Send a thank-you note to Romania for keeping us out of last place

Last week the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) released a report on child poverty in America. Done in partnership with the Urban Institute, it presents some troubling stats but also nine strategies for reducing child poverty by 60%.

First, the bad news: 

• It's not just that over 21 million American children live in poverty, but that this nation ranks 34th out of 35 industrialized nations in how well it addresses the problem. (Last place goes to Romania, which has an economy 99 times smaller than ours). Think about it: a nation with the world's largest economy fell next to last in civic response to children living in abject poverty.

• Every year that we keep children in poverty costs this nation $500 billion. If you look upon them as individuals, it may be easier to understand the long-range problems emerging from the toxic stress of a childhood spent in poverty: fewer cognitive skills, impaired brain function, less productive adult years, aggravated health outcomes, criminal behaviors, and "dynasties" of poverty through future generations.

But here's what we can do:

• Download the CDF report. It's a cogent and detailed piece of nonpartisan reporting.

http://www.childrensdefense.org/library/PovertyReport/EndingChildPovertyNow.html

Get the details on the nine proposed strategies. Spread the word. Make it a part of your volunteer efforts, church ministry, or philanthropic planning. For example, advocating an increase of your state's minimum wage to $10.10/hour would help.

• Educate your policymakers on the proposed changes and policy improvements, and their consequences. Remember that humanity lives on both sides of a defined poverty line*: such changes would not only benefit kids living under the poverty line but also children in jeopardy just above it.

• Don't let anyone tell you this country cannot afford to end child poverty. CDF's policy recommendations would cost $77 billion, just 2% of our national budget. For further perspective, consider that Americans represent only 5% of the world population, but 37% in military spending, yet in 2013, more than 45% American children lived in homes where there wasn't enough to eat.

The bottom line: Whether or not you have children, no American citizen should remain a bystander to what is a national moral disgrace.

* The poverty line is defined as $23,834 for a family of four.

Why Everyday Nigerians Ought to Matter to Everyday Americans

While the world wept and marched with France over the shocking attack on Charlie Hebdo, the Boko Haram (BH) insurgency massacred 2,000 elderly, women, and children in northeast Nigeria. What's more, the world barely noticed. With Nigeria's elections set for February and given the BH's aspirations for statehood, cold-blooded massacre may just be the BH's way of hitting the campaign trail. But why should Americans care about what transpires in the villages of Nigeria? After all, we have our own troubles.

Here are the top three reasons why Nigeria matters to us.

Textile vendors in Lagos, Nigeria

Reason 3:  We have history together. A longtime ally of the U. S., Nigeria is regarded as our proxy on the African continent. We can't afford to let Nigeria destabilize any further into an ongoing humanitarian nightmare of atrocities, which also spell thwarted economic initiatives and disrupted educational opportunities. Current Nigeria is an economic and humanitarian paradox — it lives in fragments of tribal and ethnic tensions, yet also amazing human resilience. Despite its advantages (see below), most of its people live below the poverty line, rendering them — especially women and children — especially vulnerable to groups like the BH.

Reason 2:  We can do a huge amount of lucrative business together. Porsche, Intercontinental Hotels, MAC Cosmetics, and L'Oreal are just some of the corporations currently working in Nigeria. Home to Africa's biggest population, the largest economy on the continent ($510 billion GDP), the nation is rich in resources, not the least of which is an extremely industrious and entrepeneurial population with an emerging middle class. It's also been predicted that Nigerian millionaires will increase 47% by 2018, and Goldman Sachs has put Nigeria on its "Next 11" list of nations that will be off-the-charts moneymakers in the 21st century. Nigeria's success can also serve as a model for other weak African nations, which brings me to . . . 

The Number 1 Reason:  We both need a stable Nigeria in order to fight a more effective war against terrorism. In Nigeria, terrorism and its humanitarian outrages are inextricably entwined. Look at the region: Nigeria lies in and below the Sahel, a semi-desert stretch below the Sahara that's become a "terrorist corridor" where militias and jihadist groups (emerging from more tenuous nations) are trading huge amounts of weapons and supplies with each other. Close by, Libya has become a convenient arms depot and shelter for militants, and France is again fighting Islamists in Mali. Continued weakness in that region means incubation of yet more "boondock jihadists."

The savage power of the BH must be nullified as quickly as possible, and its leaders brought to justice. This is not only because it's the right thing to do — the humanitarian thing to do — but because if and when the BH attains even an illegitimate statehood, they'll be harder to stop — their atrocities against the vulnerable and defenseless will only grow with impunity, and reach a point where these aren't just committed against Nigerians. They will also become a hub for providing materials, training, and moral supports to jihadists in Syria, Iraq, even Europe.

