Vote for Joe

I interviewed Paul Yoder in Apple Creek, Ohio. His farm sells “100% grassfed beef and lamb, pastured chicken, turkey, pork, eggs…” Mr. Yoder uses no artificial chemicals on his fields or artificial hormones with his livestock. He does everything naturally, or better put “…the way God intended it,” Mr. Yoder says. He also sells shares in his cows, and people in turn get raw milk as well. Milk, Mr. Yoder asserts, that is much healthier than the pasturized and homgenized milk sold in stores. (Pasturization, for instance, kills the good bacteria and enzymes needed to break down the fats and protein, he said.) Mr. Yoder has a circle of health conscious customers from a fairly large radius, as far north as the Cleveland area. He said over the years a trusting relationship has developed between he and his customers, like it was in the old days when local farmers used to grow for local town people. This relationship, he continues, is just as important (if not more) than the actual transactions. It is about building community, as again, there was a lot more of in the old days. Note: Mr. Yoder told me he decided not to use artificial farm chemicals because of the possible detriment to consumer health. Although it was risky financially to begin farming that way, he said doing what was right was more important. I found that extremely refreshing.

Liz and I gave a talk to an assembly of students at St. Mary’s School in Mansfield, Ohio yesterday. I said a strong platform point of ours was helping the marginilized in society. And several years ago we had moved into the inner city of Cleveland to live side-by-side with some of these marginalized people, one of whom is Richard. Liz explained to the students that we had met Richard at an outreach center to the poor that we volunteer at. Richard is 50, single, a Vietnam veteran — and lives in a tent below a birdge in Cleveland, year round. Richard has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from his time in Vietnam. A car backfiring will send Richard spinning back to being shot at in the jungles of Vietnam, paralyzing him for hours. He also continually moves from high anxiety to deep depression, keeping him from holding a steady job. Liz said to the students that what Richard had asked for for Christmas the year before was a small Coleman Stove to stay warm with in the tent… I told the students that Richard needed more than the Coleman Stove. He needs quality, long-term mental health counseling to considerably diminish the PTSD symptomology. He needs job training and/or more education. And Richard needs a home. I then asked to see a show of hands of how many students had garages at home. Every hand went up. I then said we in America shelter cars while people like Richard in Cleveland and little children in Chicago, L.A., Phoenix… sleep on inner city streets. I ended by asking if they thought it would be a good idea for their parents to convert their garages into a living space for some of these marginilized people? Most indicated yes. “Then, if you would, would you go back home and tell your parents about this idea,” I said. They promised they would. (I figured it would be better coming from them, than from me.) Note: Just in case of some of the students forget to tell their parents, I also mentioned the idea to a reporter from the Mansfield News Journal during an interview later in the day… Liz said at the start of her talk that she’d been reading the book The Irresistable Revolution. At one point, the author said that he’d read a poll that said some 80% of Christians questioned believed Jesus spent significant time with the poor. But out of the same group, only 2% said they spend any significant time with the poor. [I couldn’t help but think: Wouldn’t a garage apartment be a good way to start.?]

“Average Joe” sighting… Shortly after we drove into Cleveland, I got a call on my cell phone. It was Stephen Piscura who said he’d been following the campaign for awhile now and when he saw our vehicle going by an Ohio City coffee shop, he “almost knocked over a table” trying to get to the street to flag us down… While we missed connections then, he and a couple of his friends caught up with us later in the day… In his early 20s, Stephen is a senior at Kent State University and is on fire for Christ. He is spending the summer in Bangkok working with a Christian ministry called “Remember Nhu.” This is an outreach to youth forced into the sex slave trade. A growing problem all over the world, the ministry website www.remembernhu.com calls it one of “the darkest moral tragedies of our time.” Stephen said what motivates him to help is that Christ is in the face of each of these tremendously desperate children and teens. (In places like Bangkok, children are sold by their poverty stricken parents into brothels, and the like, so the rest of the family can eat.) Note: If all this isn’t bad enough, these youth are also at great risk, daily, of contracting AIDS.

I was asked to give a talk to all the Social Studies students at St. Mary’s School in Mansfield, Ohio. I also interviewed St. Mary’s Principal Roger Harraman. As former Principal at Woodmore Public School, Mr. Harraman described himself as the “last holdout.” That is, before the “Pledge of Allegiance” in the school each morning, he allowed several moments of silence for students to pray (or not) in whatever way they wanted. In 1984 he was finally asked to stop… Our platform, when it comes to school prayer, is very similar to what Mr. Harraman’s was. That is, we would lobby for several moments, if not more, of silence where the student could pray (or not) however they wished. This country was founded on, among other things, “freedom of Religion.”

My family and I stood in solidarity with some 175 Ohioans lobbying to legalize the sale of raw milk at a Statehouse hearing in Columbus yesterday. (Ohio has prohibited this since 1997.) One of the participants lamented to the House Committee that it seems an irony (if not an absolute travesty) that a group of citizens in the year 2006 have to fight to drink “raw milk,” which people for thousands of years just took for granted. John Ciprian said raw milk is “healthy, natural and unaltered artificially by man.” The contention, which was expressed in various ways throughout the hearing, is when milk goes through the heating of a pasturization process, many of the key vitamins and minerals are either eliminated, or diminished considerably. Carolyn Jackson, a dietician, drew a corrolary to the nutritional value of a mother’s breast milk. And she said we’ve never considered pasturizing that. Physician Wayne Feister said raw milk was “nutrient dense” and denying the public this and other natural, unaltered, sources of nutrition leads to a cadre of public health problems — because the immune system has been weakened in kind. During the testimonials at the end of the hearing, one person said that she found it amazing Ohioans can purchase alcohol and cigarettes — but they can’t purchase raw milk. Note: The night before, I talked with Worthington, Ohio’s William Ruth, 84. He told me he grew up on family farm in Johnstown, Pennsylvannia. He and his seven siblings drank raw milk from the farm’s cows as youth. He said besides himself, three of his siblings are now in their 80s as well… Maybe the saying should change to: “got raw milk?” Note 2: We urge Ohioans to call or write their legislators urging the passing of House Bill 534 to legalize the sale of raw milk. And we strongly urge more people to consider supporting your local organic farmers in general.