Art and inspiration from Corita and Jane Addams

Arts has been part of social work since its founding. Founding mother Jane Addams stressed the importance of the arts in our daily lives. One of her first acts at Hull House in Chicago was to put art prints on the walls of the old place. That was followed by Sunday afternoon art study groups.

But Addams didn't stop there. She also believed there is an artist in every one of us. To bring out this creative spirit, she and the other women at Hull House started an art studio, a pottery studio and a book bindery.

They also started several theater groups, including one of the earliest children's theater companies in the US and another theater group which was a forerunner of today's community theater.

Hull House was also host to a many music and dance groups, including a modern dance troupe and a marching band.

Addams saw art not only as an inspiration, but also as a way to bring people together and a platform for learning about each other.

Corita Kent might have felt right at home at Hull House. A native of Fort Dodge, Iowa, Corita was an extraordinary example of an artist who also believed all of us are creative. She used art as a form of social activism and as a way to celebrate ordinary life. Her serigraphs in the 1960s and '70s urged viewers to work for peace and justice and "love the moment."

Corita (she was known by her first name) was an art teacher at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles for a number of her ideas. It was there that she tested her ideas on art -- and on teaching. Those ideas have been collected into a book, "Learning by heart," and a film, "Corita on teaching and celebration."

Together, Corita and Addams offer a lot of inspiration for social work. They show us how to use the arts not only in our work, but in every aspect of our lives.

New songs for Independence Day

This column is a collage of thoughts for Independence Day. The
collage is composed of excerpts from folk and pop songs. Your comments
are welcome.

WE CAN'T MAKE IT HERE ANYMORE

Vietnam vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one's paying much mind to him
The VA's budget's stretched so thin
And there's more coming home from the Mideast war
We can't make it here anymore

Will work for food
Will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor fall through the cracks
They can't make it here anymore

--- James McMurtry (2004)

I DON'T FEEL AT HOME HERE ANYMORE

I want my country back
and a good dream to stand up for
Got my hand over my heart
But I don't feel at home anymore

Big, big flag above the big, big mall
and the shake, rattle and roll to the core
things sprawl after they fall
and I don't feel at home here anymore

Homeland of Sojourner Truth
and Chief Joseph before
many quiet words of wisdom drowned out by TV
and I don't feel at home here anymore

Blind engineer, war train on the track
many many a heart is sore
We want our country back
We want to feel at home here once more.

--- Greg Brown (2003)

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND

As I was walkin' I saw a sign there
And that sign said...no trespassin'
But on the other side it didn't say nothin'
Now that side was made for you and me

In the squares of the city - in the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some and grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

---Woody Guthrie (1956)

CHIMES OF FREEDOM FLASHING

For between sundown's finish and midnight's broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing

Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
And for each and every underdog soldier in the night
And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing

In the city's melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched
With faces hidden while the walls were tightening
As the echo of the wedding bells before the blowing rain
Dissolved into the bells of lightning
Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake
Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned and forsaked
Tolling for the outcast, burning constantly at state
And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing

--- Bob Dylan (1964)

PEACE, LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING

As I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony

Cause each time I feel it slippin' away
Just makes me wanna cry
What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding

--- Nick Lowe (1974)

I'M NOT AT WAR WITH ANYONE

We could live as one
Between the sea and the sun
I am not at war with anyone

I don't need to be friends with everyone
But I'd like to live in peace with everyone

--- Luka Bloom (2003)

GET TOGETHER

If you hear the song I sing
You will understand
You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
One key unlocks them both
It's at your command

Come on people now
Smile on each other
Everybody get together
Try and love one another right now.

--- Chet Powers (1963)

THIS IS MY SONG

This is my song, O God of all the nations
A song of peace for lands afar and mine
This is my home, the country where my hear ts
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine
But other lands have sunlight, too, and clover
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine
Oh, hear my song, O God of all the nations
A song of peace for their land and for mine

--- Lloyd Stone (1934)

Hope for the long-term

At times it seems the struggle for just and tolerant communities is too
overwhelming. We look around and see so many obstacles: poverty,
intolerance, even indifference. We are on the verge of losing hope.

At times like these, I think of Bill Sackter. I've found him to be an
extraordinary source of hope and inspiration. He spent nearly half a century
in the old Faribault State Hospital in Minnesota, completely cut off from
family, friends and community. But he emerged with his spirit intact.

It's that remarkable spirit he brought to Iowa City. It's that
same spirit he shared wherever he went. It's also the spirit which Barry
Morrow captured in the two movies, "Bill" and "Bill On His Own."