Getting your high school student ready for college

I went through this process as a single parent and it's not easy, but here are some ideas that helped us. Hopefully they'll help you as well.

Check out The Colleges That Change Lives consortium.  There are about 40 participating colleges, and the concept grew out of education columnist Loren Pope's bestseller about what these schools offer — a focused commitment to the student; smaller class sizes; programming and support for out-of-classroom experiences; an academic and communal experience that transforms the student in positive ways. Their tuition ranges vary as well. Just because they're not part of the Ivy League brand does not make them inferior by any means. My own child attended one of the CTCL schools; it lived up to its promises. (Contact me if you want details).

When you attend college fairs or make campus visits, prompt your child to get to know faculty/staff key to the admissions process, not just pick up brochures. Have your student dress for the occasion as he would for a job interview; you wouldn't believe how many kids show up for college fairs dressed for a day at the beach (in shorts and flipflops). When particular colleges capture his interest, have your child exchange business cards with those key individuals, and send a follow-up note that thanks the faculty/staff member for their time, and includes more pointed questions. As with sales touchpoints, this helps to build the relationship. And trust this: very few teenagers take this approach, so if your child does this, he'll stand out. And he should ask questions, because it's four years of his life that he'll be investing with them, not just the other way around.

You can create a card for your child (see illustration) that profiles him as a candidate. Leave the GPA blank so he can handwrite the latest as he gets deeper into the process. Include AP classes, SAT scores, unique capabilities, anything you want flagged for attention. Again, very few teens do this, so he'll stand out.

You'll be able to sense when a school has a smart enrollment management strategy. For starters, it'll be more than "bodies in/bodies out." A ho-hum, lackluster admissions representative is a poor showing. The admissions counselor of my daughter's college was enthused, engaging, and extremely proactive about recruiting her. They traded emails that addressed her questions about life at the college. Another incentive: if she applied by October of her senior year, they'd waive the application fee. When each college charges fifty to a hundred bucks in application fees, this is a big help, especially if your child applies to more than three or four colleges. 

You might also check out the FAFSA website (www.fafsa.gov). That's the Federal financial aid resource. In January of your child's senior year in high school, you'll want to fill out an application. It's allocated on a first-come-first-served basis: the sooner you do this in the year, the better your options (ie, January versus July). Do it every year your kid's in college. Do not worry that the info you give them may be subject to change. The financial aid offices of the college will fine-tune as your child's circumstances become more imminent. 

Being a transfer student might ease the process. We didn't do this but a lot of families have their kids attend the first two years of college in a local school close to home, to benefit from in-state cost breaks. This also helps the child adjust gradually to living away from home, and affords the family a couple more years to save for tuition. Then they have their child transfer to the college of their choice, because sometimes it's easier to get in as a transfer. This isn't always a desirable solution, but a solid alternative.

Have your child create a web site or social media presence showcasing special talents or interests. For example, is your child eager to study creative writing? Every writer in the world is urged to create a platform, and this will show she's savvy about social media, professional about her passion, and knows how to communicate her ideas to a larger audience. She can also start a Facebook page for the same purpose. With every new blog post on her web site, she can also post it to her Facebook page, Tweet it, even load it with images onto Pinterest. It doesn't have to be perfect: just make it exist with a professional tone. She can then encourage admissions folks to visit those sites.

About social media.... After he applies, the colleges will likely have a work-study student check out his social media. This is a great opportunity: have your child synch up his social media identity to be consistent with how he wants colleges to perceive him. You wouldn't believe how many kids apply and say, "I'm a passionate student of international relations and read The Economist weekly," but their Facebook pages are riddled with behaviors like "F**k you, man, I'm going to blow it out my *** this weekend!! KEGGER!!!" True story. Don't let a deal-killer come from temporary lapses in judgment.

Putting together the next college class is intentionally creating a new community, not just about grades but about who each freshman is as an individual. Sorry to be longwinded, but this can be a daunting process and I wanted to "pay it forward." If I could get through this, then you can too.

Twilight's Last Gleaming: The Role of 9/11

A photo montage with a portrait of each 9/11 victim

I lost no one on 9/11/01, but every year I try to read about some of the victims — who they were, where they were in their lives, who they left behind. There was the firefighter with the older-model Wagoneer that was constantly breaking down. The EMT who should've had a day off, but turned on his heel to run back into the first smoking tower. The bright-eyed middle-schooler on her first flight to another city. 9/11 gave us a new "Spoon River" anthology of lives, cruelly interrupted .

