I continue to update our position paper on the environment. Yesterday I was writing about “water power.” At a stop in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, during Campaign 2004, we learned there is a project underway there to harness wave action from the Atlantic Ocean. A big, pencil-shaped buoy is being placed off shore. It has the capability of capturing energy from the continual motion of the waves, then transfering it into electricity. In it’s pilot phase, the project will generate electricity for: 500 homes. Wave action is endless and an excellent source of clean, renewable energy… NASA is spending billions of dollars trying to get to Mars to see if there was ever any water there. Meanwhile, there’s water on this planet that can generate all kinds of clean power, as opposed to global warming gases that are now imminently threatening the earth. Question: Wouldn’t it be just plain ole’ common sense that all these billions of NASA dollars be better spent on technology around these big pencil-like things?
6/19/06
The following is an excerpt from the beginning of a column I’m currently working on: Okay, let’s talk “weapons of mass destruction.” They seem to be causing the darndest problems these days. We thought Iraq had them. And boy, look what happened (and is still happening) as a result. What’s more, Iraq, it turns out, didn’t even have weapons of mass destruction. Now it’s Iran (with North Korea is only a test launch away as well). We (read: U.S.) think its Iran’s intention to make nuclear bombs. They say they’re just interested in making nuclear energy. Who is to say for sure? I mean we relied on “intelligence” before, and it turned out not to be, well, so ‘intelligent’… One thing is for sure. The way I see it, you don’t need much intelligence to know: We (read: U.S.) have about 10,000 weapons of mass destruction aimed at countries all over the globe. “What if we let the weapons inspectors into Montana?” I posed to an ABC News correspondent in Findlay, Ohio, just before the Iraq War started… Question: Does anyone out there see a glaring irony in all this?
6/17/06
We took our children to the Michael J. Zone Rec. Center in Cleveland for the start of “Rookie League Baseball.” This first day they were short a coach and asked me if I’d like to step in. Having coached Little League for a season years ago, I said sure… My first act as coach, as was the first act of the other five coaches, was to pick a team. The kids and their parents were sitting in the stands of the gymnasium and it was set up just like a draft. Each coach picked one player at a time. I decided on a “social justice” strategy. That is, my first picks were of kids who looked like they were usually chosen last. Should be an interesting season.
6/16/06
I wrote a column today that is titled: Post Modern Voyeurs and Exhibitionists. My contiention is that most people in America (many unknowingly) have become one of these, or both. An excerpt from the column: A man is walking down the street with his wife and a scantily clad woman is approaching from the opposite direction. He stares. Then he stares intently. And as she walks by, he turns and stares intently some more. At which point, his wife, just as ‘intently,’ slaps him. Now, here’s the irony… That same man could be at home sitting on his couch intently watching scantily clad women on prime time television for hours — while his wife is in the kitchen thinking nothing about it… I shared this scenario in a talk to a graduate Religion Class at Bluffton College several years ago, and the professor reflected: “When you think about this objectively, it would be just the same as if the man watching television would have said to his wife: ‘Honey, I’m going next door to look in the window at Marge for a couple hours.”‘ …This all begs the probing psycho-sociologically significant question: “Have we gone nuts?” Or perhaps more apt: “Have we totally lost our common sense, or in this case, our: moral compass?” Note: I’m a former mental health counselor. And I’ve watched, time and again, how unconscious anger has played havoc with one’s emotional state, and with one’s relationships. And don’t think for a minute that if a spouse is, day in and day out, ‘intently’ watching scantily clad people (no matter what the medium) that there isn’t unconscious anger welling in the other spouse. Anger that can, ultimately, contribute significantly to the break-up of a marriage… Incidentally, the current divorce rate in the country is approaching: 60%. Again, if we start connecting these dots…
6/14/06
I continue with work on updating our position paper on the environment… According to the environmental group Green Scissors (Cutting Wasteful and Environmentally Harmful Spending), cattle grazing in the West has become a monumental problem that is polluting tremendous amounts of water, eroding all kinds of topsoil, killing fish, displacing wildlife and destroying more vegetation than any other land use… On a stop in Rawlins, Wyoming, we went to the Bureau of Land Management there to investigate this. One representative there said the “ideal solution” would be not to lease any more federal land to ranchers so the rangeland could start to heal. However, this is a “political football” she said, because the ranchers comprise such a powerful lobby… Our administration would hold the stance that it’s time to stop playing ‘political football,’ but rather it’s time to start playing ‘hardball’ for programs intended to save the environment. Good environmental stewardship practices would demand this.
6/13/06
I have just started to update our position paper on the environment, based on some 15 years of research… A hot (excuse the pun) topic these days is: global warming. It is, indeed, an Inconvenient Truth. And since the Bush Administration has declined to sign the “Kyoto Protocol” in line with universal standards for the reduction of greenhouse gases, that doesn’t mean that we individual Americans can’t “sign on” to the treaty in spirit — and in action. During an energy seminar at Atnioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, I told the assembly that my family and I had created a: “Kyoto Protocol Home Zone,” with a sign to that effect out front, and everything. (Boy was Liz embarassed when I put that up.) Anyway, we’ve decided not to use air-conditioning, turned the thermostat down in the winter, wear sweaters and close off part of the house. I also told the Voice of the People television show in Hibbings, Minnesota, that in an effort to save even more energy, we all share bath water. Although I said I always try to get in the bath before our two-year-old. (Liz was embarassed on that one too.) In addition, we try to walk and bicycle locally at least 90% of the time within a three mile radius. We’ve dramatically reduced our purchasing (it takes burning fossil fuels to produce items). And I could go on with this, but I think you get the “Kyoto Protocol Home Zone” point. We all have the power not to use the power (paradoxical pun). Note: Wouldn’t it be a sight to see homemade Kyoto Protocol Home Zone signs go up in yards all across America, right next to the homemade Vote for Joe signs?