I recently talked about this spirit of Bill at a service learning
conference. It was part of a presentation on "Sustaining hope for the
long haul."

FIVE IDEAS FOR
SUSTAINING HOPE

How does one keep hope alive? How can one find the strength to continue social
and community work despite the obstacles and the failures?

I have come up with five ideas on restoring and sustaining hope which I plan
to take with me to the conference in Minneapolis:

1. Places
John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, spent much of his life trying to
protect areas of wilderness so they could continue to serve as places of
inspiration for future generations. Paul Gruchow described this as the
"necessity of empty places." Wallace Stegner said this is a "geography of
hope."

Of course, not all of the places which restore the soul are rural, something
acknowledged in the Beatles' tune: "There are places I remember..." I think
each of us has places we go to restore hope. For myself, there are five
which come to mind: Field of Dreams in Dyers ville, Iowa, Minnehaha Falls in
Minneapolis, Alum Rock Park in San Jose, Jane Addams' gravesite in
Cedarville, Illinois and the Pacific Ocean behind the San Francisco Zoo.

2. Music
Music has the power to restore. My inspirations range from Pachabel to Led
Zeppelin, from Mozart to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The best gifts I have
received in the last couple of years have been "home brew" CDs of music.

3. Friends
Hanging out with friends is a way to restore and sustain hope, especially
friends who are engaged in similar struggles. There are friends I call and
say: "Remind me again, why are we doing this."

4. Youth
Listening -- really listening to young people -- is another way to restore
hope. I am impressed not only by the idealism of youth, but also by their
persistence; not only by their "sense of wonder," but also by their
practicality.

5. Thoughtful moments
You may call it meditation, contemplation or even prayer. But these are
times when I am able to clear away the clutter of life and consider the
"meaning of life" stuff. It could be in concert with any of the other four
ways of sustaining hope or on its own. Recently, these moments have come
while rereading "Frannie and Zooey" and the Letters of Jane Addams.

That's what I have come up with so far. Have some additional ideas? I'm
interested in hearing from you.

Building a bridge over violence

MARY JOHNSON has had this dream for a lot of years. She has
imagined building a bridge across a divide which seemed impossible to
cross. This impossible dream recently came true in a small coffeeshop.

Mary and I have been friends for about 10 years. We met as the result
of murder -- the epidemic of homicide which has been the scourge of so
many US cities for more than a decade.

I met Mary because her son had been murdered, shot to death at a
party. Her story was all too familiar to me. More than a dozen young
people I knew were shot to death during a decade of teaching and
community work in Minneapolis.

It was sad, tragic and an epidemic. Worse, the deaths continue. In
fact, gun violence is the leading cause of death for young people in
Minneapolis and most other US cities.

I was teaching high school when Mary found me. She'd heard about
students in our school who had been shot and killed like her son.
"We've got to do something," she said in her first phone call to me.

That "something" turned out to be a group for parents whose son or
daughter had been killed. We called it Parents of Murdered Children.

I remember well the first day this group met. There were more than a
dozen parents at that meeting. "I'm not sure what we are going to do,"
I said to Mary as people continued to arrive. "But clearly we are
responding to a need in our community."

That group met regularly for several years. Though it started as a
support group for parents, it soon branched out into other activities.
Some of the parents started speaking to classes at local high schools.
Others talked at churches and community groups.

I particularly remember one talk Mary gave at a local church:

"Some nights I still find myself listening for my son to come in the
door." she told the group. "And sometimes I still look for my child in
the faces of the young men I see on the street.

"You never think this can happen to you. It's always another city,
another neighborhood, another person. But not you."

By the time Mary finished she was in tears. So was the audience.

There were other projects as well, including talking to young people
who had been arrested on gun charges. We also worked on a community
theater production which highlighted the hopes od fears of youth in
the city.

But Mary had one more idea. She mentioned it several times to me. "I
want to get the mothers together," she said. "I want to bring together
the mothers of those who have been killed with the mothers of those
who have fired the guns. If you think about it, we both have lost a
child."

A wonderful, wonderful dream, I thought. But to me it did not seem possible.

I was wrong. Mary patiently and persistently pursued mothers around
the city -- mothers of those who have been murdered and mothers of
those who have murdered. It was a process which took several years.

Then, on a recent Saturday evening, Mary gathered mothers and others
affected by gun violence at a small coffeeshop at the corner of
Plymouth and Penn in Minneapolis. There she announced the formation of
"From death to life: Two mothers healing group." The new group was
celebrated with music, dance, stories and a dinner.

