Yesterday I sat down and did a little video chat about the book with one of my readers, Jonathan Blundell (my one reader?). Jonathan has been very supportive of my work (and I’m supportive of his work) and it was fun to talk over some of the ideas in the book and how the book came together.

So if you’re looking for the inside scoop on Least of These—how inspiration came from U2 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, how my wife refuses to read it, my take on standard post-apocalyptic plot lines, why it has such an awesome cover—check out the video chat. I even do a little impromptu reading.

For a special bonus, count how many times I say ‘um.’

Get your copy of Least of These now.

You always hear about the ridiculous real estate prices in Detroit (one NPR story mentioned a $500 house) so I decided to see how crazy it the market really is.

It’s crazy.

While I searched I found listing after listing for beautiful homes for well under $100,000. OK, the mansions were under $100,000, the homes for the rest of us were under $50,000. The home pictured above is a four-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,000-square-foot house built in 1931 on the east side (technically the Morningside neighborhood, but that means nothing to me). The price? $19,900.

That’s crazy.

I used the mortgage calculator just for kicks (would they even give you a 30-year mortgage for a $20,000 house?). Your mortgage would be $117 per month.

All of which makes me want to move to Detroit.

We’re not moving to Detroit.

But the possibility is kind of intriguing.

I realize the reason these houses are so cheap is the wretched economy in Detroit. Sure, you could move there and get a cheap house, but you’re not going to find a job (unless, like me, your income is not dependent on your geographic location). There are also issues of saftey (you might find a job in the private security industry) and convenience (no Target, WalMart or even a grocery store within city limits). But those might be balanced by food (the locally grown options would make a foodie drool) and artistic green spaces (Art! Trails! Score!).

As Detroit slowly deflates like a day-old balloon, I see possibility rather than just a sad balloon.

I’ve mostly left video games behind to avoid this addictive behavior, but every now and then I give in and have a little fun. Like last month when I went back to my childhood game of Pirates!

It all started, oddly enough, with the Earthquake in Haiti. As I was looking at a map of Haiti, I suddenly remembered the exact coastline of the country thanks to hours spent playing the Commodore 64 strategy classic, Pirates! You played the role of a pirate in the game (duh) commanding your ship as you sailed across the Caribbean. Much of the Caribbean became familiar to me, including the coastline of Haiti and that rare enclave of French colonies (including Leogane, which is a little odd because that’s where my church’s sister parish is based).

My brother and I would play the game for hours on end. We’d actually wake up early on Saturday just to play. The game didn’t include a map (or we lost it), so my brother and I would pull out an encyclopedia to help guide our expeditions.

I’ve tried to find that game on many occasions—it’s been re-envisioned a number of times as Sid Meier’s Pirates! for the PC and the Xbox—but last month I struck gold and found a version for the Mac. They’ve updated the graphics and some of the gameplay, but it’s basically the same game I played more than 20 years ago (meaning horribly lame by today’s standards).

Of course I bought the game and have been conquering the Caribbean ever since. I did have an addictive bought of game playing for the first week or two, but it nicely coincided with being sick, so it worked out. Lately I’ve played a little more sparingly (probably because I’m growing a little tired of it).

Most of what I enjoy is the familiarity and nostalgia of the game, but I also like the strategy and free-form feel of the game (I should never, ever play World of Warcraft—I’d be so addicted). It’s fun to hunt down a notorious pirate or build up your crew so you can sack Havana (oh yeah, I totally sacked Havana—the Spanish put a price on my head).

It’s fun, if completely frivolous, to go back and relive the pirating days of my youth.

If only I could find a way to play video games that actually accomplished something. Not just a little beneficial education (which Pirates! managed to do—if only Caribbean geography was useful in my daily activities), but game play that did some good in the real world. Harnass all that nerdery and addiction for some real world good.

Watch the video.

You can buy a copy from Amazon if you like. A few friends have also created e-versions from the free PDF (iPhone and ePub, I think), but I haven’t gotten around to posting them. If you’re clamoring for those, hit me up in the comments I’ll stop procrastinating.

And for the record, I noticed one error and a handful of corrections I wanted to make after reading the first chapter outloud four or five times. I told you it was a rough draft.