My father was in New York City that day with a Chinese film crew, and I had three or four friends traveling in commercial jetliners like the one that cartwheeled and vaporized over a Pennsylvania farm field. My family and I tried all day to reach Dad, were finally relieved to learn he was unharmed. My loved ones were inconvenienced by 9/11, and their safe return enables me to feel a level of empathy for those who did lose loved ones that day. For several hours, that possibility had been ours. 9/11 refreshed a public component in our sense of empathy: caring for the plight of strangers is not a bizarre thing to do.

Empathy being a vital part of public grief

There are diverse attitudes about 9/11, one being that only New Yorkers have any right to mourn it, since the attack epicenter was in their neck of the woods (hello! Pentagon on line one). Another deplored our day of "grief porn," that a nationwide mourning of 9/11 is somehow maudlin and self-indulgent.

Neither works. Far more than American lives were lost that day, and far more than American lives were in jeopardy during the hours of uncertainty that followed. More than 90 countries lost people in the attacks. 9/11 was a global event that happened on American soil.

Our nation, among these 90 others, experienced butchery on a massive scale, and for a while we engaged in an unprecedented sense of community and compassion. Then it devolved to polarized discourse, fingerpointing, spitefulness, and all levels of social, political, and emotional violence. The same Congressional chamber that saw Americans rising to their feet to applaud the widows of Flight 93's "Let's Roll" heroes also saw, years later, Congressman Joe Wilson screaming "You lie!" to a newly elected POTUS. 

Today incivility characterizes our most ordinary dealings with one another, from Little League ballfields and mall parking lots, to workplaces and groceries. 

And yet when we applauded the Flight 93 widows, nobody stopped to ask if their dead husbands had been liberals or conservatives.

The role of public grief

So ... back to the role and value of public grief (that it's public only means it's widespread, not histrionic) —

Grief enables the living to try and understand (if not accept) the breadth and depth of their bereavement. It helps us to reflect on those lost, and what they mean to us. It gives us an opportunity to honor memories, whether one does that by laughing over anecdotes, burning incense in a place of worship, making a pencil rubbing off an engraved memorial, or buying a tacky souvenir from the 9/11 museum shop.

The more abrupt and violent the loss, the more unpredictable the grieving process. To those who have lost a great deal in the cruelest manner, a day of public grief gives the rest of us a chance to stand with them, to offer care and support, even if they are strangers. That's being humane, not "pornographic."

Self-ordained for what?

As a culture, this nation has gotten good at self-ordination based on sentiment versus fact. We're skilled at identifying how we're entitled. Some of it's been to the positive, and some has been gasbag punditry and blatant hatemongering. 

Over a decade later, despite the violence that was done to us on 9/11, we've become a more violent nation. And we've yet to find the common ground we share with other nations much less among ourselves: currently we're more invested in being morally triumphant than in finding unprecedented solutions. And we'll get no closer to finding common ground by telling others their most heartfelt emotions — such as grief — have no place in public discourse (Sandy Hook parents). 

Lively debate is one thing, but to believe you can make someone else change their moral vision is a presumption of correctness that's wrong for the times in which we live. Don't forget, it was moral intractability that drove the terrorists to act as they did.


So what?

9/11, as it turns out, didn't bring us closer to agree but to disagree. Its consequence was — and remains — our greatest opportunity, because in disagreement we find new ideas, even fresh collaborations. The same convictions that got us here won't be the thinking we need to get us out — and over — to better solutions. 9/11 awakened those who'd been spiritually dormant, and galvanized those already engaged in social justice and geopolitical accords.

Twilight's last gleaming? If we can't do compassion, can we at least try civility? 

America's Son

File this one under "Our Workplaces Do Not Exist in a Vacuum."

One foggy evening, I'm leaving a West End meeting with a client and in the darkness at a stop light, a hooded figure — a black guy — starts running towards my car. I glance at my doors — and he winds up running past me because he's trying to catch the bus on the other side of my car. 

Does this make me racist?

A black mom advises her two teenaged sons not to wear hoodies, nor to walk around with their hands in their pockets. 

Post-Trayvon, does this make her over-reactive? 

Post-Trayvon, journalist Charles Blow recalled telling his sons to watch how they run, because a black man in motion usually makes people nervous and suspicious — not what is he running to (like a bus), but what is he running from (like a crime)? 

I've been in a handful of race relations workshops, at least one of which turned emotionally violent because the issues quickly polarized. One observer, a Canadian mayor from a city of at least 14 ethnic groups, shook his head and asked me, 

Michael Brown at age 16:
He wanted to attend college and
one day run his own business

"Is it only about black and white here in America?" 

Is my adopted hometown of Atlanta — this city symbolized by a phoenix rising out of the ashes — is this a city "too busy to hate," or just busy enough to sidestep a crucial conversation that's never been properly discussed, not anywhere in this nation, but especially not in places like Ferguson, MO? 

