The War on Poverty

It was 50 years ago that Lyndon Johnson announced his “War on Poverty.” John Kennedy had visited Appalachia and was appalled at what he saw, but Johnson knew poverty first hand and decided that would be the big issue of his presidency.

The debate is still going on whether the war was won or lost. To me, it is still going on. To Johnson the problem was simple, too many people didn’t have enough money and the government could help. His programs such as food stamps and Medicaid have gone a long way to keep people from starving to death. Newer programs such as school lunches and Earned Income Credit certainly help as well.

We now know that just giving people money doesn’t solve the problem. It is obvious to me that there is a “culture of poverty” that is extremely complicated and deep rooted. Some even deny that it exists and attribute poverty to racism or lack of education. Racism is a separate issue and may be an contributing factor in some situations, but the problem is deeper than that.

Education is closer, but part of the culture of poverty is a lack of interest or even disdain for education.

I have been involved with homeless shelters for several years and have some familiarity with businesses that cater to the poor. Businesses such as payday loans, buy-here-pay-here car dealers, rent-to-own stores, and to a lesser extent pawn shops, not only exploit the poor, but contribute to that culture. My direct experience is working in a pawn shop. Pawn shops are on a slightly higher plain than the others in this category, but we dealt with some of the same people, so I had first-hand experience.

We cannot expect the governments or Congress to deal effectively with this issue because they have problems understanding issues far simpler than poverty.

It is really everybody’s concern, especially churches and the Christian community who are particularly commissioned by Jesus to help the poor. Organizations such as The Salvation Army and the various Rescue Missions understand this and are generally overwhelmed. They need our help.

I see the most basic problem of poverty as lack of trust in the education system or in any big organization such as a bank. For example, many believe that it is better to cash your paycheck at a check cashing service than it is to open a bank account. An amazing number of people see no value in going to school and openly criticize those that try to learn or do well in class.

Surveys have shown huge differences in the way the poorest people and the wealthier people approach basic things like diet, exercise, health care, learning, and even transportation. Poor people regularly spend the most with the least benefit, not because of lack of availability, but because of their understanding of how things work.

A basic concept of the poverty culture is instant gratification. In fact, helping people get past this issue may be the key to helping them out of poverty. Starting a business or investing in the future is a totally foreign concept to a large portion of the population.

Jesus said that the poor will be with us always. He did not mean that we couldn’t do anything about it, but rather that this was going to be an ongoing problem for millennia and that we had our work cut out for us.

The Value of a College Education.

There has been a lot of talk in the media about the value or non-value of a college education. With the skyrocketing costs of college and the less than stellar outlooks for some recent graduates, this is a good time to take a closer look.

On a strictly dollars and “sense” level, it may be a wash. If you come out of college with tons of debt and a job that you could have gotten right out of high school, you have to seriously look at how you spent your time. But this misses the whole point of going to college. 

The value of a college education is not just “book-learning,” after all you could do better spending eight hours a day for four years reading in the public library for free. The value is in the relationships and experiences that come from the rarified atmosphere of a college campus that you can’t get anywhere else.

The years I spent at Kansas State University and later at Mid-America Nazarene University were life changing in all kinds of ways. Only a few were things I learned in a classroom. Sure I picked up some good economic theories and learned a lot of calculus that I’ve never used; but the bulk of my education came over a cup of coffee, hanging out with people from all over the world and all walks of life, exchanging ideas about music, art, architecture, and literature. 

I just finished reading J Paul Getty’s memoir. He attended Oxford in the early part of the 29^th century. He admits that the best part was that classes were only six weeks at a time, four times a year, which gave him plenty of time to travel and get to know people. His travels to Italy, Greece, and France help make him one of the world’s foremost authorities on Renaissance art. His degree from Oxford in Economics may or may not have been helpful in the Oklahoma oil fields where he made his fortune.

I recently talked to a bank president. The bank is family owned. The current generation of owners were his friends in college. When they needed a president, because they already knew him, they gave him a call. Do the relationships we have in college matter? They certainly can.

This all brings into question the value of online or other alternative forms of higher education. I take all kinds of online courses to stay up to date in business, but this is not the same as being on a college campus and being submerged with like-minded people 24 hours a day. An online degree misses the whole point and probably dilutes the whole idea having a college degree.

