Campaign trail week in review… We continue to follow Rte 40 east toward the coast. Rte. 40 parallels Old Rte. 66 through the section we’re currently on. And last Saturday at Holbrook, Arizona, I stopped at Joe and Aggie’s Cafe for a cup of coffee. (Joe and Aggie’s is the longest running family restaurant along 66.) Steven Gallegos is part of the third generation to work the restaurant and said his grandad, Joe, who started it all in the late 1940s, is now the oldest living resident in Holbrook at age 92. Steve also bent my ear a bit about the Social Security system, explaining a bad car wreck several years ago left him with three broken vertebrae. His doctor said it would take a year, or less, to heal. He said that at the time the Social Security criteria to draw benefits was that the injury had to leave the person disabled: a year, or more. Steve said he was bitter about this, especially because he felt it was a legitimate claim. And after all, he had already paid a lot of money into the system… An interesting feature of Joe & Aggie’s restaraunt is that each table has a rack of used humor novelty books, like: A Liar’s Guide for Fisherman; The Outhouse Book… The book I picked up was published by Apricot Press: “When you care enough to give the best… but maybe they don’t deserve it.”… Speaking of books: In Holbrook, Arizona, I also interviewed Bob McCarthy. He showed me a book his mother, Thecla McCarthy, just had published (www.PublishAmerica.com) titled: 10 Embassadors to Costa Rica. Bob had been one of those ’embassadors’ at age 10. It was then that he, his nine brothers and sisters, mom and dad went to Costa Rica in 1964 as part of a U.S. Rural Development AID mission. The father trained mechanics and heavy equipment operators to help build and repair roads on the rural Nicoyan Peninsula there. The family was in Costa Rica two years, and Bob told me the experience was invaluable to him in regard to learning about another culture, learning another language, and seeing the face of Third World poverty, first hand. As a result, he is now more apt to help with humanitarian outreach to the Third World and he has a number of Hispanic friends in the area because of his ability to speak Spanish, and to understand the culture… Our administration would propose a U.S. Department of Peace, with many more of these types of initiatives into other countries. In her book, Mrs. McCarthy wrote: “People and families are always on the move escaping wars, oppression and injustices. These people move under duress, force, to find freedom and remain free. Why not voluntarily move [as the McCarthy family did] to help prevent war and poverty?” Good question… We then headed west to Gallup, New Mexico, where we came across Danny Osborn. In the small town of Belen, New Mexico, Mr. Osborn is involved with the “Brothers of Joseph.” This is a group of Catholic men who meet regularly to talk about the dynamics of being the ‘spiritual head of the family,’ and they have set up a mentoring program for some of the newer “brothers.” Mr. Osborn said the men are focused on being “good leader servants” to their wives, their children, in the work place, in the community. Their mission statement, for example, includes exhorting men, “on a daily basis,” to take time with their children. And the mission statement continues in regard to wives: “It is very easy to forget that very important friend who takes care of our children, cleans our house, cooks our meals, washes our clothes, and keeps us from doing stupid things.” [I read that last sentence to my wife Liz who immediately said, in regard to the last item: “You should see about joining that honey.”]… We headed further west on Rte. 40 where I spent time in Albequerque with my children flying a kite in a park on the west side. (With all the wind here in this high desert area — the kite stayed up forever — there should be wind turbines all over the place!) Later that night, I gave a talk to a prayer group at Holy Rosary Church, also in Albequerque. I said while in New Mexico several years prior, I had researched the non-profit “International Good Neighbors Council,” which has 28 chapters, half in the U.S., half in Mexico. Director Stanley Evans told me each chapter picks a yearly charitable project to perform on the other side of their border. (We can sometimes forget we need help in America as well.) And in all this, I said to the prayer group, that Mexico and the U.S. are growing closer. (This would be another excellent model for the U.S. Department of Peace.)