I’m telling you, someday someone is going to write a book about Alan Graham, founder of Mobile Loaves and Fishes. No, a book isn’t right. Too flat.

They’re going to make a movie about him. He’s just that charismatic of a guy. But it’s beyond charisma; it’s the way he uses his brain.

Alan Graham has the rare ability to find the shortest path from problem to solution. You won’t spend 10 minutes talking with the man before he says something so fresh and so startling that the only possible reaction you could have to what he just said is, “Duh.”

Not in an “Everybody knows that,” way but rather in a “Well, shit, why didn’t anybody else think of that?” way.

For example, a couple years ago a short-lived ice storm hit downtown, closing office buildings and reducing traffic to almost nothing. The shelters and soup kitchens were closed, but people still needed food that day, probably that day more than others. Alan Graham got a phone call. Could he bring a truck down?

No, he couldn’t bring a truck down. But he could send some pizzas. How many pizzas did they need?

He called pizza delivery, made them a deal, and had several dozen pizzas delivered downtown. Couple hundred bucks. Lots of people fed.

Maybe that sounds obvious now, but who else thinks to deliver pizza to homeless people during an ice storm, when no one else can come up with a way to help them? Duh.

It’s hard to write a thoughtful reaction to a film that left me so emotional. And I wasn’t the only one. There were quite a few beefy guys walking out of the theater with puffy, watery eyes last night, too.

But “Happiness Is” by Austin’s Andrew Shapter will do that to you. It’s not that it’s a sad film by any means. In fact, it’s pretty hilarious. Shapter interviewed some characters, for sure. The woman who admitted to thinking that happiness could be found in a solid-surface countertop sticks in my mind. (HINT: It can’t.)

What it is is hopeful because the message is this: Happiness is within your reach. It’s not something to strive for, it’s something you find within yourself. For proof, Shapter talks to happiness historians (they exist), scientists, and anthropologists. They’ve done the research and can pinpoint exactly when most Americans stopped being happy. (HINT: Rampant materialism, duh!)

Then, to further prove his point, he interviewed an incredible mix of people from all over the country – men, children, immigrants, scholars, artists, musicians, comedians, old people…. Though they all get there differently, eventually they all come to the same conclusion.

There are a couple of things you should know about the film:

1. It’s going on a screening tour around the country, and they’re paying for that tour in DVD sales. If a quarter of the population in America saw this film, it could change this country for the better. Seriously. So if you can swing the DVD, buy it here: http://www.happinessisthemovie.com/blog/shop/

2. The film is being used to raise money for the sponsoring nonprofit. In the case of last night’s screening, the nonprofit beneficiary is Mobile Loave & Fishes, the organization that takes food out to the homeless and is run by the incredible Alan Graham. (He’s featured in the film.) You can support that organization here.: http://www.mlfnow.org/site/PageServer

There were hundreds of people at this screening last night. I wonder what they’re thinking today.

DJ Stout is one of Austin’s best designers. Don’t know the name? Magazine lovers – and Texans – do. He put Texas Monthly on the design map (where it firmly remains thanks to a stream of talent out of Lubbock).  He also put Pentagram Design, one of the most respected international design firms in the world, in Austin.

This Saturday there will be a party at Pentagram to raise money for Mobile Loaves & Fishes and celebrate the release of Pentagram Papers 39, designed and conceived by DJ Stout. This Pentagram Paper features Joe Ely’s collection of homeless signs, as photographed by Randal Ford and accompanied by portraits of Austin homeless men, women, and children by Michael O’Brien.

A spread from inside SIGNS

 

 

 

How did this collaboration come about?
I was asked by the other Pentagram Partners to do a Pentagram Paper. The Pentagram Papers are little black books that we have published for over 35 years, and although they are on a variety of topics, they tend to be mostly about visual subject matter like Kimonos and folk art mail boxes or collectible items like architectural toys or buttons from the USSR. I come from an editorial background so I wanted to do something on the state of our society or commented on an important issue in our daily lives. I wanted it to be relevant to what is going on now. Little did I know when I first started thinking about this book how relevant the timing would become because of the state of our economy and rising unemployment.

I had heard through a friend that Joe Ely had a collection of homeless signs. Since my days at Texas Monthly magazine I had always been interested in hand-writing and scrawled letterforms and the power that it has to communicate both verbally and visually. I met Joe over at his house to look at his signs and that’s when he told me the story of how he had been homeless for about eight years or so when he jumped on a freight train heading out of Lubbock. Over the years he kept a journal of musings, verses, songs and sketches and because of his fascination and compassion for the homeless men and women he encountered along the way, he began to pay them for their hand-written signs. I thought Joe’s sign collection and his story was an interesting way to raise awareness on the current state of homelessness in our society. To me the homeless sign-holders are doing what graphic designers do but at its most basic level.

