I talked with Bluffton University professor Don Hooley. Back from a sabbatical to India, he said it wasn’t uncommon to see a family of four there living in one 15 ft. by 15 ft. room, complete with a small kitchen, small bathroom, and electricity. What’s more, he said people in these situations consider themselves: “doing well.” On the other end of the spectrum, and on the other side of the world, we live like kings by comparison, including people in, say, the lower-middle-class here. But this shouldn’t be about “counting our blessings.” This should be about going to things like house sharing, and the like, and taking the savings to help our brothers and sisters living in Third World slum dwellings without the kitchen, the bathroom, or electricity. We have become so gluttonous about our “space” in this country. Note: On a campaign stop in Stamford, Connecticut, a couple years back, we met with an attorney who taught at a university in India for a time and was tremendously impacted by the poverty he saw in some of the slums there. So impacted, in fact, he came back and googled the “international average salary,” which was a little more than $9,000 at the time. He decided to live on this, and started by moving his family into a small trailer. He takes the rest of his income and gives it to humanitarian aid agencies working in India.
On caskets, and such…
I talked with Neil Kehler who is involved with a “Casket Ministry” at First Mennonite Church in Bluffton, Ohio. He and other church “carpenter hobbyists” make nice, cherry wood caskets for deceased church members. The cost: $300. Neil told me the going cost for an on-the-market casket these days would be: $6,000, or so. Now… There are currently some 1 billion people living in slums throughout the Third World. At a stop at Habitat for Humanity Headquarters in Americus, Georgia, several years back, we learned Habitat builds new homes in Uganda, Tanzania, Biafra… to help get families out of these slums. The cost: $2,000 a home. Some math: We currently bury one dead American for the same amount of money it would take to: get three very alive families out of slums in the Third World! Let that sink in. Note: Overheard in Lima, Ohio, today… Q: “What is the biggest room in the world? A: Room for improvement.” And on this ‘casket thing’ in America, we have a whole lot of room for improvement.
What the “Super Committee” couldn’t do…
And you think the Super Committee had problems… I talked last week with Tom Eckelberry who is the president of the Harrod, Ohio (pop. 400), Village Council. Harrod is one of a handful of towns that don’t assess a tax on resident incomes. However, that’s about to change. At a public hearing about this, some 30 rather upset residents showed up to air their concerns. (Read: They didn’t want to be taxed more.) Amidst the vocal protest hub bub, Eckelberry offered a creative “compromise solution.” There’d be a new tax (1%). However, after city expenses were met each year — there’d be a rebate to residents out of what wasn’t used. The residents thought this was a fair compromise. Amazing… This small town village council president was able to come up with an extremely common sense approach that worked. Yet these high profile politicians in D.C., with all these supposed smarts, ended up: stymied. Incidentally, it’s the Tom Eckelberrys of the country who we want to take to D.C. with us.
Hot in Madagascar, Take Back The Night, Just ‘Curious’
The campaign continues… This last week, Liz and I met with Debbie and Kevin Moore. They were missionaries in Madagascar for 17 years. Madagascar is the 4th largest island in the world, and the 10th poorest country. Although quite close to the equator, there is little electricity and no air conditioning — few fans even for that matter. Kevin said the body simply “adjusts.” This should be a concept that is in play in Durban, South Africa, this week at the U.N. Climate Change Convention. We all need to have our bodies: “adjust.” Or put another way, we need to: “sacrifice.” That is, if we don’t want to pass on a world of climate chaos to our children, I recently said during a talk at the University of Notre Dame. If they can do it in Durban, they can do it in Des Moines… Another thing they don’t have in Madagascar is much in the way of televisions, radios, cell phones… Instead they have deep, meaningful relationships with each other because they’re not distracted by all this technological stuff, said Debbie Moore. Hmmm… Note: Later in the week, some of our family members participated in a “Take Back The Night” event in Bluffton, Ohio. It was sponsored by our daughter Sarah’s Girl Scout Troupe. Sarah was the anouncer for the event, and my wife Liz shared a personal experience. She talked about breaking up a domestic violence dispute between a young Hispanic husband and wife on our street back in Cleveland several years ago. The husband was drunk and threatening to beat his wife with a pool stick out in front of their house. Neighbors were standing in their front yards, but when Liz screamed for someone to call the police — nobody moved. Liz, in turn, bravely stepped inbetween the couple and it de-escalated. In our neighborhood, it could have well gone the other way. Note 2: Last Saturday NASA launched the Mars rover “Curiosity” on a mission to find “chemical ingredients needed for life” on planet Mars. A program that, since it’s inception, has cost billions of dollars. I’m ‘curious.’ Don’t ya gotta wonder how far those billions of dollars would have gone in helping to impact world hunger and homelessness for: LIFE ON PLANET EARTH!? I mean, we already know there’s ‘life’ here, right? President Obama, who is promoting this Mars mission, recently said we have to go into space in a “smarter way.” How ‘smart’ is spending billions of dollars on this, while 24,000 people starve to death every day worldwide? I mean, you have to also be ‘curious’ about whether they have any classes on “Common Sense for the Common Good” at Harvard?
