Vote for Joe

While in South Bend, Indiana, I interviewed Jonah Smith in regard to an expanded position paper we’re doing on the environment. Smith, who majored in Ecology at Rutgers University, said farm run off in the Mississippi River Watershed Region is being transported down to the Gulf of Mexico at an alarming rate, creating a gigantic aquatic ‘dead zone’ in this body of water. Smith said a key to staving off more of this particular environmental devastation is a dramatic shift to much more: organic farming… Smith also said modern agri-business should be looked at as a monopoly of sorts, and, ideally, there should be a move to break these up, while supporting more small farm initiatives. Note: For Father’s Day yesterday, our family went to a Babe Ruth League game just over the border in Niles, Michigan earlier in the afternoon. This is a summer league for guys 16 to 19 years old. We set up our lawn chairs along the right base line and simply had a wonderful time… There was a cemetery just beside the field. And afterward we found a grave stone with the name “Joe” to pray and talk about my father who died several years ago. (He’s actually buried in Cleveland, but I told the children: “Granddad will still hear us.”)

While in northern Indiana, we learned of an excellent social justice program. In Kimmel, Indiana, a group of farmers (and others) are involved with a “Common Ground Growing Project.” They are farming a common plot of land, with the proceeds going to the Foods Resource Bank, which is a Christian based initiative to get money to 25 Third World countries for seeds, farm tools, irrigation equipment, animals… all in an effort to help farmers in these other countries become more sustainable. I told the Advance News newspaper in Napanee, Indiana that our platform calls for dramatically stepped up programs like these to help in the Third World. Note: While in Napanee, we went to a supermarket that had a significant amount of parking for Amish buggies. The kids and I walked about looking at the horses, talking to some of the Amish. And I couldn’t help but think what a sane response many more of these buggies (and bicycles…) would be to global warming — and all the domino effects that are happening to nature as a result, including tremendous damage to wildlife habitat… Coincidentally enough (read: providentially enough), as we walked about the buggies, we happened on a man wearing a t-shirt that said: “Extinct is forever.”

Just before leaving Ohio, the family and I helped an organic farmer in Bluffton hoe a field of beans. Hard, sweaty work. But clean, good work. More than a few times while out in the field, I’d look up to see a pick-up truck going by with a chemical sprayer on the back. I’m sure we looked much the anomaly out there with our old-fashion hoes. Nevertheless, the farmer said in a small radius around his place, another farming couple had both lost their lives to cancer recently, as had his brother who farms just the next field over. He said the chemicals leech into the groundwater and get into the wells. And, he explained, some of the chemicals sprayed, never make it to the plants or the ground — but rather become air born. “It’s kind of like breathing in second hand smoke,” he lamented. Note: These chemicals are not just hazardous to the farmers. David Orr, who is head of the Environmental Science Department at Oberlin College, has written that the chemicals (pesticides, herbacides…) in our food supply, are creating “chemical cocktails” in the systems of the general populace these days, which is leading to all sorts of disease, including cancer.

Went to Bluffton, Ohio’s Farmer’s Market (“…with an emphasis on organic”) today. I talked with Ray Person who recently bought a 20-acre farm on the outskirts of town. Eight families from Bluffton regularly go out to tend to a large organic garden, chickens and some pigs. They’ve also converted an old garage to a “Summer Kitchen” and the families can together there, and so on. Ray, who is a theology professor at Ohio Northern University, has bought the farm, primarily, for environmental stewardship reasons. It’s his way of combatting some of the urban sprawl (by keeping the land rural) and it helps connect these other families much more with the land, God’s growing cycles, etc. Note: Bluffton High School’s marquee had a bit of writing for the graduating class of ’05: “Do not follow where the path may lead, but go instead where there is no path — and leave a trail.” Kind of sounds like the theme of our “back roads” campaign.

We stopped in Yellow Springs, Ohio (pop. 4,000). The town is dotted with “NO SPRAWL” signs. Chamber of Commerce volunteer Joan Horn told me a developer had recently bought a tract of land on the outskirts of town and had plans to put in a strip mall with a Kinkos, and a number of other stores. (All Yellow Springs’ businesses are currently located downtown.) Many of the residents, who believe in the concept of Decentralism in general, maintaining the integrity of their downtown specifically, and keeping things as ‘walkable’ and cyclable as possible — dramatically rose up with these loud, yellow yard signs and a barrage of letters-to-the-editor of the town paper. The developer backed off. Note: In an article about “Getting Fit” in the current Time Magazine, it was noted: “The average Amish man takes 18,425 steps a day, and the average Amish woman takes 14,196. A typical American [not counting those in Yellow Springs, Ohio] takes: 5,000.”