… We then headed further east, stopping in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. During a Communion Service at St. Rose of Lima Church here, Sr. Jean exhorted the congregation: “Let’s try to make Jesus look good today!” After the service, I gave a talk there about getting more involved with Pro-Life issues. That is, flooding legislators with letters, flooding the local newspaper with letters-to-the-editor, flooding the streets with protest signs and prayers… “Let’s make Jesus look good on this one as well,” I said. Later this day, I told the Santa Rosa News that our administration would push for the development of a “North American Union,” like the evolving European Union. That is, we’d like to see a formalized union between Canada, the U.S., Mexico and Central America. I said the “NAU” would be about promoting the “common good,” whether that would be working closely on joint environmental projects, more cultural exchanges, mutually advantageous business ventures, more collaborative humanitarian aid projects… “After all, we are all brothers and sisters in God,” I said to the newspaper… We then headed further east into the dusty plains of Texas, stopping first in the small town of Vega. There we attended a Wednesday evening Church of Christ service. The pastor mentioned the New Testament Bible parable about “The rich man and the beggar Lazarus.” A cliff note: The rich man “dines sumptuously” every day, while Lazarus lies at his gate — pretty much ignored. (Although one could surmise he got a few scraps occasionally — or he probalby wouldn’t have stayed at the gate.) The rich man eventually dies, and goes to Hell. The poor man dies, and goes to Heaven. The pastor said between them is a chasm that can’t be crossed. I said I had recently read the Cotton Patch Gospels by the late Clarence Jordan. And in this series, Jordan writes that that ‘chasm’ is created by us, not God. That is, by living our comfortable suburban lifestyles and ‘dining’ sumptuously on food, entertainment, central air and heat, nice vehicles… with little real regard (just an occasional scrap) for scores of children daily dodging hunger, drugs and violence in America’s inner cities, and billions living in desperation in the Third World — we have, indeed, built a “chasm.” A chasm that may well be switched around (as far as living conditions) in the next, and much longer [read: eternal] life. And I told the Church of Christ pastor this night, point blank, that as long as the pastors and priests go on living these comfortable suburban lifestyles themselves in America, and not confronting their congregations who are living the same (read: “rich” in comparison to the inner cities and Third World), there is little hope for this to change… The next morning during a talk at Immaculate Conception Church in Vega, I said to the congregation that 24,000 people die of starvation in the Third World, every day. And I urged people to sacrifice a lot of their lifestyles here, so people in the Third World can have the basics in food, medicine, shelter… I said this is as much a Pro-Life issue as abortion. Afterwards, Fr. Antony Punnackal told me he had just given a talk the day before to the local Kiwanis in Vega. In the talk, he pointed out that in the year 2000, Planned Parenthood had made $68 million from abortion procedures and ove
r 40 million babies have been killed by abortion in America to date… There was a Bible Study after Mass at Immaculate Conception that Liz and I sat in on. At one point, there was a discussion about womens’ roles in society and in the home — and how that’s changed considerably of late. Liz referred to the book she’s currently reading titled: Home Coming (Beyond Feminism and Back to Reality). The crux of the book is that God has endowed women with a phenomenal amount of talent to be tremendously effective in raising children and maintaining many aspects of the household. However, with the current societal paradigm shift, these talents are often getting transposed into the work place and the children are being raised, primarily, by: Day Care, the school system, television and computers. In other words, in few circles is motherhood looked at as a “sacred vocation,” the way it was intended, said Liz. And as a result, the family unit is breaking down and children are growing up empty and troubled. (All we have to do is look at the mounting constellation of social problems (drugs, sex, violence, materialism… in the past few generations.) Later in the prayer group, one of the women referred to something she didn’t particularly agree with. Her exclamation: “BULL COOKIES!” That’s what they say around here, at least the church going ones: BULL COOKIES. Liz and I smiled, then headed further east into ‘George Bush country.’ Undaunted, we stopped in tiny ‘Bushland,’ Texas, where I approached a man on the street and said I was running for “president of the United States.” I then handed him an “Average Joe” Mobile shaped refrigerator magnet with our website on it. At first he looked a bit perplexed [As many of you know, I’m not exactly a household name yet], then collected himself and said: “I’ll look you up…” Then it was off on our ‘steel steed’ again. Next stop: Groom, Texas. I Groom, we stopped at the “Cross Project.” This is billed as the biggest cross in the Western Hemisphere, standing 19 stories high. The Project also has striking, life-size bronze depictions of the Stations of the Cross and a seperate bronze statue of Jesus on his knees crying — and holding an aborted baby in his palm. I also interviewed the Project’s chaplain, who is also a Baptist minister in nearby Alanreed, Texas. His name: Jim Bible. (How’s that for the name of a pastor, huh?) The grounds also has a replica of the Shroud of Turin. In regard to authenticity of the shroud, literature here explains the actual shroud contains pollen grains from the Tumbleweed Gundelia Tourneforth (not to be confused with the “Texas Tumbleweed”), which is only found in March and April in the region of: Jeruselum… I was asked to give a talk this weekend at a Firefighters Appreciation Dinner in Alanreed, Texas (“pop. 52 people, 104 dogs, 88 cats, 2 skunks and a few snakes”). [That’s what it says on an Alanreed postcard, honest.]… Yes, we continue on down the “back roads.” And frankly, it doesn’t get much more ‘back road’ than this. Stay tuned. Note: Throughout the week I’ve also been working on an update to our “Hispanic Immigration Position Paper,” which is based on a tremendous amount of cross country research the past several years. It should be up on the site sometime next week.
4/17/06
I gave a talk at St. Therese Church in Grants, New Mexico, today. I noted how the amount of people taking to the streets to fight for immigration rights is tremendously impacting legislators in D.C. What’s more, I said if Pro-Life people took to the streets in the same sustained, week-in-week-out fashion, in tandem with flooding these legislators with letters, flooding local newspapers with letters-to-the editor, and so on… abortion would end. Prior to the talk, the priest at St. Therese referenced the Biblical passage where Jesus says if we acknowledge Him before people, He will acknowledge us before the Father. Connecting the dots: You gotta believe Jesus is Pro-Life. So vocally standing up against abortion is, indeed, acknowledging Jesus (in a major way) “before people,” I said to the congregation. Note: There were approximately 4,400 babies killed in their mothers’ wombs today in America. Babylon had to pale in comparison.
4/14/06
Yesterday I interviewed Michael Vollmer, who is the director of the Newman Center on the campus of Northern Arizona State University. Last year the Newman Center, which is a Catholic ministry, set up a “Hunger Banquet” to demonstrate to students the economic differences between the First, Second and Third Worlds. Mr. Vollmer said in Third World countries (Ethiopia, Sudan, Biafra…), annual income generally ranges from a couple hundred to a thousand dollars. In the Second World countries (Ukraine, Poland…), annual salaries generally range from $1,000 to $7,000. And in the First World countries (America, Canada, England…) annual salaries generally range from $7,000 and up… In the “banquet” this night, students were seated in three areas. The first represented the Third World. There was no table or chairs and rudimentary bowls to put small amounts of rice in. That was it. The second area had an old table and some chairs. On the table was some rice, beans and a glass of water. In the third section, which represented the First World, Mr. Vollmer said they tried to replicate a typical Sunday dinner for a middle class family in America. There was a nice table and chairs, a table cloth and glasses for water and cider. The table also had rice, a fresh salad, a roasted chicken, gravy, corn, mash potatoes and desert was cheese cake. (Pretty standard fare for an American middle class meal.) Mr. Vollmer said the students at the First World table were hesitant to eat their food, had a hard time looking at their friends at the other settings, and eventually felt so guilty they tried to give some of