Flipping Pencils

Where

Where, a blog about cities founded and guided by Brendan Crain out of Chicago, has been on this blog’s list of favorite sites almost from the beginning.

I’m pleased to report that I’m now a contributor—one of ten regulars—to Where. 

My first post on the blog came in October as part of a Blog Action Day dedicated to discussing poverty.

Today, I’m starting a series of posts about the future of urban journalism—a subject that combines two things I like to daydream about: cities and newspapers.

I’ll continue to post here at Flipping Pencils as usual— that is, every so often.

Poverty is a Constellation of Difficulties

"[P]overty is a constellation of difficulties that magnify one another: not just low wages but also low education, not just dead-end jobs but also limited abilities, not just insufficient savings but also unwise spending, not just poor housing but also poor parenting, not just lack of health insurance but also the lack of healthy households… The troubles run strongly along both macro and micro levels, as systemic problems in the structure of political and economic power, and as individual problems in personal and family life."

—David K. Shipler

Source: The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler (New York: Knopf, 2004), p. 285 as quoted in Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream edited by John Edwards, Marion Crain and Arne Kalleberg (New York: The New Press, 2007), p.5.