Is Mrs. Brown just another grieving low-income black mother (one of those social elements identified as "tearing apart the fabric of society"), or is she my neighbor, another mother who struggled to keep her child in school? If we buy into the notion that the fabric of our society is supposedly being torn apart by black men without work ethic, or black women bearing children without husbands, does it then make it okay to shrug off Michael Brown's death (or the death of any other youth from those presumed circumstances)? 

By criminalizing and dehumanizing both the youth and his circumstances, are we who are not black thus morally absolved of what happened last Saturday in Ferguson? 

Or is the hifalutin sacred fabric of our society even more threatened by what happened — because America's sons can die so violently in their hometowns, their bodies left on our streets for hours, while authorities scramble to understand how such things could've erupted in the first place?

Is the death of Michael Brown a social justice problem for just the black community, or is this one that belongs to all of us? 

I'm not asking you to give an answer. Just trying to round up the questions.

"It must've been my evil twin!"

I deliver a class on (workplace) civility and we talk a lot about cultural influences behind the incivilities we experience today. Reality TV shows, for example, are loosely scripted around escalating conflicts.

The rudeness people experience on social media is an odd phenom: everyone agrees it's deplorable, but nobody's responsible for those acts of incivility. I've concluded we each have evil twins running around, indulging in low-brow conduct.

Anyway, here's a rundown of what I'm talking about:

• Willfully misunderstanding the other person to position them in the wrong (and to put yourself in the right). If you don't understand their point, ask for clarification.

• Willfully (mis)characterizing the other person's motives. Before you make an accusation of their moral or intellectual inferiority, get an accurate picture of their motives first — from them.

• Name calling, insulting, baiting, goading, profanity, sarcasm. If you normally wouldn't say it face-to-face, then best not to launch the salvos from behind the medium. Remember that their loved ones may be following the thread. I've had to keep my 20something daughter from entering the fray when she felt I was being unfairly attacked. 

• "If you don't think the same way I do, you must be evil/moronic." Well, let the witch hunts begin.... Your moral indignation and their public shaming will not reverse any opinions. About the only thing that changes attitude and value judgment is careful listening: if you listen, you'll have earned your right to be listened to.

• Discounting someone else's personal experience as irrelevant or petty. Personal experiences lead us to our most closely held opinions! The more profound the experience, the more deeply set the opinion will be. (As a single mother, I might disagree with notions that "single mothers are tearing apart the fabric of society.")

• Understand that you can't fix the world's problems on social media, you can only try to understand the issues better via access to assorted viewpoints. At best, agree to disagree (so many of my Facebook threads have ended this way).

• If you post the topic, you're the host or "curator." It's the equivalent of having friends, acquaintances, and colleagues in your living room. Do you favor only the ones with whom you agree? Are you going to stand by, grinning, while others "gang up" on an individual? You need to be sure everyone behaves to your terms of conduct. You need to have terms of conduct.

• Always end the discussion as positively as possible. Wish everyone a good evening. Thank them for bringing their viewpoints to the table. Remember their spouses and families. It may be a cranky, begrudging finish, but try to leave it as friendly as possible. If you're a "guest" leaving the thread, thank the "host" for posing the discussion.

Engaging in debates, arguments, and discussions is not the problem. The problem is the way people choose to behave once emotions run high. This country was built on public discourse, even when volatile and polarized, but social media has provided us a screen to hide behind. And I don't mean to be holier-than-thou, because I remind myself of these points each and every day, and I don't often measure up. #dietrying

About the illustration: Pawel Kuczynski, a Polish artist, has worked in satirical illustration specialising in thought-provoking images that make his audience question their everyday lives. His subjects deal with everything from poverty to social media and politics.

Here's one for the Curiosity Book

How long does the American public care to follow a news story before it loses emotional heat?

I've watched this in an informal way and — with the exception of stories like the OJ Simpson trial, 9/11, the disappearances of Laci Peterson and Elizabeth Smart, or Kate Middleton's evolving wardrobe — it appears to average about two to three weeks. And then we move on to the next crisis, the  next controversy.

The Georgia "hot car death" story began trending within hours after the father was arrested (around 6/20/14), with reactions and opinions voiced on Facebook threads, but faded shortly after his bond hearing and his wife's hire of her own attorney (after the July 4 holiday weekend).

Even though the case itself has gone quiet for now, it's spawned flash-in-the-pan stories in the news: with the nation now hyper-alerted to children and animals left in hot cars, last week a Georgia woman was arrested after she left four kids, all under the age of six, in hers when she ran into Kroger's for about 20 minutes. An Asian couple in Brea, CA, was arrested after leaving their 3-year-old alone in the car.