Catching up on the last couple weeks… Late at night, I’m continuing to review the criteria, from state to state, to be an “official” write-in. Each state’s criteria is different and there is a jumble of protocol to meet (some difficult, some not so difficult)… During the days, I continue to write for two local newspapers — often about stories that tie into various parts of our platform, and so on. For instance, we’re staunch “religious liberty” supporters. And last week, I covered a ‘town square’ prayer vigil for a young girl who had been Life Flighted to a Toledo hospital the night before and was in critical condition. Christians from around the town gathered, prayed and read from the Bible. It was a heartening display of Christian solidarity. [The girl was an active youth group member at a local Assembly of God church.]… I wrote a column that expressed that defunding the police was “…left of ludicrous.” What we should be doing, I wrote, is ‘funding’ the police way more, in tandem with citizens stepping up way more with community initiatives to supplement local police work. In our travels, I researched citizen “Crime Alert” block programs, citizen Mediation programs to cut down on police work and court dockets, community “Crime Stopper” programs… I also researched an Indio, California CHIP (Citizens Helping Indio Police) program that had citizen volunteers driving about in squad cars handling minor things and calling in more significant things. This was helping cut down on police burn out, and helping make Indio safer in general. For more all this, see our position paper on crime… Also during this time, I wrote a story about a local Cars & Coffee (see photo) monthly gathering where classic cars sit side by side with, well, your more run of the mill local cars whose owners have, nonetheless, kept them up quite nicely as well. For instance, a classic 1957 Nash might be parked next to a 2007 Volvo. Our platform calls for Americans to value and maintain things much more, as opposed to the “planned obsolescence throw-away culture” that seems the predominant paradigm these days.