I laugh all the way through the 30 minutes of 2 Broke Girls every Monday night. And I laugh through reruns, too. There’s no one cooker than Max.

An article this long in the Washington Post says to me that 2 Broke Girls is a force to be reckoned with.

I had my television début on Washington Business Report this morning on WJLA ABC7. I was invited on by Rebecca Cooper because she stumbled upon the Abraham Harrison website and liked our humor and our business.  So, here’s the video of the segment for you to check out:

I just received this note from Scott Schenkelberg, Executive Director of my favorite charity, Miriam’s Kitchen, where I volunteer as Sous Chef and Dining Room Campaign at least a couple-times-a-month, and any time they need a pinch hitter:

All of us at Miriam’s Kitchen have been impacted by your generosity this year.

From the homeless men and women who join us every day for a healthy meal and support services, to the volunteers who have the great opportunity to work with our guests because of your support–you have changed lives.

As we prepare to ring in the new year, we want to take a moment to let you know just how much your support really means to us.

Here are just 3 of the life-changing events you helped make possible in 2011:

• More than 3,200 homeless men and women received support services aimed at increasing their self-sufficiency and improving their quality of life,
• we hired our first Director of Advocacy and adopted a new vision of ending chronic homelessness in Washington, DC, and
• nearly fifty of our guests received keys to their very own home.

We’ve had a remarkable last few years here at Miriam’s Kitchen, and have you to thank for allowing us to continue to serve our guests in the best ways possible.

From all of us here at Miriam’s Kitchen, thank you for helping to change the lives of our guests this year.

Happy New Year.

Scott Schenkelberg, Executive Director

Related articles

• 24% of Miriam’s Kitchen’s guests are homeless veterans (chrisabraham.com)
• Please Support Miriam’s Kitchen on Give to the Max Day (chrisabraham.com)
• Why there are so many homeless people in Washington, DC (chrisabraham.com)
• Testomonial from Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Tomorrow is Give to the Max Day (deaconjohnspace.wordpress.com)
• Must-see video about homelessness in Washington (chrisabraham.com)
• How to write an irresistible blogger pitch email (chrisabraham.com)
• Tomorrow is Give to the Max Day (deaconforlife.blogspot.com)
• Detailed analysis of the perfect blogger pitch (socialmedia.biz)
• Two fun ways to support Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Some shelters dish out organic Thanksgiving to homeless (usatoday.com)
• Auntie Miriam’s Potato Kugel – Crispy Goodness (jitterycook.com)

Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun is not the work of a Glock fanboy like many of these gun books are.

It is the gun version of Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. Of course it is an historically-accurate representation of the life and times of Gaston Glock and everything GLOCK, Inc., and its line of handguns.

Some accounts claim that Glock developed his gun in just six months, or perhaps even three. Glock himself said the process lasted a year—still a startlingly short period of time for a novice firearm designer to produce a prototype. He filed for an Austrian patent on April 30, 1981. It was his seventeenth invention, so he called his gun the Glock 17. Coincidentally, his creation could store an impressive seventeen rounds in its magazine, with an eighteenth in the chamber, if the user so desired.

It is also a complete history of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, a history of gun-related politics and policies, and also a very accurate and sober portrayal of America’s love for and of guns.

For the first time, in 2008, the US Supreme Court stated clearly that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to private possession of handguns in the home, as opposed to a right related to the maintenance of a civil militia or other armed force. The court by a 5–4 vote struck down a Washington, DC, law that effectively prohibited private handgun ownership. In 2010, the high court extended its ruling to other municipalities and states, invalidating a similar law in Chicago.

In the same way you read Cod even though you’re not into fish or fishing, you really should read Glock even if you’re not into sports shooting.

If you’re anti-gun, you’ll learn both about the culture of firearms in America and how powerful and intelligent — savvy — a force your enemy really is.

If you’re pro-gun, the Glock revolution will blow your mind, especially in contrast with how pathetically every gun manufacturer in the world performed against GLOCK, especially poor Smith & Wesson, a company that watched as GLOCK came in and single-handedly replaced every .38 Special revolver in every police station in America with not only a high-capacity, semi-automatic, magazine-fed pistol, but with a Glock 17.