the food to their friends… The First World currently represents about 15% of the globe’s populace, the Second World represents 30% and the Third World represents a whopping 55%. That’s a lot of hungry people. And a lot of malnourished people that are getting all kinds of diseases (sometimes fatal) because their immune systems are so depressed because of the lack of, not only food, but healthy food… Now to go back to the visual of the three dinner settings at the Newman Center. There’s a Biblical parable Jesus tells about the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man dines “sumptuously” every day while Lazarus, the beggar, lies at the rich man’s gate hungry every day. The rich man dies and goes to Hell for eternity as a result. It wouldn’t take a Biblical scholar to see that the modern corrolary would be all of us in America dining daily on chicken, mash potatoes, fresh salad, cheese cake… while people in Ethiopia dine daily on: rice. (And sometimes they don’t even have that, like during the current famine in eastern Africa.)… Earlier in the campaign, I gave a talk to a theology class at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, explaining about the tremendous disparity in relation to the First World and the Third World. A priest approached me after the talk and said he’d just heard Pope John Paul II say the First World and Third World epitomized the ‘rich man and Lazarus” parable. This would beg the question (as the destitute on the streets of Calcutta beg for rice): Is each of us who are”dining sumptuously” in the First World headed for the same eternal destiny as the rich man in the parable? Serious food for thought. Note: Last night I went to a “Last Supper” Mass at St. Puis X Church in Flagstaff, Arizona. The priest, playing the role of Jesus, washed the feet of 12 parishioners then said in his homily that as the apostles were willing to “receive” from Jesus, we should be willing to “receive” from our neighbors in a good spirit. He relayed this rather soft, pandering message to a bunch of surbanites who had probably just finished their chicken, salad, mash potatoes and cheese cake… before they came to the service in their Lexus… Jesus washed the feet of the apostles to show them that spirituality was about serving others. Yet so often the First World priests and ministers of today, won’t confront all of us for eating our chicken, fresh salad, mash potatoes, cheese cake… and not better “serving” our hungry brothers and sisters in the Third World — because, well, these priests and ministers are often leaving the service afterward in their Lexus (or whatever) to eat, that’s right: chicken, fresh salad, mash potatoes and cheese cake.
4/13/06
I sat in on a Passover Seder last night at the Holy Trinity Newman Center at Northern Arizona University. Then gave a talk to the group. (The Seder commemorates the Exodus of the Jewish slaves from Egypt.) During the ceremonial dinner there were readings about how hard the Egyptians worked the Jews, having them carry heavy stone “and toiling long hours in the fields.” At one point in the dinner, you eat a bitter herb to commemorate the bitterness of slavery. Toward the end of the dinner, the promise is that because of the pain these people knew first hand, they would stridently “defend liberty” in return… After the dinner I said to the some 40 college students that it was no longer Old Testament times, but rather: “the year 2006.” (I try to stay up on these things.) And I said in our current time, there were still “slaves” worldwide. (All you have to do is read Amnesty International’s literature.) I said among this slave population, I believed, were many of the illegal immigrants in this country who are ‘toiling in the fields” of the San Joaquin Valley in 110 degree temperatures sun up to sun down for minimum wage, or less. Or they are ‘carrying’ heavy burdens in the garment district sweat shops of L.A. and New York. Or they are sweating in the frigid cold, or oppressive heat, of chicken processing plants in the Midwest. Or… Then I said why many of these people leave family, friends, culture, country, is because their children are hungry or they are under political oppression. I told the students about traveling to Juarez, Mexico, where people work for $3 a shift in multi-national factories and live in cobbled together shacks with no running water, no electricity, and their children are hungry. Then there is Heraldina in Nicaragua. Tiffin, Ohio’s Sr. Paulette Schroeder told me she heard Heraldina’s story during a trip to Nicaragua on a “Witness