I’m proud to announce that today my wife Ann is in Madison, Wisconsin, to help accept the state superintendent’s Friend of Education award on behalf of Project 16:49. Ann works as the homeless student liaison for the School District of Janesville, and she and Robin Stuht — her counterpart in Beloit — have been working tirelessly over the past couple years to set up a shelter for homeless teens in Rock County. Many homeless children can enter a shelter with their family, but a large number of homeless teens don’t have that option. They’re not yet old enough to enter a shelter for adults, so they have zero places to go.

To help raise awareness about this problem, filmmaker Rubin Burgos created a documentary about three local homeless teens. He called it Sixteen Forty-Nine after the numbers of hours and minutes a child has to wait between leaving the safe haven of a school in the afternoon and returning the next morning. Ann and Robin took up that banner, naming their effort Project 16:49, and they’ve been showing this moving film all around the area to help drum up support ever since.

This pays off in all sorts of ways, not just raising funds for the shelter itself but also motivating people to chip in as best they can. Earlier this month, for instance, the staff of the Mercy Health Mall teamed up to donate backpacks full of school and personal supplies for Janesville’s homeless teens. (That’s them in the photo. Ann’s the one in the blue dress in the middle.)

Today, State Superintendent Tony Evers is recognizing Project 16:49′s efforts (along with eight others) in a ceremony at the state capitol, and Ann and Robin are there to accept the award. Read the official press release, and if you can manage it, visit the Project 16:49 website to see if there’s something you can do to help.

I spend my days entertaining people, which I love, but my wife and her friends are out there on the front lines every day, working hard to help people in the worst need. I’m glad the state superintendent stood up to recognize and endorse all their hard work.

I had a wonderful, jam-packed weekend, most of which was spent celebrating the ninth birthday of my quadruplet kids: Pat, Nick, Ken, and Helen. It started off Friday right after school with a sleepover party with four of their friends and their big brother Marty, who was nursing a side pain that landed us in the ER on Thursday. (He’s fine now, thanks.) This involved pizza, playing outside in the record-breaking heat (94F), making s’mores over an open fire, and camping out in the backyard.

The kids and their guests had a wonderful, wild time, staying up past midnight and then getting up at the crack of dawn. We dined on donuts and started playing again until the guests’ parents came to collect them, except for one boy who plays on the quads’ soccer team. I coached the quads’ last soccer game at 11:30 AM, and we all came home to collapse for a couple hours before heading out to a friend’s pool party, at which there was another cake with the quads’ names on it too.

Yesterday—the quads’ actual birthday—we spent relaxing and then visiting the kids’ big present: our new dog. His name’s Simon, a one-year-old Lakeland terrier who had been destined to be a service dog but will wind up with us soon instead.

It struck me hard that at nine years old my little ones are now halfway through their journey to adulthood and eventually leaving our home. Marty may only be here for another six years himself. It’s been such a wild and crazy near-decade with the quads that I can barely imagine what the next nine years have in store for us, but I know that they’ll go by in the same kind of flash: a mad scramble while you’re in it that seems to have passed by in a blink when it’s done.

One of the best parts of being a freelancer is that I get to set my own schedule and spend so much time with my kids, to be there for them and with them not only when they need me but even when they’d just like me around. Sometimes that might mean getting a bit less work done at the moment, but when they’re grown and gone, how much would I be willing to pay to have that time with them back? Far more than I might be losing out on now, I’m sure.

I’m determined to savor every last one of these moments with them that I can. In that way, this weekend, as brutally fun as it may have been, was a huge success.

If you’re anywhere near Beloit this weekend, come out to the Beloit Film Festival for the premiere of Sixteen Forty-Nine. This documentary by Ruben Burgos highlights the issue of homeless teens in Rock County, and my wife Ann — who’s the homeless student liaison for the School District of Janesville — is interviewed about the situation in the film. It will show twice during the festival:

• February 18 at 7:30 PM, at the Eclipse Center in Beloit
• February 20 at 2:00 PM, at the Pontiac Convention Center in Janesville

Tickets for both shows are on sale now. Here’s the trailer for the film here to give you a sample of what it’s all about.