“hobo,” campaign swing, a flint rock, water shortage worldwide
Catching up on the last week… I met up with a homeless guy who we had taken in a few years back. He’s a modern day “hobo,” if you will. He has a bi-polar disorder and how it manifests is: he doesn’t do well in one place for long. He has traveled the country (hitchhiking, on buses…) the past 20 years. Coincidentally, I have extensively traveled the country the past 22 years doing research and campaigning. While my wife Liz wouldn’t call it a bi-polar disorder, she has referred to it (on her bad days) as being: “nuts.” Okay so we’re not ahead in the polls, yet… Some of this campaigning has taken our 16-year-old daughter, Sarah, and I on a recent swing through northwest Ohio. (Sarah just got her temporary driving permit, and I have to believe this was a more pressure packed trip than all the other presidential candidates experienced last week — Herman Cain notwithstanding — combined.) One of our stops was at tiny Van Buren, Ohio, where I put up a campaign flier on the town bulletin board under “Community Events.” Well if I win, people in Van Buren would consider me being there a “community event,” right? In Upper Sandusky, Ohio (pop. 6,364), I did a little impromptu stumping at the Beca House Coffee Shop downtown. As we were leaving this quintessential, midwestern small town later, against a backdrop of kids walking home from school, colorful fall leaves… Sarah and I noticed an even more colorful (and graphic) “Girls Gone Wild” tour bus parked in front of a tavern downtown, apparently there to put on a semi-erotic show that night. I couldn’t help but think: “Girls Gone Wild / Society Gone Nuts.” …I rounded out the week by attending a seminar on “Prmitive Native Skills” with our eight-year-old son Jonathan at Bluffton University. Wilderness Instructor Clint Myers fascinated some 70 students with demonstrations of how Native Americans lived (hunting, fishing, making clothes…) before the White man got here. When Myers got to the demonstration about starting fires (without matches), he held up a gray rock and asked the class what kind of rock it was. 70 college students stared blankly, until our Jonathan’s hand tentatively went up in the back. “It’s a flint rock,” he said. (For homeschooling Jonathan has been reading a lot of wilderness literature lately.) All 70 heads turned in unison, and apparently in awe. Or at least they were impressed, as was I — who didn’t know what it was either. Myers then started a small fire with the rock, until one of the more technologically advanced students said if it got any bigger “…the sprinkler system would probably come on.” And that was that. Note: Wilderness instructor Clint Myers said the average American uses 120 gallons of water a day (drinking, cooking, cleaning, flushing toilets, watering lawns…) Meanwhile in the developing countries, many people use a pail of water a day, if that. And often times it’s not clean water. On a stop in Stephens Point, Wisconsin, we interviewed University of Wisconsin Environmental Professor George Kraft. He said we are running into water problems worldwide, in part, because the developing countries are over-using water. Thus, our administration would ask Americans to cut back on their water use significantly and fund many more water projects in the Third World. “Common sense for the common good,” worldwide.