for Peace” tour. She said Contra forces had undertaken a campaign of terror there to undermine strides toward moving people out of poverty. In one village, she said grenades started exploding amidst intermittent gunfire. Heraldina grabbed her eight-month-old child and ran. A bullet pierced her back and lodged in the leg of the baby. Heraldina survived, barely. The baby lost his leg… I asked the students if they were living in a similar situation, how many would seek refuge in, say, America? Everyone raised their hands… I then exhorted the students to not come away from the dinner with just a bunch of empty symbolism about the “bitterness” of slavery and the “sweetness” of freedom. But rather, the night should motivate them to help free those in bondage to slavery today. I exhorted them to protest in solidarity with the immigration rallies of today. To flood their campus and local newspapers with letter to the editor about social justice for the illegal immigrants. I asked them to consider setting up a Sister Church project with a Church in Latin America to get as much help to the people there who want to stay, but are in seemingly dead-end situations… And I closed by saying none of the people in the room were “poor college students.” I said that was an absolute myth fostered by our insular socio-economic class system here. That is, if they were living in a dorm room with central heat and air, a nice bed, couch and CD player, a full refrigerator and full closet… and what’s more, were moving toward a career that would set them up nicely in suburban America — they were, in fact, “among the most privileged in a world — where billions live in abject poverty.” And there was one other perception they might want to lose as well, I said. That is, no matter what profession they were aiming at — “it isn’t any more important than a farm worker’s job.” That is, a farm worker helps provide us with life giving food, I said. So even if society doesn’t acknowlege (monetarily, or status wise) that a farm worker’s job is as important as, say, a lawyer, or accountant, or stock broker — “at least now you know,” I said. And I continued it something God knew as well. “So,” I said, “if you leave here and begin making, say, “$45,000 a year, and decide to spend most of it on yourself as opposed to sharing close to half of it with a farm worker and his family (who is making $7,000 a year and doing just as important a job, if not more important) what do you suppose God might say to you at Judgement? I told the students He might, oh, echo the passage in Isaiah 10 about: turning aside the needy from justice and robbing the poor of their right. Later in that passage it asks specifically of those who rob the poor of their right: “What will you do on the day of Judgement?”… An apt question, not only for all the college students currently moving into “Generation Me” — but for all of us. Note: In Flagstaff, Arizona, the other day I saw a bumper sticker that read: “Lord, help me to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.”
4/12/06
After the interview at the immigration rally yesterday in Flagstaff, Channel 3 News out of Phoenix caught up with us again to do a piece on the campaign. The reporter asked why I was running for president. I said because I was a concerned parent who, among a long list of things, didn’t want my children inheriting a world of “global warming.” Later in the day, I picked up the Arizona Daily Sun and there was a front page article about a Northern Arizona University (NAU) professor who now says plant life alone is not enough to counteract the carbon dioxide we’re pumping into the air, and the earth could actually be warming up faster than we thought. NAU is one of four universities nationwide that is recognized as “an institute for research on climate change.” Professor Bruce Hungate and colleagues found in a recent study that forests and jungles around the world can’t process the world’s carbon dioxide nearly as fast as civilization is emmitting it, according to the article. The professor said this is a “wake up call” that we can’t expect nature to fix the problem and we ought to get serious about emission reduction. Translated: In the face of all this alarming news, if you’re still driving to the local market or shunning taking the bus to work — you are demonstrating absolutely unconscionable environmental stewardship practices… We also did a whistle-stop event in downtown Flagstaff yesterday, meeting people on the streets, passing out literature, listening to ideas… NAU’s campus TV News station came