The point of writing is not to transmit information but to create information.

Think about that for a minute.

What? A whole minute? Think about something for a whole minute?

So goes my thought train, halfway through reading The Tyranny of E-mail, by John Freeman. The book is an attempt to look at the huge shift in time and space that e-mail has effected, how it’s changed our lives, our culture and workplace, and our psychological well-being. What I’ve learned so far:

• Arabs pioneered the use of carrier pigeons. (Freeman includes a rather longish but fascinating history of written communication.)
• The average corporate worker spends more than 40% of his/her day sending and receiving e-mail.
• We misunderstand the tone of e-mail 50% of the time.
• Because I think it is so important I will repeat: We misunderstand the tone of e-mail 50% of the time.
• There’s also the problem with the auto-fill-in-address function, which makes it easy to accidentally send an e-mail to a whole group. (I laughed and laughed reading about the executive who sent details of his salary to the entire company by accident and pulled the fire alarm in panic.)
• Some companies have e-mail-free Fridays.
• In 2006, the average office worker was interrupted 11 times an hour. The cost of these interruptions (which included e-mail): nearly $600 billion.
• One survey found it took people an average of one minute and forty-four seconds to respond to an e-mail pop-up alert on their computer. (I used to respond even faster than that until I turned the little notifier off.)

According to Freeman, our use of technology has begun to alter our attention span; we’ve started reverse engineering our brains for speed, as opposed to mindfulness—a very sad state of affairs indeed, since I’ve spent the last 20 years trying to improve my level of mindfulness! 

Interrupted every thirty seconds or so, our attention spans are fractured into a thousand tiny fragments. The mind is denied the experience of deep flow, when creative ideas flourish and complicated thinking occurs.

Isn’t that the truth? Just in the last few months I’ve had several coworkers say to me that they spend so much time on e-mail, they feel like they don’t have time to get anything else done. “I don’t have time to think!”

The second half of the book focuses on how we can use e-mail more effectively to help, rather than hinder, our productivity. More on that in a couple of weeks.

Dave Ellis, United Way Impact Manager, Domestic Violence

Today’s blog post is an interview with Dave Ellis, our Domestic Violence Impact Manager who was also involved in PeaceJam over the weekend.

Liz: What is PeaceJam?

Dave: PeaceJam is a Youth Leadership program of youthrive—the Upper Midwest Affiliate of PeaceJam International. PeaceJam engages youth leaders from Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa with a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate that the youth have studied using the PeaceJam curriculum. Each featured Laureate focuses on a specific theme relating to an important global issue. The event combines learning sessions on peace building in schools and communities, discussions with Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, and a host of hands-on service-learning activities in a selected community. At the PeaceJam conference, participants talk about service-learning projects that they have carried out in their local communities.

The theme this year was Healing Communities Torn by Racism and Violence.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Rigoberta Menchu Tum of Guatemala

There were 600 youth involved, completing more than 15 service projects over the weekend in the host community of South Minneapolis. They also presented more than 50 projects they had worked on in their local communities to featured Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum from Guatemala. The service projects represented all 10 of Greater Twin Cities United Way’s goal areas as well as Diversity and Inclusion.

Liz: When does it happen?

Dave: PeaceJam is a year-round program that begins in November with PeaceJam Slam, hits its midpoint in the spring with PeaceJam Conference, and wraps up in the fall at the Slam.

Liz: Where does it happen?

Dave: It happens at the University of Minnesota and in the community. Programming at the U of M includes family groups and service-learning projects.

Liz: What were you most pleased with from this year’s event?

Dave: There is a fantastic mural on the corner of 25^th Street and Chicago Ave. S. that was done by the youth.

Peace Jam mural at 25th St. and Chicago Ave. in Minneapolis

Liz: What surprised you?

Dave: That an agency with only two paid staff can pull of an event like this every year for the past 12 years (with many volunteers). The conference this year was twice as large as previous PeaceJams.

Quarterly Economic Pulse - April 2010

The most recent edition of the Quarterly Economic Pulse has just been released.

There are glimmers of hope. Unemployment has probably peaked (though all of those discouraged workers out there could re-enter the labor market—which is a good thing—and drive the unemployment rate up a bit further, which is generally viewed as not such a good thing). People are saving more (good for community stability) and they’re paying down their debt (good for individual stability).

But we still have eight unemployed workers for each job opening, poverty is growing in the suburbs even faster than in the central cities, and the suburbs are now home to the lion’s share of low-income people. (See Brookings report for more detail on suburban poverty). Consumer confidence remains low, and will probably stay that way until the job market improves.