More than just a resurgence of the yo-yo (can I claim to be ahead of the trend?), this is my old yo-yo buddy making it big (if you consider “big” to be featured on yo-yo packaging and in a video loop in an aisle of Walgreens stores across the country). Adam is the guy who taught me how to yo-yo when we were both Petra-loving, Christian T-shirt-wearing geeks. We had a yo-yo ministry in high school (that was even featured in the Detroit Free Press, complete with crazy cool photo). He taught me how to do street performing in Chicago, which made a crazy summer adventure even crazier. He was in my wedding and I was in his.

So you can understand why I think it’s pretty cool to see my friend on the packaging of a yo-yo. I think it’s so cool I bought four of ‘em.

You can see more of Adam in action at YoTricks.com. And check out the yo-yos. $3.99 is dirt cheap for ball bearing yo-yos (back in the day we paid at least $20) and they work pretty good.

Fun fact: Adam and I had the chance to be yo-yo pros back in 1998. As I recall, the Yomega corporation offered us something like $20,000 to be their touring yo-yo pros. Being a freshman in college, that was the equivalent of a year’s tuition and not tempting enough to get us to drop out and become professional yo-yoers (besides, I don’t think I was ever that good). It’s cool to see Adam still chasing the dream.

So basically her boss is the Bishop of Haiti, Jean Zache Duracin (last I heard he was living in a tent). The Episcopal Church of Haiti is running something like 20 refugee camps and caring for more than 20,000 people. Among those are the priests, parishioners, parents and students of the churches and schools with which my own church has had a 20-year partnership.

So Lauren Stanley was giving Twin Cities churches an update on what’s happening on the ground in Haiti. I went to hear what’s happening in Haiti and learn how the money Color4aCause has raised is helping (a tiny, tiny fraction of the money that’s been raised). Lauren had sobering updates, butt-kicking statements and in-depth stories and history to share. She’s a firecracker.

A few random updates:

• 300 students were buried in the rubble of the Holy Trinity trade school.
• Another 200 students were buried in another collapsed school (I missed the name of it), one of the premier schools in Haiti. They managed to save 12, though some of those have since died.
• When asked about clearing rubble, the bishop’s response has been, “We will not bulldoze our children into oblivion.”
• As a result of all the students killed in collapsed schools, “Haiti has lost a generation of intellectual leaders.” That fallout of that will be felt for generations.
• The Episcopal Church is going to be in crisis mode until they can give everyone who needs it food, shelter and medical attention.
• As they plan for rebuilding they’re already seeing ridiculous bids from contractors and are going to be ripped off royally. They’re trying to find ways to minimize that as much as possible.
• She talked about the urgent need for tents and temporary shelter in the face of the coming rainy season (see the work of one Atlanta church: A Home in Haiti): “Don’t give me a stupid-ass pup tent. I need a tent that will fit an entire family!”
• Of money donated to Episcopal Relief and Development, 93 cents on the dollar ends up in the hands of the people they serve in the form of food, water, medicine, supplies, etc. The remaining 7 cents goes to getting those supplies to the people. None of it goes to administrative costs (those are picked up by the Episcopal Church. “You’re not going to see a lot of press releases for Episcopal Relief & Development or see our logo on anything. We just want to feed the people.”
• “We ain’t got much, but we perform miracles.”
• While in the U.S. the Episcopal Church is perceived as being a church of the elite, in Haiti, “We are the church of the poor.”
• In the next 5 years Haiti is going to need people with these kinds of skills:
  • Construction
  • Pastoral care
  • Trauma care for children
  • Medical care
  • Teaching
  • Physical and occupational therapy
  • Art therapy (for children coping w/ trauma)
• There is another 6.0-earthquake predicted for Haiti in the next six months. This one is expected to be more widespread.
• Haiti is a country of with a long history of faith. The first eucharist was served in Haiti in 1493 (didn’t happen in the U.S. until 1608).
• It’s also a country with a long history of getting stomped on by the rest of the world (and by their own corrupt leaders). Haiti has been getting the short end of the stick since Columbus landed in 1492. When Haitian slaves defeated Napoleon’s army and declared their independence, no country in the world would recognize them. They had to pay reparations to France for stealing their land and have faced tariffs and sanctions of one kind or another almost all the time (the U.S. just recently lifted some sanctions against Haiti before the quake). The U.S. invaded Haiti in 1915 and occupied the country until the 1930s. During that time we apparently reinstituted slavery. Thanks to tariffs and U.S. farm aid, it’s cheaper for Haitians to buy rice from the U.S. than to grow it themselves.
• Recommended reading: Paradise Lost: Haiti’s Tumultuous Journey from Pearl of the Caribbean to Third World Hotspot by Philippe Girard for a history of Haiti and War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges, which explains national mythology and how that can hinder development. This is going to be a big issue for Haiti, especially the divide between those who survived the earthquake and resulting devastation and those areas that had minimal or no damage.
• There’s an African term, ‘wabenzi’ that literally means people of the Benz, as in Mercedes Benz. These are the people who get rich or powerful and forget the people. It’s a derogatory term for those who don’t give back.
• “Poverty is a sin. Poverty is caused by people who refuse to share of their bounty. When people are in poverty it’s because someone has turned their back. And sometimes that someone is us.”
• “Right now Haiti is about pissing matches, organizations more focused on egos and wanting to be heroes than working together. And God’s children are suffering because of it. Stop the pissing matches.” (I couldn’t write fast enough, so this quote is summarized and not word for word.)
• The Holy Trinity Cathedral was completely destroyed, which housed an incredible collection of Haiti artwork. Only one mural survived. (I realize artwork ranks pretty low on the scale of importance in the face of a tragedy like this, but it is an incredible cultural loss.)
• “God says to you, you do your part and I will do my part. God has always done God’s part and the Episcopal Church of Haiti has always done its part. We ask that you do your part because we are one body and when any part of the body suffers the entire body suffers.” (again, paraphrased quote)

