Yesterday we gave you a look at Steph’s story from the upcoming book, From a Growing Community, Iowa’s Homeless Youth. Today, we’re giving you the other half of the book preview: Trevor’s story. Later this week you’ll be able to pre-order the book for $10, which is half the price it’ll sell for when published in May. Profits will go to Iowa Homeless Youth Centers. (Click any of the images below to enlarge. Then use the arrows to flip through the pages.)

Well the Community Bash went off very, very nicely. Thanks go out to Aeon Grey, The Envy Corps, Patrick Fleming of the Poison Control Center, Seedlings, and The Nutleys for playing that night, as well as Logan Christian for excellently mixing them, and Nick Ridler for booking them. Also due for thanks are Zach and Ben Anderson, owners of Crown Cleaners, for donating the Community Bash t-shirts (designed by Smash) that were sold that night, and Andrew Nixon for selling them. We have some left over and will probably be making them available online soon. Thanks to everyone’s help, Shrieking Tree was able to raise over $1,300 for Iowa Homeless Youth Centers that night!

Now for those of you who weren’t there to see it in person, I’ve got a look at the first printed pages of the upcoming book From a Growing Community, Iowa’s Homeless Youth, edited by Danny Heggen, and designed by Wesley Norman, Nicole Anderson, and myself. Photographs were taken by Wes and I. This post will cover Steph’s Story, while tomorrow’s post will cover another, longer story — Trevor’s. Later this week, we plan to make a 12-page PDF available of the entire book preview along with the option to pre-order your copy for half the price the book will eventually sell for. The final book will include 9 stories from Iowa’s homeless youth and over 60 pages of full color images. Profits will go to benefit Iowa Homeless Youth Centers. (Click any of the images below to enlarge. Then use the arrows to flip through the pages.)

If you looked at the title of this post and thought you’d be seeing Mr. Heggen soaking in apple cider with a succulent apple in his mouth, you were wrong. What we do have, however, is a scan of an article in Juice magazine about the upcoming benefit concert I previously posted about.

Article by Joe Lawler.

The Vaudeville Mews is hosting The Community Bash to Benefit Iowa Homeless Youth Centers’ upcoming book, From a Growing Community, Iowa’s Homeless Youth, which, if you’ve been reading, is the book Danny, Wes, Nicole Anderson, and I have been working on for the past several months. The cost is $10. Aeon Grey will be headlining with supporting acts, the Envy Corps, Poison Control Center, Seedlings, and the Nutleys. Proceeds from the concert will be going towards helping print the book. You will also be able to pre-order the book (short printed previews will be available at the show) and buy shirts that SMASH has drawn up. Hope to see you there!

Purchase tickets here!

The reporters at Rock Iowa recently posted an article about Moral Calculus on their Iowa music blog. Unique to this article is the free giveaway of “Thin Glass Islands on a Clouded Sea”, which is the most vocal-intensive track on the album. Head over to the post, have a listen, and let them know what you think. The CD is now available locally in Des Moines through Mars Cafe for $10, and everywhere else, through our Web site.

Here is something I’ve been contemplating for the past week:

“We do not know what we ought to do about an underclass. We do know that we should not manufacture one. We do not know how to bring an end to poverty and inequality to our society. We do know children shouldn’t live in subways. We also have a good idea of how to build a house – or many houses, each of which has many heated, safe, well-lighted rooms, doors with doorknobs, electric switches that go on and off, a stove that can be used to cook nutritious meals, a refrigerator in which food for children can be stored. Overwhelmed by knowledge of things we can’t do, we are also horrified that we do not do what we can. I suspect one of the ways we deal with this is to get angry – not at ourselves, but at the mother and, by implication, the child.”

