average JoeOhio Tour cont: We traveled to Westerville, Ohio, where we were introduced to the congregation at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church. During his talk, Deacon Tom Barford said we can get so caught up in our leisure and prejudicial thinking that we miss living out the gospel message day to day. For instance, our prejudice toward the poor keeps us thinking in terms of “hand out,” when we should be thinking: “hand up,” said Deacon Barford. And to extrapolate this out, it is poverty that sometimes leads to abortion. So as an example, some well off, suburban pro-Life people who are tight with their money when it comes to social justice — could well be contributing (by ommission) to inner city abortions. Note: I recently read in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper that leading child advocate Marian Writght Elderman said there is a “cradle to prison pipeline,” especially for Blacks growing up in the inner city. And, again, by our social justice ‘ommission,’ many are responsible. Several years ago, our family intentionally moved into the heart of Cleveland to impact some of this ‘pipeline.’ And we have just put up on this site one way we’re trying to do that.
6/25/07
average JoeOHio Tour cont.: We stumped in W.Salem, Ohio yesterday. During a Sunday Service at St. Stephen’s Church, a deacon said Mother Theresa was once asked to give the Commencement Address at Harvard. He said she stood up and said someone told her that there was a good possibility some of the students had cheated, at one time or another, during their college career. As some may well have had sex outside of marriage, or abortions, or… Her message to these esteemed grads: “Repent.” She got a standing ovation. While we didn’t get a standing ovation, people clapped when the priest at St. Stephens introduced us to the congregation after Mass. We then passed out information to people from all over northereastern Ohio who were in the church social hall next door for “Frank & Angie’s” 50th Wedding Anniversary. (What an anomally 50 years of marriage is anymore in this society.) During the party, I talked with one of the son-in-laws, Rick Spake. He said health care is a big topic with him and he wouldn’t be opposed to paying a bit more in taxes so there was universal health care coverage for everyone in America, like there is in, say, Canada… We then headed south to Ashland, Ohio, where I talked with Lee Wetherbee, who is an Associate Professor of Pastoral Counseling at the Ashland Theological Seminary. He said over the years he’s worked with a good number of children who have been diagnosed with ADHD. However, he explained he isn’t as quick to diagnose this because sometimes seeming ADHD features may merely be attributable to things like food allergies, or sugar… Later in the evening, we passed out flyers to a good number of people who had showed up for an outdoor concert by “The GeezeCats.” Great music, mostly from the ’50s. The lead singer started off by saying: “We’re going to take you back to a simpler time… That is, until Lee Harvey Oswald and John Lennon screwed it up.”
6/16/07
I went to a Bible Study at the Catholic Worker House in Cleveland. It was noted that Jesus was forever talking about bringing more social justice to the world. Someone noted that, often merely because of circumstances, someone grows up in a suburb, goes to college and makes all kinds of money pushing paper somewhere in an air conditioned office. Someone else, often merely because of circumstances, grows up in poverty and later works in a hot field picking tomatoes making, oh, considerably less. The privileged often support a system that favors the privileged. That simple. However, it was also noted during the Bible study, that nothing would keep, say, a white collar person from taking significant lifestyle cuts and just as significantly helping, say, a group of migrant worker families. I mean the Bible says if you have two coats (more than adequate: housing, food, access to health care…) and your brother, or sister, needs a coat (because of less than adequte: housing, food, access to health care…), well, you give them a coat for crying out loud. (“average Joe Biblical paraphrase.”) Note: Henri Nouwen in the Gennesse Diary writes that wealth can be a “blessing or a curse.” Translated: If you use the wealth primarily for yourself, it becomes a tremendous curse in the long run. (Read: eternity.)
6/15/07
We’re back in Cleveland for a few days and we have just posted a photo-essay/video about the campaign on this site. Stephen Piscura, a photo-journalism student at Kent State University, followed us around the better part of two days recently and captured some of the essence of our campaign, and of our life in the city. God has given Stephen quite a talent, as you will see…
6/14/07
We went to an Assemblies of God Wednesday night service in Bellevue, Ohio, last night. Pastor John Ginty and his wife Jodi told me they used to be involved with the “Open Air Ministry” in LA’s Watts area. Amidst alcohol, drugs, violence, police helicopter search lights… John would walk into this area at, among other times, midnight on a Saturday — playing guitar and talking about Jesus. “We were literally putting our lives on the line any time we went down to this project (Jordan Downs Project),” Jodi said. Jodi and John talked about gang members turning their lives over to Christ, children finding hope in their Children’s Ministry, and so on. The next day, druing a whistle-stop event, I told the editor of The Bellevue Gazette that the nation could use way more of this type of “holy boldness.” Note: Bellevue’s Brian Oldo has caught some of this ‘boldness’ when it comes to politics. He told me that he often gets behind political causes. His last was helping to push to raise the minimum wage in Ohio. He said he and a group of advocates went to various nearby towns (“Republican strongholds,” he said.) and stumped for the cause. It passed.
