More on this year’s festivities later…

The Des Moines Register published an article about homeless youth in the Sunday paper this week, titled “Who Cares That Teens Are Homeless in Iowa?” The article, written by longtime columnist Rekha Basu and illustrated by artist Mark Marturello, mentions that the motivation for asking this question were the stories in our book, From a Growing Community, Iowa’s Homeless Youth. The article takes a detailed look at some of the kids in our book, and can be found on the front page of the Opinion section or online at the Des Moines Register’s site. If you choose to read the online version, be sure to click the tiny “Recommended” link at the top of the article to help encourage others to read it too! There seems to be a bit of a feud going on in the comments section, so check that out as well if you’re into verbal bloodletting.

The Dallas County News printed a front-page, lengthy article about our book today, titled “Voices for the Silenced.” Bob Eschliman, the paper’s editor, details the story of each child in the book, along with details on the project’s origins. I imagine it will appear online soon, so I’ll post the link to the full text when that happens. For now, here’s a scan of the front page.

Another band I’ve worked for over the years, Unwed Sailor, has a pretty sizable fall tour coming up, and I’ve just recently updated the site to give out the details. The tour will also feature bassist Johnathon Ford’s new band, Native Lights. In brief, here’s what’s coming up:

12/1/09 – The Ten Eleven – San Antonio, Texas
12/3/09 – TBA – New Orleans, Lousiana
12/4/09 – The Spanish Moon – Baton Rouge, Lousiana
12/5/09 – The Bottletree – Birmingham, Alabama
12/7/09 – Propaganda – Lake Worth, Florida
12/8/09 – The Engine Room – Tallahassee, Florida
12/9/09 – Redlight, Redlight – Orlando, Florida
12/10/09 – Caledonia Lounge – Athens, Georgia
12/12/09 – The End – Nashville, Tennessee

The release of Pick ‘n’ Aul’s fourth full-length album is on the horizon, but for now I’ve just updated the official Books site with a few new tour dates. Check out the tour section to see if they’ll be playing near you soon!

For those of you who have not yet heard of The Books, they are – in my humble opinion – one of the most innovative bands currently active, and I’ve been had the pleasure of working with them on animations and web media since 2005. Their sound is difficult to describe, but I usually term it as “techno-folk” with highly manipulated instrument and spoken word samples playing a heavy role in nearly every composition.

Hello, everyone. Things have been very, very busy at Shrieking Tree lately. Generally, when I fail to update the blog, it means that my schedule has grown so full that I haven’t had enough time to do it. There is a lot to announce, and I hope to do some of that over the next few days.

For now, I would like to update you about a very recent development, and that is the publishing of an article I wrote for the Des Moines Catholic Worker’s Via Pacis publication. I have volunteered off and on at Catholic Worker houses in both Des Moines and Las Vegas over the past few years, but only recently have I begun to fully immerse myself in the habitual serving of the homeless. Over the past couple of months, I have begun to take on regular shifts there and the experience has been positive in many ways. Having grown closer the community, I was invited to share my thoughts on the process of photographing and creating the art for the book, From a Growing Community, Iowa’s Homeless Youth. I have done that in the form of an article published in the October issue of their free newspaper, which can be found on newsstands across Des Moines and online in PDF form.

Those of you who might be interested can find the full text of my article below the cover image.

Bridging the Gap to a Growing Community
by Justin Norman

In November of last year, I found myself shivering, hands in pockets, pressing against a fence just above the roar of interstate 80 in downtown Des Moines.  Moments earlier, my brother Wesley had scaled the chain-link barrier and was somewhere just out of sight, snapping a photo beneath the 6^th Street bridge.

A few minutes before we’d been in a lighthearted mood, garnering chuckles from the odd looks of passers-by as he awkwardly fell off the far side of the fence into the grass and I dangled the camera over to him.  But then, as we both stared at the resultant image from this adventure, we both felt a bit unnerved.  The glow of the camera’s backside monitor revealed a rocky ledge beneath the familiar bridge, littered with dirty blankets.

So this was where Ryan slept.

For three weeks, a high school student from Des Moines had called this home. But the reason for my sudden change of mood wasn’t just because of the unpleasant living conditions shown in the photo.  It’s because I’d been struck by the realization that I drove under this very same bridge quite frequently.  This was when Ryan became real to me.

This incident turned out to be the beginning of a pattern of realizations as I took on the role of art director for the book, From a Growing Community, Iowa’s Homeless Youth – a collection of stories from nine homeless kids around Iowa, of which Ryan was one. By the bridge, I realized that the problem of child homelessness was not something that existed in some other world, though it often seemed like that to me. No, it was right here, in familiar places all around me.

While I had volunteered to serve homeless adults on-and-off at Catholic Worker houses for a couple of years, a problem I’d always had when talking about homelessness to my friends is that almost none of them had ever even heard about the Catholic Worker.  Nor did they want to.  Suspicious glances and questions like, “Well, don’t those people want to be homeless?” were common fare.

