In downtown Wellington, Ohio, we spotted two long distance cyclists. Larry Albert and Gary Buck were heading 1,100 miles from Painseville, Ohio to Memphis, Tennessee. Last year they crossed America on bicycles. Very affable guys, they used to work together and are now retired. They like to cycle for fitness, for education (they did the Louis & Clark Trail last year), and, well, “…because it’s there,” said Gary. We, in turn, passed on some literature to the guys and told them about a 2,000 mile bicycle tour we did through the Midwest during Campaign 2000. Note: To follow Larry and Gary’s travels, go to www.crazyguyonabike.com/LarryA
5/30/07
“average JoeOhio Tour” cont.: We have come to Wellington, Ohio, home of Archibald McNeil Willard. He was an unknown, but inspired, wagon painter who did the famous “Spirit of ’76” painting. (And there is a Spirit of ’76 Museum downtown here.)… Wellington is also the home of Don and Norma Downs, who are ‘inspired’ in their own right. They have an apitherapy ministry at their home in the country. Wonderful people. Apitherapy is about the nutritional and medicinal aspects of anything having to do with bees (pollen, honey, propylis, venom…) That’s right, venom. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, people come from all over the northern part of the state to get, well, stung. People with arthritis, with depression, with paralysis, and a variety of other ailments, submit to the stingings. Bee venom, said Don (who has been written up in a number of local newspapers), has great curative properties. So much so, there is an American Apitherapy Society. The evening we were here, groups of people from at least a 100-mile radius came to get stung and pick up supplies of honey, pollen and so on. This has been our second stop at the Downs, and the testimonies of the people who come here are pretty pheonmenal.
5/28/07
“average JoeOhio” Tour: We stumped in Oberlin, Ohio, during Commencement Weekend at Oberlin College. People from across the country were here for the ceremonies. A physician from Chicago told me he’d like to see a move toward a National Health Care System because so much money gets lost in advertising, insurance paper work, extraneous administrative costs… On a tour in 2005, an Auburn University “Healthcare Economist” professor told me these costs add up to almost one-third of healthcare costs in America… Commencement Speaker Connie Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, exhortedd students to make a difference by treating those who much of the society considers “nobodies” (waitresses, car valets, maids…) with more respect. She said this would include tipping better, salutaions of “Sir or ‘Mam,’ and so on. I couldn’t help but think a more apt social justice message for these highly privileged grads would be to exhort them to stridently work to change the system so, say, the migrant worker picking tomatoes is compensated the same as the stock broker pushing paper. Often, privilege merely begets privilege. But to assuage our conscience, we’ll tip better every once in awhile.
5/23/07
In solidarity, I sat in with a group of farmers during a Statehouse meeting in Columbus, Ohio, yesterday. These farmers tout the tremendous nutritional value of raw milk — as opposed to milk that is pastuerized. They explain that when milk is pastuerized, the heating process kills off a significant portion of the nutrients. Selling raw milk in Ohio, however, is currently illegal. Yet it is legal for family members on a farm to consume raw milk. And in recent years “herd share” programs have developed as a form of Community Sponsored Agriculture. People buy “shares” in a farmer’s cows, and as a result have access to raw milk from those cows as well. A representative from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources explained during the meeting that new Ohio Governor Ted Strickland grew up on a farm drinking raw milk and is supportive of the herd share programs. What’s more, these farmers have started a “Graziers Association” in Ohio to inspire more farmers to get involved with producing raw milk. They believe as this happens, the climate toward raw milk will change in kind. Note: These farmers’ cows are grass fed and most do everything on the farm organically. It is, indeed, environmental stewardship at it’s best. Professor Wayne Feister, who is on the faculty for the Ohio State University Medical School, attended the meeting. He said it is an irony that smoking cigarettes (with all their attendant health risks) is legal, but raw milk for mass consumption in Ohio is not… To learn more, go to www.theotherrawmilk.com
5/16/07
The “average JoeOhio Tour” continues to unfold. Leaving Cleveland, our Jonathan, 4, and myself stumped, unannounced, at a sidewalk cafe called Heck’s. ‘Heck,’ why not (sorry). One man said Jonathan was, indeed, a “chip off the old block.” In Westlake, Ohio, I met with the owner of Lehman’s Deli. She put a flyer and bumper sticker on the wall. During our conversation, she said she had relatives on the Bayou of Louisiana. I told her that after a tour there last year (post Hurricane Rita), we learned people on the Bayou scrambled pleasure and fishing boats to rescue people from their homes right after the hurricane. “We take care of our own down here,” one man told me. Note: For all you supporters out there interested in promoting true social justice, peace, a consistent life ethic and environmental stewardship through a presidential candidate’s voice — we need donations to keep on. The supportive e-mails are great, but maybe it’s time to put your money where your mouth is. Schriner Election Committee, 2100 W. 38th St., Cleveland, Ohio.
