I gave a talk at the Sunday night service at the Agape Worship Center in downtown Waverly, Ohio, last night. Prior to the talk during the “praise report” time, someone thanked God for getting a raise this week “because I now have more money to help others with.” How refreshing. There was another speaker this night as well, a “Christian poet.” Mr. Norman Gross of Portsmouth, Ohio, mixed some poignant story telling with several poems that were absolutely captivating. A couple lines from one poem that particularly struck me had to do with people longing for a society where it’s clear: “What’s wrong is wrong. What’s right is right.” …Today I was interviewed by a reporter from Waverly’s newspaper. At one point, I said ‘what’s wrong’ (at least in one area of our global society) is an unequal distribution of resources between here and countries south of the border. I said what would be ‘right,’ I think, is mobilizing as much help as possible for Mexico and Central America, so those countries could be as sustainable as possible. This would help stem the influx of illegal immigration and help people stay in their countries, with their families, in their communities… All of which they often wouldn’t be leaving — if their kids weren’t hungry. The reporter responded that this seemed a common sense approach at getting at “the roots” of the issue. I nodded. Note: Jonathan, our three-year-old, and I, went to “Diner 23” in Waverly this morning. ’50s memorabilia was everywhere. On one wall was a picture of Barney Fife (Don Knotts) of “The Andy Griffith Show.” In his deputy uniform, Barney was awkwardly (as he always looked when he was doing this) trying to load his gun. The caption said of his “job description”: Answering the telephone, emptying trash, checking door knobs, taking the laundry while someone is out of town, feeding Opie breakfast, school crossing at 3 p.m., and chasing hardened criminals.
5/6/06
I was just contacted by a reporter who was doing a story on Commencement addresses and she wondered if I was giving one somewhere this spring. I had to tell her that, allowing for a last minute call from Yale, I hadn’t been asked. However if I had been asked, this is what I would have said: “Class of 2006… You have just gotten a degree in something. (Never overlook the obvious.) And now you face some challenges. No, not the challenge of getting a job and rising as fast as you can to get that nice place in the suburbs. That’s passee, and for that matter, not very sustainable anymore… The challenge you face in the year 2006, the way I see it, is how to reverse: rapidly increasing global warming, kids sleeping on inner city streets in this country and starving to death in the Third World, millions of people worldwide who have no homes or tremendously substandard housing, the threat of nuclear Holocaust, and rapidly vanishing plant and animal species… And you thought finals were hard! … So you can take your sheep skin, as short on sheep as we’re getting these days, and myopically move out into the work force and make as much as you can for yourself. Or you can do what a University of Dayton student recently did. On a research trip to UD, I learned he took his Engineering Major, not to the glamorous, high-tech doors of NASA to help in wasting billions of dollars flying to Mars. But rather, he took his engineering smarts to rural Guatemala to work at a decidedly more low-tech job at a whole lot less pay. Working with the non-profit, humanitarian aid agency Ethos Engineering, this young man traveled the poverty stricken countryside in Guatemala helping rural villagers install vented, ceramic ovens. This was a tremendous improvement over the open cooking fires in the homes, which would often cause severe burns to young children and respiratory problems for practically everyone else… So many of you graduates now have the smarts to help all sorts of humanitarian aid efforts like this; or the smarts to help develop even better clean, renewable solar or wind technology; or the smarts to enter the social services, or the Peace Corps, or Ameri Corps, etc., to better the world for the poor and marginalized… You indeed have a choice as you head out from here into the world this day: You can take your smarts and make a difference for, well, yourself. Which will mean the high paying job, the Lexus with Mapquest, and the summer house at Martha’s Vineyard… Or you can take your smarts and make a difference for, well, someone else. Which will mean way less money, an old Volkswagon without Mapquest (or maybe even air conditioning) and, for some, a rural hut in Guatemala… Now without trying to sway your decision, I do have to say: It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist at NASA to figure out which choice is more needed in our world these precarious days… God bless you. And may God guide your decision.
5/5/06
I told the Messenger newspaper in Adams County, Ohio, that ours could definitely be considered a “Retro Campaign.” That is, we’d like to see a return to the days when all a parent had to worry about when the child went up the street to play sandlot baseball was whether they had fun or not — not whether they had gotten abducted or not… Note: Speaking of baseball… I played whiffle ball with our kids last night and had a no-hitter going, until the second batter. And I’m wondering why the Cincinnati Reds haven’t approached me about throwing out the ceremonial “first pitch?”
