Vote for Joe

I have jumped ahead a couple entries here. (Will catch up on the rest of the last week soon)…     At St. Mary’s Church in Athens, Tennessee, this morning we saw the remnants of a “Cardboard City” that was set up in solidarity with the homeless.   We learned that for two nights youth here slept outside in order to increase their empathy for the homeless.     Later on WYXI Radio in Athens, I told host Bob Ketchersid that I would hope this kind of empathy would translate to sacrifice.   That is, as president  (and as a presidential candidate) I’d ask people to cut back considerably on consumer purchases, on entertainment… and put the savings in a fund for the homeless.   This, in part, would mean trying to turn a blind eye to modern advertising.   We are so awash in “urgent” messages to get the the new this, or the improved that, or  yet more of  something we already have… that we’ve been brainwashed to believe many of these things are necessities, when in fact, they are in no way necessities.   And in all this, we keep pampering ourselves — while little children and adults sleep, not in new sleeping bags on the soft grass at St. Mary’s, but  under dirty blankets on  the asphalt alley ways of Cleveland, Los Angeles, Atlanta…     Note:   Later in the morning, I told a reporter from the Daily Post Athenian that beyond  money  for the homeless, our family has set aside a bedroom as a “Christ Room” for the homeless in the inner city of Cleveland.   We could end homelessness in this country, if we were serious about ending homelessness in this country.   Sadly,  most of us are way  more concerned about ourselves.   And our actions (consumer buying patterns) show this, in spades.

I gave a talk at the “House of Prayer” in St. Augustine, Florida, last week.   The audience, for the most part, seemed relatively well off socio-economically.   I said billions of people in the Third World were either homeless, or living in cobbled together shacks with no running water, no electricity, little food, virtually no medicine…   What’s more, 24,000 of these people starve to death every day.   I said I didn’t know what the town of Nineveh was doing before Jonah walked through it, but I doubted it was worse than letting 24,000 people starve to death every day.   And that’s exactly what we do as we continue on with our relatively “well off” lifestyles in America in the face of this worldwide abject poverty…   The prayer group leader, Gary Gornick, then did a teaching he had planned for the evening.   He said the talk would, indeed, dove tail with what I had said.   Gornick said if someone has a proclivity to do “wicked things,” they have a strong tendency to  insulate themselves  with people of “like minds.”   As a result, seldom — if ever — are you confronted.   Extrapolated out, if I want to  remain unfettered by my  comfortable First World lifestyle in the face of all this horrendous Third World suffering, I’ll move into, say, a sub-development, church community, etc., of “like minded” people where stock portfolios, lawn care and Florida Gator football are the predominant topics of conversation.   Not Third World poverty, and what  one is  trying to do to help end it.   Note:   Mr. Gornick said:   “We’re going to be judged on what we do.”   I said I  thought the Ninevites “sack cloth thing” wasn’t just about dressing down, but rather about turning from their sinful, gluttonous lifestyles.   And doubting the Gap was going to come up with a “Sack Cloth Fashion Line,” wouldn’t it be about cutting back our lifestyle in America as well?   Of course it would.  

In Brunswick, Georgia, we researched the Hostel in the Forest.   Tom Dennard gave us an extensive tour.   He is the founder of the Hostel and  also teaches a Backpacking Class at Coastal Georgia Community College.   The Hostel in the Forest is a series of small, geodesic dome huts and “tree-houses.”   There is no heating or air conditioning.   There are extensive gardening plots,  complete with  solar panels to help pump water to the gardens.   The Hostel has recycling bins for clear glass, green glass, brown glass, paper, cardboard… and if it’s a material that can’t be cycled, it goes in: “The Can of Shame.”   Dennard noted that the Hostel is big on “reduce, reuse and recycle,” with a strong emphasis on “reduce.”   During the tour, Dennard noted that the area used to be somewhat swampy, but for the past five years there’s been a tremendous drought here and all of it is currently dry.   “Global warming,” he lamented.   The Hostel hosts regular environmental education workshops.   Note:   It’s so crucial to have this environmental mindset from house to house in America these days in the face of climate change.   We must become a Society of Conservers rather than a Society of Consumers.

In light of the last entry about America’s tremendously dangerous transportation infra-structure…   I was interviewed by Anneli Sundquist last week.   Ms. Sundquist is a free-lance journalist from Sweden and regularly travels the world.   After the interview, she told me that she has been in dangerous places in many countries, but she had never feared for her life more than — when she drove the Interstate from Brunswick, Georgia, to Savannah, Georgia.   She said with packs of cars speeding along at an extremely “fast” clip, cars and trucks rapidly changing lanes (our standard highway driving fare), she felt in danger the whole drive north.   Yet, I couldn’t help but think, we’ve come to accept this crazy, fast-paced driving mileau because, simply, we’ve been conditioned (in increments of 5 mph more at a time) over the past several decades (despite all the increased fatalities, maiming, and so on).   We are so conditioned, in fact, that  seldom, if ever,  would ever question it — it would take an outsider.   What’s more, when I asked Ms. Sundqvist what she thought of America, she said it’s like viewing “a big car crash.”   That is, she said, even though the crash is a mangled jumble you know you shouldn’t slow down to look at, there’s something inside of you that’s “fascinated” with it.   What Ms. Sundqvist construes as the mangled jumble, is: our, again,  high-speed driving patterns; the rapid fire rate that advertisements (tv, radio, billboards…) come at us to buy so many, and often absurd, things; the breakneck pace of business in general; fast food, drive-thru expresso… I couldn’t help but think, after my conversation with Ms. Sundqvist, that  European travel agents  could capitalize on this:   “Fly to America to see the ‘Big Car Crash!   And  we’re not talking NASCAR…”                                                                                                                                  

On our journey down Rte. 19 in Georgia, we stumped in the small town of Smithville, where a couple men  told me  there was no longer a grocery store here because bigger ones have gone up in more centralized towns.   So people in Smithville have to now drive aways, and in turn, global warming  increases…   In Albany, Georgia, we were interviewed by Fox News and Channel 10 News.   The reporter for Channel 10 News asked, rather skeptically, if it would be good to have just an “average” citizen in the Whitehouse.   I said with the “highly educated” (Harvard, Yale…) brain trust that is currently in D.C. in general, we are in an ill-begotten war, have an almost 11 trillion dollar National Debt, some 46 million people don’t have healthcare insurance, global warming is increasing at an alarming rate, children sleep on inner city streets… Maybe  people we currently consider “highly educated,” are, in fact,  tremendously short on common sense, social justice awareness and environmental stewardship.    And in all that, aren’t  we falling down (priority wise)  on what people really need to be “educated” in.   Black History Month Note:   After the interviews, we toured Albany’s Civil Rights Museum.   The 1961 protests against segregation here (dubbed the “Albany Movement”), proceeded the protests in Selma and Montgomery.   Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came here to stand in solidarity.   And it was the lessons learned here that helped define the Civil Right’s strategies going into Alabama.   While Blacks weren’t initially successful here in reversing segregation, by March of 1963, Albany’s Segregation Laws were finally removed.   “Victory is not to the swift…”   Dr. King had said… I also interviewed Albany’s Lula Porter, 73.   She marched in protest in 1961 as a young black woman.   It took tremendous courage, because many blacks went to jail.   And in jail sometimes in the South —  blacks were never heard from again.   Ms. Porter pointed out that while Segregation Laws have changed, we still have a long way to go.   Because, for instance, there are still so many all white churches, all black churches, all white neighborhoods, all black neighborhoods.   “We need to get together, we need to reason together,” she Ms. Porter said.