One particularly striking part of the event was the exhibit of
photography on the walls. Each photograph was of a mother holding a
picture. Each picture was her son or daughter who had been murdered.
It was a profound reminder of the epidemic of gun violence in our city.

But there was a hopeful air in the coffeeshop. Perhaps if mothers
could gather together the community could gather together. And perhaps
then there could be peace. If there could be peace in this one place,
couldn't there be peace in other places.

If you'd like more information about the Two Mothers group, call (612)
501-3512. Or send an email to twomothers@hotmail.com.

How's your hello?

IT'S THE quality of the hello. That's one of the distinguishing
characteristics of Bill's Coffeeshop and other places like it. These
are the kinds of places where people really are glad to see you. You
get real people saying a real hello.

It's not a televised fairy tale like "Cheers." Or a place where
someone is paid to say hi to you like the greeter at Walmart.

Oh, each of us who has been behind the counter at Bill's has had our
days. I certainly have growled at my share of people while working in
the coffeeshop. But that's not typical.

What is typical is a strong, genuine hello. It's the kind of hello
which makes you feel special and makes the shop or store seem special,
too. This kind of hello is far more likely to be found at
locally-owned businesses. It's far less likely to be found at the
chain stores, whether it be fast-food outlets or big-box stores.

This kind of hello not only makes you want to come back again. It also
gets you thinking of how to give this kind of hello along to others.
In the coffeeshop, we see this as passing the spirit of Bill
along to others.

Bill had a genuine hello for each person who came into the coffeeshop.
His example can be an inspiration for all of us. My wish for this week
is that each of us has lots of opportunities to give Bill-sized hellos.

* * * * *

I was thinking about this whole idea of welcoming people one recent
evening and found myself surrounded by a number of voices. Now, don't
be alarmed. Those of you who know me know of my interest in theater. Over the
years, I've had a hand in creating a number of fictional characters
for the stage.

On this particular evening, a number of my favorite characters stopped
by to pass along their ideas of a welcome.

Harry, the aging hippy, is one. He always does his welcome with a
protest sign and a ponytail. His hello goes something like this: "Hey,
I know these guys. We went through the 60s together."

Anne, the aspiring comedian is another. But she often starts laughing
even before she starts the joke. "Say, shouldn't you dress up in a tux
or something if you're going to welcome people," she said. "That would
be a great te to tell the penguin joke, you know the one from Prairie
Home Companion. It's even in the movie.

"It goes like this...There were these two penguins...
The first one says: Hey, you look like you're wearing a tuxedo?
To which the second one says: Who says I'm not.

Neighbor Daryl is another character. "No problem saying hello," he
said. "Just ask 'em: 'Hey, how about those Twins?'"

Super salesman Francis X. McCarthy always has one thing on his mind.
"I'd just say hi and then try to sell them something."

Finally, there is the character Janelle. She always wants to greet
audiences, but is extremely shy. "Let me, let me," she said. "I could
do a great welcome."

"No," I responded. "Do you remember the last time?"

"You mean when I tripped and fell on that guy who came into the coffeeshop?"

"No, I was thinking of the time when you came out to say hi and threw up."

"Oh, Tom, that couldn't be helped. That was my old boyfriend."

This advice from my imaginary friends is great fun, even if it isn't very
helpful. But it did get me thinking a lot about the quality of the
welcomes I give to others in my life.

And it reminded me again of the importance of the greeting we give
each other in the coffeeshop and in our daily lives.

Reinvigorating social work

Bill's Coffeeshop is not only a model for employment of individuals
with disabilities. It is also a model for reinvigorating the "social"
in social work.

Coffeeshops like Bill's were a part of many early centers of social
work, including Hull House in Chicago. Jane Addams, a founding mother
of social work, called for an integrated social work practice which
was committed to strengthening neighborhoods as well as strengthening
individuals.

This model of social work was a "holistic rather than specialization
approach, advocating for social reform while giving services," writes
Rolland F. Smith in an essay for the Encyclopedia of Social Work. This
approach has "an orientation to family and neighborhood strengths
rather than to individual pathologies."

Addams' idea of social work was a radical notion when she first
proposed it in the late 19th century. It's at least as radical today
in a society which is based in many ways on an exaggerated notion of
individualism. Modern society has been built around segmenting the
lives of people in many different ways.

First, there is the separation between work and home. This is
compounded by the increasing distances between on and the other.