5/4/06
Yesterday around the country we found out which politicians won or lost, and which issues and levies passed, or didn’t pass. A thought about local school levies: Say one didn’t pass in a particular region. What would keep people who voted for the school levy from setting up a “Voluntary School Levy Fund” and annually paying into it what they would have been assessed anyway? Sure this maybe wouldn’t cover all of what was proposed, but it would cover some. What’s more, why couldn’t some of these voluntary payers (if they were able) pay even more than what they would have been assessed to make up for the shortfall? I mean, wouldn’t this just be: common sense? Note: Yesterday a former English professor from Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, asked if she could take a picture of me next to our van — so she could e-mail it to her friends. I said sure, and even went one better. I gave her an official “Schriner for President 2008 / www.voteforjoe.com” refrigerator magnet (with the caveat not to try and sell it on E-bay, yet)… Incidentally, let nothing keep any of you supporters out there from having some of your own “Schriner for President 2008 / www.voteforjoe.com” refrigerator magnets (any shape) made as well. I mean, how many times do people go to the refrigerator in the course of the day? Again, we’re doing this all without paid political consultants, or even a lot of money for that matter.
5/3/06
I stumped with a rather large table of “regulars” at the Village Inn Restaurant in Peebles, Ohio (pop. 1,739), today. At one point, I passed out our new campaign flyers to everyone at the table. The flyer quotes reporter Jim Phillips of the Athens News: “…his (Schriner’s) campaign stresses a populist faith in the ability of regular American folks to fix the problems of the federal government with decency and common sense.” It then goes on to say my platform includes: ending world hunger and homelessness; stopping abortion; ending pollution; healing the family; making the streets safe for kids again… There was a decidedly long pause after the regulars at the Village Inn read all that. I finally broke the silence by saying: “OK, I’ll admit that seems like a lot — but we think it’s doable.” Note: For those of you following the campaign, we would ask you to consider doing a little “stumping” of your own in the local restaurant, or on the street corner, or… You can download the new flyer by clicking on Hand Out on the red bar at the top of our Home Page. Thank you.
5/2/06
Yesterday was National Loyalty Day. I didn’t know there was one either, until I was contacted by national columnist Dru Sefton last month. (It’s actually been celebrated — a small town in New York even has an annual parade and voting for “Ms. Loyalty” — since the 1950s.) Ms. Sefton was writing a column about National Loyalty Day and asked for 100 word essays from a diverse group of citizens nationwide on what loyalty to the country means to them. I started by saying that loyalty to America should be loyalty to Americans — for the common good. And then as one example, I wrote: “…Seneca Kansas farmers stop putting toxic chemicals on their ‘amber waves of grain,’ so people eating bread in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, don’t get cancer.” [Link for the full essay, and column…]
5/1/06
We crossed the Ohio River into the state of Ohio at Cincinnati yesterday. And the “Buckeye Backroads Tour” begins… Incidentally, we’re planning on winning Ohio this time… At Guardian Angels Church in Cincinnati, a priest said that with artificial contraception extra-marital affairs have increased considerably — and so has the divorce rate. The priest said statistics show that among the general populace today (many of whom use artificial contraception), there’s a 50% divorce rate. However, he continued that among couples who don’t use artificial contraception the divorce rate figure is less than: 5%… Note: I figure I might as well admit this now, before my wife Liz writes a “tell all” book after my presidency. The night before getting to Ohio, for the first time ever, I committed a “drive off” from a gas station. We were driving late through Kentucky on Hwy 65. At one point, we stopped for some gas and I went in to prepay. I then walked out, got in the motor home and, well, ‘drove off.’ We were more than a few exits up the highway when it registered that I hadn’t pumped the gas! …just doing my part for ‘big oil.’ (Liz suggested I might want to get some coffee at the next stop.)
4/25/ thru 4/29/06
I gave a talk yesterday (link to copy of speech) to a full school assembly (including some adults) at St. Mary’s Church in Jackson, Tennessee (pop. 40,000). I had our Sarah, 10, and Joseph, 8, stand by my side. I explained that no matter what a person’s age, they can make a great impact in society. For instance, I said Joseph and Sarah recently stood in solidarity with a group of people in San Bernadino, California, who were praying the Rosary in front of an abortion clinic. In North Dakota, Sarah stood on a sidewalk in front of an abortion clinic, pleading with pregnant women not to go in — alongside a group of “Collegians for Life” students from Morehead State University. I exhorted the students to go to God in prayer about ending abortion, write letters to the editor of their town paper, raise funds for local crisis pregnancy centers… (The latter two, I suggested, could be class projects.)… Earlier in the week, we visited the memorial at the Oklahoma City bombing site. (They had just recently commemorated the 11th year anniversary.) There are black walls on either side of what used to be the Federal Building, two open doors — and empty space where the rest of the building used to stand. The minimalism is quite impactful. What’s even more impactful is a life size statue of Jesus just across the street, His back turned and His head in His hands. The caption: “And Jesus wept.” …We headed into Brinkley, Arkansas, where we visited the Louisiana Purchase Historic State Park and Museum. On Oct. 27, 1815 the land survey for the Louisiana Purchase began at a point in the woods 22 miles south of here. After the survey, America would buy 830,000 square miles (spanning 14 current states), for less than 3 cents an acre ($15 million), from France. In the museum was a statement at the time from Gen. Horatio Gates to President Thomas Jefferson: “Let the land rejoice, for you have bought Louisiana for a song.” [The irony was it wasn’t really France’s to sell, or ours to take. It was the Native American’s. The Native Americans who we swindeled (broken treaties) slaughtered and pushed the rest off the land almost altogether. Given what we’ve done to the “land” since (global warming, acid rain, urban sprawl, drastically diminished habitat…) you’ve got to wonder if the land is (or was) in anyway ‘rejoicing.’ And given what we did to the Native Americans, you’ve got to wonder how much ‘Jesus is weeping.’ Maybe in the New York Harbor, there should be a Statue of Liberty size sculpture of Jesus with his back turned to America — and Him posing [read: crying] like He has been posed in Oklahoma City.