Lauren Stanley speaks with passion, conviction, fire and humor. She has quickly become one of a small group of folks I recognize who refuse to take a nickel and dime approach to stopping injustice and practice an inconvenient compassion that’s I find tremendously inspiring and at the same time personally shameful. These people routinely kick my butt for my own comfort, wealth, inaction and apathy. These are folks like Mark Horvath and Shaun King who get righteously angry. I find it both easy to ignore them, and also impossible. I want to turn away and not listen because what they say is hard. But I also find deep in my soul that I have to listen, I must listen. And more than listen, I need to act.

Afterword I went up to thank Lauren and quickly told her about Color4aCause. Not because we’ve done anything great with Color4aCause, but because I wanted her to know that we were working hard to help in our own small way. I gave her one of Lexi’s pictures (the crab) as a small thank you. She loved it and told me she was going to hang it in her office, and to be sure to tell Lexi that she was going to do that. I told Lexi this morning and she took it in quiet stride. I’m not sure if she really understood or if she was distracted by Sesame Street or if she was in awe that someone helping people in Haiti would hang her picture on their wall. Either way, she went back to work coloring more pictures for Haiti.

So do not forget Haiti. There is so much work to do and there will be for years and years. God is doing his part, the Haitians are doing their part, and we need to do our part.

You can do you part:

1. Haiti has mostly fallen off the media’s radar, but you can stay updated. Lauren’s blog is packed with daily updates. It’s easy to turn away if we’re not aware of what’s happening.
2. If you’re the praying type, pray.
3. Donate. There are plenty of places you can donate. I’m pushing Color4aCause and we’re supporting Episcopal Relief & Development, but I don’t really care where you give as long as they’re doing good work. Do some research and give, give, give.

Thanks.

Anyway, I had an revelation as I was looking at the numbers for our charitable giving. I felt like I’d been pretty generous this past year. My wife and I have talked a lot about generosity and giving and being more intentional about supporting good causes, not just with our words but with our wallets. We’ve tried to support causes as they come up and not be so cheap about it. Personally, I’ve tried to only plug the causes I’ve actually donated to. It seems disingenuous to spread the word about something but not chip in yourself.

So with all that focus on giving, I thought we’d do pretty well for 2009. Go us.

Turns out our giving is down compared to 2008. By quite a bit. Doh.

There can be all kinds of factors at work to explain this, including the fact that we made less money in 2009 or we were more tight-fisted because of the travel expenses to Ethiopia or whatever. But I think the real factor is consistency.

While we tried to actively donate to more causes in 2009, the result was a lot of tiny donations. $10 here, $20 there. That’s good money and it will go to good causes, but it doesn’t add up to much. It’s a drop in the bucket. What does add up is consistent giving. Weekly or monthly donations add up a lot more quickly. That sounds completely obvious and it is (I told you I hate accounting), but it doesn’t really sink in until you sit back and look at the numbers over a period of time.