The Glock, introduced in the 1980s, inherited all aspects of the American firearm heritage: It was seen as an instrument of law and security, but also menace, danger, and fear. It became the handgun of choice for cops and a favorite of some demented mass killers. Its black plastic-and- metal construction set it apart from everything else on the market, suggesting modernism and efficiency. The handgun is the weapon Americans really care about, and within a decade of arriving here, the Glock had become the ultimate American handgun.

I can keep on going.  Each story is more amazing than the next.  The chutzpah of Gaston Glock is only bettered by the cajones of his right hand man during the early days in Atlanta, Mr. Karl Walter, a man who turned the conservative and serious world of arms sales and arms dealing in America into a discotheque, into a circus, into a strip club, into a world of Hollywood action flicks, rap music videos, and an army of Glock devotees that is only bettered by those mad men and women who are obsessed with their antiquated 1911s.

Let me explain why I know so much about this book and it’s not even out yet.  Well, I read an advanced Galley copy of the book.

On November 4th, Paul Barrett contacted me to review his upcoming book, Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun. He chose me because I guess I am pretty open about both my gun ownership and my attraction to Glocks.

Though I have only been shooting for a year, I already have a pretty nice collection of three Glock handguns: a Generation 3 Glock 23 in .40 S&W, a 9mm First Generation Glock 17 — the original — a retiree from the DC police department, and my Generation 4 Glock 26, my  Baby Glock, in 9mm.

So, in an exemplary blogger outreach campaign, Mr, Barrett sent me a Galley copy to read. And I read it. I consumed it and was mesmerized. I was mesmerized by how much I didn’t know about these United States, about gun legislation, about gun bans and bans on high-capacity magazines.

I was flabbergasted by the loopholes in these bans that were so big you could taxi a 747 through them.

I was not mesmerized by the typical fanboy depiction of their favorite gun and gun maker, I was mesmerized by a book written by an investigative journalist who dug deeply into the GLOCK empire and its ripple effects on not just Law Enforcement but popular culture, rap music, politics, television, and hundreds of movies.

I really didn’t know anything about the history of firearms in America or how they’re sourced and have been banned; how they’re imported — or, rather, sourced and then assembled — and how they’re marketed and sold.

Glock built a veritable cash machine, with margins in the neighborhood of 70 percent—the kind of performance that would warrant a Harvard Business School case study were Glock not so secretive about his decision making. Few outsiders knew how he had accomplished what he had done.

And that’s not even scratching the surface of all that is GLOCK, Inc, and its illustrious founder, Gaston Glock, an Austrian nerd who ended up developing, designing, and producing the most iconic pistol since the Colt 1911.

Glock asked the colonels to describe the Army’s requirements for a new handgun, which they did. “Mr. Glock, in his credulousness, said it shouldn’t be difficult to make such an item,” according to an official company account published years later. “To him, the handgun was simply another accoutrement that attached to a soldier’s belt, similar to the knife he already produced.” Or, as Gaston Glock himself put it in an interview: “That I knew nothing was my advantage.”

If you liked Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, Salt: A World History, The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, or Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, you’ll love Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun by Paul M. Barrett.

Related articles

• Reading a galley of Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun (chrisabraham.com)
• Glock denies slowing for Hamilton (autonetinsurance.co.uk)
• Gabby Giffords District Republicans Raffle a Glock! (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Ariz. GOP raffling off Glock gun (politico.com)
• GOP raffles Glock in Gabrielle Giffords’ district (cbsnews.com)
• Cleaning a Glock (or the 2nd Amendment argument), never looked so good! (Video) (politicsandfinance.blogspot.com)
• Pima County GOP Officials Raffle Same Type of Gun Used in Tucson Shooting (foxnews.com)
• Pima County GOP Raffling Glock, Same Gun Used in Giffords Shooting (abcnews.go.com)
• Glock admits need to ‘google’ 2012 teammate Pic (inautonews.com)
• Virgin’s Glock starts work in McLaren simulator (inautonews.com)

Over the last five years that Abraham Harrison has been pitching bloggers on behalf of clients, we have learned a thing or two about how best to reach bloggers, how to engage them, how to get them to carry our client’s message to their readership. Whether we’re doing an outreach to the bloggers of mainstream media and celebrity blogs or to someone who has just set up a blog for the first time, it all begins with the message model.