6/12/06
Yesterday National Public Radio did a piece explaining that the homicide rate in America is increasing. Adding to those statistics was a murder last week about 200 yards from our place in Cleveland’s inner city. According to reports, it was 3 a.m. and a man pulled up to a light at the corner of Lorain and Fulton roads here. Two men swiftly approached the car, dragged him out, then beat and stabbed him to death. The murder victim was the father of several young children and there are posters up around the neighborhood asking for leads in finding the murderers… We live in an area that not only seems, but feels, continually on the edge. Poverty, frustration, drugs, mental illness… swirl about here. Children grow up amidst this, often just trying to survive — and seeing virtually no way out. Bruce Springstein sings of an inner city in New Jersey: “Kids down here look just like shadows…” And they do, metaphorically. Below the bravado, the street tough, I’ve consistenlty experienced these kids as often emotionally empty and afraid. A ‘shadow’ of one’s self, if you will… So what do we do? Some of us take a deep breath and move back into the inner city to live side-by-side with the disadvantaged. We become friends with the parents and formal, or informal, mentors to some of the kids. We, for instance, live on a street with a cluster of Catholic Workers who have moved into the city to help. They have become friends to their neighbors on 38th St., informal mentors to the kids here as well, fight for affordable housing, help run a drop-in center for the poor… They are, in effect, modern day martyrs. That is, they are risking their safety for a higher good. And it’s my contention that in God’s eyes, whether any of these Catholic Workers die a violent death down here, or not; they, ultimately, will be considered “martyrs” just by the mere fact they were willing to move into a danger zone to help.
6/12/06
I spent the last few days extensively updating our position paper on “Agriculture.” (The updated paper should be up within the next month.) Anyway, one of the things I’m writing about is a seminar I attended in Ohio where a Bluffton College economics professor said that modern corporations, for the most part, see people as “individual markets,” not “individuals living in community.” As a result, making money from the “individual markets” is the priority, and how people live in community isn’t given much of a thought. So corporations often don’t hesitate to pollute, overwork cheap labor, or exploit natural resources… How this translates in the farming world is that corporate mega-farms in America can grow at such volume and ship cheaply enough — that these farms can undercut small family farmers selling to local markets in: Central America. As a result, impoverished people in the Third World become that much more impoverished… Question: Something to be “American Proud” of?
6/9/06
We got our first official Campaign 2008 endorsement. (That is, if we’re not counting my wife saying: “Oh alright, but I’m not sure how many more times I’m going to be able to do this.”) The endorsement came from Matt Swaim in Kentucky on his Apoloblogology site. Incidentally, check out some of Matt’s other entries on his blog. He’s got a lot of insightful things to say (the endorsement withstanding, of course), with a decidedly modern spin.
6/8/06
We took the kids to a jury trial for two Cleveland Catholic Workers who committed a non-violent act of civil disobedience about a month ago. During a prayer/protest rally outside an Armed Services Recruitment Center in Lakewood, Ohio, these two men chose to enter the premises and hold, in effect, a “sit in.” Police arrived and asked them to leave, but they chose to remain — and got arrested. The story made the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper and all the regional network news shows… On the stand before an almost full courtroom, Catholic Worker Chris Knestrick said he believed the “gospel of Jesus” calls us to pacifism with phrases like: turn the other cheek; do good to those who have harmed you… Knestrick, who is the Social Justice Coordinator at nearby St. Edward’s High School in Lakewood, said he’s seen, first-hand, the devastation war can wreak. He said his father was a Special Forces Green Beret in Vietnam who developed a bad case of post traumatic stress disorder. It dramatically affected, not only Chris’s dad, but the whole family… Joe Mueller was the other accused Catholic Worker. He had gone to Iraq the year before with a Christian Peacekeeper’s Team. (The next CPT team over to Iraq were kidnapped, made international news, and ultimately one of the members were murdered by insurgents.)… Mueller explained that during the protest in front of the Recruiting Center, the names of the dead soldiers were being read… Both men wanted to talk to recruiters and potential recruits that day, with the hopes of disuading some from becoming part of that list of names… Note: During one of the recesses, I was interviewed by Cleveland’s CBS anchor Harry Boomer. I said these men, like so many people in America these days, are opposed to the Iraq War. I then correlated their non-violent disobedience to similar acts during the height of the Civil Rights Movement in America’s South. I said in retrospect, America sees how important those acts were in helping bring about an end to a societal wrong. And while the circumstances around Iraq are complex, these Catholic Workers should be commended for standing up for their beliefs. And, I added, it’s not like these men are criminals. They spend their days trying to help the poor in Cleveland in as many ways as possible, including taking them into their home, running a nightly drop-in center for the disadvantaged, and so on… Mr. Boomer also asked me my take on the Iraq War. I said we went in there predicated on finding Weapons of Mass Destruction. “Yet if we let the weapons inspectors into Montana, what would they find?” I posed. “They would find 2,000 Weapons of Mass Destruction aimed all over the world. Wouldn’t that make us [read: U.S.] look like a terrorist nation to a lot of other countries?” Well, of course it would. Note 2: Mueller and Knestrick lost the court case. Yet we told our kids that they actually won in respect to what they were trying to do — which was to get a point across.