Vote for Joe

I’ve picked a 75-mile radius to campaign in on nights and weekends in Northwest, Ohio.  [And we’re asking our supports to do the same in their areas.]  Last Saturday I stopped, first, at a Pilot Truck Stop about five miles down I-75 from us.  I passed on campaign cards to people from West Virginia, Ohio, Oklahoma… and I approached a guy who turned out was from Canada, but he wished me luck anyway.  I smiled…  The people from West Virginia had a Sierra Club sticker on their car.  I, in turn, said I was “pro-environment” — which I am.  See our position paper on the environment…  I then headed to Gomer, Ohio (pop. not much).  At Uncle Al’s Pizza there, I talked with Cody Woods, who had recently graduated from Columbus Grove High School and was going in the Navy next month to serve on submarines.  He said a vet he works out with at a local gym discovered a tumor, but it seems it took him the longest time to get in to see a VA doctor.  Woods said he’d definitely like to see improvements in the VA around healthcare for vets.  I passed on a campaign flyer to Cody and said when I got to D.C. I’d work on that.  He smiled…  In Middle Point, Ohio (which is in no way close to the middle of the state), I dropped in unannounced on a volunteer firefighter meeting in the downtown station.  This turned into a town hall meeting of sorts, with the main topic being: guns.  Two of the firefighters were adamantly opposed to the government banning any sort of weapons — which, they said, would be a “slippery slope” in then banning more, and more… types of guns.  Because we saw the gun violence up-close-and-personal in a rough neighborhood in Cleveland for five years, I’m in a different camp.  While I back the Second Amendment, I believe (as does President Obama) that there should be more “common sense” gun laws to cut down considerably on shootings in America (we have an astronomical 100,000 a year now).  For more, see our position paper on guns.  After the conversation with the firefighters, I passed on some campaign cards and asked them to tell others about the campaign — since we’d decided to use word of mouth instead of millions of dollars in TV advertising.  Call it a hunch.  They smiled.

Still catching up on the last couple months…  I write columns for our local newspaper, The Bluffton News.  However in recent months, I’ve turned my attention to sports.  I’ve been asked to write the boys varsity basketball stories, not because I’m a Sports Illustrated quality sports reporter — but rather because our son Joseph plays on the team and the editor knew I’d be going to most of the away games.  This has turned out to be kind of like: Dave Berry writes small town sports.  Exhibit A from the lead of a recent article:  The boys basketball team from Wapakoneta [“One giant slam dunk for mankind”], Ohio, landed on “Planet Bluffton” Friday, only to fine a band of hostile aliens (read: hostile pirates).  And what ensued made the new Star Wars movie battles seem, well, tame.  When the “planet dust” had settled, Bluffton came out on top: 65 to 55.  Note:  Wapakoneta is the hometown of famous astronaut Neil Armstrong.  Note 2:  The other thing that’s been good about covering the basketball team is it’s proving helpful to the campaign as well.  No, the Bluffton Pirates haven’t officially endorsed the campaign.  But rather, while traveling to the away games, I often do some “average Joe” campaign stumping in small towns along the way.  That’s right, while Trump is jetting about in his 737 wide body plane,  I’m in a decidedly less-wide, 1998 Villager mini-van stopping in Beaverdam, Cairo… on the way to the Delphos-Jefferson game.  Which, by the way, Bluffton won — if you didn’t see it on ESPN.  Note 3:  For more on the campaign’s Ohio Strategy…

Catching up on the last couple months…  It’s been a whirlwind of stuff in between house painting, parenting, writing, working on the campaign…  We, for instance, have done a number of Facebook “…from the ladder” segments about such topics as immigration, space travel, abortion, global warming…  I note that with the mounting super-charged storms, climate refugees, increasing drought (all from climate change), we in the U.S. could well be viewed as: “climate terrorists.”  During this period — appropriate enough —  I also interviewed the CEO of “Energy One” in Findlay, Ohio, for a magazine article.  The company is building three large wind turbines clustered together in Findlay that will be tied to a “Wind Campus” of businesses.  Energy One also envisions school field trips out to the site so students can learn about the dynamics of wind energy “up close,” so to speak…  During this time, I also interviewed two small, second-generation business owners (at a local glass company and a local optician).  Both businesses were passed on by parents and the optician noted that her customers actually span three family generations.  She said this kind of business family lineage has diminished in spades in this country — “…and that’s been sad.”  Our position paper on the economy calls for a resurgence of small Mom & Pop stores throughout the country.  These small stores, and small family farms, were once the backbone of this country.  And they should be again.  Note:  During this time, I talked with a professor at Bluffton University who said her journalism class has a few students who are majoring in creative writing.  The professor half smiled and said that she was forever saying “…it doesn’t matter how the air smelled at the time of the event, Mary!”  As coincidence would have it, I had majored in journalism in college, and minored in creative writing.  This got me to thinking.  What about a new newspaper genre?  “Press & Prose.”  And you could call one of the newspapers: The Creative Chronicle  “…Press & Prose for the People.”

I attended a talk at Bluffton University today that was, in part, about Russian dissidents.  BU History Professor Perry Bush noted that scores of Soviet Union “dissidents” (artists, writers, teachers, Christians…) were killed under Stalin — or sent to “labor camps.”  The same thing is happening in China today.  Yet we continue to offer that country, for instance, “favored nation trading status.”  We are, in effect, financially inter-dependent with China — and as a result it’s dwarfed our voice on human rights in that country.  It’s a bad “trade” off.

Did some more traveling on Ohio’s back roads last weekend…  In Lisbon, Ohio, I stumped at the Steel Car Trolley Diner.  I also noticed the menu featured a Cleveland Browns Burger, as it featured a Ben Rothils’burger’ (Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback).  Lisbon is about halfway between the Browns Stadium and Pittsburgh’s Stadium.  So the restaurant proprietor seemed to be playing it both ways.  Not unlike, well, many politicians.  And speaking of politicians, the priest at St. George Church in Lisbon said during a Sunday homily that the predominant feature of modern politicians is to promise they’ll do something(s) for the voters.  When, instead, he said sound spiritual principle is that the politicians should be exhorting the people to do something(s) for their country.  I mean that seems the Gospel message, doesn’t it?  After Mass, I told the priest our platform does just what he (and John Kennedy) was talking about…  I also stopped at the McDonald’s in Upper Sandusky early Saturday morning.  I approached what looked like the “brain trust” table (you know the one) and passed out some campaign cards.  I also asked for particular concerns.  One farmer said he was concerned about the vote this November to make Ohio the fifth state in the country to legalize the use of marijuana for recreational purposes.  I said me too.  Do we, for instance, want more impaired drivers, more impaired parents, more impaired people in general…?  What’s more, the demand for drugs on this side of the fence drives a good deal of the cartel violence on the other side of the fence.  So if we ramp up even more demand, there will probably be more violence.  Also, people smoke to get “high.”  There are few “social smokers,” if you will.  Note:  While in Lisbon, I stayed at the Travelers Motel on Old Rte. 30.  It was 50 bucks a night.  And as president, I’d stay at the Travelers Motel on Old Rte. 30 — and take the savings to spend down the national debt!