Bluffton has become an RTA experiment in this region. A bus out of Lima (pop. 40,000) is coming here five times a day, making a loop through the village (pop. 4,000), then heading back to the downtown station in Lima. I contacted the RTA Director of Operations who said ridership was steadily increasing throughout the first three months of this. With climate change accelerating, we, so many of us, need to (metaphorically, and literally) “Hop on the bus, Gus.” …Just did a story on one of the local high schools here that put in a new $766,000 artificial turf field. It will, in large part, be paid by a local tax levy. But you have to wonder, also in large part, whether that money would be much better (spiritually) spent on helping Third World farmers grow crops in food insecure countries. The artificial turf, when grass has worked so well for, like, forever, seems a bit First World spoiled. Our foreign policy would line up with the latter. And speaking of food insecurity, I also did a story on a local church that hired a food truck and went into a low income trailer park recently to pass out free meals. A spokesperson for the church told me that these generally low income people were, many of them, struggling even more in the midst of the pandemic. And this was the church’s way of bringing the Gospel message to life, he said.