Second, there is the separation at work itself. Many jobs have become
very specialized. From construction to social work, from education to
manufacturing, jobs have been moving away from general skills and
towards specialist skills.

Finally, there is the growing separation of neighborhoods by income.
The growth of the suburbs (and urban renewal in the cities) has fueled
this phenomenon, resulting in economic isolation for so many families
and individuals.

Bill's Coffeeshop (and its cousin Uptown Bill's) are antidotes to this
separation. These two coffee shops, and others like them, are working
to restore the "social." They not only offer an alternative to the
separation in our communities, they also offer an alternative model
for social work.

Coffeeshops offer three distinct advantages to traditional settings
for social work:

1. A less formal setting than regular social work agencies
2. An environment with the potential of being shaped by the "client"
as well as the social worker.
3. An experience of community at the same time individual needs are
getting attention.

Coffeeshops fit with the idea of "a reconstructed social work"
outlined by Harry Wasserman and Holly Danforth in their book, "The
human bond: Support groups and mutual aid." This kind of social work
"envisions a theory and practice in which the individual, family,
small group and community constitute an interdependent quartet. This
requires...an internally consistent set of concepts and...a web of
human connections."

ACLU and Mother Jane

Jane Addams had a vision of free people living in a free country. Again and
again, she said that what America needed was more democracy -- more
opportunities for people to speak out and make decisions. To advance these
ideas, she played a key role in the formation of a host of organizations.
Included: NAACP, National Women's Suffrage Association, League of Women
Voters, PTA, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Events in 1919 and 1920 prompted her to play a key role in forming another group -- the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In November 1919, federal agents all over the arrested over 10,000 people. Those detained were targeted solely because of their leftists or anarchist political views. Most were never charged with any crime. Many were held in jail for months. About 250 of those arrested, including Emma Goldman, were deported.

Addams spoke out against this injustice in a November 1919 speech in Chicago:

"Hundreds of poor laboring men and women are being thrown into jails and
police stations because of their political beliefs. In fact, an attempt is being made to deport an entire political party.

"These men and women, who in some respects are more American in ideals than the agents of the government who are tracking them down, are thrust into cells so crowded they cannot lie down.

"And what is it these radicals seek? It is the right of free speech and free thought; nothing more than is guaranteed to them under the constitution of the United States...

"We are trying to suppress something upon which our very country is founded -- liberty." (For more about this speech visit Teaching History Online:
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uj/USAaddams.htm.)

Initially, the protests of Addams and others were ignored by US Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover, his special assistant. In fact, the two federal officials ordered the arrest of an additional 6,000 people in January 1920. Again, few of these were ever charged with a crime and many were held for months.

That prompted Addams and others to meet and talk about forming a group to respond to this threat to civil liberties. That must have been some meeting.

Addams, founder of Hull House, was there. So, too, was her friend John Dewey, a leading voice for progressive education. (His book, Democracy and Education, is a powerful and eloquent argument for experiential learning rather than learning based on tests and lectures.)

Upton Sinclair, author and journalist, was there. He was one of the writers referred to as Realists, along with Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Sinclair Lewis and others. His book, The Jungle, tells the story of the horrors of working in a meatpacking plant and inspired the first federal meat
inspections.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a labor organizer and leader in the IWW, was there, too. Her autobiography, Rebel Girl, takes its title from a song Wobblie
troubadour Joe Hill wrote for her in 1915 while he was in jail awaiting his
execution in Utah. The story of Hill's life and the Wobblie movement is movingly told in the play Salt Lake City Skyline.

Others there for the meeting were some of the best-known people in America including: Helen Keller, Jeannette Rankin and James Weldon Johnson.

The group decided to form a new organization dedicated to protecting the rights of individuals and political groups. They chose the name
American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU is still around today and still doing the work it started out to do more than 80 years ago. It is the ACLU, for example, which has been pointing out excesses of the Patriot Act and the lack of basic legal protections for the individuals detained by the US government at Guantanamo.

Hull House was a center of feminism

Women's History Month is a good time to recall that Hull House was
much more than an experiment in social work. It was also a center of feminist
thought and action, something which is not widely known.

Hull House opened in 1889. It very quickly emerged as a leading center of the "first wave" of feminism which was sweeping across the United States in the late 19th century. Suffrage was at the center of this movement, but there were plenty of other issues as well, including temperance and pacifism. The women of Hull House were active in all of these. Three of the Hull House residents -- including Jane Addams -- emerged as major national figures in the women's movement.