I asked my photographer friend Randal Ford to photograph the signs and then I discovered that another friend of mine, Michael O’Brien, had been working on a personal project photographing homeless people in Austin. His main access to the homeless people was through a homeless charity called Mobile Loaves & Fishes. I knew of Mobile Loaves & Fishes and their charismatic leader Alan Graham through my two boys who had ridden on the food trucks with the group a dozen times to feed the homeless. I had actually gone with them two or three times and I found it to be a very meaningful and fulfilling way to help people that are less fortunate. I thought that Michael’s portraits were powerful and that they would add human faces to Joe’s collection of hand-scrawled signs. It is a great collaboration for me because these are all friends and extremely talented people who I greatly admire who have come together for a greater good.

Why did you decide to make this a fundraiser?
I wanted this Pentagram Paper to have a purpose. Throwing a book release party to give out the Pentagram Papers and then asking for donations in exchange seemed like I a way to give the Pentagram Paper a reason for being.

How did you approach the design of this book?
The pacing of homeless portraits and signs is very intertwined. I like the way that the verbal messages on the hand-scrawled signs work when combined with the faces of the people.

How do you think readers will react to the book?
I’m not really sure. I know it made some of my partners uncomfortable when I first presented it to them.

What’s the most important message you hope the book conveys?
I hope that it will make people think about the world that we live in.

Pick up your copy of SIGNS this Saturday.

When: Saturday, March 21, 7 pm
Where: Pentagram Design, 1508 West 5th Street in Austin
RSVP: howdy@texas.pentagram.com
Complimentary copies of Signs will be distributed at the party, and Ely, O’Brien and Stout will all be on hand to sign books. Musician Darden Smith and band will be performing, and Sharon Ely will be serving up her famous Holy Pozole soup!

The event coincides with the final night of SXSW, so if you’re in town, please drop by! For those unable to attend, signed copies of Signs will be available by mail for a suggested donation of $20 to Mobile Loaves and Fishes. Please email howdy@texas.pentagram.com for details.

“Every little bit helps.” I know you hear people saying that all the time when they want you to donate money or things, and it sounds suspicious. If you do only give $1 or $5, you think they’re thinking to themselves, “I didn’t actually mean that, you cheap bastard.”

Remember that “little bit” is relative. And so now I’m going to tell you a personal story that makes me look like a loser.

After college, I moved to Chicago (Hyde Park), where I waited tables at the Medici and worked as in intern at Today’s Chicago Woman magazine, which paid me in shoes and an occasional free dinner, but not in actual, real money. I remember having $4 to my name and having to make that last for the next couple of days until I could pick up another shift at the Medici and enjoy my shift meal (Oh, the spinach pizza with jalapenos!) before the work started. This happened a lot…. but I don’t remember being too upset about it. I had friends, and we helped each other out. Someone would always throw $5 my way to grab a half-sandwich from Harold’s. (Okay, now I’m making myself hungry.)

The point is…. $5 was a lot to me. It helped me get to that next shift and from there, I could take care of myself. Surely some of you hve similar memories. If you do, then consider making a donation to any local charity. Any of them, but maybe especially one that helps people with basic needs like food and shelter. A good one to consider is Caritas.

I just received an e-mail from them that went something like this….

Dear Friend,                                                  
 
It is an especially difficult time and the demands facing both Caritas of Austin and our community call us to respond. Increased poverty will impact us all, but especially the most vulnerable.

We are experiencing a 60% increase in requests from eligible low income families for rent and utility assistance, but do not have sufficient resources to serve them.
We are seeing a 13% increase in client households needing groceries from our Food Pantry to feed their families.
Our phone system is overloaded with individuals in crisis needing to book an appointment. And despite our best efforts, callers seeking assistance report being on hold anywhere from one to four hours.

This speaks to the level of desperation so many in our community are facing, and to the limited resources at Caritas.
 
With your contribution to Caritas of Austin, we can continue to provide emergency rent and utility assistance for families in crisis, take-home groceries from our food pantry and hot meals in our community kitchen. Your gift will advance the fight against poverty, hunger and homelessness.

You can send $5 or $35 or more or less to Caritas here.

“Everyone thought someone else was checking that the underlying mortgages were good loans.”

The nonprofit public policy research institute, The Century Foundation, makes it a big part of its mission to explain issues and challenges in the United States in plain language. One of their most recent discussion papers was about the housing market and the proposed bailout. If you’ve been trying to get your head around this issue, their downloadable PDF “A Guide to the Housing Crisis: Ten Questions and Answers” might help. Among the questions it answers….