4/24/06
We drove into Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where we met with Robert Waldrop, a quintessential ‘extra-mile American,’ if there ever was one. Some seven years ago he started the Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House out of his modest, one-story home on the city’s near Northwest side. And periodically, he has taken in the homeless and others simply down on their luck. In a small house behind the regular home, he has operated a food pantry that has gotten tons of food to the needy all over the city. And Mr. Waldrop doesn’t just give to the poor, he fights for them. At the time of the interview, he was just off a 2006 run for mayor of Oklahoma City. He told me he ran to raise issues about the destruction of low-income housing for the poor and the lack of an adequate mass transit system in Oklahoma City (which, again, primarily affects the poor). And not only did he get the issues into public debate with his run, he actually garnered 8% of the vote — and he’d only spent $200 (which was the filing fee) on the campaign. What’s more, on his one-seventh of an acre of land in his Gatewood Neighborhood, he’s planted clusters of trees, grows some 100 different types of food in raised beds gardens, with fruit bushes, and so on. “A well kept lawn is a waste of productive land, unless you’re grazing sheep,” he said. And Mr. Waldrop’s home is ultra-energy efficient as well, with creative insulation, a hot water heater with a switch to turn it on only when it’s needed, double pane windows. And this all comes out of wanting to be the best environmental steward possible. Mr. Waldrop, who is the full-time music director at Epiphany Catholic Church in the city here, also publishes the newspaper Better Times “…an occasional almanac of useful information about simple, sustainable and frugal living.” For more on Mr. Waldrop, stay tuned to our Back Road Journal for a full column…
4/22 and 4/23/06
Hwy 40 Tour continued… I gave a talk at a Firefighters Appreciation picnic in Alanreed, Texas, on Saturday. During the talk, I read an excerpt from our Back Road to the White House 2 book (in progress). The excerpt talked about the New York 9/11 firefighters who dashed into the Twin Towers that day, hurriedly scribbling their social security numbers on their arms — so their bodies could be more easily identified. I told the gathering that firefighters everywhere, in risking their lives every time they go out, are spiritual heroes. That is, Jesus said the ultimate sacrifice is to give up one’s life for another… We crossed into Oklahoma next, ‘sooner’ (for all you OSU fans) than expected. We stopped first in Elk City, OK, where there is a huge bronze statue of, that’s right, an elk in the downtown area. Then it was on to Weatherford, OK. On the outskirts of Weatherford are a considerable gaggle of wind turbines, which were all spinning magnificently today in 50 mph wind. Wind that is pretty continual on these plains. Literature about this wind turbine project explains when these turbines are operating optimally (like this day), they provide power for some 40,000 households… Weatherford is also the hometown of famous astronaut Tom Stafford. He flew four space missions, including Apollo 10, which set the stage for the moon landing several months later. We toured the rather elaborate “Tom Stafford Air and Space Museum” here. There were giant rocket boosters, replicas of NASA Command modules, dramatic videos about various space missions (from the Russian Sputnik at the beginning to America’s Shuttle missions today)… During an interview with a reporter for a local radio station in Weatherford this day, I said as president I would work stridently to: “end the Space Program in America” at this time. For lack of a better word, I told the reporter I thought the whole thing was “nuts.” That is, scores of little children every day in the Third World are dying from drinking unclean water — and we’re spending billions of dollars going to Mars to see if there was ever water on that planet. Billions that could be spent on better water filtration plants, cisterns for collecting rain water, solar ovens so rural villagers in Uganda, Ethiopia, Columbia… could boil their water. All on this planet, now! [We have become so absolutely spiritually blinded. And they will lament at the Final Judgement: ‘But Lord, when did we see you thirsty…?’] Note: Not to mention, I posed to the reporter, how much of that Space Program money could go to, say, developing more wind turbine farms like in Weatherford — so the children in the next generation didn’t have to worry about having too much water — from polar ice cap melting?