Below is an example of a message model we developed for Miriam’s Kitchen for National Homelessness Month. We didn’t use it because we focused on Give to the Max Day instead, but I think it is an example of our best work and I’ll put it aside and we’ll use it next year for sure. I will share the entire email pitch in total below but then I will go through a line-by-line explanation as to what we did and why we did it:

From: Chris Abraham <cjabraham@miriamskitchennews.org>
Subject: November is National Homelessness Month

Hi <<First Name>>

November is National Homelessness Month and I’m reaching out to you to discuss the issue of homelessness in America. I’m also hoping that you’ll discuss this issue with the readers of <<Blog Name>>. I am a volunteer at a small kitchen for the homeless in DC and while working there it occurred to me that this issue affects every town, village, and city in America.

I have put together a microsite that puts the issue of homelessness in perspective and also uses Miriam’s Kitchen, the kitchen where I volunteer, as a model for addressing homelessness and untreated mental illness in the US capital city. There are a multitude of news, facts, videos, photos, and banners so please feel free to repost any of it:

www.miriamskitchennews.org

If you are able to post about this issue in any form, it would really help spread the message of homelessness in its many diverse forms and maybe suggest ways to help improve many lives. Please let me know if you have any questions and if you are able to help. Thank you so much.

Chris

–
Chris Abraham,
On behalf of Miriam’s Kitchen
www.miriamskitchen.org

OK, now I will go into more detail, section by section …

From: Chris Abraham <cjabraham@miriamskitchennews.org>

The first thing you’ll notice is that I am doing the outreach in this example. Though not the norm, I personally volunteer and donate to Miriam’s Kitchen and people know that, so I decided to reach out as me because that’s the most authentic relationship. In other cases, the names of Abraham Harrison team members fit the bill. The next thing you’ll notice is that the email doesn’t come from either miriamskitchen.org or abrahamharrison.com domains. Instead, we virtually always reserve a completely new and unique domain name for each campaign, in this case miriamskitchennews.org. Why? Three reasons:

1. Clients protect their domains. Most companies and organizations have very restrictive IT policies that limit the use of their domain and the allocation of email addresses. This makes it almost impossible to place social media news release content on their site, so we reserve our own because it gets around any of those issues.
2. Bloggers don’t trust PR firms. We prefer to reach out to bloggers as the client instead of as Abraham Harrison on behalf of our clients. Why? Not to be deceptive but because a strong majority of all the bloggers we reach out to are not trained in public relations processes and don’t generally feel comfortable being communicated to via a broker, so we always try to communicate as clearly and as simply as possible, so choosing something in-between the two is best, in this case cjabraham@miriamskitchennews.org.
3. Spam detectors are always a risk. Because we reach out cold to upwards of five-thousand bloggers at a time, it is essential that we don’t put ever put mission-critical domain names in jeopardy of being black-listed as spam or being taken away by a fickle registrar such as GoDaddy.com. While we’re exceedingly careful when we target and how we engage each blogger, it is amazing how few email recipients need to report a single email as unwanted before the gray-bearded email wizards can ban and block an entire domain from being deliverable–we never want to put ourselves or our clients in that precarious position. While this has never actually happened to us or our clients, we have felt enough saber-rattling and there have been enough shots over our bow that we make sure we never put anyone into a defensive position. Ultimately, protecting our clients’ brands as well as our own is of top priority.

Let’s move on to the all-important subject line.

Subject: November is National Homelessness Month

The first, and sometimes only, thing a blogger sees when she receives our email pitch is the email subject line and the sender. Choosing a title is super-hard because we want to be as neutral and as informational as possible. Teasing or tricking a blogger into opening by being cute, mysterious, or clever in the subject line has almost always blown up in our faces. The simpler the better, especially when you realize that we follow up a couple times after the first outreach–something I will go into more in a future post. But first, the salutation.

Hi <<First Name>>

When we research bloggers to pitch, we always do our very best to discover the full name of the blog, the first name of the blogger, and the best address possible. We also make sure the name is correct because it isn’t always clear. I can’t tell you how many pitches my blog, Because the Medium is the Message, and my corporate blog, Marketing Conversation, get from marketers who address us wrong, mostly as Abraham. “Dear Abraham.” Those go straight into the trash. Next, our mailer, nicknamed “The Cloud,” has a mail merge feature, allowing us to personalize our email a little bit, within reason, and appropriately.