In some ways, I can relate to their ignorance.  While problems regarding homeless adults were familiar territory, I never had a clue as to the extent of the homeless youth issue until Danny Heggen moved in with me last year.  Danny had recently returned from Australia, where he’d interviewed women in a new prison and compiled their stories in the book, Voices on the Inside: the Women of Boronia. The book was published locally as a way of educating people about an alternative prison system that better prepares convicts for re-entering society.

Having arrived back in Iowa, Danny wanted to replicate that process, but with an issue plaguing our home state.  He explained to me that there were over 10,000 homeless children in Iowa last year, but only 735 shelter beds available for them.*  This was a complete shock to me.  Ten thousand homeless kids? I’d had no clue.  So I offered to help Danny spread that knowledge with the skill that I’d excelled at for years – graphic design.

The realizations I had during this work came as much from the new design and publishing concepts as the subject matter it supported.  Graphic design did not have to be a process of slathering every product on an assembly line with a coat of gloss, as it had often been for me in the past.  The book’s text consisted of letters straight from the mouths of the people affected by the problem, and the design could be a natural outgrowth of that.

Over the course of nine months, we traveled to the places the kids mentioned in their harrowing stories, photographed them, and bound them together in hopes of bringing their voices out of the muffled cracks they are so often confined to, and into a common medium where they can be amplified.  They are not so distant – they are here in familiar places, like the 6^th street bridge.

But the most freeing realization for me was not just learning of the problem itself.  It was discovering that something could be done about it quite easily if even a small number of volunteers begin to prioritize people over profit.  The four people who worked on the book all could have been making much more money working a typical 9 to 5 job for a year.  But instead, by choosing to spend that time volunteering at shelters and taking a payment of 50 cents per book, we’ve been able to route the funds to those who need them far more than we do.

With each $20 book sold, $10 is donated to Youth & Shelter Services, and we have sold over 800 copies in the three months since its self-published release.  The result is that in many ways – through knowledge, money, and direct action – the gap between the housed and the homeless is gradually being bridged.

Find out more at www.SowSomethingMeaningful.com

* Statistic from HomelessChildrenAmerica.org

Justin Norman is a frequent volunteer at the Des Moines Catholic Worker.

Hello Friends,

Much has progressed over the past couple of months with the book. So now I write to share with you, because you have been a very important part of this book moving forward: you have encouraged us and supported us in each step.

During September, Justin Norman and I had a number speaking events:

- One was with Youth & Shelter Services for a donor appreciation event. That evening, Youth & Shelter Services invited donors out to hear pieces of stories in From a Growing Community, Iowa’s Homeless Youth. Instead of Justin or me reading them, however, the shelter asked youth going through their services to give voice to the letters. To hear this done moved me. I witnessed how these stories allow other youth to identify and how they touched the lives of those whom have been donors to Youth & Shelter Services’ mission over the last thirty years.

- Another event was Justin’s and my opportunity to guest lecture to students in a Service and Writing course at Drake University. We spoke about community and its effect on producing positive community action. That means we mentioned your involvement, whether it was your coming out to an event, telling others about the book, buying a book, or being your sweet, ol’ self.

- The last I’ll mention is a series of concerts we’ve been invited out to speak at with the band Hanwell. These guys have incredible hearts. And their invitations have opened the book up to a younger crowd than ever before. And the responses have been great!

Justin has also been hard at work contacting Borders Book stores. From a Growing Community, Iowa’s Homeless Youth can now be found at Borders Books in Iowa state-wide (Des Moines, Ames, Dubuque, Davenport); Peoria and Normal, Illinois; Omaha and Vermillion, Nebraska; and other to-be-announced sites soon! Borders has been a wonderful distributor for us, knocking their cut from each book down to 10% instead of the usual 40% corporate distributors ask for. Thus, we are still able to donate! And Barnes & Noble has just agreed to distribute books in West Des Moines.

Wellspring/Parable in Urbandale/Clive, Beaverdale Books, Mars Cafe, Scooter’s Coffeehouse, and The Village Bean also distribute the book, as well as our website: www.SowSomethingMeaningful.com.

The Quad City Times has written an article about the book. We received many positive remarks like these: “‘I think what Danny did really nicely is tell the story our youth and humanize what becomes a dehumanizing experience,’ [Director of Iowa Homeless Youth Centers] Brad Whipple said. ‘He was really able to put a face on an experience. for us to have a tool like that from an awareness-raising standpoint is huge.’ ”

And the talk-radio station WOC 1420am of Davenport interviewed me yesterday and posted our interview as a podcast.

So many great opportunities have been presented, and we want to thank you for being right here with us – whether we see you in our day-to-day interactions or if you’ve been following the movement through Facebook. Over the past couple weeks, we’ve met more and more people outside of our community of contact who have heard or seen the book around. So the project is growing and we keep pushing forward.

And this means our local shelters are gaining awareness, as well as the youth they’re serving.

So, as always, thanks for helping us grow!

Danny