Vote for Joe

I just wrote a newspaper article about Maysville, Ohio, pop.: not much. It’s just a small cluster of homes that are loosely configured around an intersection on Rte. 309 here. But Maysville wasn’t always like that. In the mid-1800s, it was a bustling town with two general stores, one shoe store, two blacksmith shops, two hotels, one small manufacturing plant… It was a day horse/buggy ride west of Lima, Ohio, and travelers would stop here for the night. What’s more, many were simply employed and lived here. It was, primarily, a good model of a decentralized community. Then the railroad came, and passenger trains bypassed the town, freight trains bypassed the town, and the town, incrementally, died — as did many other towns across the nation at the time. According to a book I’ve been recently reading (see photo), “…the railroad was warmly embraced by the American people almost from its inception. Its utility in unifying the nation and creating a strong national economy were apparent to nearly everyone.” Everyone except, of course, and apparently, the merchants in Maysville, Ohio.

Okay, if (some) of the scientists/meteorologists are right, global warming looms like a scary doomsday scenario. First World lifestyle changes would, indeed, be good, whether the threat is, ultimately, real, or not. Stay with me on this… To curb CO2 emissions, we need to, as an example, bicycle, and walk, way more than we currently are. This will entail some “sacrifice” for many. Sacrifice is what the Catholic Church calls “mortification.” And mortification, in turn, is good for the soul. So, ultimately, we end up with a cleaner world, and cleaner souls. It’s a win/win.

I just interviewed a local Vietnam Vet who weighed in on the War in Ukraine. He was a helicopter flight mechanic near the front lines during the war. This veteran said he sees the Ukraine War paradigm, basically, the way the Vietnam War was framed. That is, “containment” of Soviet Union (now Russia) style communism. The atrocities taking place in Ukraine at present are, indeed, absolutely horrific. And the ‘communism containment of today and yesteryear’ is, very much, an apt corollary — on one level. But, and here’s a corollary that’s not being made (yet), abortion has been legal in Ukraine for decades, and Zelensky, as an example, is a strong proponent of “choice.” What happens in an abortion is absolutely horrific as well. What’s more, abortion is now legal in almost every country worldwide. Do we think God is just going to stand by and allow this Holocaust to continue unabated? What we are looking at in the Ukraine, I believe, may be just one of the opening salvos of World War III — where God merely takes His hand off the world, and mankind reaps the grave consequences for abortion, (and other) grave sins. In fact, we may well be seeing the “pale green horse” of the Book of Revelation ‘coming around the first turn,’ so to speak.

I regularly cover village council meetings in small communities throughout the area. And the issues that come up are tremendously varied. For instance, one of the towns is doing a water tower rehab project this summer. The Village Administrator for this town also recently outlined a multiple road asphalt repaving project slated for this summer, in tandem with a municipal pool painting project. While, okay, not seemingly momentous on the face of it, these projects, these council decisions, do, indeed, impact the local populace in significant ways. In fact, our campaign calls for much more power to be put in the hands of these local officials who, ultimately, and intimately, know their towns’ specific needs.

I recently interviewed a local librarian who is the youth reading coordinator. She doe story time sessions at the library and at an elementary school (using books like the one pictured here). She has a master’s degree in Library Science. She noted that in this modern age of screen videos, and such, reading among youth is becoming more and more out of vogue. This can, indeed, be detrimental. That is, reading books, for instance, is akin to aerobics for the brain. One has to actively picture the plot line, the characters, the background scenes… With a video, well, the imagery, what the characters look like, etc., is all right there in front of your face. In adopting all this new technology, cart blanche, have we, indeed, made a mistake? An important question. Note: I also recently interviewed a local sociology professor who posited that technology actually drives culture in recent centuries, not the other way around. And he used the example of the Industrial Revolution. Steam power was initially harnessed, factories went up, mass production started happening… and people moved from the country to around these plants (which became “urban areas”). And many people traded a small farm, agrarian-based existence, for a much more fast-paced, crowded, polluted… existence. The professor said that unlike the Amish, who go through prayerful, studied discernment in regard to adopting a new technology, mainstream America usually just accepts the newest technology — and labels it: “progress.”