Addams and the other women at Hull saw themselves as feminists. They were committed to gender equity in all areas of political and social life. Addams used the word feminist in her writing. One early example, in 1916, can be found in The Long Road of Women's Memory. In that book, she contrasts "feminist" with "militarist," concluding that one cannot be a
true feminist unless one committed to pacifism.

The women of Hull House worked with feminists in Chicago and across the United States. For example, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, an important feminist theorist, lived at Hull House for a time. Shortly after her visit, she wrote Women and Economics (1898).

Also, the women of Hull played a leading role in the organization of a host of social and political groups for women. Hull House Maps and Papers (1895) outlines some of the earliest ones: A Hull House Women's Club supported a wide range of civic improvement projects and was connected "with some of the most vigorous movements in the he city." A Monday evening girls club called Libuse studied heroic women in history. The Eight Hour Club was organized by young working women to lobby for an eight hour day.

At the national level, Hull House women were involved in organizing the National Congress of Mothers (PTA), AAUW, General Federation of Women's Clubs and a national association of African-American women. Addams and others were also founders of the Women's peace Party and the Women's International League for Peace and freedom as well as the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

At Hull House, Addams and her colleagues created not only an alternative workplace for women, but also an alternative way to live. From its start, Hull was a cooperative living community of women (and a few men). This idea was extended to working women in the neighborhood through housing co-ops such as the Jane Club.

People around the US saw Hull as a center for feminism. The institution legitimized the involvement of women in public life. It offered a place for intellectual discussion among women (and of women with men). It served as a testing ground for a variety of institutions to help parents, particularly mothers. Among these: a nursery, a day care center, a
kindergarten, a well-baby clinic and a playground.

Many women around the country wrote to (Addams and other at Hull House) for advice. For example, one young woman, soon to be married, wrote to Addams in 1916 asking if she was required to change her last name to that of her husband when she married. Addams responded: "It is not a legal matter to
take the husband's name. It is, I believe, only a matter of custom."

Another woman, writing from Louisville, Kentucky, asked for advice on a
career. "I would like to do something good in the world -- not merely
exist," she wrote, noting that she would not settle for the stereotypical
women's job of stenographer. Still another woman wrote to Addams to thank
her for her support of working women: "I have tramped the streets, bewildered
and weary, looking for work," she wrote. "I have known the bitter, bitter
loneliness of the hired girl."

It's an extraordinary history. But it's a history which is largely absent from our textbooks, including those in social work. Women's History Month gives us an opportunity to reclaim this and other aspects of our past which have been lost.

Social work's other Jane

Social work's essential knowledge can be found in two books. One is by Jane
Addams; the other by Jane Jacobs.

Jane Addams (1860-1935) was the author of "Twenty years at Hull House," an account of the social work of Addams and others in a Chicago neighborhood from 1889 to 1909. The book is based on notes and research by Addams. It intersperses first person narratives with research results and political analysis. "Twenty years" describes a social work practice based on making connections across the lives of individuals, families and the community. It was a practice designed to "accommodate individual and community interests under one common framework," writes Cindy St. George (1997). Their idea of social work was rooted in a belief that "all lives are connected to other lives," observed Gisela Konopka (1991).

Jane Jacobs, who in 2006, was the author of "The death and life of
great American cities." Like Addams, Jacob celebrated "lively, diverse, intense cities" in her writing. Also like Addams, she points out the importance of
connecting the physical environment with the social environment in our communities. Too many city planners consider only the physicalenvironment, she observed. The result is the destruction of the social (or human)environment.

In her book, Jacobs chronicled the folly of the massive urban renewal in many
cities during the 1960s. Lively neighborhoods were wiped out in the name of
progress. Worse, those lively communities were often replaced by dead zones of
highways and office buildings.

Why is it that city planners plan in these ways which destroy cities, she asked. Why don't we plan cities for people instead? "If we understand the principles behind the behavior of cities," she wrote, "we can build on potential assets and strengths, instead of acting at cross-purposes to them."

Together, the two Janes provide all the wisdom we need to guide us in building
and maintaining strong, vibrant, diverse families and communities. Their
insights can be applied wherever we live -- whether New York or New
Hampton, IA; Minneapolis or Milbank, SD.

Resources for more reading

Addams, Jane (1910). Twenty years at Hull House. New York: Macmillan.

Jacobs, Jane (1961). The death and life of American cities. New York:
Random House.

Konopka, Gisela (1991). All lives are connected to other lives: The meaning of
social group work. In Theory and practice of group work. New York:
Haworth Press.