What’s behind that first paragraph?

November is National Homelessness Month and I’m reaching out to you to discuss the issue of homelessness in America. I’m also hoping that you’ll discuss this issue with the readers of <<Blog Name>>. I am a volunteer at a small kitchen for the homeless in DC and while working there it occurred to me that this issue affects every town, village, and city in America.

The most important thing is to make sure the first paragraph of every pitch is simple, clear, concise, and immediately addresses why you’re emailing. Yes, answer who, what, when, where, why, and how–but in very short order, so get to it! Who? Miriam’s Kitchen. What? Homelessness in America, an issue that affects every town, village, and city in America. When? November. Where? On your blog. Why? To share the issue with your readers How? Posting to your blog. I added the last sentence to proactively address why I was the person to be writing at all–because I am personally invested and this is meaningful to me, for real.

I am lucky enough to have Dan Krueger and Phillip Rhoades on my team. They’re both excellent BS detectors and masters of minimalism. For a pitch like this, Dan or I generally create a first draft. Then, the other two of us go through the draft line-by-line. As if it were poetry. We cut to the bone. This process is a direct result of three things:

One, you only have a blogger for a few seconds–if she opens it at all–so you must cut to the chase.

Two, we have all received enough pitches ourselves to know who does and doesn’t read our blogs, so the entire “I am a real fan of your blog and have been reading you a long time” are generally lies. So, after you write your first draft, cut out all the inauthentic praise. Truth be told, if your targeting is good and you have a great offer and are clear as to what you want, you’re effectively doing the blogger the favor of providing good content that they can easily and quickly pop onto her blog–and you really don’t need to flatter. I am not saying that you should be short, rude, or curt, but surely be very clear as to who you are, what you are, what you want, and what you need.

Yes, I do volunteer at Miriam’s–many times-a-month. If I didn’t–or if I sent the email out as someone else in the company, an online analyst, and that person hadn’t ever graced Miriam’s, I would never make that up. Everything in the email must be honest and true. This isn’t a con job, this isn’t a cheesy 11pm pick up, this is the sharing of relevant information–don’t feel like you have to sell to someone or fool someone to cover you. Also, be very careful about playing the heart strings too loudly when you’re doing an outreach on behalf of a charity. To be honest, the less said the better–allow the blogger to come up with her own conclusions–you really don’t have to tell the blogger what to think. Not only isn’t that necessary but it can be downright insulting to bloggers, who are by their very nature free spirits.

Now, on to the meat of the pitch.

I have put together a microsite that puts the issue of homelessness in perspective and also uses Miriam’s Kitchen, the kitchen where I volunteer, as a model for addressing homelessness and untreated mental illness in the US capital city. There are a multitude of news, facts, videos, photos, and banners so please feel free to repost any of it:

www.miriamskitchennews.org

One of the results of making the email pitch so efficient and tight is that there’s a lot left behind. Most folks who pitch to bloggers still include the kitchen sink in their email pitches: PDF or MS Word attachments are still very common. The majority paste their rich-text traditional press release inline in the email, along with inline images, logos, and graphics. We refuse for three reasons.

1. Our email pitches are all about starting a conversation. We’re more interested in getting an email reply that we can respond to than we are in firing and forgetting.
2. We always send plain text emails. We do not include anything that might result in spam-boxing. We don’t even include any “http://” prefixes in our links, assuming that the webmail or email client will activate the link when the blogger opens up their email and views the content.
3. We don’t take the blogger’s interest in our pitch for granted. The email, to me, is a speed date. We don’t want to waste anybody’s time or good will, so we allow the blogger to decide whether she wants to go on a second date. We like it best when the chemistry is so intense that our client and the blogger drive to Vegas immediately and get hitched–by which I mean we reach out, the blogger immediately likes our pitch, immediately posting to their blog as well as Facebook and Twitter–but we don’t want to assume any of that. We like to play it cool because a heavy sell never works, especially in an earned-media PR campaign.