Forget all the gibberish about whether or not a college degree will make you more money. It may or may not, that is up to you, not the degree, but it will definitely make you a different, and usually better, person.

40th Anniversaries

We just completed the 39^th Annual Bike Across Kansas. Last year was the 40^th Walnut Valley Music Festival in Winfield. Music festivals, bike rides, and assorted fairs and unusual events all over the country are celebrating their 40^th anniversaries this year, last year, or next year.  Louise and I were married in 1971 and started our black and white photography business in 1973. 

The question is what was it about the early 1970’s that spurred all this creative activity?

There were a large number of people who came through the counter-culture of the late 1960’s, or were on the fringe of that movement, who were and are committed to not living boring lives as they had seen their parents doing.

They wanted to ride bicycles long distances, hold days-long music festivals and have art fairs. Large numbers of these events started in 1972-1974 are still going and are bigger than ever, usually attended by the same people every year.

Which brings up the question, what are young people doing now? The obvious thing is paying off student debt. It is pretty hard to start a music festival when you owe $75K in student loans. 

Student debt and the high cost of higher education are right up there with health care costs when it comes to national crisis. Both things have the potential to wreck our quality of life for generations by sapping resources that could and should go to more creative activities.

HAIR

My wife and I saw “Hair” last weekend at the Kauffman Center. We had seen it before about 40 years ago. For the uninitiated, Hair is a Broadway musical that was first produced in 1968. It was at the time a contemporary snapshot of the emerging counter-culture, sometimes called the hippies.

I was not an active participant in this movement, but more of an eye-witness, since I turned twenty in 1968. 

There was a pretty good size group of people around the world that actually thought we could build a better world around the values of peace, love, happiness, and freedom. Some of these people were Christians who desired to live a first-century Christian life-style of community, sharing, and working together. Most were not Christians, but aspired to these same ideals.

Even though this period was short, from about 1967 to maybe 1973, it inspired some of the greatest music and art of the twentieth century. The movement could have been more successful and long-lived but Satan realized he had to squelch it in the bud to keep this “Peace and Love” thing from taking off and brought out his biggest weapons.  He used drugs, and to a lesser degree unbridled sex, to take out the heroes and disgrace the counter-culture.

I often wonder how the world would have been different if drugs had not taken their toll. Would this country still have been involved in almost continuance warfare since Vietnam? Would the people of this generation still be so hedonistic and materialistic? It turns out that we are still human and working for the benefit of each other, living in peace, love, and community can only be accomplished through the faith and the grace of God.

Pawn Shops

Jerry Childers was a guitar picking friend who worked in a pawn shop. One day he decided to leave our band, quit the pawn business, move back to his home town, get married, and become a mailman. As far as I know, that was what he did because I never saw him again.

Before he left town, he sold his Gibson Trini Lopez and introduced me to the owner of the pawn shop and recommended that I take his place. That was the beginning of my pawnbroker career and a steep education curve. I became the local "expert" on musical instruments and cameras.

That is why I enjoy watching "Pawn Stars" and "Cajun Pawn" on the History Channel so much. Actually real life at Doug's Pawn Shop would have made a better TV show because of all of the bazaar things that happened there. I am also pretty sure that these "reality" shows are mellowed out a lot to make them palatable for TV viewers. A television show could never match the real life adventures that happen in places like auctions, pawn shops, and touring rock bands. Most people wouldn't believe it anyway. I know, I've done all those things.

Kansas Wind Turbines

If you think it is windy now....wait until they get things hooked up and turned on.

Actually, with the oil producers scrapping the bottom of the wells and the governor signing a tax bill that will most likely bankrupt the state, the answer may be blowing in the wind. Wind is the major natural resource in Kansas that will never run out or go away.

Some people think they are noisy or they kill birds. I presume that these people have never seen a strip mine or tried to figure out what to do with spent nuclear fuel.

What do you think? Iis wind a good source of energy, especially in wind rich places like Kansas?

The Lectern

In 1989 I was on the board of my church. Somebody suggested that we needed a powered lectern for one of the classrooms. The room was fairly large and the teachers were having trouble being heard. We agreed that that a lectern or podium with a built in sound system would solve the problem.

I volunteered to investigate the purchase. I decided that none of the commercially available units were just right. They were either too small or too expensive. I decided that I could build one myself that would be better than anything on the market. I had been involved designing and building sound systems before and also enjoyed wood-working. My shop was available and I wasn’t particularly busy. It was the perfect project.