St. George, Cindy (1997). Mission of social work revisited. MSW clinical
research paper. St. Paul, MN: School of Social Work, College of St.
Catherine/University of St. Thomas.

Fireflies as social work symbol

ANY DAY now the fireflies will be back in the Midwest. It's always
exciting when they appear again. You can hear the oohs and ahhhs up
and down the block the night they first appear.

I don't recall the first time I saw them. But I do remember the first
time young Tom saw "lightning bugs." We were just leaving Casa Zamora,
a Mexican restaurant in Albert Lea, Minnesota when he saw them. "What
are those?" he asked. I told him; he was thrilled.

I also remember the excitement when customers spotted fireflies out
the windows of Bill's Coffeeshop. Those were wonderful moments, ones
to be scooped up and saved.

Lately, I've been thinking that fireflies would make a great gift for
graduates in social work. In fact, I think they would make a great
symbol for the profession.

Other professions have symbols, like stethoscopes for doctors,
calculators for engineers and hammers for carpenters. But there's
never really been anything for social work.

So why not fireflies? We could start by presenting each graduate with
a "lantern" of fireflies.

One reason for choosing fireflies is that they illuminate dark places.
And they
do it in such a wonderful way.

Another reason for fireflies is that they are a great symbol of hope.
No matter how cold the winter or wet the spring they always return.

Both of these -- illumination and hope -- are roles associated with
social workers.

Like so many things in this Newsletter, the idea of a gift of a
firefly came to me in a coffeeshop. Leah gave it to me along with a
double mocha.

She had told me her parents were "firefly farmers." It was supposed to
be a joke, she told me later. But at the time I believed her. After
all, I've met people who grow worms and ladybugs. And we all know
about "ant farms."

So why not "firefly farms." We could raise fireflies and then
distribute them to communities which don't have any -- or don't have
enough.

Of course, I wonder what Bill's reaction might have been to fireflies.
I would guess that he was delighted with them. "Hey buddy," he might
have said, "Look at the lights on those little bugs."

So when you see the fireflies for the first time this year, consider
the possibility that they could be symbols for social work.

Looking for peace

A man stands on the corner holding a sign
People yell at him as they drive by
I wonder what they read
That made them so upset
I looked at the sign and all it said was

One word
Peace
In the neighborhood
Peace
One word
Peace
In my own backyard

A man in a foreign land kneels to pray
Wonders where the bombs will fall today
My leaders tell me to fear him you see
But love conquers all
Is what I believe

One word
Peace

-- From "One Word (Peace) by The Subdudes (2005, Behind
the Levee)

Searching for peace? It's been hard to find this past year.

But if you live in the Midwest there is a place where you can catch a
glimpse of peace. One of the few US monuments dedicated to peace is
located in the southwest corner of Minnesota. The Pipestone National
Monument has been a sacred site dedicated to peace for hundreds of
years. Since 1937, it has been a national monument maintained by the
US Park Service (www.nps.gov/pipe).

"Monument" makes one think of big statues or a granite wall of some
sort. But you won't find those at the Pipestone monument, located just
outside the community of the same name. This place is different.

Most of the "monument" is a tall grass prairie -- more than 200 acres
of it. It's a small slice of the prairie which once covered the whole region.

Roughly in the center of the site are small areas which have
been excavated for "pipestone." This is the red tile rock which has
been used by Native American tribes of the northern plains for
generations to make sacred pipes or "Pipes of peace."

You can walk paths past the excavations and out into the prairie.
Signs along the way give the history of pipestone and of the prairie.

In the summer, you are likely to see the pipestone being excavated. At
the nearby visitors center, the red rock is carved into sacred pipes
by Native American artists.

The peace of Pipestone comes partly from its prairie setting. But it
also comes from the history of the place, a "sacred ground," a place
of peace, for many hundreds of years.

It's a small place which celebrates peace in a very low-key way. But
it has the potential to be a big inspiration in the quest for peace in
our neighborhoods, our communities and our countries.

Reinvigorating social work

Bill's Coffeeshop is not only a model for employment of individuals
with disabilities. It is also a model for reinvigorating the "social"
in social work.

Coffeeshops like Bill's were a part of many early centers of social work, including Hull House in Chicago. Jane Addams, a founding mother
of social work, called for an integrated social work practice which
was committed to strengthening neighborhoods as well as strengthening
individuals.

