This week: Moops, Homelessness, and The Cute, Cuddly Teddy Bear

“I’m so sorry, it’s the Moops. The correct answer is the Moops.”

It’s a misprint. Don’t be quick to jump at Trivial Pursuit for the error. See, like this game, I also make mistakes. There (not their, not they’re) have been, on occasion, spelling mistakes, overlooked typos, and grammatical errors in all of my posts, emails, cover letters, texts, captions, and the list goes on. I try my best to catch them ahead of printing, pressing send, or posting.

I am not infallible. Mistakes happen — I’ve made a few. In my youth, I bypassed any orthographic endeavors in favor of jumping for coins and falling through tubes, while sitting in front of a T.V. What can I say, the Super Mario Bros life chose me. The Scripps life chose them.

Ambitionz as a writer, reader, and adequate speller. If I miss something, I will be quick to take ownership for, and fix the mistake. I encourage others to do the same.

But, first, a throwback.

The Results Are In

More than a year ago, back when the Daily Show with Jon Stewart provided the majority of news I needed, a short, satirical segment about providing homes to the homeless caught my attention. We go to Utah, to revisit this story: Comprehensive Report on Homelessness.

The 2015 Annual Report covers, county-by-county, the total homeless population in Utah. According to the report, in 2015, there were 157,000 homeless families in the country and, of that total, 0.2% were living in Utah. Programs around the country estimate that, in a given year, 70% to 80% of families exit homelessness within six months. Also greatly impacting families, from 2011 to 2015, the population of Utah’s homeless children enrolled in school increased from 785 to 898 (HUD’s definition and from Utah’s Point-In-Time counting method).

Before going into the areas of success from this report, I wanted to go further into the ED.Gov data. I found some depressing numbers and I am stunned at both how unaware I was of this issue and the future impact for so many kids. Post recession, the total population of children enrolled in schools that are homeless has increased each school year. In 2013–2014 school year, more than 1.3 million school children were homeless. In 2014, the Department of Education directed $65 million to support programs for homeless youth.

Taking a step back I started to wonder, as mentioned in the Washington Post article, if the huge increase, from Utah to California and all over the country, could be the result of schools actually doing a better job counting homeless students. And, if that is the case, is it at least a good sign that there are programs trying to reach and keep homeless students in school?

Returning back to Utah for a moment. In 2005, the state set out on a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness across the state. According to HUD, the definition of chronic homelessness is:

An adult individual or adult member of a family is considered to be chronically homeless when he/she has a disability and has been continuously homeless for a year, or has experienced at least four episodes of homelessness in the last three years.

Here are the results. A focus on this subpopulation in Utah from 2005 to 2015 helped the state reduce chronic homelessness by 91%. Last year there were around 200 people — down from about 2,000. If you watched the Daily Show segment (here is the link again), you’ll know that Utah achieved this by providing housing to those that were categorized as chronically homeless. And the state actually saved money on putting the homeless in homes because it reduced the number of ER visits, services, and drug related incidents, in this population, that ends up costing the state between $30,000 and $50,000 per person.

Why did I decide to go into this topic? Well, just this week I saw a post on Facebook that the United Way of Mass Bay and Merrimack Valley is partnering with the Boston College School of Social Work on a competition to, “seek innovative, cost-effective and feasible ideas to reduce family homelessness in our state.” The deadline for submissions is today. Winners (either one, two, or three will be selected) will get up to $25,000 to pilot their idea. I’ll revisit this story after winners are announced sometime in mid-September and some of the other programs in Massachusetts that are addressing homelessness in 2016.

While it seems that Utah found a simple solution for one population of those who are homeless, I think it will require way more complex and long-term plans to address both the issue of homeless school children in the country and homeless families here in Massachusetts.

My Great Grandfather Did Not Invent The Teddy Bear in 1902. But Morris Michtom Did.

Well, I could have told you, “You will not believe who invented the Teddy Bear…” but I decided now is not the time to bury the lead. I recently heard of this story and it got me thinking…

Just at the turn of the century, when, I imagine, barnstorming tours swept across the country and stickball was played on every street corner, the most cute and cuddly toy animal ever entered the American home and became a permanent part of the heart of a nation. This build-a-stuffed-toy-bear story dates back to a Mississippi hunting trip in 1902 and a Washington Post cartoon, which shows, “Teddy’s Bear.” I will save most of the details of the hunt and fast-forward to the cartoon that paved the way for Winnie, Smokey, and not your av-er-age bear, Yogi. Breaking the bear barrier if you will.

This wasn’t your basic Mississippi hunting trip. Then Governor of Mississippi, Andrew Longino, invited President Theodore Roosevelt south to hunt bears. Journalists followed and the news soon went viral. Clifford Berryman, a cartoonist for the Washington Post, heard the story (see, it went viral back then) and went to work on the “Drawing the Line in Mississippi” sketch.

This famous Roosevelt scene would later be the inspiration for Morris and Rose Michtom, candy store owners in Brooklyn, to make a stuffed toy bear named, “Teddy’s Bear.” The popularity of the bear led the Michtom’s to start the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company.

About 15 miles north of Brooklyn, and a few years after the Michtom’s started Ideal Toy Company, Nat Kupferberg started a syrup factory in the Bronx and sold bottled, chocolate syrup to candy stores. When I first started reading about the Michtom’s, I wondered how they saw this Washington Post cartoon in Brooklyn. I also wondered if these two entrepreneurs knew each other.

Like Nat, Morris was a Jew who came to New York City in the late 1800’s. Morris and Nat left eastern Europe (Russia and Poland respectively or thereabouts) after Pogroms spread around the region. I think Nat would have been 12 years old in 1902 — considerably younger than Morris. It is just one of those stories that got me wondering about my own family history and how Morris and Rose came to see that Washington Post cartoon.

So I will end here. Unfortunately I don’t have a record of the newsstand in Brooklyn where Morris picked up a copy of the Washington Post. I also don’t have a record of the candy stores that Nat would have sold to; however I like to imagine they crossed paths at some point.

In the pipeline

Next week other stories. I saw the sign, signs, signs, everywhere signs. Odd plaques in Boston and unnecessary signs to Franklin Park Zoo.