I spent a few weeks studying speaker configurations, amplifiers, and microphone placement and came up with a great design. I built the cabinet out of solid oak and put on ten coats of hand-rubbed lacquer. I carefully selected a Shure microphone that had good isolation properties so that sound would not transfer when people tapped on the lectern or moved the microphone. The microphone was attached by a gooseneck with concealed wiring. The speakers were a stacked array of four eight-inch speakers.

It looked and sounded great. My wife was so impressed that she thought we should go into business making them. I wasn’t as excited because I knew that we would have to get the cost down to make it profitable. There was just too much hand work involved for the price we would be able to sell them for.

I proudly delivered the powered lectern to the church in March of 1989. It worked in the room as planned and I assumed that it was going to work out wonderfully. When I checked in on it a few months later, I found that one of the teachers and repeatedly bent the gooseneck over causing the wires to break inside. This was fine. It told me that I needed to reinforce the wiring through the gooseneck. I still considered this a prototype and learning the weaknesses was part of the process.

I made the changes, but when I checked on the lectern later I found that the high quality Shure microphone had been replaced by a cheap mike from a chain electronics store. The new microphone was noisy and susceptible to feedback reducing the overall quality considerably. I presumed that the original microphone was stolen, but I really don’t know what happened to it. By this time I was off the board and buying another Shure mike was not in my budget. I had donated all of my time and materials up to this point.

After awhile I went on to other projects and quit checking on the lectern and for several years didn’t know or think about its use or whereabouts.

About fifteen years later I noticed the lectern in a classroom. The gooseneck microphone was gone and the electronics had been stripped, but it still looked pretty good.

That lectern is still used every Sunday and several times during the week, but without the sound system. I am sure that the hundreds of people who see it each week never give it a second thought. Most would admit that it looks fine and serves it purpose. Almost nobody knows that it is not anywhere near living up to the purpose that its creator intended. I intended for the polished oak cabinet to contain a sound system allowing any speaker to be heard throughout a large room. Instead it is used only to hold notes and to give the teacher something to lean on. Not what I intended at all.

I believe that this lectern is a good metaphor for most of our lives. We are serving a useful purpose, we still look pretty good after all of these years, but our greater purpose, the reason God designed and created us in the first place, has been lost.

It could be that like the lectern, we were abused at a time when we were weak. Or it could be that somebody stole something critical like our education or a dream. Maybe somebody discouraged us from following our passion because of some misguided idea. Whatever the reason, we lost our purpose but continued to be available in some way, just not at the level God intended.

It also occured to me that if any time in the past twenty-three years, right up to now, if somebody would have come to me and asked me to restore the lectern to its original form and intent, I would have it done in a very short time, but nobody has asked.

I believe that God is the same way. If we would only turn to Him and ask Him to restore us to fulfill the mission He intended, I know He would get started right away. It may not be immediate. There may be something that needs to be done or undone. Like that lectern, it might involve some disassembly and seeing what is inside that can be used and what needs to be replaced. But God can certainly do it. After all, He created us in the first place and He doesn’t make mistakes.

Have a Wonderful Christmas

As a follower of Jesus, I celebrate the birthday of Jesus on December 25 just like most of the other billions of Christians. Of course we don't really know the date Jesus was born, but December 25 is as good a day as any.

The Bible tells us that wise men travelled from a long distance to bring gifts to the new born baby who would become the Savior of the World. Because of that, it has become a tradition to give gifts to each other as part of the celebration.

Giving and receiving gifts is one of the languages of love and is a nice way to show people that we care about them and want to make an emotional connection with them. Thinking about a person and taking the time to select something that we think they would enjoy is a very real part of any relationship.

It does seem that we have taken this custom to the extreme as more and more people seem to forget about honoring Jesus and put their energy into spending money they don't have for reasons that are less than obvious.

I like to go to white elephant gift parties. The original idea of the white elephant was to give your enemies a gift that they had to spend money to house and maintain without any real benefit. A white elephant is a useless gift that puts a hardship on the receiver. The modern version is usually taken as a joke, and is a lot of fun.

Several years ago my wife and got rid of 75% of our possessions, moved from a four bedroom house to a two bedroom apartment and pledged to live more simply and tread lighter on the earth. From that point of view, most gifts are white elephants, because it turns out that it is a lot harder to sell something or give it away than it is to buy it in the first place.

