If America’s economic decline continues, local nonprofits that serve those in poverty anticipate larger demands for their services.

Organizations such as Backstreet Missions, Shalom Community Center, Stepping Stones and Community Kitchen expect more people will seek their help in the months ahead.

Community Kitchen is devoted to eliminating hunger in Monroe County by providing meals to the hungry. The agency saw a slight increase in October and expects the numbers to continue to rise.

“It wouldn’t surprise me to see a 10 percent rise in numbers over the next six months,” said Vicki Pierce, Community Kitchen’s executive director.

Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, Stepping Stones, Shalom Community Center and Martha's House will ask Bloomington to participate in National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week Nov. 16-22 to bring awareness to poverty in the community.

It is a collaborative effort between the four non-profit organizations to teach community members about poverty and empower them to take action against poverty in Bloomington. The week's events include Food for Thought, Bloomington, Stand Up! and the Bloomington Food Stamp Challenge.

Food for Thought is a returning program under which several local restaurants donate a portion of proceeds to the participating non-profit organizations.

"Stepping Stones partnered with Martha's House last year to create what was called the Food for Thought fundraiser," Stepping Stones Assistant Director Warren Wade said in an e-mail. "We collaborated and recruited a handful of restaurants to donate a portion of their proceeds to our two agencies."

Editor's note: Gregory Travis is down with the flu this week and asked that this column from March 6, 2006, be rerun. It's more relevant than ever, he says.

Indiana is the trucking "Crossroads of America" where, apparently, an economy based on little more than storing-and-forwarding stuff made elsewhere can be a healthy and sustainable economy. At least if you believe Morton Marcus.

A couple of weeks ago Marcus wrote of Hendricks County, located to Indianapolis' west, as a place booming with both the second-highest population and the second-highest median income growth in the state.

How did it get that way? By being a warehousing "Mecca," hard against the Indianapolis airport and ready-made to store-and-forward goods produced in one place to consumers located in another.

It is move-out time. Pictures are taken off the walls, the carpet is vacuumed one last time, and all the counters are wiped clean. The landlord arrives for the move-out inspection. Move-in damages are compared to the state of the property now.

What appears to be the normal tear and wear of renting for a year can turn into deductions from a security deposit. And Jim McGillivray, IU Student Legal Services (SLS) staff attorney, says the definition of the normal wear and tear is broad.

"What we try to argue in court is that ordinary wear and tear is the sort of depreciation you would expect from that (type) of tenant and the number of tenants living in the premise for a year," he explains. "But what could look like normal wear and tear to one landlord can look like damages to another."

Four years ago, President Bush outlined his vision for an “ownership society,” a society where, “if you own something, you have a vital stake in the future of our country. The more ownership there is in America, the more vitality there is in America, and the more people have a vital stake in the future of this country.”

This “ownership society” would be one in which the individual, not the community, increasingly took title to everything. Success, property and credit would flow to those who deserved them, and away from those who didn’t.

In doing so, Bush told us, our nation would be better. More fragmented. Less homogeneous. But more market-oriented, more dynamic, more equitable in allocating to those who won.

If you haven’t heard already, we’re in big trouble. I’m not talking accidentally let the goldfish go down the drain trouble. I’m not talking backed the car out of the garage while the door was still shut trouble. I’m not even talking you committed a hit-and-run in a School Zone, and now your face is on TV, trouble.

I’m talking big trouble. Macro trouble. Makes the Great Depression look like a bounced check to Pizza Express trouble.

Four two years now, the nation’s housing bubble has been deflating. Starting somewhat slowly at first, it’s now plummeting to earth and opening up a black hole that has spread beyond just our shores and to every country on the planet.

A group of Brown County musicians are reaching out to their neighbors who struggle each day to put food on their tables.

The artists call themselves Brown County Musicians United to End Poverty. Their mission is "to gather musicians and other individuals interested in working together for the common cause of ending poverty in Brown County. ... Our ultimate goal is to help our impoverished neighbors unloose the shackles of poverty and experience hope."

Proceeds from the sale of their new, all-original-music CD It’s Not Just a Dream -- and from the release concert in Nashville the first weekend in October -- will benefit Mother's Cupboard Community Kitchen in Brown County (not to be confused with Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, the Bloomington food pantry).

It’s hard to think of a tragedy worse than that which befell Elena Veach last week. A talented teacher and wife of Bloomington’s New Tech High School principle Alan Veach, Elena, just 27, fell after giving birth to her son. A victim of genetics gone bad, Elena passed from a congenital heart defect; too soon, and too tragic.

But not without a legacy. For now Elena’s family is struggling to raise funds for which to pay her posthumous medical bills. Bills accrued during her life, due now that it’s over and because it’s over.

A bake sale of sorts, for the past health needs of a vibrant individual. Covering the obligations that she, in death, was forced to lay on the feet of her survivors. Here, in the most prosperous nation on earth.

When the friend John Collins was staying with told him he was moving across the country, Collins was forced to find a new place to live. His answer came from one of many faith-based organizations in town that serve the impoverished, Backstreet Missions.

"My brother stayed here once and told me a little about it," Collins explained. "I went to the Shalom Center, and they mentioned something about it too, so I came out here, and they took me in."

Backstreet Missions is a Christian-based organization dedicated to helping those in need. With a variety of programs and services, the mission has served Bloomington for 13 years.

Lesbianism is not contagious. Seriously, you can share a friendship, work space, recreational activities, even a church pew with a lesbian or gay, bisexual or transgender person, and it will in no way effect your own personal gender identity or sexual orientation.

You don’t need a vaccine to prevent contamination, and you might even build up a natural immunity to homophobia by freely associating outside your own comfort zone and accepting the fact that love and its attractions are more than a political statement.

We recognize your possible fear that folks might define you by your association and think you are a lesbian too (gasp!), but we don’t buy that “birds of a feather” argument. If one so easily became who they associate with then we would all become one another and there would be no distinction.

Besides, we humans are supposed to be defined by so much more than our procreative genitalia. Not to mention that we could learn from one another.