~ Jonathon Kozol, Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America

“Overwhelmed” is a feeling I have experienced quite often throughout this writing project. There is no way to clear every thought out of my head about homelessness in our community each night before I go to sleep. There is no way to clear out all these thoughts while I’m reading a book, watching a movie, talking with friends, brushing my teeth, eating breakfast or lunch or dinner, while jogging – and on and on and on right now. There is no way to help everyone. And there are no words to speak which could unite everyone outside of this issue. There has been, however, a way to focus my thoughts on one aspect of this issue; there has been a way to allow this focused thought affect how I act throughout the day; there is a way to think about helping someone; there is a way to think about the things I see each day (the lady begging for change outside Mars Cafe, the guy who asked my roommate where he could score crack in our neighborhood; the twenty-four year old girl who just split with her husband, is losing her third child, realized she is again pregnant, and is trying to furnish her first government-supported housing); and so there must be a way to not become horrified about what I hear and see each day.

To start taking action believing I can do anything and everything is not the answer. And believing this issue will never change, even if we all performed very small acts of charity, only leaves me discouraged. So how have I managed to overcome being overwhelmed recently, then? To start, I decided not to believe these things.

After talking to many people who are outside this issue about what I do and coming to only find most never realized it was an issue in our own community, I realized there is something I need to do first. I need talk about what I see. I need to express my concerns. I also need to demonstrate that getting angry at the people in this situation is not a step to be taken. Anger may seem like a logical step, for it is not our fault they are homeless so, obviously, it must be their own. Anger, however, holds us back from doing something. And this doing something (taking action) is overwhelming when we don’t know where to begin or don’t feel comfortable dealing with someone in this position. But remember, we don’t have to do anything outside of ourselves. If we focus on what we can do and allow people around us to help in their own ways as well, we are acting like a community. Taking action together makes something much less intimidating, for as a community we have many more resources and ways to be affective.

And if you think no one deserves of help? Then that’s what you believe, and you better believe that and stand by it. But remember, you don’t have to help everyone. Help by offering something you can – music, a cup of tea, a cigarette, a magazine, a sock. And help the children. What could happen if we change the way homeless youth develop into adults? There are people working on this every day and every night. They live to help. How overwhelming can that be – giving hours and hours for little pay just to help an at-risk kid take another step ahead; and, especially when there is little support from the outside community?

So that’s why I’m doing this: to ask you to listen and learn about the community surrounding us. Learn about those who receive from our shelters. Learn about those who work for our shelters. And give your support any way you can: bake cookies, donate old coats or shirts or jeans, volunteer, take back cans and donate the money, etc.

If we can work together, supporting each other; if we can start small and use what we learn to improve our community’s quality of life step by step, we will experience development. This whole thing is completely overwhelming, and it should be because we don’t understand it – there are way too many things that effect each homeless youth individually. But, please, don’t become horrified and do nothing.

So that’s just been something I been contemplating lately.

Progress on the book is being made! If anyone is interested in pre-ordering the book, we will begin that on Feb. 22nd at the Community Bash Benefit Concert (5pm at the Vaudeville Mews, $10 at the door). Layout is coming along well. I’m very excited about what layout designers Nicole Anderson and Wesley Norman are putting together. The pictures and letters and everything all look great – I get excited because I had no real visual ideas for the project, it’s just not how my mind works, so it’s fun for me, and I hope it allows us to present this issue in a non-intimidating manner.

If anyone has any questions, comments, or anything’s, an official email has also been established for the book: growingcommunity@shriekingtree.com.

Thanks so much for all of your support this far. I’ll let you know more when I know more.

Danny

It’s been a strange couple of weeks for me. My grandfather, who passed away back in December, left an estate for my mom and her siblings to clean up. Since I write full time, I had the flexibility in my schedule to take a break from the project to go help clean everything my grandparents left behind in Florida. Pictures and books were taken from shelves, paintings from walls, and clothes and receipts from the ‘80s were removed from drawers. My mom, two aunts, an uncle, and I, for five days, did this. And it was interesting: I got to clean out the drawer my grandpa collected letters and other things in – the drawer I always wanted to peek into when I was younger; I found pictures from his days in the army; and I learned more about my very hidden family history – my grandpa’s secret, first wife; my grandma’s out of wed-lock children (a common trend with women in her line). At the end, however, all that was left were a couple couches, a couple beds, and a couple TVs, and that’s it: no more Christmas reunions in Port St. Lucie, Florida, no more grumpy grandpa, no more anything – besides the few things I grabbed from those shelves, walls, and drawers I cleaned. One thing I grabbed because it caught my attention as I was packing other issues into a donation box was a National Geographic from May 1981. A story which lay inside that top issue I was setting down was a feature titled, “Iowa, America’s Middle Earth”.