Our donations were down in 2009 because we lowered one of our consistent donations. It seemed financially prudent at the time (and still is), but it means we gave a lot less and our impact is likewise reduced.

Like much of life, it comes down to consistency. If you really want to make a difference in anything, you have to work at it consistently. You can’t just do something once and expect change. It’s true with teaching your kids, it’s true with learning any skill, it’s true with work–and it’s true with money.

[Note: Money and giving can be a pretty touchy subject. I'm not trying to tell anyone how to do it, I'm just sharing a lesson I learned. I also don't mean to minimize one-time donations. Those one-time donations add up when you bring them together (remember how they made me bald?).]

What’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi? Think Mad Max’s Road Warrior. It’s the genre I go on and on about all the time. The world has barely survived some apocalypse (duh) and the survivors try to piece together an existence in the aftermath. There are usually recurring themes of boiling life down to its simplest elements, both in day to day survival and in bigger picture terms.

What is Least of These like? It might be comparable to the recent Denzel Washington flick The Book of Eli. Sort of. Mine has some action, some stock villains, a heroic female. But no iPods, swinging machetes (but arrows!) or utter desolation (or Denzel). I wrote Least of These in 2008 as a part of National Novel Writing Month. It’s been very lightly edited and published as a rough draft (hence the lame-o cover). It’s not deep literature, but hopefully it’s good for a rainy afternoon bit of fun (do people still consider reading fun?).

Why is the Internet so cool? Because I published this thing in three days. I got the idea on Tuesday. I went through the manuscript and made minor proofing edits (and missed loads, I’m sure), I did the layout in Microsoft Word, slaved over the cover in Photoshop and by Thursday was uploading a PDF file to CreateSpace. Three days. On Friday I ordered my proof copy. It arrived on Tuesday. You could buy a copy online that night. It was up on Amazon about a week later. Of course it helped that I had a manuscript lying around and had already read through it making editing notes. Go Internet. It’s a cool time to be creating stuff.

Why does the cover suck? Remember ‘published in three days’? Yeah, I have lots of friends who could design something better. Heck, Lexi could design something better (brainstorm!). But I wanted to crank it out quickly. Plus there’s that whole rough draft thing. It seemed disingenuous to put a lot of effort into the cover when I haven’t put a lot of effort into the editing (except for the last time I did that). It’s a rough draft, all the way around. I kind of like the idea of publishing rough draft versions like this. Get it out there, quick and dirty.

Where can I get a copy? You can score yourself a print copy of Least of These for only $9.99 or download the free PDF if you want to take it for a test read. For the record, I get a bigger royalty if you buy through CreateSpace. But buying through Amazon is pretty swell, too, since you can use your shipping deals and throw my book in with your regular shopping.

So there you have it. I had hoped to announce this a week ago, but that’s how things go.

That’s my story. I’m going on week number two of being sick. This has to be the third or fourth time I’ve gotten sick this winter. Bleh. I’ll spare you the details (nothing worse than reading about people’s medical symptoms online—unless of course you’re looking for an online diagnosis by strangers, which can be loads of fun), except to say that I think the sinus pressure has blocked the hearing in my left ear. Feels like I went swimming and can’t get the water out. Otherwise I’m actually feeling better. And losing your hearing can have its benefits. Milo has an ear infection and has been pretty crabby—but his tantrums are that much quieter now.

On the plus side, Foursquare.org published an article I wrote yesterday. “Advocate for the Invisible” tells the story of homeless advocate and InvisiblePeople.tv founder Mark Horvath. I talk about him a lot, so it was fun to tell his story. It was also a challenge to do it in under 800 words. That article easily could have been twice as long. When I interviewed Mark for the story we talked for over three hours, so you can imagine the material I have and couldn’t possibly use. Good stuff.

Mark is a constant inspiration. The way he continues doing what he does despite all odds is incredible. As he says, he’s not called, he’s forced. He has no choice but to do this. He has a choice all right, but I’m not sure he could live with himself if he walked away from the homeless people he serves. I could use that kind of heart.

I came across this picture in a CNN article today that gave the numbers of the tragedy. The stories are always more interesting, like this boy drawing in a makeshift camp at Champ de Mars in Port au Prince. I wonder what his story is.

But he’s drawing a picture.

I wish he knew that kids here in the United States are drawing pictures for him. How cool would it be if we could get his picture for Color4aCause?

I hope you’ll consider making a donation to help kids like this. Color4aCause: Make a donation, get a picture.