For Congress: Arkansas engineers

I publish a magazine for the state’s two engineer associations, the Arkansas Society of Professional Engineers and the American Council of Engineering Companies of Arkansas.

These are good folks, they work hard, they are mathematically inclined, and sometimes they are a little nerdy. I wish they would run for Congress.

You won’t see a road-building project stalled because engineers refuse to budge on some side issue. You won’t see a project fail because one faction of engineers wanted to embarrass the other.

Engineers build bridges and roads; our current congressmen can’t even agree how to fund them. In fact, Congress is two years late passing its latest highway bill.

It’s time to replace these rigid ideologues and political game-players with practical problem-solvers who know how to get the job done. That’s why I’m endorsing Arkansas’ engineers for Congress.

More in this week’s column.

Helping foster kids when they no longer are kids

Eric and Kara Gilmore were working as house parents for a group home for foster kids when he decided he needed to do more and enrolled at UALR to earn a master’s degree in social work. He was selling ads for a radio station when one of the foster kids they had worked with got into trouble.

Here’s how he describes it.

“She left with one bag of clothes and one night’s worth of her bipolar medications. And that was her entrance into adulthood.

“So that lasted, I think, about a month. They kicked her out. She lived with us for a little while but decided that she wanted to be a prostitute, and that was where she was going to make the most money. So unfortunately, that’s what she’s still doing. …

“It was one of those things where we decided two things: One, this is not OK. There’s an injustice here. And two, we can do something about it.”

That was what they were supposed to do – help foster kids who age out of the system to transition into adulthood. It’s a difficult path for all of us but can especially so for foster kids. According to a 2007 report by The Pew Charitable Trusts, one in five foster kids who age out will become homeless within two years.

The Gilmores founded Immerse Arkansas, which now provides an apartment, counseling, and volunteer mentors for six ex-foster kids. But there are 250 who age out every year.

So far, Immerse Arkansas is in its early stages. Open for business since August 2010, this year’s budget is $65,000, but it has recently raised a chunk of money that will enable it to serve at least 15 people.

Want to invest in this great organization? Read more here.

Here’s a column I wrote about Immerse Arkansas for the Arkansas News Bureau.

Kids and the Web: Is balance best?

How do you feel when you spend too much time on the internet?

Dr. Erick Messias, a psychiatrist and epidemiologist, and his fellow UAMS professor, Dr. Juan Carlos, have found a correlation between heavy internet/gaming and depression among young people.

They looked at the results of the past two Youth Risk Behavior Surveys, a biannual report by the Centers of Disease Control in which thousands of young people are asked about their health habits. Kids who said they spent five or more hours surfing and playing were more likely to have had two-week periods of sadness in the past year. They also were more likely to have contemplated, planned or attempted suicide.

Which came first: the screen time or the sadness? They freely admit they don’t know.

Also interesting, kids who never played/surfed were more likely to have been sad than those who played or surfed an hour or less a day. The non-users were more likely to have thought about or planned suicide than some of the other groups and were the second likeliest to have attempted suicide.

Again, the authors don’t know why this is so, but a good bet is that a large percentage of the non-users are living in poverty, which is a risk factor for depression and suicide.

Still, maybe balance is best. Messias lets his own son play/surf one hour a day and two on the weekends.

More here in my column this week for the Arkansas News Bureau.

Healing hearts, including her own

After Joyce Raynor’s son, Charles, was murdered, she started a ministry that helps crime victims and where she teaches life skills to prison inmates. Then one day her son’s killer was in the class.

Joyce started the Center in 2001 less than a year after her son, Charles Jr., was murdered by two men in Little Rock. Its mission is to help victims of crime, but part of its purpose was to help Joyce heal. The wounds were so deep that she found it hard to get out of bed, but with God’s help, she forgave the men who did it.

As part of her ministry, Joyce started teaching life skills to inmates. One day at Tucker Max, one of her son’s killers, Christopher Bush, was there. Already warned that this would happen, she was prepared to see his face for the first time since he was sentenced to 40 years in prison eight years earlier.

Before starting the class, Joyce told the rest of the inmates that she couldn’t talk about forgiveness and reconciliation without practicing them herself. She approached Bush.

“Mr. Bush, today is, I guess, our day of reconciliation,” she said. “I understand that you have something that you want to say to me. Guess what? This is your time.”

He asked for permission to stand and apologized for what he had done to her family.

“What did you do?”

“For killing your son.”

“My son has a name, Mr. Bush.” She reminded the rest of the class that they always included the names of their victims in their discussions.

“I’m sorry for killing Charles Raynor Jr., that everyone called Chuck,” he said.

She told him she appreciated it and that she already had forgiven him, but if he was being insincere, that was between him and God.

For more, check out my column this week for the Arkansas News Bureau.

A contrarian – and positive – view of the economy

The economy is not as bad as we are being led to believe, according to Donald Broughton, a St. Louis-based analyst with the Avondale Partners research firm, and the reason is because, despite the chaos of Wall Street, real people are still making stuff and buying stuff.

Broughton bases his opinion on an economic indicator known as truck tonnage. Every month, the American Trucking Associations surveys its members to determine the amount of goods they are shipping on the nation’s roadways. Truck tonnage has proven to be an accurate predictor of economic expansions and contractions. When it’s rising, the economy is improving. And it’s rising.

More accurately, it’s rising on a year-over-year basis. This July saw more tonnage than last July; thus June saw more tonnage than last June, and so on for 20 straight months starting with December 2009.

The past few months have been a little choppy, however. March and June were great, April and May not so much. Bob Costello, the ATA’s chief economist, said that July is typically a soft month, but this July was particularly so.

As for the nation’s 9.1 percent unemployment rate, Broughton said that the best predictor for an improving jobs picture is rising truck driver pay. That’s because for many workers, driving a truck is the job of last resort, and if companies have to pay more to attract drivers, that means they have choices. Driver pay is rising.

Learn more in this week’s column for the Arkansas News Bureau.