Maybe it is time we changed our Christmas emphasis from buying stuff to remembering some of the things Jesus taught us. He taught a lot of things, but his central message was love and forgiveness. He said that anybody can love their friends; the real test is loving your enemies and forgiving those that hate you.

I like the idea that Christmas is close to the new year. What better way to start the year fresh than to follow Jesus' teaching and forgive those who have wronged us and make reconciliation with anybody we have had tense relationships with?

This year let us: Spend Less, Love More, Forgive Everyone, Serve Others.

Let me know how it works out.

Beryl Harrell

How many of you have heard of Beryl Harrell?

There is a great story about her in the fall issue of The Fretboard Journal.

She was born in 1918 in Washington but grew up in Los Angeles. She took steel guitar lessons from steel guitar legend and pioneer Sol Ho’opi'i. By all accounts she was gorgeous and a phenomenal steel guitar player. She played in several all-girl Hawaiian bands in the 1930’s and ‘40’s.

After the war, country music, and particularly western swing, became huge in Southern California and she became a sensation playing in all the famous LA clubs such as The Palomino Club. She hung out with Merle Travis, Les Paul, Leo Fender, and Paul Bigsby around the Los Angeles music scene in the early 1950’s. When Las Vegas took off she started playing there as well.

In 1963 at the age of 45 she decided that she was too old for playing all the clubs and late hours, so she quit music and sold her steel guitar. She went to work as a telephone operator at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, but she missed playing music so much that she became very depressed.

In 1977, not yet 60 years old, she decided that life without music wasn’t worth living, and she took her own life.

To those of us past 60 and playing as good as ever, and nowhere near gorgeous, this is an amazing story.

Science

One of the great theological questions throughout the ages has been “Does God have a sense of humor?” Personally I think He does, but it may not be the same as ours. A lot of Jesus’ teachings use humor, though through language and culture changes, much of it is lost on us.

Proverb 25:2 in The Message version says, “God delights in concealing things; scientists delight in discovering things.” This is a remarkable insight into what we call “science.” It would seem that there is something like a big game of hide and seek, with God slowly disclosing nature’s secrets to us, to both His and our delight.

Of course we often get it wrong. Many of the things that were considered true just a few decades ago have been proven incorrect. In fact the joy of research is finding new things, disproving old theories, and forming new theories based on new discoveries. It is a moving target, which is the whole idea. That is why it is so amazing that we take everything that is thought to be scientific as fact.

When I was in school, science was defined as anything that is observable and repeatable. Since then that definition has expanded greatly and now includes many theories and ideas that have not been observed and aren’t repeatable.

God delights in us finding out how things work, but I doubt if He would find any delight in the current situation where science has been elevated to a god. Faithful people now find themselves defending God against science instead of the other way around.

One of the most obvious characteristics of current society is the high place given to science. If someone says something is scientific, it becomes hard to argue with it. Science has indeed become god to the majority of people.

Tool Time

When I was sixteen years old and working on my first car, I needed a Phillips screwdriver. The cheap ones my Dad had in his tool box were worn out and not too useful. So I took my freshly minted driver’s license, got in my Pontiac and drove to the hardware store.

The hardware guy directed me to some cheap screwdrivers not unlike the one’s my dad had. After I insisted that I wanted a good screwdriver, he showed me one that was equal to about 4 or 5 hours of minimum wage labor. I happily parted with my hard-earned money and finished the job.

I have used that same Phillips screwdriver almost every week of my life since – 47 years. My mantra since then has been “you have to have good tools.” That applies to musical instruments, cameras, as well as hammers and screwdrivers.

Most of the tools I have, I have owned for decades. I tend to buy the best stuff and keep it forever. That doesn’t work with digital things, but for about everything else, that has worked for me.

Today I decided to empty the contents of my six tool boxes onto my work table and have a big Tool Sort.

It turned out to be a trip down memory lane as I saw tools related to various projects and phases in my life. Specialty bicycle tools reminded me of my heavy cycling phase and some left over woodworking tools reminded me that it was ten years when I sold my woodworking shop and invested the money in musical instruments – a decision I have never regretted.

Somebody once said that the difference between people in poverty and the middle class is the people in the middle classes have tools and know how to use them. Upper class people know people who know how to use tools. I am glad I am solidly middle class.