out to do a story. Right in the middle of the interview, a guy pulled up on his mountain bike. I passed on a flyer to him and said we had a friend back in Ohio who had a similar bicycle, only with a bike sticker that reads: QUESTION INTERNAL COMBUSTION! I then said to the reporter that we had met with Dan Burden in High Springs, Florida, earlier in the campaign. (Time Magazine called him one of the top environmentalists in the nation.) Burden travels the country trying to inspire his “Walkable Community” model, which includes widening bicycle lanes, slowing speed limits, locating senior living facilities above downtown mercantile sections, creating diagonal paths to the center of town to shorten walking distances… It only makes sense, common sense, that if we make a town much more walking and bicycling friendly, people will, well, walk and bicycle more… Last night I talked at the Holy Trinity Newman Center on NAU’s campus. I said I couldn’t help but notice, as the rest of the nation has, the phenomenal numbers of people taking to the streets to promote social justice for illegal immigrants. (And our campaign is right on board with that.) What’s more, it’s having a tremendous influence on current immigrant legislation, as bill provisions are being changed to be more accomodating as a result. I also said at the Newman Center that wouldn’t it be heartening if we could mobilize the same kind of consistent, sustained (on the street, from town to town, in the country’s face) protest — against abortion. Isn’t it time? Note: The reporter from Channel 3 News said he’d recently done a story on a mayoral election in nearby Williams, Arizona. The current mayor had been running for another term uncontested. That is, he was uncontested until people started to informally suggest that “Buff,” a town dog, run for mayor as well. Although Buff never officially declared — as a write in he got 24% of the vote in Williams. And now you know the rest of the story…
4/10/06
I talked to some 500 people at an Immigration Rally in Flagstaff, Arizona, today. Through a bull horn, I said several years ago we went to the dusty streets of Juarez, Mexico, to research the conditions there. I graphically talked about 200,000 people living in cobbled together shacks made of scrap wood and rusty tin on the city’s westside. There was no electricity, no running water and little food, I continued. At one point in the tour, I explained I stood on a ridge with a vantage of both Juarez and El Paso, Texas, to the north — which looked like OZ in comparison to Juarez. The priest who was giving us the tour (and who ran an orphanage in Juarez) pointed to the face of poverty (slums) in Juarez, then to the face of relative affluence (suburbia) of El Paso. Then he pointed to the fence on the border and asked: “If you were Jesus, what would you do with the fence?” The crowd this day in Flagstaff didn’t have to wait for an answer. They just cheered, loudly… After I finished talking, I was interviewed by Channel 3 News out of Phoenix. I said we would push for an immigration policy that would provide amnesty and family reunification for the some 12 million illegal immigrants in this country… In an interview with a reporter from the Northern Arizona University’s newspaper, I said besides pushing for amnesty and family reunification, our administration would also push to get as much humanitarian aid in the form of more funds, more Peace Corps help and private citizen initiatives to Latin America to help people there become as sustainable as possible. I told the reporter our platform hinged on “common sense.” And we believe common sense would say a lot of people in Latin America don’t want to leave their countries, their families, their friends, their culture… to come here. It’s just, well, in most cases their kids are hungry… Then during an interview with Flagstaff’s Channel 33 News (Spanish TV), I said that ultimately we’d like to see the fence come down and we’d like to see a move toward a ‘North and South American Union’ (like the evolving European Union). By opening the borders and encouraging much more interconnectdedness between countries, we believe we’d increase rapport between countries tremendously as we got to know each other better. We think this would pave the way to much more cultural exchange, joint environmental conservation projects, more of a flow of humanitarian aid help. It’s the type of globalization that doesn’t hinge primarily on economics (read: NAFTA), but rather a multi-dimensional focus aimed at the common good for, well, everyone.