On to the end of the email:

If you are able to post about this issue in any form, it would really help spread the message of homelessness in its many diverse forms and maybe suggest ways to help improve many lives. Please let me know if you have any questions and if you are able to help. Thank you so much.

Chris

As I said before, being clear as to why we’re writing is essential. Being clear what you want and what you expect is essential, too. Too many pitches I receive simply share their message but are never bold, brave, or courageous enough to make an ask: please post it anywhere, anyhow, to help spread the message of homelessness in America.

The most essential thing, however, is that this is really just a speed date. If we pass muster but the blogger just isn’t sure who we are or why I am emailing her, we need to be painfully clear that this email is not a fire-and-forget. That this email is the beginning of a connection and that simply hitting reply will result in swift answers. Also, accountability. We end just about every email with a direct request to the blogger to please let us know if she ends up helping and sharing–and that we’re appreciative either way. At the very least because she’s spent some of her time opening and reading our email.

Finally, the signature.

–
Chris Abraham,
On behalf of Miriam’s Kitchen
www.miriamskitchen.org

If you’ll notice, we don’t misrepresent ourselves–or myself–as being on the staff of Miriam’s Kitchen; however, we also don’t want to confuse the purity of the message by bringing a second brand into the brief message model, such as would be the case if I included Abraham Harrison LLC in the signature. So, we chose to split the middle.

What you’re thinking right now is “how in the heck could you blog so much about such a short email?” Well, it is because we spend a lot of time, many revisions, and three or more staff cutting, editing, re-ordering, and BS-detecting each message model. We’re very intentional, very formulaic, and also very careful. We don’t want to tell bloggers what to think. We don’t want to put words in their mouths, and we surely don’t want to alienate a blogger because we color the copy in such a way that they reject our pitch based on style instead of content and mission.

It is like a first date, especially for a man like me: it is more important for me to remember to be a good listener and not to spend the entire meal making it all about me. The longer my message model and email pitch is the more likely the blogger will feel like I might have sent them an email in error. I want each email pitch to be as neutral and factual as possible. All dogma, passion, color, interpretation, and story should be provided by the blogger–and don’t forget that everything that you cut out of the email message model can possibly find a happy home in your Social Media News Release.

While the email might seem very casual and conversational, winging it is not an option when you’re officially reaching out on behalf of your brand. This is doubly so when you’re reaching out on behalf of a client. The message model is a getting-to-know-you process and not simply a product. Before I explain what goes into an email blogger pitch, I need to explain this process and the philosophy that we have developed through trial and error since the Fall of 2006.

Being completely familiar with the client, the brand, the product, and the services, before moving forward with the pitch is essential. Anything we don’t use in our message model and email pitch we aggregate it into a social media, multimedia, social media profiles, news release.

This process of collecting all of the client’s assets and collateral material, including videos, photos, ads, bios, history, background, context, interviews, case studies, testimonials, and media mentions, help us then decide if there are any missing pieces that we need to request from the client or create ourselves.

Then we can interview the client to discuss what the subject of the pitch should be, what the ask is, and then which blogs and bloggers should be included–or excluded–and who to exclude is often more important than who to bring into the pitch.

My next blog post will focus on what I am all sure you’re curious about: the social media news release (SMNR), that “kitchen sink” catch-all supporting document that provides all the details, content, media, images, and greater story that has been pruned from the initial pitch but surely deserves being told.

A future post will be about the value of following up a couple times with any bloggers who don’t reply or post. We have evolved a process that does not email just once but also sends two follow-up emails to those bloggers who don’t reply at all. Funny thing is, we get only 25% of all posts from the first email. We get 50% of all our total earned media posts from the first follow-up email and another 25% from the final outreach, so I really want to go into the why and how of that–and how we handle something that might very well be scary to some of you and and might feel like we’re being a pest to others–and I will address all of those fears and perceptions.

Please feel free to ask any questions or make any comments you might have on your mind after reading this blog post and I will do my best to respond.

