Thanksgiving Day: Last night our family went to a drop-in center for the homeless in Cleveland. While there, I met with Carl Cook who is the director of Project Save. It is an agency made up of former homeless people who now help those on the streets of Cleveland. Cook was homeless. He now directs the program, regularly speaks in schools and helps with a youth mentoring group. As I talked with him last night, I couldn’t help but think of the mythology of the phoenix: “Out of the ashes…” ‘Ohiocana’: A friend of mine, Paul Kapczuk, ran in Cleveland’s 25th annual, five-mile Turkey Trot. The numbers of his finishing time weren’t of particular note to Paul, however his race number was: 1620. The year, he pointed out, that the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. “Of all the numbers to get this day…,” Paul smiled.
11/19/06
Our family attended a prayer vigil/protest at an inner city church in Cleveland today. The protest is against the “School of the Americas” in Ft. Benning, Georgia, where it is purported that military from around the world are trained in abduction and torture techniques. The speaker was a man from Chile who was a political prisoner in that country in the 1970s. He said he was regularly tortured. He also said if it wasn’t for Amnesty International, he doubted he would have been released. Note: A couple years ago, I interviewed a Catholic high school teacher in Ocala, Florida, who was starting an Amnesty International Club at his school to raise student awareness about international atrocity.
11/18/06
I campaigned in Twinsburg, Ohio, today, passing out flyers, talking to people. One man said he lived in nearby Remindersville, Ohio. I told him to ‘remind’ everyone there that I was running. (Sorry.) ‘Ohiocana’ Note: Remindersville is reported to be the smallest village in Ohio.
11/17/06
I wrote a letter to the editor of several rural Ohio newspapers this week explaining about a “church farm” that we’d researched in Neola, Iowa, during Campaign 2000. An area farmer there left his 400-acre farm to St. Patrick’s Church. Every year farmers, and other members of St. Pat’s, pitch in to farm the land (complete with a Fall Harvest Party). The profits go to the church, and to the area needy. The profit the year we were there was approximately $73,000. In an essay for Farming Magazine, I wrote this is truly “a gift that keeps on giving.” For more on our agriculture position in general… Note: Speaking of letters to the editor… We are asking people to send supportive letters-to-the-editor of Ohio newspapers about the campaign, if you would.
11/15/06
I gave a talk to a prayer group at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Cuyahoga Falls last night. During the talk, I shared the following: While in the border town of Juarez, Mexico, we toured a slum that had 200,000 people living in cobbled together shacks with no running water, no electricity, little food… Kids were dying. Across the border was El Paso. It looked like heaven and hell, and El Paso isn’t even that affluent. I asked the American priest who was giving us the tour about his take on immigration policy. He pointed to Juarez. Then he pointed to El Paso. Then he pointed to the fence: “What do you think Jesus would do with the fence?” He asked. Note: For more on our position on Hispanic immigration….
11/14/06
I stumped at Donut Land in Brunswick, Ohio, yesterday. Brunswick’s Louann Keith noted that youth today are tremendously over-stimulated with cable television, with computer games… She said that growing up it wasn’t unusual for her and her friends to play a three-day running board game at someone’s home over a weekend. [Oh, where have you gone Norman Rockwell?]
11/13/06
On a campaign stop in Brecksville, Ohio, over the weekend, I talked with Rosemary and Norman Hannibal. Each year Norman celebrates his Birthday, as well as his: ‘Lifeday.’ Norman, who is extremely Pro-Life, said nine months before his Birthday every year — he celebrates this Lifeday. For years he worked at a blue collar position, but on this day he’d wear a tie that many would ask him about. In turn, it gave him the chance to explain.
11/11/06
Due to a computer glitch, we have lost the past four months of campaign entries on this blog. Undaunted (sort of), we continue to press on…
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Welcome to Joe’s blog!
7/3/06
I just wrote a letter-to-the-editor of our diocesan Catholic newspaper in Cleveland. It follows: Should the social justice onus for not having a higher minimum wage in America simply be on legislators, or should we all share the blame? In your recent “Just Speaking” column, Dennis Sadowski notes that getting paid $5.15 an hour (prevailing minimum wage) equates to $10,712 a year. That puts a family of three, for instance, at the lower margin of the poverty line. And Mr. Sadowski writes: “It’s a moral outrage to think that most of our elected representatives have abandoned the poor.” And it is. But we, too, have abandoned the poor… A reading at church Sunday was from 2 Corinthians where Paul is exhorting the early church: “…but as a matter of equality, your abundance at the present time should supply their (those less well off) needs.” So, I wonder, what would keep a Cleveland suburbanite family who enjoys “abundance at this present time” from turning off the air conditioning, gettting a bus pass to go to work in the city, foregoing the large screen TV, nixing the dinners at Applebies… finding a family of three living on minimum wage — and giving them the savings, each year? Answer: Selfishness. Note: Tomorrow we celebrate our “freedom.” What that means to me, in it’s essence, is that we have ‘freedom’ to follow God’s will, or not. That is, for example, we have freedom to follow the 2 Corinthians passage (the way it’s written), or not. Note 2: Our family will boycott the fireworks tomorrow. I just read where Independence, Ohio, had to cancel their fireworks this year because they couldn’t raise the $30,000 that’s needed for the display. And, I would imagine, that sum is fairly typical for most intermediate sized towns across America… Scores of little children starving to death daily in the Third World and we’re spending millions of dollars on our 20 minutes of entertainment tomorrow night? Again, we have the ‘freedom’ to do God’s will, or not: Millions on fireworks? Food for starving children? Does anyone really think God would opt for the fireworks. Note 3: Speaking of money, we continue to ask for campaign donations to help get this message out farther: Schriner Election Committee, 2100 W. 38th St., Cleveland, Ohio 44113.