An “A” in Ayersville, Bengals bungling, played “valiantly,” An “F” in Foreign Relations Policy
The “Back Road to the White House Tour” rolls on… In Ayersville, Ohio (pop. it wasn’t even listed in the Atlas), I put up a campaign flier in the Ayersville Gas Station (one pump) / Carry Out / Restaurant (one table). A guy at the cash register wished me luck and a guy at the pump said he was open to alternatives this election and would check out the website. Then it was on to Dupont, Ohio (pop. smaller than Ayersville), where I approached what looked like an extended family out putting Christmas decorations up around a house on the corner. I had a Browns cap on and two of the guys were wearing Cincinnati Bengal sweatshirts. There was an awkward moment. I then started: “Hey guys (That’s what we say in Ohio, “hey guys.”), as unlikely as this seems, I’m running for president of the country. And the football thing notwithstanding, I’d really like your vote!” They looked briefly at the campaign card, then they looked a lot longer, again, at my Browns cap. Ohio sports fans can be a tough lot. Speaking of football… Our kids’ Midget Football League Team, “The Rams,” clashed with the Ayersville (actually, I didn’t get the whole name) team. It was the last game of the season and I helped coach. As sometimes happens in these “games” with the younger kids, the coaches stay on the field like in a scrimmage situation. Our younger son Jonathan played halfback and safety. And our older son Joseph played offensive end and defensive linebacker. All the kids on our team played valiantly this day. (Read: We got beat by a lot.) And at one point this really showed in the huddle, with our offensive tackle crying (literally) with a bruised shoulder and our quarterback crying (literally) from a bruised ego. (At that point we were losing 24 to 0.) One of our coaches, a young father, started to head toward the sidelines. “Where are you going?” I asked. “I just can’t take all the crying man,” he said in exasperation. And so it goes on the Midget Football League gridiron. Now to move to a foreign affairs ‘gridiron’… This past week, I’ve been expanding our position on foreign affairs. And the last couple days I’ve been focusing specifically on our “strategic alliance” with Saudi Arabia. This is a country run by dictatorship, illiciting continual charges of human rights violations. It is a country where if you’re convicted of robbery, say, the sentence can include (and regularly does): amputation of your hands and/or feet. It is a country with no freedom of speech or press, with all media actively censored by the government to prevent political dissidence. It is a country where women are not allowed to drive, vote and only 5% of Saudi women are in the work force. It is a country with no religious freedom. In other words, it’s a country that displays principles seemingly antithetical to much of what America stands for. And last year the Obama administration rubber stamped a huge weapons deal with Saudi Arabia that could be worth up to $60 billion over 20 years. We are sending them, among other military hardware, 84 F-15 fighter jets to: help protect their “kingdom” — and our interests. (Read: oil.) So in this case, basically, our economic interests trump protesting human rights abuses. Would that, in essence, put America in the same camp as Saudi Arabia?
urban forestry, duck weed, a tractor tire, flannel shirts and freedom
Two days ago the AP carried a story saying the UN inter-governmental panel of scientists not only continue with their assertion that global warming is real, but it’s apparently accelerating rapidly. However, the panel does note there is still time (but not much) to curb it. With this in mind, I attended the Northwest Ohio Urban Forestry Seminar at Bluffton University yesterday. You see, trees absorb carbon dioxide. So if we start planting a bunch of trees all over (in tandem with sacrificing, going to much more green energy, etc.), we’ll have a leg up on this global warming thing. Nebraska City, Nebraska (home of “Arbor Day”), did. On a campaign stop there several years ago, we learned this town of 7,000 people was planting 10,000 trees. While we were in Rawlins, Wyoming, for another campaign stop, a U.S. Forestry person there told me that while we get so up in arms about the rapidly depleting Brazilian rain forests — we clear cut almost all (96%) of America! And it’s time we start looking in our own backyard, and, well, planting some more trees in it… After the seminar, I took our kids to basketball practice at the Harrod, Ohio (pop. 467), Multi-Purpose Center. And as luck would have it, the Harrod Village Council was meeting last night just up the hall from the gym. I stopped in. While most of the nation was riveted on the mounting tension between Israel and Iran yesterday, the Harrod Village Council people discussed the best way to get some “duck weed” off a local farm pond. And then there was the issue of a tractor tire in a ditch by the fertilizer plant. The village administrator said: “If the water plugs up in a big storm, there could be real trouble out there.” (And you think this nuclear threat in Iran is a nuisance…) Note: Levity aside… My wife Liz was just showing me yesterday that iconic Norman Rockwell painting of a man in a worn leather coat and flannel shirt standing to address what seems like a small village council meeting in America somewhere. The picture has “grassroots democracy” written all over it. And these guys at the Village Council meeting in Harrod last night, dressed in jeans, work boots, flannel shirts…, were living this small town democracy thing out with all the gravity it should be lived out with — as were those in the audience. For instance, three women from the Harrod Historical Society were there to lobby that the town park lights not be turned off as a cost cutting measure. Those lights shine down on, not only grass and park benches, but a 1905 Shay Steam Engine (which was designed here) and a Veterans Display that features a full-size Army green tank, a full-size Army green helicopter, and the words on a plaque nearby that say, in essence, that people gave their lives so that the democratic process that was being played out in this small village council room up the street last night — could go on. Note 2: As the highly-charged, geopolitical international chess game goes on around a “nuclear Iran,” like with the rain forest dynamic, it’s time the U.S. look squarely in it’s own backyard — or at least in it’s ‘backyard’ out West. That is, I once posed to a reporter from ABC News in Toledo, Ohio: “What if we let the weapons inspectors into Montana? What would they find?” Hint: Some 2,000 nuclear missiles aimed all over the world, including at Iran.