Related articles

• Testomonial from Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Agencies are too afraid of bloggers to do their job (chrisabraham.com)
• Please Support Miriam’s Kitchen on Give to the Max Day (chrisabraham.com)
• Authentic Internet inbound marketing the way God intended (chrisabraham.com)
• Set up your Google+ Brand Page right now! (chrisabraham.com)
• Fire for effect when you can’t get a direct bead on your market (chrisabraham.com)
• Live people over Robot Armies and Zombie Hordes (chrisabraham.com)
• How to make friends and influence bloggers (chrisabraham.com)
• Write your blog to be taken completely out of context (chrisabraham.com)
• Amplify Twitter and Facebook with GaggleAmp (chrisabraham.com)

Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology

Tonight I get to repeat the amazing experience I had last year when I volunteered to sous chef the first annual Thanksgiving Dinner for the homeless at Miriam’s Kitchen.  I excited to share the missive I received from Miriam’s this AM outing the amazing menu we’re preparing and sharing with your guests this afternoon:

• Happy Thanksgiving! (chrisabraham.com)
• Some shelters dish out organic Thanksgiving to homeless (usatoday.com)
• Testomonial from Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Happy Thanksgiving! from The League of Aggressive Progressives – Politics and Your Thanksgiving Dinner (theleagueofaggressiveprogressives.wordpress.com)
• Candy Dish: Thanksgiving Overload (collegecandy.com)
• For A Thanksgiving Dinner That Can’t Be Beat… (wncx.radio.com)
• TV Stars Join Kirk Douglas to Serve Thanksgiving Dinner to the Homeless (aoltv.com)
• Help me make a Thanksgiving dinner for one (ask.metafilter.com)
• Kim Kardashian Reminds You To Think Of The Homeless This Thanksgiving (hills2city.wordpress.com)
• PETA Serves ‘Baby’ for Thanksgiving Dinner (newser.com)
• Survey: What’s Your Mashed Potato Technique? (thekitchn.com)
• Unique Mashed Potato Recipes (livingrichwithcoupons.com)
• Happy Thanksgiving! (growup318.com)
• The story of the three turkeys (tonydelarosa.wordpress.com)
• Can I Make Stuffing and Mashed Potatoes Today? (dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Thanksgiving Alternative Meals (vegontherun.com)
• Alyssa’s Mashed Potatoes (thepantryfairy.wordpress.com)
• Celebrate the Joy of the Season with Special Holiday Values at Mimi’s Cafe (prnewswire.com)
• Mashed Potatoes with Roasted Garlic and Lemon Thyme Butter (savoringeverybite.wordpress.com)

Today I will be volunteering at Miriam’s Kitchen in Washington, DC, as sous chef to cook and serve 8 turkeys along with an an entire organic and fresh menu for our homeless guests.

This is the second annual Thanksgiving dinner that Miriam’s Kitchen has served to the homeless community and I am proud to have been a part of the first annual dinner last year.

Tomorrow I am going back to Miriam’s to act as floor captain, so I get to give back two days in a row, one in the capacity as cook and one in the capacity as the guy who gets to manage the dining room.

I love both job equally and while I love to cook I also love to interact with our guests, our security, and also the amazing social workers.

Related articles

• Testomonial from Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Please Support Miriam’s Kitchen on Give to the Max Day (chrisabraham.com)
• Two fun ways to support Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Must-see video about homelessness in Washington (chrisabraham.com)
• Some shelters dish out organic Thanksgiving to homeless (usatoday.com)
• At Miriam’s Kitchen, the Case Work is Why the Kitchen Exists (chrisabraham.com)
• 24% of Miriam’s Kitchen’s guests are homeless veterans (chrisabraham.com)
• A Thanksgiving Poem (babywithatwist.wordpress.com)
• Tomorrow is Give to the Max Day (deaconjohnspace.wordpress.com)
• Commited to my community as well as my clients (chrisabraham.com)
• Why there are so many homeless people in Washington, DC (chrisabraham.com)
• Obama: Thanksgiving spirit can help nation (content.usatoday.com)
• Caprice Helps Students Dish Up A Feast For The Homeless To Celebrate Thanksgiving (huffingtonpost.co.uk)
• Tomorrow is Give to the Max Day (deaconforlife.blogspot.com)

I received this missive just now from Miriam’s Kitchen on this, Veteran’s Day, 11-11-11:

There are 76,000 homeless veterans in the United States on any given night.

At Miriam’s Kitchen, nearly 1,000 (or 24%) of our guests are veterans.