Housing sales are increasing, and there are still a lot of foreclosed properties on the market, keeping housing prices low (which also makes housing more affordable). Median sales price for a Twin Cities house in February was $159,000. One in six Minnesotans owe more on their homes than they are worth. One in three Minnesota students are eligible for free or reduced price school lunch.

So, we’re starting to emerge from the recession but we still have a long way to go, and a lot of people will be facing hard times for the foreseeable future.

Wilder Research has released their initial findings from the Homeless Study, and it’s looking pretty grim. The number of homeless people on this one-day survey numbered 9,452, up 22% from the 7,751 individuals counted three years ago.

African Americans and American Indians are severely overrepresented among homeless adults. They represent only 5% of the state’s population, but account for 52% of the homeless adult population.

More than half (55%) of homeless adults have a serious mental illness, and 46% have a chronic health condition. Nearly half (44%) are on a waiting list for public housing. Nearly 15% are veterans.

Children and youth account for 47% of our homeless population. The number of homeless families with children increased 27%, reversing nearly a decade of decline. The average age of these children is 6. Altogether there were 3,251 children with their parents, 220 children age 17 and under on their own, and 987 youth ages 18 to 21.

You can get more information from Wilder Research, including details about the community presentation scheduled for May 25. Additional detail and reports focusing on specific populations will be made available throughout 2010.

Today we have a guest blogger, Dave Ellis, an impact manager in the area of Domestic Violence, responding to the recent spate of incidents across the state.

Dave Ellis, United Way Impact Manager, Domestic Violence

All I remember that morning in July, was waking up in complete darkness to cries for help. “Where is she?” a young voice called out, over and over. I jumped up and looked at the clock — 3:00 a.m. What’s going on, I thought. Peering outside, I saw a young girl pacing in the rain outside my window.

I quickly threw on my robe and ran outside. When the young girl saw me, she backed up and repeated again, “Where is she? My mom is missing,” she said. “There’s blood on the back door and a window is broken.”

By now neighbors had gathered, and stood, staring at us in the rain—at me in my bathrobe and the young girl who, I’ve since learned, lived across the street.

She was sobbing now, saying again her mother was missing. “Mom’s boyfriend came to visit, but now she’s gone. And there’s blood on the door, everywhere.”

My next door neighbor, Deborah, stepped forward to console the young girl. I called police.  We all waited in the rain for them to arrive while the young child continued to cry.

The police came and took her away. A few days later I heard that they called the incident a “domestic” and that the girl’s mother was in the hospital where the boyfriend had dropped her off. The mother’s story? No harm was done to her by the boyfriend. She had slipped and cut herself and miraculously, he “showed up” soon after, and drove her to the hospital.

This terrible incident happened almost 15 years ago. Since then I’ve worked all my life to prevent these incidents from happening to more women and children. For this is only one of countless other violent incidents I’ve heard about.

Fast forward to this past week—a roller coaster ride of bad news and some good news that efforts are being made to stop the violence:

Bad news:

• A Mankato woman was shot by her ex-husband, in the face, 3 times, in her car, in a parking lot, in front of their 3 children.  He takes another vehicle and leads police on a chase.
•  A woman is stabbed 70 times by her husband. Three of their children watch in horror.  He says she was driving him crazy. That much seems obvious—stabbing someone that many times can only reflect the level of rage he had must have felt at the time. But the larger question remains about what the impact will be on these children in their future without a mom or dad.  The oldest daughter, Brittany, called 9-1-1 while the 13-year-old took the knife and ran into the yard.

Some good news that will hopefully put an end to this violence:

• In early April, 2010, the City of St. Paul unveiled its Blueprint for Safety—An Interagency Response to Domestic Violence Crimes.  This is St. Paul’s unique collaborative response to domestic violence.
•  On April 7, 2010, Hennepin County introduced its Co-Parenting Courts to respond to concerns that unmarried parents need to have the same rights as married couples who are divorcing.

United Way and its partners are working on responses to these issues of domestic violence.  We know that children who witness these violent incidents are the unintended victims—they suffer from lasting physical and emotional harm. 

A recent national survey found that more than 60% of children have been exposed to violence, either directly or indirectly.

In Brittany’s words to the media after watching her father stab her mother, “I think this is a dream,” she said. “It don’t seem real to me.”  All too often, it seems like a dream.  When will we all wake up from the nightmare?