position papers, Italy, Nicaragua, ‘NRA Speak’
Catching up on the week… I’ve been cloistered in “campaign headquarters” working on position papers for our stances on foreign policy, and on gun rights. That’s what happens when you don’t have much of a staff, you actually end up writing these things yourself… A good-size story appeared about our campaign this week in a big Italian newspaper called Riformista. That’s right, while the other candidates have stories splashed all over American newspapers, we’ve opted to go the Italian route. (Call it a hunch.) I also recently gave a talk to a Nicaraguan high school, via the virtual magic of Skype. My wife, and ‘almost First Lady’ Liz, who is always the optimist, said: “Maybe the people in Italy and Nicaragua have friends in America they can talk to.” Note: In our position paper on guns, I note that more than 100,000 people in American are either killed or injured by guns every year now. The U.S, in effect, is turning into a veritable war zone. With the ‘front lines’ being our major cities. And to address this situation merely with ‘NRA Speak’ sound bytes and hubris, as opposed to squarely looking at the tremendously complex dimensions to gun violence in America, well, “…misses the mark (sorry).”
Ada, a bald guy, NFL footballs, coffee addiction, “tipping point” (not), trade…
The campaign rolls on… While the more high-profile candidates jockey for position on the national stage, we went to: Ada, Ohio (pop. 6,052), this week. I stumped at the Sawmill Restaurant, a small locally owned eatery in the center of town. It sits just adjacent to the Ada Post Office. And I walked out of the restaurant just in time to see a middle-age, kind of paunchy bald guy emerge from the post office with a t-shirt that read: “With a body like this, who needs hair!” (Is it just me, or is this t-shirt prose thing getting more and more off-the-wall?) Incidentally, while in Ada we learned a small Wilson Sporting Goods factory here: makes all the footballs for the NFL. How’s that for trivia? Then it was on to Lima, Ohio… In Lima,my daughter Sarah and I went to The Meeting Place (on Market) for lunch. And I put up a campaign flier in the front window there. That’s right, our answer to the multi-million dollar campaign TV ads:? Well placed fliers. (And we continue to do all of this without paid political consultants.) The Meeting Place has a rather large variety of coffee drinks and a list of 10 Things That Might Mean You’re Coffee Addicted. One of them: “You think sleep is only for the weak.” Note: At a gas station in Ada, I put up a campaign card that reads, in part: Average Joe for President. The cashier glanced up at it and asked: “You’re running for president of what?” Apparently we haven’t reached a “tipping point,” yet. Note 2: Free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama were approved this week by the House. This will open the door to way more trans-continental shipping and all the attendant global warming gases that come with that. It will also open the door to more sweat shop conditions in these other countries — so they can compete. So this might, in the short term, create more jobs in the U.S. because of ramped up exports, but at what long-term costs globally? I.e., common sense says we’ve got to stop being so myopic.
Peace Keepers, Shay Locomotive, beef jerky, Joe the plumber, ‘rotation formation’
Catching up on the last week… I talked with Bluffton College Education Professor Paul Weaver. Every year he goes down to the country of Colombia as part of a Christian Peace Keeper Team. Amidst the violence there, he and other team members serve as human shields for children walking to school, for rural villagers threatened with drug cartel attacks, and so on. Christian Peace Keepers believe in non-violence and are willing to put their ‘money where their mouth is,’ so to speak. That is, as soldiers are willing to die for war, these Peace Keepers say they are willing to “die for peace.” …Our “back road” campaigning in Ohio continues. We stopped in Harrod, Ohio (pop. 493). This is the home of the Shay Steam Locomotive, circa 1905. One is on display on the town green here, and is referred to as the “work horse of her day.” (It was manufactured at the nearby Lima Locomotive Works.) While in Harrod, the owner of the Harrod “Snack Shack” put up a “Joe the Painter” for President campaign flier on their bulletin board by the door. I signed it and added: “GREAT FOOD!” Okay, so I just had the beef jerky, but it was pretty good… Speaking of “Joe the Painter,” I just read that “Joe the Plumber” has officially announced that he is running for Congress in Ohio’s 9th District. And the “Average Joe Revolution” rolls on, like the Shay Steam Locomotive used to… Note: I filled in as coach for our son Jonathan’s Midget football team in a practice this week. I lined up the offense and defense in a “rotation formation.” That is, after each play the players ‘rotated’ so each boy got a chance to play each position. That meant, at one point, that the kid who regularly plays anonymously in the trenches at center, got a chance to run the ball. You should have seen the smile on his face as he lined up in the backfield. And he gained about 10 yards to boot on a pretty good run… After watching the Republican debate on the economy last night, I couldn’t help but think the “rotation formation” I used with the boys, would be a good idea for the economy. That is, for instance, maybe some of the “suits” on Wall Street (and well dressed politicians for that matter), could ‘rotate’ into some low-paying, mind-numbing assembly line work for a significant amount of time — not a photo-op amount of time. What’s the bet these people would soon (real soon) be looking to develop a new kind of economy based on much more human dignity for everyone, like our position paper on a “new economy” proposes.