This model of social work was a "holistic rather than specialization
approach, advocating for social reform while giving services," writes
Rolland F. Smith in an essay for the Encyclopedia of Social Work. This
approach has "an orientation to family and neighborhood strengths
rather than to individual pathologies."

Addams' idea of social work was a radical notion when she first proposed it in the late 19th century. It's at least as radical today in a society which is based in many ways on an exaggerated notion of
individualism. Modern society has been built around segmenting the lives of people in many different ways.

First, there is the separation between work and home. This is compounded by the increasing distances between on and the other.

Second, there is the separation at work itself. Many jobs have become very specialized. From construction to social work, from education to manufacturing, jobs have been moving away from general skills and towards specialist skills.

Finally, there is the growing separation of neighborhoods by income. The growth of the suburbs (and urban renewal in the cities) has fueled this phenomenon, resulting in economic isolation for so many families and individuals.

Bill's Coffeeshop (and its cousin Uptown Bill's) are antidotes to this separation. These two coffee shops, and others like them, are working to restore the "social." They not only offer an alternative to the
separation in our communities, they also offer an alternative model for social work.

Coffeeshops offer three distinct advantages to traditional settings for social work:

1. A less formal setting than regular social work agencies
2. An environment with the potential of being shaped by the "client"
as well as the social worker.
3. An experience of community at the same time individual needs are getting attention.

Coffeeshops fit with the idea of "a reconstructed social work"
outlined by Harry Wasserman and Holly Danforth in their book, "The
human bond: Support groups and mutual aid." This kind of social work
"envisions a theory and practice in which the individual, family,
small group and community constitute an interdependent quartet. This
requires...an internally consistent set of concepts and...a web of
human connections."

Five minutes of war

OUR country is now spending $1 million every five minutes for the Iraq
war, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Five minutes of war would pay for 10 Bill's Coffeeshops and provide
jobs for 10 individuals to work in them for a year.

Five minutes of war would buy a home for every one of the homeless
individuals my friend Kelly Dobson feeds each Sunday afternoon in Minneapolis.

Five minutes of war would finance a college education for Judy and at
least a dozen other people I know who don't have money for tuition,

Five minutes of war would support Altman, Sierra, Jeremy and at least
two dozen other fine young musicians I know for an entire year. Think
of how much music they could make to brighten our lives.

Five minutes of war would endow a Gisela Konopka chair in social group
work at the University of Minnesota and allow at least a dozen
graduate students to study group work.

Five minutes of war would help close the gap in school spending in a
major US city. In San Jose, Calif., for example, it could close the
$1,000 per child difference in spending between the Alum Rock schools
and neighboring districts.

For one hour of war, we could do all of these and more. Just think
what we could do with a day or a week.

Powerful setting for social work

COFFEESHOPS like Bill's in Iowa City can be powerful forces in social
work. They are a contemporary example of the blending of clinical and community practice envisioned by social work's founders. Jane Addams and other founders outlined a social work practice which stretched from the individual level to the community level. This vision came from their belief that strengthening communities would help strengthen individuals and families. They tested a variety of concepts to carry out this vision, including community theater and a neighborhood coffeeshop.

Addams and the others had a "holistic rather than a specialization approach," writes Rolland Smith in an essay for the Encyclopedia of Social Work. Also important, he writes: "An orientation to family and neighborhood strengths rather than to individual pathologies."

A coffeeshop is a great place to do this work. It offers opportunities
for community as well as for individuality. And it offers a "home" for
individuals from many different backgrounds.

Every person needs places to experience a sense of belonging, scholar
Ernesto Galarza said. That means everyone, he said, even individuals
with mental illness and those with chronic alcoholism should have the
chance to "take part in some type of social relationships." In a
speech to social workers, he urged the profession to invest "much more
care and time and funding...in this direction." A coffeeshop offers a
great setting for such interaction.

This is not as easy as it sounds. In a 1998 essay for the journal
Social Work Janet Finn and Barry Checkoway said that the profession
has an "uneven record" when it comes to an integrated practice which
combines both clinical and community elements. They were looking
particularly at youth work and suggested the profession needs a
"reorientation from therapeutic models of individual treatment to
consciousness-raising models for group reflection and action." They
went on to call for a "redirection" of social work roles from
"counselor, case manager and broker to those of collaborator, mentor
and animator.."

Bill's, its crosstown cousin Uptown Bill's, and a number of other
coffeeshops are trying out these ideas every day. Perhaps you know of
another coffeeshop where this kind of social work is taking place.
Write to the Newsletter and tell us about it.

