcasts are doing in drawing an audience. Last week was interesting, because The Drawn2Jesus Podcast became listed on the iTunes directory -- which looking at Feedburner, resulted in a healthy kick in downloads which I think is new subscribers. Feedburner shows me the number of times aggregators ask for my RSS feed daily, including which aggregators, but this doesn't translate to actual downloads -- actual downloads is some factor of this data. I can also look at the stats from the website I use to host the two podcasts and see the actual number of times each specific podcast has been downloaded.

So here are a few numbers:

Individual Podcast Downloads:

6/13 - 6/19: 414
6/20-6/26: 444
6/27- 7/3: 371
7/4-7/10: 540

Total Individual Podcast Downloads: 2669

Most Frequently Downloaded Podcast:

6/13-6/19: Drawn2Jesus for 6/14 (55 downloads)
6/20-6/26: Retire2Serve for 6/20 (59 downloads)
6/27-7/3: Drawn2Jesus for 6/27 (53 downloads)
7/4-7/10: Drawn2Jesus for 6/14 (71 downloads)

Most total downloads: 168 for Drawn2Jesus for 6/09

Note that during the first 3 weeks of this period, the most frequently downloaded podcast was one of the shows produced at the beginning of that week. But with Drawn2Jesus appearing on the iTunes list last week, one of the older podcasts was heavily downloaded due to new subscribers downloading past shows as well as new ones. In fact, the new shows which came out last week only had 41 and 58 downloads -- maybe because they came out in the middle of the week.

So what I can surmise from all of this is that my podcasts have reached at least 168 people, and that maybe half or more are listening on a regular basis. Further, the numbers seem to continue to grow with time and with ease of access (iTunes). I think that's encouraging.

Spyware Now Less of a Problem

Spyware is the stuff that gets installed on your computer when you visit certain websites. I regularly run spyware removal software. It dawned on me today that since I've switched from Internet Explorer to Firefox for my web browsing, that I find very little spyware on my computer. What caused me to realize this nice change was an article on CNN's website.

If you're still using Internet Explorer, I'd recommend a change to Firefox. It's free, and you can download it here.

10,000 Steps?

So with all the hype about taking 10,000 steps a day that's been on TV and in magazines, it turns out that it's not the result of any research. Common sense, maybe -- but not research. The AARP Bulletin this month points out that it came from the name of the pedometer developed in Japan in 1965.

So, if you name it, they'll come?

Subscribing to Podcasts Using iTunes

You can now use iTunes to subscribe to my podcasts. iTunes is free software from Apple that is downloaded to your desktop. iTunes is Apple's software that allows you to purchase and download music to your computer and in turn to your iPod. The ability to subscribe to podcasts to listen at your convenience and have them automatically downloaded to your iPod is a new feature of iTunes.

Here are brief instructions for subscribing to my podcasts using iTunes:

1. Download iTunes version 4.9 if you haven't already done so. Note that if you have an iPod and want to automatically download podcasts, that there is an update for the iPod software -- also available at Apple's website.

2. When you open iTunes, you will notice that there is a new category called "Podcasts." When you click on "Podcasts," you will notice a link to the iTunes Podcast Directory. Click on that link.

3. To subscribe to Drawn2Jesus, which is included in the directory, click on "Religion and Spirituality" and then on "Christianity." Scroll down to "Drawn2Jesus" and click "subscribe."

4. To subscribe to Retire2Serve, which is not yet listed in the directory, click on "Podcasts." Then select "advanced" from the menu, and "subscribe to podcast." Then type in or paste this link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Retire2ServePodcast.

Trips to Abilene Make Me Think

Trips to Abilene always put me into a reflective mood. It's sort of like going home. We went to school there, we have relatives there, and in a lot of ways feel ties to Abilene. But I think part of what makes me reflective about trips to Abilene is that I recognize that it's not home.

There are differences that seem to jump out at me. People tend to dress differently -- more of a western cut to their clothes. The news is about very local things -- and small things get attention. The sports reports are about Class A football in all the surrounding small towns. The big squabble in Abilene is over redistricting between the two high schools -- and the impact that seems to have had on football fortunes. Conversations often turn to the difficulties Abilene and the Abilene School District are having because of all the development outside their boundaries -- and the population shift to the suburbs (if Abilene can have suburbs). And part of it is also that I'm reminded of the differences that are accented between churches -- whether between groups wearing the same name (churches of Christ, Baptist, etc.) -- or the distinctions between the larger groups themselves. It's not that any or all of this is not good -- it just seems magnified, which sets me to thinking.

Here are a few of the questions that moved in and out of my mind on the drive home:

• Why do I feel uncomfortable when things are a little different?
• Why is there such a focus on creating controversy -- about schools, about football teams, about churches -- rather than seeking to find agreement and middle ground?
• Will there be controversy in heaven? Will we focus on what's different and not feel comfortable?

Well, more questions than answers. But I'm glad to be home where I can immerse myself in my own little universe.

Cows and Horses and Shade

We made a trip to Abilene and back over the weekend, and the temperature was near or above 100 all the way up and back. You get to see a lot of cows along the way, and they were all clumped up everywhere you saw them under trees. Where there were cows, they were standing in the shade, even fairly early in the morning. Horses were a different matter. They were standing out in the sun eating.

Now cows are maligned as being very dumb. And we usually think of horses as being smarter. Have cows been misjudged?