4/5/06
I was interviewed by the Kingman (AZ) Daily Miner newspaper today. In relation to Hispanic immigration, I said this is a tremendous spiritual opportunity for us to help some 12 million people by not only offering amnesty, but doing everything possible to make sure these people receive a living wage, have adequate housing, equal opportunity… It is the essence of the Gospel message, I said… After the interview, the reporter told me if I was interested in seeing more of the ‘essence of the Gospel message,’ I should call Pastor Kelly Fallis here. So I did… Pastor Kelly Fallis is the executive director of the Cornerstone Mission Project in Kingman. Cornerstone is a 30-bed homeless shelter. It is a Christian faith-based project that relies solely on donations. Cornerstone provides shelter, food, job training, education help… It’s a holistic approach to helping someone get back on their feet in a solid way, said Pastor Kelly. One dimension that is missing with Cornerstone is a drug and alcohol rehab option. So Pastor Kelly has set out to do something about that. One of Cornerstone’s board members had connections to the local Taco Bell. And last summer, Pastor Kelly took up residence on the restaurant’s roof with a bull horn and a mission. He never left the roof for the next 15 days, no shower, a lengthening beard, the whole thing. What’s more, this was in August and in 110 degree heat. CNN did a naitonal story. Part of their footage showed Pastor Kelly continually called from the roof for people to donate for a rehab. And they did. He raised $60,000 — and lost 30 lbs. (Well, I’d imagine after awhile practically anyone would get tired of just tacos.) What’s more, Pastor Kelly told me he would have stayed up longer — but Hurricane Katrina hit. His motto is we must be as “proactive” as possible for the Lord… And this motto, Pastor Kelly believes, should be translated into our nation’s general policies as well. As an example, he noted there are scores of people regularly starving in Africa, in large part because of drought and lack of water for irrigation in general. Pastor Kelly wondered why America couldn’t build a trans-oceanic pipeline(s) [just as we built the Alaska pipeline] to carry fresh water to Africa for irrigation and other needs. Note: Money, indeed, could be spent on this pipeline; or for that matter, it could be spent on desalinization plants to convert ocean water to fresh water. (Africa is surrounded by water.) At the end of our last tour, there was a front page article in the Monterey Herald explaining the Monterey Bay area was just about to start a desalinization project to convert some of the water from the Pacific there to fresh water for the Monterey Peninsula. Inother words, we have the technology — and we have the money… A couple weeks ago I noted that the Bush Administration is on the verge of proposing we spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the next couple decades to update our nuclear arsenal, including new plutonium for many of the warheads we already have. I, on the other hand, believe it would make more (spiritual) sense to move the focus away from trying to protect ourselves even more here in America — while all these people are starving in Africa. I believe the Bible verse most apt in this case would be: ‘…he who is willing to lose his life for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’
4/4/06
We stopped at Holy Resurrection, a Byzantine Catholic Monastery out in the desert in Newberry Springs, California. After attending early evening prayers with the Fathers here, we were invited to dinner. It was a simple fare of spinach sandwhiches, salad and rice. We sat in a rectangle with a podium positioned in the middle of the tables. The whole time we ate, one of the Fathers read from the book The Ladder of Ascent by John Climacus (a Lenten ritual at the Monastery). This particular night the essay was: “On Gluttony.” Some excerpts included: “Gluttony thinks up seasonings and creates sweet recipes… If a visitor calls, then the slave of gluttony engages in charitable acts — but for the reasons associated with his love of food… So let us restrain our appetites with the thought of the fire [read: Hell] to come… What we ought to do is to deny ourselves fattening foods, then foods that warm us up, then whatever happens to make our food especially pleasant… Fight as hard as you can against the stomach. The man who fights his stomach causes it to shrink… You should remember a demon can take up residence in your belly and keep a man from being satisfied, even after devouring all of Egypt and after having drunk all of the Nile…” Now while I had been oscillating, it was after this last one that I decided not to ask for seconds… On a more serious side: Several years ago during a campaign stop in Vermont, I interviewed Fr. James Noonan who has been a Maryknoll priest in Cambodia — amidst extreme poverty and hunger. He said to me that we in America are “food terrorists.” That is, we take the abundance God has given us and waste tremendous amounts of money on non-nutritional junk food or spice up (“…make food especially pleasant”) and then overeat it — while scores of little children starve daily in the Third World. Yet from the pulpit (unless it’s a small Monestary in a California desert) do we seldom, if ever, hear this called what it is. The sin of: gluttony. Note: In a case of interesting timing, the next day after the monestary experience, the Arizona Republic newspaper ran an AP story saying the US Center for Disease Control just released an updated report saying a larger portion of Americans, than ever before, are overweight — and we were now one of the most overweight populaces in the world. A phenomenal 30.5% of all American adults are now considered obese and a staggering 64.5% are overweight. And one-third of U.S. kids are now overweight as well… Meanwhile, 17 million people stand on the brink of mass starvation in drought stricken East Africa.