My wife Ann is one of the leaders of Project 16:49, an effort to set up a shelter for homeless teens here in Rock County, Wisconsin. One of their biggest tools for drawing the public’s attention to this problem has been a documentary about three such teens, filmed right here in Beloit by Ruben Burgos. Ann and the other members of Project 16:49 have been showing the film privately to various people and groups in the area, but soon you’ll be able to see it too.

The public premiere of SIXTEEN FORTY-NINE is slated for the Beloit International Film Festival, coming up the weekend of February 18–20. It will show twice during the festival:

• February 18 at 7:30 PM, at the Eclipse Center in Beloit
• February 20 at 2:00 PM, at the Pontiac Convention Center in Janesville

Tickets for both shows are on sale now. Please come out, witness this inspirational film, and show your support. I hope to see you there!

Tonight, look for an interview with my wife Ann on Channel 15 News out of Madison, Wisconsin. They came out to our house this afternoon to ask her about Project 16:49 and the benefit concert being held for it this weekend. Ann and Ruben Burgos (the director of Sixteen Forty-Nine) also appeared on WCLO AM radio this morning, and you can listen to a recording of the show online.

The TV interview took place in my office while I chatted in the kitchen with the three homeless teens who are the subject of Ruben’s documentary. If/once that shows up online, I’ll post a link to it. That way you can learn more about Ann’s work and see where I work at the same time. If you get Madison TV stations, though, be sure to tune in tonight. And if you’re around this weekend, be sure to join us at the benefit for some great music and food for an excellent cause.

Update: Turns out the full TV piece will air in mid-February, near to the time that Sixteen Forty-Nine will appear at the Beloit International Film Festival. There may still be a mention of the benefit concert tonight.

My wife Ann is the homeless student liaison for the School District of Janesville, a city about 15 miles north of us. As part of that, she’s involved with an effort to set up a shelter for homeless teens, an effort called Project 16:49. An article in yesterday’s Beloit Daily News covers one part of the fundraising initiative: a benefit concert to be held at the Marine Corps League on January 29. If you’re in the area and would like to help out, be sure to attend. Besides all the music, there’s a raffle with some cool prizes too. (If you’re on Facebook, you can find details there too.)

Of course, if you’re not going to be around or just don’t care for such events, you can still donate to the cause. I spent a good chunk of my weekend setting up a website for Project 16:49. It now comes with a bright and shiny “Donate” button, so please chip in if you can.

Project 16:49 gets its name from Sixteen Forty-Nine, a documentary created by local director R. E. Burgos that tells the story of three homeless teens here in Beloit. It’s both heartbreaking and motivating at the same time. Ann and her partners at Project 16:49 have been showing the film to various groups around the area, and it never fails to move everyone who sees it.

Sixteen Forty-Nine‘s next public showing is at the Beloit International Film Festival, the weekend of February 17–20. If you can make it, it’s well worth the effort.

So, where does that odd title come from? For a homeless teen, being in school is often the safest and best part of their day. Getting through the rest of the day is the long slog, wondering where they’re going to go, what they can find to eat, and where they’re going to sleep. From the moment they leave school one night and return the next morning, it’s sixteen hours and forty-nine minutes.

That's Ken's head, then Ann and Helen. Marty's in the gold shirt, next to Nick.

Yesterday, Ann and I took the kids to Great America, along with their uncle Nick Kolinsky, who was down for a long weekend. The kids had each earned a free ticket to the park through a reading program at school, so it didn’t cost us much at all, and they always have a wonderful time there. Last year, Nick and Helen were just a bit too short to get on some of the bigger rides, but this time around they cleared that hurdle.

This year, we had some extra excitement. We got stuck on two of the rides.