Just this morning, we were joined by 15 veterans and had the opportunity to thank each of them personally for their service.

We also had the opportunity to talk with them about the services we provide to veterans.

Those services include:

• meeting their basic needs and providing them with healthy meals and clean clothing,
• providing them with services like medical care, mental health treatment and legal assistance through our case management program,
• linking them with housing programs specifically tailored to veterans,
• connecting them to services through the Department of Veterans Affairs and All Faith Consortium by providing space for their outreach workers in our dining room, and
• helping them find their way by welcoming them into the Miriam’s Kitchen community.

You are already a big part of the work we do for homeless veterans but if you’re inspired to do more today, here are a few ideas from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

From all of us here at Miriam’s Kitchen, Happy Veterans Day.

Related articles

• Please Support Miriam’s Kitchen on Give to the Max Day (chrisabraham.com)
• Homeless Veterans More Likely To Die On Streets Than Homeless Non-Veterans, Study Says (huffingtonpost.com)
• Study Finds Homeless Veterans Stay Homeless Longer Than Others (atwar.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Is the homeless veteran problem set to explode? (ctv.ca)
• Homeless Veterans (themoderatevoice.com)
• Group prepares for surge in number of homeless vets (ctv.ca)
• Homeless Veteran’s Day Program (thepittsburghlitterbox.wordpress.com)
• At Miriam’s Kitchen, the Case Work is Why the Kitchen Exists (chrisabraham.com)
• Veterans returning from service to get preference for job openings at Port of New York and New Jersey (nj.com)
• Veterans More Likely To Be Homeless, Study Says (huffingtonpost.com)

Tomorrow is a special day.

Wednesday, November 9 is Give to the Max Day of Greater Washington, “Give to the Max Day is a massive one-day regional online fundraiser that will unite local Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC communities to support nonprofits serving the area.” Please contribute to Miriam’s Kitchen on November 9 — let’s really give DC homelessness a swift kick in the pants!

Here’s a very gorgeous video about Miriam’s Kitchen and some insight into chronic homelessness in Washington: 12,000 Stories:

Here are some facts about Give to the Max Day, Miriam’s Kitchen, homelessness in Washington, and homelessness in America:

• Starting at midnight on Wednesday, November 9, local residents will donate online to help raise millions of dollars for local nonprofits as part of the first annual Give to the Max Day: Greater Washington.
• Give to the Max Day is a massive one-day regional online fundraiser that will unite local Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC communities to support nonprofits serving the area.
• As part of Give to the Max Day: Greater Washington, nonprofits large and small can earn their share of $125,000 in cash awards, including up to $25,000 for nonprofits with the most individual donors and the most money donated.
• Homelessness in Washington, DC, the Nation’s Capitol: there are more than 6,500 homeless men, women and children in Washington, DC on any given night. Of those, nearly 2,000 are chronically homeless–meaning they have been homeless for a year or more, or four or more times in the past three years.
• Miriam’s Kitchen provides free, homemade meals and high-quality support services to more than 4,000 homeless men and women each year in the Nation’s Capitol, Washington, DC. Their core programs are meals, case management, Miriam’s Studio, and Miriam’s Cafe.
• Homelessness at Miriam’s Kitchen: on any given day at Miriam’s Kitchen, 82 percent of their guests are chronically homeless.  In fact, the average length of homelessness of the guests is 5.5 years
• Nearly 80 percent of Miriam’s Kitchen’s guests live on the streets of DC, in parks around the city, under the bridges along the Potomac River, and in emergency shelters.
• Miriam’s Kitchen’s guest demographics: 95 percent of Miriam’s Kitchen’s guests are male, 60 percent are African American and the median age of our guests is 50.
• Mental illness and addiction at Miriam’s Kitchen: Many of Miriam’s Kitchen’s guests suffer from severe mental illnesses and addictions, making them the most fragile and hardest to connect with social services.
• There are 671,859 people experiencing homelessness on any given night in the United States – roughly 22 of every 10,000 people are homeless
• 18 percent (124,000) experience chronic homelessness in the United States:Chronic homelessness is often the public face of homelessness, involving either long-term and/or repeated bouts of homelessness coupled with some sort of disability (physical or mental). People experiencing chronic homelessness often end up living in shelters and consume a plurality of the homeless assistance system’s resources
• 37 percent of the homeless population are people in families: Families become homeless as a result of some unforeseen financial crisis – a medical emergency, a car accident, a death in the family – that prevents them from being able to hold on to housing. An estimated 85,000 families experience homelessness each night.
• 50,000 young people are homeless long-term: Young people often become homeless due to some familial disruption, including divorce, neglect, or abuse. An estimated 50,000 youth experience long-term homelessness.
• 20 percent of the homeless population is made up of veterans: There are approximately 131,000 homeless veterans, accounting for 20 percent of the entire homeless population. Veterans often become homeless due to war-related disability. For a variety of reasons – physical disability, mental anguish, post-traumatic stress, etc. – many veterans find difficulty readjusting to civilian life.
• Non-chronic single adults: Survivors of domestic violence and former prisoners re-entering society are among the other groups of people that often experience homelessness
• Lack of affordable housing leads to homelessness: Homelessness occurs when people or households are unable to acquire and/or maintain housing they can afford. The main reason behind this inability to acquire/maintain housing is the scarcity of affordable housing in the United States – particularly in more urban areas where homelessness is more prevalent