5/15/07
The situation in Darfur grows worse. Some 20 people are being killed there every hour now. We, as a nation (and as a world), have to respond. And respond now. We have just posted a policy paper on Darfur that spells out actions Americans can take to impact the atrocity.
5/14/07
We have launched on yet another campaign tour of Ohio. Our first stop was South Cleveland where we talked with peace activist Tim Musser. He told us he was tremendously impacted by the writings of Dorothy Day. I, in turn, was impacted by a May 2007 National Geographic article in the Musser home about the “Jamestown Settlement,” which marked it’s 400th anniversary this last weekend. Amidst the patriotic hoopla of the weekend celebration in Virginia, perhaps a few things got lost. For instance, the National Geographic article noted that the Jamestown settlement was, basically, a ‘venture capital’ endeavor. The settlers were subsidized to look for gold and precious metals. Not finding these, they turned to growing tobacco — which became a huge cash crop driven by English demand. A couple problems: Tobacco fueled an addiction for more and more land. And tobacco also has an almost “unique ability to suck the life out of the soil,” according to Leanne Dubois, the agriculture extension agent in James City County… So we kept clear cutting more and more forest and sucked more and more land lifeless at a breakneck pace. Later we started using toxic farm chemicals that sucked more and more life out of the soil. Added to this, with urbanization we paved over a lot of soil and lawn chemicals sucked more and more life out of the soil as well. And now urban sprawl is doing this to more and more rural land… Can anyone see a pattern here? This is not about sustainability and the “common good.” Common sense would say: This just continues to be about money.
5/10/07
I interviewed Bernie Meyer this week. He bears a striking resemblence to India’s late Mhatma Gandhi. And for the past five years, Meyer has talked to college groups, civic groups, churches… about Gandhi and his teachings (white shawl, sandals, the whole thing). Meyer said Gandhi wore the white shawl to stand in solidarity with the poor. And Meyer points out that there are some 1.8 billion people worldwide living in abject poverty on $2, or less, a day. Meyer also tells groups that if Americans lived simply, the way Gandhi did, this would free up a tremendous amount of resources for people who don’t even have the basics in food, shelter and medicine. Note: I was just told this morning by a woman who has been researching “weddings in America,” that the average U.S. wedding cost is now at: $24,900. Meanwhile, scores of Third World children starve to death — daily. The spiritual disconnect in this country is staggering.
5/7/07
Americans across the board seem to want to hear politicians talk tough on terrorism. So to oblige, our campaign will too. And we have recently posted a position on terrorism where we primarily take to task: American forms of terrorism. And there are many. Note: A peace activist friend of ours, Tim Musser, stopped by the other day on his bicycle. The bicycle had a sticker that said: “A quiet protest against the oil wars.”
5/4/07
I just read a review of a new book titled Boomsday. The review said it was a “wickedly funny” fictitious book about the 77 million “Baby Boomers” moving into retirement — by stepping aside and committing mass suicide… Fiction, sometimes, is a predictor of the future. Space travel. In a society that is paying less and less attention (or respect) to the elderly, it’s not much of a stretch to think we’re going to see more and more euthanasia (assisted suicide) in that population. Oregon. And who knows where it will go from there. It is our campaign’s belief that we should be going in the other direction. That is, the elderly must once again be esteemed and learned from, as it was in the days of old in this society and as it continues to be in other cultures. To this end, we have just significantly updated our position on Social Security to provide a blue print for this.