6/13/07
“average JoeOhio Tour cont.” I stumped early in the morning at Rosie’s Soup & Such Restaurant in Tiffin, Ohio. Great place! Owner Lori Brown was buzzing about serving patrons, and inbetween trips to the tables, was stirring something in a big pot on the stove. One of the customers, out of the blue, voluntarily got up and took over the stirring so Lori could wait on a new table. How’s that for small town camaraderie? …Later in the morning, we did a whistle-stop on the downtown square in Tiffin. A former Ethics professor from Heidleberg University here told me he didn’t think it was ‘ethical’ that our nuclear proliferation was sparking similar proliferation all over the globe. (What’s more, he said he and his wife regularly attend vigils for peace with a group of other peace activists on the square here.) As a spin off from this conversation, I told reporter Zachary Petit from Tiffin newspaper that the U.S. has nuclear missiles aimed all over the world. It’s only “common sense” that other countries like, oh I don’t know, Iran, North Korea… would be racing to develop their own nuclear weapons to protect themselves. Note: Tiffin attorney Martin Koop stopped by the whistle-stop. He told me he’s running for city council as an independent and is going door-to-door to get his message out. He told the Tiffin newspaper reporter that he liked how I was taking the “politics out of the politics.”
6/11/07
Average JoeOhio Tour cont.: While in Bluffton, we stayed on Dan and Cindy Basinger’s farm. Dan told me he’d recently read a story about a rock singer who converted to Christianity. He was sitting in a pew during one of his first church services and leaned over to a man next to him. “When are we going to do it?” He asked. “Do what?” The man replied. “Do what Jesus did (heal the sick, help the poor, set captives free…).” The man replied again. “Oh, we don’t necessarily do that. We just mostly talk about what Jesus did.” … We did a whistle-stop event in Findlay, Ohio. Andy Black approached me and said one of his main issues was the environment. (In regard to the environment, he recommended the book Animal Vegetables and Miracle “…about the ecology of local food and the toxic logic of industrual agriculture.”) I told him that the environment was one of our main issues as well. I then told a reporter from the Findlay Courier newspaper that we had researched wind turbine projects in California and Oklahoma. What’s more, this part of Ohio (with it’s flat land and steady breezes) would be excellent for similar non-polluting, wind energy projects. I said as president, I would also push for subsidies to get farmers to “plant a row of wind turbines” on their farms.
6/9/07
I gave a talk to a Men’s Fellowship Group at St. Charles Church in Lima. I said part of our platform calls for Americans, almost across the board, to cut back lifestyle-wise and help more in the Third World. Out of this group of guys, one had gone to Belize, South America, on a missions trip and others were involved with various outreach projects to help in Mexico. Besides the social justice aspect, another thing that struck me about the group was their earnest striving for a deeper sense of spirituality in their lives and in their families in general. They meet once every two weeks to discuss the gospels and to support each other in their faith walks. Note: After the talk this morning, I stumped at the Farmer’s Market (“Buy Local”) in Bluffton, Ohio. One vendor, Dena McClure from Lima, was selling homemade soap and witnessing at the same time. Her t-shirt said: “When Jesus said love your enemies, I think he probably meant don’t kill them.”
6/7/07
average JoeOhio Tour cont.: We stopped in Kenton, Ohio, where we talked with Charles Shotwell. He said if he were president, he’d withdraw the troops from Iraq now and put warships in International waters close to Iraq to monitor potential, future terrorist attacks toward our shores. This got me to thinking. Maybe it would make sense, common sense, to withdraw the U.S. troops from Iraq now and position our warships out in those International waters for another reason. With our troops gone, it would conclusively show whether the insurgents would back off, or not. What’s more, it would conclusively show whether our exit would plunge the nation into civil war, or not. If these situations got worse, we could always send the troops back in to quell some of the escalation. But how can we definitively know, either way — if we don’t try. Note: Mr. Shotwell also told me he is a staunch gun proponent. And with a name like “Shotwell,” well, is there any wonder?
6/5/07
“average JoeOhio Tour” cont: In Morrow County, we visited the town of Cardington where we passed out campaign info at a youth league baseball game, then we walked about the town passing out info as well. Afterward we went to Suz-e-q’s (“It’s not you’re mama’s home cooking.“) for a burger. I put a flyer on the bulletin board and wrote: “Suz-e-q I love you!” Once again, we’re doing this without a paid PR consulting staff, or anything… We then went to Mt. Gilead, Ohio, hometown of Warren Harding, the 29th president of the U.S. We stumped at Sames & Cook Coffee Shop (great coffee!) in the downtown area. There I talked with Ralph Rapp, who is a retired math teacher. He told me he believes standardized testing is one of the biggest problems in education today. He said it discourages creativity on the part of the teachers to assess and teach to the needs of individual students. What’s more, he added that often information taught for the standardized tests is extraneous for many students. I told the Morrow County Sentinel that our education platform would line up with this as well. Note: While jogging through Mt. Gilead, we lost a bolt on our stroller. Joe at “Joe’s True Value Hardware” fixed it for free and then gave the kids some Tootsie Rolls and our dog a doggie treat. I just love small towns.