The first was the Whizzer, which has been there since I was a kid. When we got near the top of the first drop, the coaster froze, and the clouds that had been mumbling about rain all morning finally started to make good on their implied threat. A staffer came up to reassure us and ask us to stay in our seats. About ten minutes later a woman with a tool belt and a man in a tie joined him. They explained the situation to us, then each grabbed on to the side of one of the coaster’s cars and gave us a push. The coaster’s motor finally kicked in then and brought us to the top and finally past the point of no return.

It was a great ride, and after we crawled out of the cars, the man in the tie gave each of us a coupon that would let us skip the line for any one ride. Pat was annoyed because he and his uncle Nick had been waiting to get on the first car, so they missed out on all the excitement.

Later in the day, we tried to ride the Giant Drop, a ride that hauls you up into the air on a pole and drops you into a second or so of freefall. This time, the ride got stuck before it even started going up. Unfortunately, the restraints were stuck too, and we had to wait ten minutes or so for someone to come let us out.

All we could do was laugh — and collect another line-jumping coupon.

Yesterday, the Beloit Daily News ran an article on the Welty Environmental Center, a great place out on the edge of town here that’s dedicated to teaching people (especially kids) about nature. Ann takes the kids out there regularly in the summer for various classes and activities, and reporter Daniel Thompson showed up while they were there. Read the article to see what Ann has to say about the place, and if you cock your head the right way and peer at the photo that accompanies the text, you might see Patrick in the blue shirt on the left and Nicholas in the white shirt on the right.

If it seems like it’s been a bit quiet around here, that’s because I haven’t been around. I spent most of the last two weeks on one of those classic family road trips that American families insist on inflicting upon themselves every summer they can. (Cue up Lindsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road” from National Lampoon’s Vacation.)

Ann and I packed the kids into the minivan for a two-day drive out to Colorado, where we spent a night at the house of my cousin Tim Kuhn, a professor at the University of Colorado. He was off at a conference in Singapore, but his wife Sophia and their two young kids — plus his mother, my Aunt Joan — took great care of us.

From there, we spent four nights camping out in Rocky Mountain National Park, our first time in a (very large) tent with the entire family. We wandered and hiked all around the place, including a drive to Grant Lake and back by way of the Trail Ridge Road, which winds up to a height of over 12,000 feet. On the way back up the Trail Ridge, which was under re-construction at the time, we ran into a thunderstorm during which we spotted lightning flashing below us. You might still be able to see the marks of my grip on the steering wheel.

While there, we saw deer, moose, mountain goats, lots of birds, and herds of elk. We cooked hot dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches, and burnt way too many marshmallows making s’mores. We spent one rainy day at the YMCA of the Rockies, which turns out to as big as a small town all by itself.

Every night, after everyone else was in bed, I sat at the picnic table and worked on my latest short story, which should be in an upcoming anthology this fall or winter. Working on a vacation is never fun, but it’s the freelancer’s lot. Still, tapping away at my keyboard under a full moon while elk cries echo off the surrounding mountainsides reminds me why I prefer to work for myself.

On the way back, we stopped to visit with Tim for a bit, who’d gotten back from his conference, and with his father, my Uncle Dick, who’d come out to help as well. Then we raced off to Kansas to stay with Ann’s Uncle Marty and Aunt Jan. While there, we got to visit with a couple of her cousins (Kristi and Julie) and see her 98-year-old grandmother too.

I think I’m still recovering from the trip, but we all had a fantastic time. We’re already making plans for where we might go next summer, but in the meantime we’re determined to make the most of what’s left of this one.

Lincoln Stollard, who I met at the GAMA Trade Show a few years back, just told me that he’s completed work on a book called The Learning Project. In it, Lincoln interviews dozens of people in different fields to discover different ways in which people learn. It’s aimed at teenagers, to show them that there are all sorts of different ways to become educated about anything, but anyone curious about such things should enjoy it. Lincoln’s looking for a publisher for a dead-tree version of the book, but you can enjoy his work online right now for free.

Lincoln interviewed me as one of the three writers profiled in the book. He caught me on the tail end of an exhausting, fun-filled show (aren’t they all?), and I was probably a bit more scattered and candid than normal. If you’d like to know about me and how I got here, his interview of me is an excellent place to start.