4/3/06
We have finished the Farm Worker Tour leg in California, which was phase four of a four and a half month campaign tour at this point. And we are now headed back across the country… Today on Rte 46 West in California, we came across a large, free standing mural of: the late actor James Dean. It stood 50 yards from Michael’s Corner General Store in the middle of practically nowhere. Michael’s Corner, it turns out, was the last stop James Dean made before his fatal car crash 25 miles west of here in Cholame, California, on Sept. 30, 1955. He was traveling to an auto race in Salinas, California, in his Porsch Spyder sports car when he crashed into a tree… In Michael’s corner, which has a whole section on James Dean memorabilia, were a number of newspaper articles on the walls about the actor. Part of one read: “For better or worse, Dean changed the world… He encouraged a generation to rebel against authority…” Now, I personally believe it’s good to rebel against authority, if the authority is wrong. In the middle part of last century, the American society was moving more and more toward rampant materialism, with little regard for the environment. Television was starting to replace consistent quality parenting time. Both parents were now increasingly starting to move into the workplace, moving on an accelerating treadmill to make more to buy more. And with this dynamic (as with television), kids were getting even more shorted emotionally and growing up empty, confused, angry… Youth of that time, of course, didn’t understand the emotional and psychological dynamics of why they were feeling empty, confused, angry. They just were. So they took their teenage angst, if you will, and tried to express the anger, and fill the emptiness, with alcohol, drugs, sex, fast cars… [read: “rebellion”]. They were thumbing their noses at “the establishment.” An establisment, or ‘authority,’ which was leaving them empty, confused and angry. The problem was that much of this rebellion took the form of self-destructive behavior. Which, when you analyze it psycholigicaly, made sense. That is, these youth didn’t have much self-esteem because of the lack of quality parental attention. And consequently, if someone doesn’t feel good about themselves internally, they have a tendency to do things that are abusive to themselves… James Dean’s most famous movie was Rebel Without a Cause. That title should speak volumes. Note: I left a campaign flyer with the store clerk at Michael’s Corner. I signed it: “Joe Schriner …a Presidential Candidate With a Cause.” –And we continue to do all this without paid political consultants.
3/31/06
In honor of Cezar Chavez Day today, I worked on a position paper about farm worker issues this morning. One of the points I make in the paper is that our administration would push to make this a National Holiday because of the social justice importance of what Chavez accomplished… I also interviewed Jennifer and Ruben De Anda today. They live on the Monterey Penninsula in California. Jennifer was born in America. Ruben comes from Lago de Moreno in the State of Jalisco, Mexico. (He is now an American citizen.)… Ruben proposes a fascinating concept. He pointed to the coming together of countries to form the European Union and wondered why we couldn’t form, say, an “Americas’ Union,” involving as many countries as possible in North and South America. With this Union would come a unified monetary system (like the Euro), open borders, more idea and investment exchanges… In other words, undertaking things together might well create more of a common bond, more conduits for mutual aid, and better camaraderie in general between nations… The De Andas have three young children. The children are learning to speak both English and Spanish. Jennifer explained they get the children bilingual books, attend bilingual church services and are also taught a lot about their father’s country and culture. “Just learning the language doesn’t tell you how people think, or about their customs and social standards,” said Ruben… The couple is also quite concerned about the recent immigration policy debate in the U.S. They said some of the extended family is legal, some not. If the policies enacted are quite stringent, the De Andas are worried about deportation and the havoc that could cause in splitting some of their extended family, and so on… Note: We came across a group of some 50 Hispanic men congregated around a 7-Eleven store parking lot in Seaside, California, yesterday. They were trying to hawk their services. One of the men, Oscar Domingus, said he had arrived at 5 a.m. (it was now 10:30 a.m. and he still hadn’t been hired). Domingus, who moved here from El Salvador four years ago, told me the men gather here every day early in hopes of being hired to do day land scaping, or mechanical work, or contruction work, or farm work. Some get hired. Some don’t. These guys live in quiet desperation on the margins of society, day in and day out. How many of us (spiritually) turn our backs because, well, we’re already ‘hired?’