Vote for Joe

“average JoeOhio” our cont:   We traveled to Clyde, Ohio,  where we were introduced at Mass at St. Mary’s Church.   We then headed to Green Springs, Ohio (pop. 1,000), where we stumped in the downtown area.   I got in a discussion with a group of guys at a motorcyle shop there.   Ron Conn told me that while he laments the big box stores like Wal Mart driving the small town businesses out; he sympathizes with those who shop at Wal Mart because many jobs these days don’t pay that much anymore.   “It’s a Catch 22,” he said.   We walked about  Green Springs  passing out campaign information and putting up flyers in all the stores, that were left…   We then headed to Fremont where there was a small concert on the Village Green.   I walked about passing out more flyers, then the kids and I got into a nearby pick-up football game.   Our Jonathon, 4, racked up ‘minus 12 yards’ on his three rather improvised runs.   And while the statistic looked bad (the Cleveland Brown’s running backs’ statistics  notwithstanding) —  Jonathon had a tremendous amount of fun doing it.

We spent the past five days in Cleveland catching up on paper work.   To earn some personal income while we were back home, I also scraped a house up the street in preparation for painting.   Some of it was lead paint, and I had to take a lot of precautions with a respirator mask and in the disposal of the paint chips themselves.   Like has happened so often in our “Industrial Age,” we have sped ahead with the lates innovation (lead, DDT, carbon dioxide emission…), only to find — in tragic retrospect — that these ‘innovations’  are tremendously toxic.   We would do well to follow the Amish of giving things time and prayerful discernment (not to mention much more thorough testing) before we adopted the latest ‘innovation.’   Note:   Along these lines… We are forever ‘racing for a cure.’   Wouldn’t it make sense, common sense, to: stop using stuff that causes cancer in the first place!?

Average JoeOhio Tour cont:   We went to Conneaut in the Northeast tip of Ohio.   I gave a talk at St. Francis Cabrini Church after mass, exhorting the congregation to get more involved with Pro-life work.   “Evil flourishes when good people do nothing,” I quoted… I then took the boys to watch part of a Conneaut High School football practice on a quite muggy morning…   From here we went to WOWW Radio where Marty Landon not only remembered me from the last stop here some three years ago, but he still had our button!   “I wrote you in (Campaign 2004),” he said.   We assured him we were going to get on the ballot this time… From here, we did a whistle stop event on the corner of Broad St. and Rte. 20.   Reporter Mark Todd of the Ashtabula Star Beacon asked me what our plans were for Ohio.   I said we wanted to win Ohio.   “Wouldn’t that be the feel good story of Campaign 2008,” he smiled.   A reporter (“Pastor Trudy”) for Conneaut’s The Courrier newsaper   was also at the event.   I told her our campaign hinged on common sense and gospel values…   After the event, I took the staff (our family) to the nearby State Street Diner.   Great food and even better stuff  on the wall.   Between all kinds of ’50s memorabilia, was a plaque that said:   “Teenagers!   Tired of being hassled by your stupid parents?   Act Now!   Move out.   Get a job. Pay your own bills.   While you still know everything.”      The diner’s owner, Mark,  said he’d put a bumper sticker on his car “…as long as you are Pro-Life.”   I told him I was and he immediately went to the parking lot…   I then talked to Mike Morgan, who owns a pizza place in town.      He said he is concerned about  mounting home heating costs and wondered if there wasn’t a way to harvest some of the  thousands of tons of fallen material on forest floors across  America.   His ideas is to compost this and  turn it into slow burning pellets for home heating.   (While I wouldn’t agree with this for old growth forests, because the composting of this material rejuvinates the soil; I wouldn’t be opposed to a  pilot project to harvest some (let’s say one-third) of this material from tree farms.   Tree farms that our administration would promote nationwide to provide domestic lumber and more foilage to help curb global warming…   Heading out of Conneaut, we stopped to  talk to an older couple  from New Hampshire who were on a tandem.   They had just finished a 270 mile bicycle tour of an  Underground Railroad route as part of an Adventure Cycle Tour.   On our last campaign tour, we had followed an Underground Railroad Route from Georgia to Ohio…   We then headed into Cleveland where we stood in solidarity with the “Missionaries to the  Pre-Born.”   They were in the middle of a tour of Ohio and stand at street corners holding tremendously graphic (and big) signs  of close-up pictures of dismembered, aborted babies.   Their literature says that because modern media won’t show this horrific truth, there has to be some way for the American people to see, graphically, what abortion really is.   One woman brushed by me as I tried to hand her some literature.   She said:   “It’s more complex than this.”   What’s more complex, I believe,  is the set of sophisticated rationalizations we’ve developed to justify what is simply barbaric.   ‘A picture(s) is worth a thousand words’ on this one.   The event wound down about 6 p.m. after rush hour.   Our Sarah went on with the group to protest at another site, and I took the rest of the family back to our apartment in Cleveland to update this site and take care of some household stuff…   And another day in the life of an independent presidential candidate from Cleveland came to an end about 9:30.   Note:   I had joked (sort of) earlier in the day, that running for president was taking, oh, a little more time than we thought it would.

“average JoeOhio Tour” cont.:   We traveled north to Ashtabula, Ohio, where we met with Jane and Margo Stuart who own “Silver Sands” assisted living home for the elderly.   It is an assisted living home with a twist, or rather a discount.   St. Joseph’s Church here has  leased an old convent to  Jane and  Margo  for the past 20 years.   The cost per month to residents is about half of what an average assisted living facility would cost, said Jane.   What’s more, the care is ultra personal.   There are four full-time staff, several part-time staff ,and a number of people from St. Josephs who volunteer in various ways.   Another reason the cost is so reasonable is because Jane and Margo don’t take a salary, they look at it more as a ministry.   What’s more, they hospice the dying residents on site as well.   “We try to wrap them in love,” said Jane…   We then stopped in for a cup of coffee at “His Cup Cafe,” a Christian coffee house.   Rev. Jim Ekensten said he sees his coffee shop (and adjacent “Healing Room”) as a ministry.   People come from all over town for prayer, for coffee, for Bible studies…   Rev. Ekensten said people come for prayer with drug and alcohol problems, with depression problems, with physical ailments…   In turn, they are prayed over, connected with area churches, and so on.   Rev. Ekensten said people were healed in the New Testament, and there is no where in the Bible where it said that this wouldn’t continue to happen in the future.   Note: This day at His Cup Cafe, I got into a conversation with youth leader Joe Ford of the First Baptist Church in Ashtabula.   He said he was Pro-Life and questioned the rationale of being able to kill a baby in the womb.   He said this is no different than being able to “walk into my house and ‘off’ my eight-year-old.”

I talked at a Peace and Justice group at St. Patrick’s Church in Kent, Ohio, tonight.   Before the group, one man told me about falling off his bike and breaking some ribs.   Luckily he has healthcare insurance.   In Northfield, Minnesota, during Campaign 2004, I met a dishwasher who had fallen off his bike and broke a wrist.   He didn’t have healthcare insurance — and wrapped his wrist in: Duck Tape…   Tonight I learned St. Patrick’s group helps with Habitat for Humanity; collects hats, gloves and blankets for the poor; is helping sponsor the building of a health clinic in a village in Nigeria… What’s more, one of the group members has developed “Love Light” to provide meals for underprivileged children and they are developing an arm of the program to help children with physical and developmental difficulties.   And  St. Patrick’s group  also sponsors an “Over the Counter Drug Drive” to help low-income people with over the counter medication.   Note:   The next day I told Dave O’Brien, a reporter for the local paper here, that it is groups like St. Patrick’s that form the unsung, grassroots backbone of this country.