“Why did the lenders finance this run-up?”
“Who will eventually own the real estate properties involved?”
“What will happen to the bankers and brokers who operated the institutions that created all these bad loans?”

There are people who talk about poverty every day in Central Texas, and there are people who live in poverty every day in Central Texas, and for the most part they are not the same people. They don’t even look like the same people.

All that is to say what I think lots of people don’t know how to say which is this: Poverty seems to be the lot of African-American and Hispanic Austinites, but the folks trying to lead the change are white.

You gotta give it to white Austin, though. They do try. I mean, go to any gathering of nonprofiteers and do-gooders and such, and it’s just about all white folks in the audience. This is a huge generalization, of course.

But this is why Mando’s videos are so compelling to me. He’s talking to the non-white people who are trying to have an effect on poverty and disparity.

In the interest of full disclosure, which is neither here nor there, I am Hispanic, from San Antonio, third generation Texican, and my husband is white. Just for whatever that means.

The important thing is to WATCH THE VIDEOS. If you do nothing else for poverty today, at least watch these videos. “Dialog!” as they say.

Mando Rayo at Hands On Central Texas and United Way Capital Area is going to stay up for 24 hours and post once every hour to the Unted Way blog.

Now, I’ve stayed up late before. I mean, like, sick-late until 3, 4, 5 in the morning. But then I try to get some sleep, and maybe go to be by midnight the next night. Because I may be a working mom with a moonlighting blog and magazine on the side, but I’m not crazy.

Mando has chosen crazy over sleep, and for the next 24 hours starting half an hour ago, he’ll be awake. I’m going to link to him again here because you ought to check this out. For one thing, he’s got video. For another, he’s going to lay down some information about poverty in Austin I think will surprise you.

Click on over there and check him out.

How Blog Action Day for Poverty began in Austin

The ground is wet but the air is warm and the moon is full and bright. And I’m thinking about the folks sleeping on the streets tonight to raise awareness about poverty and homelessness.

@mikechapman, cofounder of Austin Social Media Club, and @sarah703, president of NetImpact Austin, are with Alan Graham of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, taking part in a special Street Retreat to commemorate Blog Action Day, today, October 15. (These are their Twitter identities, by the way. Mine is @gcmag.) Here’s a couple of their Tweets:

MikeChapman We’re figuring out where we’re going to stay for the night. It’s very reassuring to know it’s only one night. #bad08 #austinface

sarah703 The Arch removed all tables to prevent homeless from resting/sleeping. Alan asks “where is the humanity”?

You can follow along with their night on the street at the MLF Blog, here.

About a year ago, I blogged about MLF’s Street Retreats, in which they invite aspiring deacons – and anyone else really – to spend two nights on the streets to experience a little taste of that life. I did an e-mail interivew with Alan Graham, one of MLF’s founders. Here’s one question from that interview:

Q. Do you think this is an experience more people should have? If so, how would that help with your mission?

Alan: We have been doing these for 5 years now. It is the most powerful retreat experience I have ever had and others echo that sentiment. Just understanding the plight of the homeless and working poor in real time is of benefit to what we do.

Today, they celebrate 10 years of taking millions of meals to homeless people, not just in Austin, but also in San Antonio, New Orleans, Providence, and Nashville, not to mention they’re after-hurricane relief efforts to the coast.

Here’s how to celebrate MLF today:

Go to the donations page and send them $10 or $100 or $1000. (I’m going for the whole “10″ thing, see?)

OR stop by St. John Neumann church on Loop 360 between Lost Creek and Las Cimas. Say hi, say thanks, leave a check.

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Installing gutters, downspouts, and a rain barrel

The nonprofit formerly known as 1 House at a Time, now Rays of Hope, is having its first-ever fundraiser this Saturday, from 6 to 10 pm. Here’s why you need to pay attention to this organization and consider attending.

1. Rays of Hope helps low-income and elderly homeowners reduce their energy bills, sometimes by 50%. It does this by transforming these homes to be water and energy efficient.

2. Rays of Hope teaches homeowners to be more water and energy efficient to further the energy and cost savings.

3. Homeowners aren’t the only ones who benefit. You can volunteer to help in the “greening” and learn weatherization and energy-saving strategies as you work.

4. This is grassroots, y’all. Everyone’s welcome. The main menu will feature a fish fry, but they’ll also have brisket and pizza, plus a silent auction. They’re looking for a $15 per person donation, with kids under 12 free. All donations go to the home renovations for four Austin families.

Learn more about Rays of Hope and register to attend the event this Saturday night. Bring a friend.