Today, I finally had the chance to sit down and read the article. Chance is a big word here. First, it’s strange, as I mentioned, to have this much flexibility in my schedule; second, it’s strange I would notice this article, as the print on the cover is small and I merely glanced over the stack of these magazines while I was packing up boxes. Third, and here’s the strangest part, it’s a wonderfully written article that I find to be as accurate now as it must have been back in 1981, an article from which I can only draw from as I continue work on this project about homeless youth.

Towards the end of the article, during an interview with an agribusinessman named Maurie Van Nostrand about Iowa’s production of crops, Mr. Nostrand said, “America can be thankful there’s an Iowa.” Mr. Nostrand was referring to crops and how they contribute to our nation’s and other nation’s grain supplies. This statement, however, transcends and should continue to transcend grain supplies, moving towards other products of Iowa and the purposes of these products in the world around us. Iowa provides high quality products: grain and livestock; as well as insurance, printing (Meredith, the Des Moines Register), education, arts/entertainment, and on and on. And the writer of this article, Harvey Arden, seems to fully realize this quality/philosophy during a conversation with a farmer, Jake.

Harvey asks: “What if we decided to use America’s corn and soybeans and wheat as a ‘grain weapon’ – create a kind of ‘OGEC’…Then we could double and redouble grain prices the way OPEC has done with oil. Wouldn’t that benefit Iowa farmers?”

Jake’s response: “Once big profits become a near certainty, the big corporations would move in and buy up the land. The family farm? It’d become obsolete, a fossil…Let me make a different proposal for a different kind of future. Let’s say, instead of having fewer and fewer produce our food and live on farms, we adopted national policies that would make small-scale farming profitable. Then, instead of having out-of-work farmers migrating to the cities for jobs, you could have millions of cityfolk moving back out to the farms. Sure, food costs would have to go up, but so would the quality of life.” And it’s there Harvey realizes the Iowan’s vision (and as he puts it): “An America where quality of life would have priority over profitability? Ah, well, it’s something to ponder. But will they get it in Washington, D.C.?”
And I feel struck. The odds I would pick up this article and read it were slim, but I did. It seems Harvey’s conclusion is so obvious, though it may not be for people everywhere – but this is something we need to push. We need to understand life is not only about profit, but working so we all may enjoy a high quality life. And this is the strongest point of the homeless youth project: profits from the book sales will be going back to shelters, helping provide high quality support to those who work for and receive from the services provided. We are able to provide, we just need to focus on improving our community and supporting those around us through our own work. It cannot be all about what we gain individually, for, in the end, we’re just going to leave couches, beds, and TVs for our grandchildren to clean up and throw away.

I am very excited about this whole thing right now. We are still on path to having the book out by April – layout for the book has begun and funding is still pending.
The benefit concert on February 22nd will hopefully be providing a chunk of this. The line-up is in: Aeon Grey will be headlining with the Envy Corps, Poison Control Center, Seedlings (my band), and the Nutley’s (my friend Nick Ridler’s, who has been setting up this whole thing, band).

Working with Nick to set up this whole thing has been a great experience – also, a very interesting one. A little history between Nick and me: I became a writer when I lost my best friend Zach to brain cancer back in 2004. I started writing because I didn’t have any other way to express my loss or tell others about Zach, the kid who had a profound impact on my identity and life. Now, I have stepped into the writing field with a focus on writing for a community – I developed this focus during a previous writing project concerning women in prison (resulting in the book, “Voices on the Inside, the Women of Boronia”). So, today I write because of Zach, and Nick is Zach’s little brother. It’s strange how life sets these things in front of us. At the concert, which will be at the Vaudeville Mews downtown at 5pm and costs $10 to get in, pre-sales for the book will begin. More about this will be coming. For now, simply tell everyone who may be interested.

Photograph by Wesley Norman.