Disclosure: my company, Abraham Harrison, and I are doing a Give to the Max: Greater Washington blogger outreach campaign pro bono for Miriam’s Kitchen.  As I am sure all of you know by now, I am a proud Miriam’s Kitchen volunteer. On some nights I am a Sous Chef at work in the kitchen and on others I am Floor Captain at work in the dining room. John Murphy asks me which one I prefer and I say, honestly, I love them both equally.

Related articles

• Must-see video about homelessness in Washington (chrisabraham.com)
• At Miriam’s Kitchen, the Case Work is Why the Kitchen Exists (chrisabraham.com)
• Why there are so many homeless people in Washington, DC (chrisabraham.com)
• Two fun ways to support Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Give to the Max: Greater Washington (chrisabraham.com)
• How to End Chronic Homelessness (chrisabraham.com)
• Please Help Me Raise Funds for The Children’s Inn at NIH Through Give to the Max Day (mizzinformation.com)
• Commited to my community as well as my clients (chrisabraham.com)
• It is too easy to go from middle class to homeless in America (chrisabraham.com)
• Mental Health of the Homeless on the Streets of Washington, DC (chrisabraham.com)
• It’s a Book: How Give to the Max Day Could Help Kids Read (waxingunlyrical.com)
• Give to the Max Day in in Greater Washington, DC (bloggoschloggo.wordpress.com)
• Miriam Carbajal Blanco : Costa Rica (kiva.org)
• Miriam Wangeci Gitonga : Kenya (kiva.org)
• Miriam Del Carmen Vilchez Madrigal : Nicaragua (kiva.org)
• Miriam’s Kitchen Serves Farm Fresh Food to DC’s Homeless (chrisabraham.com)
• Miriam De Jesús Ruiz Cano : Colombia (kiva.org)

I am reading a galley proof of Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun by Paul M. Barrett as we speak.

I must say that the book reminds me of one of the long-form articles in the Atlantic or the New Yorker — the book covers everything, and I am only through to something like 30% through.

I have read from the inception of Glock all the way through to where Glocks took over being the go-to gun on Law & Order. This is really a reporter’s book but Mr. Barrett cannot hide the awe he feels for the audacity of Karl Walter (chutzpah, actually) as the salesman as well as the generosity of Gaston Glock, primarily because the Glock 17 only cost $100 to make and so profits were upwards of 66% on every pistol.

It is fascinating, it is awesome — I never knew any of this, really, though I am sure you all do, anyway. All that I know about concrete I learned in high school from a long form article in the New Yorker, so sometimes there are books that just go soup-to-nuts. Then again, I am only 30% through so I will reserve a proper review until I am done.

Oh, that said, this book does not read like reading the Encyclopædia Britannica — there’s a narrative and a level of the author writing the book and synthesizing and analyzing what he’s learned and so he does tell a story.

Related articles

• The Best Hollow Books in the Business (chrisabraham.com)
• Glock Makes Significant Donation to Second Amendment Foundation (2ndamendmentright.org)