ANOTHER CREATIVE
WEB SITE FOR YOU

Have you seen the Body Secret website? It's a community art project on the web created by students at Sierra College (Rocklin, Calif.). It was inspired in part by the PostSecret website. This new website is based on anonymous submissions about body image. Among them are wishes to be taller, slimmer and wrinkle-free.

There are also startling submissions like these:

"I gave away the love and respect I had for my body...when...you gave
away your faithfulness."

"I want to be his everything."

You can find the website with a Google search for "Body Secret," and "Sierra College."

Peacemakers Jane and Bill

JUST imagine what a powerful pair of peacemakers Bill Sackter and Jane
Addams would have been if they'd had a chance to work together.

Bill Sackter is the man for whom Bill's Coffeshop in Iowa City is
named. The coffeeshop is a tribute to the life and spirit of Bill. Tom
Walz knew Bill and is the author of a book on Sackter called The
Unlikely Celebrity. He says Bill was the most peaceful man he ever
met. In fact, he calls Bill a saint.

Jane Addams, one of social work's founding mothers, worked tirelessly for
peace throughout her life. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.
Some of those who knew her also called her a saint.

Unfortunately, their lives did not intersect. And neither of them is
living now to guide us. But they did leave us a legacy. We can draw
inspiration from Bill's spirit and Jane's energy as we work for peace in our
time. Peace seems a rather unlikely prospect at the moment, but the lives of
these two and other peacemakers can guide us as we struggle to shape a
better community and world.

Would you like to talk more with others about peacemaking in the spirit
of Bill Sackter and Jane Addams? How about adding your thoughts to this blog.

Don Quixote a social worker?

Perhaps Don Quixote was a social worker early in his life. How else can one explain the exuberant "strengths perspective" he offers to everyone he sees in life.

Quixote is the main character in a novel written by Miguel de Cervantes, a Spanish author who lived from 1547 to 1616. Cervantes wrote the story in two parts. One was published in 1605; the second appeared shortly after his death.

Quixote has this irrepressible optimism about everyone and everything he sees. He rejects the idea of a "bad" person and insists there is good in everyone.

This perspective is especially vivid in Man of La Mancha, the musical adaptation of the Don Quixote story. In this stage version, Cervantes is in prison and recreates the Quixote story using those imprisoned with him.

The prisoners also play a cynical audience who loudly express doubts about Don Quixote's optimism. They initially dismiss Quixote as a hopeless romantic who doesn't understand human nature. At times, they wonder about his sanity.

But as the story unfolds, some of the cynicism melts. By the end of the play, Quxote has a group of fellow believers.

I've seen Man of La Mancha several times over the years. But I never made a connection to social work until I saw a production last year at Theatre Cedar Rapids.

One thing I think the story is emphasizing is the importance of focusing on possibilities rather than on the limitations. Isn't that what social work calls a strengths perspective? This perspective can have a profound influence on individuals, families and communities. Bill Sackter's life is one notable example of this. It got me thinking of "Quixotes" in the lives of people I know. For example, wasn't Barry Morrow the Quixote in Bill's life?

A second message from the story is that there will always be people around who will doubt the wisdom of a strengths approach. They are likely to view a "Quixote" as someone who's not very realistic about the human condition. Don Quixote is ridiculed as a silly dreamer for his insistence in seeing the potential in each person. His response: Each of us has a choice, his choice is to focus on a person's strengths and possibilities.

Ten ideas for social work

What wisdom would you offer to those about to go into social work? What are
the most important things to remember? Could you distill this advice into a brief list?

That was s topic introduced two years ago in the Bill's Coffeeshop Newsletter (www.uiowa.edu/~socialwk/bills/newsletter). The discussion here grew out of a presentation I gave to a social work class. It was titled "Ten ideas for social work" and offered in a social policy class. I offered nine ideas:

Be tolerant

Widen your circle

Have high expectations

Stay young

Find people you can trust (and trust them)

Take time to be alone

Read a daily paper

Support a public library

Have hope

Students in the class were invited to contribute their suggestions for a tenth. Many of their suggestions appeared in the Newsletter. Readers contributed more. Among the ideas:

+ Have a good sense of humor + Never stop learning + Understand and celebrate difference + Write a letter instead of an email + Be a good listener + Be passionate about your work + Let things affect you, move you.

Now seems like a good time to reintroduce this topic. So we're asking you: What's your idea for No. 10 on this list of "Ten ideas for social work?" What would you suggest to be included on a list of essential wisdom for those going into social work?

To respond, just click on the comment button below this column.