Vote for Joe

This weekend we campaigned at the North Star Festival.   North Star, Ohio,  has a population of 100.   That’s right, we continue to forgo political consultants, demographic studies… and head right for the place that has the best hot dogs —  and discussions.   While campaigning at the festival, I talked to a number of “average Joe’s,” if you will, with some good takes on stuff.   At the Antique Car Cruise-In, one man and his wife (sitting next to an old refurbished Impala), said they had recently moved here from Minnesota.   The husband said when Jesse Ventura was governor, there was a surplus.   So what did  Ventura do?   He gave some of the money back   to Minnesotans in the form of rebate checks.   “Now the government of Minnesota has been shut down the past two weeks,” the man said, shaking his head…   An old farmer from the area, calling on some common sense, said to me that the only answer to the astronomical Federal Debt is to “…tighten our belts and pay it off.”   Along those same lines, I talked to a CPA who doubled as a Dave’s RV Softball Team shortstop in the marathon games here this weekend.   He said his business didn’t do so well last year, so his family had to “ratchet down expenses.”   Why wouldn’t that be any different for the Federal Government? He wondered…   I also talked to a man who just graduated from the Agriculture Department at Ohio State University.   We talked about the continuing demise of the small family farm and it’s rippling effect.   For instance, in the “old days” kids growing up on the farm got all kinds of exercise.   Now for many kids it’s a sedentary lifestyle that is leading to things like childhood obesity.   This man said he’d just read where Ohio was 17th on the nationwide ‘obesity chart.’   Nothing to write home about…   I also talked with a Korean War Veteran sitting by his antique vehicle.   He said he was particualrly frosted by former President Bush’s decision to go into Iraq.   “There weren’t any weapons of mass destruction,” he scoffed…   Note:   At one point I approached a man in a Cleveland Browns shirt.   I told him our campaign promise was:   “When we get to D.C., we’re going to paint (“Joe the Painter”) the Capitol Dome orange and brown and put a big face mask around it.”   Liz says I gotta stop saying that.   But it’s like an addiction, or something.

After finishing our last tour, we have stopped at a farm in western Ohio.   Here we’ve been involved with most every aspect of farming:   baling hay, helping with a big garden, feeding the animals (cows, chickens, sheep…).   Good hard, clean work.   And something that is key to our platform.   Our Sarah, 15, recently wrote in her journal: “We lift 50 lb bales of hay off the wagon.   It’s hot, dusty work — but you get muscles.”   On a  stop in rural Thorp, Wisconsin, during Campaign 2000, we met with Bernie Stuttgen.   He’d been a phys. ed. teacher at Thorp High School for 30 years.   He said with the decline of the small family farm in America, a lot of kids are now “out of shape.”   That is, the work on the farm not only helped develop a work ethic in the youth, it also helped them develop, well, muscles.   Our platform calls for a return of the small family farm in America.   In fact, we’d like to see a return to a primarily agrarian-based society again.   One where organic growing was predominant, again like the old days.   Organic farming is more labor intensive, which could tremendously impact unemployment in the nation.   And it would produce a new, and healthier, generation of youth.   For more on our agriculture platform… Note:   We are trying to raise campaign donations for the next phase.   If you can help, please send your check to:   Schriner Presidential Election Committee, 14304 Mangen Rd., Yorkshire, Ohio 45388-9715.

Catching up on our last week in Ohio… We’ve come to farm country near the mid-western border of Ohio for a pit stop.    This afternoon  I was out in a barn  putting up  bales of hay…   Earlier in the day, I talked with a man in Greenville, Ohio, who is a member of the Ginghamsburg Methodist Church in Ginghamsburg, Ohio.   Among a wide variety of outreaches, both domestic and overseas, this church regularly sends  congregation members  to help in The Sudan.   They go to help in the midst of the violence/genocide, in the midst of  abject poverty, because, well, that’s the Gospel message.This man said that while much of the church money could go into bigger church buildings, and so on, the pastor thinks there are greater needs.   Good paradigm…   In Greenville, I also interviewed Amber Schmerge at the Greenville Farmer’s Market downtown.   Ms. Schmerge is the director of the Downtown Re-Development Project here.   The project is multi-pronged.   It focuses on attracting new business to the downtown.   It’s involved with historic preservation.   And it  features  an array of creative approaches to get people coming back downtown again.   As an example, one Friday night a month an outside  movie is shown on 5th Street here.   Last month the feature was Spanky And Our Gang, which drew 150 people…   I’ve also spent part of the week sanding our campaign vehicle.   (I’m really hoping Air Force 1 doesn’t have any rust.)…   And finally, I met with organic farmer Dan Kremer.   He said current applications of artificial pesticides and herbicides on conventional farms get into the food, which we then ingest.   He said there are links between eating these foods and cancer.   What’s more, these pesticides and herbicides damage the microbes in the soil that are part of the nutrition chain to the plants.   As a result, the crops are becoming less and less nutritious.   In turn, our immune systems are diminished in kind.   And the weaker the immune system, the less it’s ability to fight carcinogens that come into our bodies.   A staggering one in three people in America  now get cancer.   I told  a newspaper in rural  Bellefountaine, Ohio, that instead of just “Racing for a Cure,” common sense says we should: STOP USING THE STUFF THAT CAUSES CANCER IN THE FIRST PLACE!   Note:   That night at the Kremer farm, there was an outdoor volley ball game in some grass next to the cow pasture.   The game was  illuminated by a spotlight on the barn.   It was adults, neighborhood kids, everybody.   And it was such good clean fun, I can’t tell ya.   Think Norman Rockwell, in his heyday.   Note 2:   As we ready for the next tour leg, we are trying to raise campaign donations.    If you can help, please send your check to our current location at: Schriner  Presidential Election Committee, 14304 Mangen Rd., Yorkshire, Ohio  45388-9715.   Thank you.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

On our way up I-65 through Alabama last week, we stopped in the small town of Cullman.   The tornado that devastated Tuskaloosa, skipped across the state, also touching down in Cullman.   I talked to one of the eye witnesses, a woman who lives on the western outskirts of town.   She said she heard the tornado sirens and dashed to her front window just in time to see the tornado touch down in a field just across the street.   “I knew I should have immediately gotten away from the glass.” she said.   “But I was transfixed with the sight.   Luckily the tornado didn’t turn left toward us.”   The tornado continued west, hopped over the small downtown, and then plowed a path down the eastern half of 3rd St. here.   The destruction was absolutely phenomenal.   Huge trees were completely uprooted, there was nothing left of homes, cars were dashed about as if they were miniature Hot Wheels…   It was dark and we pulled up at one intersection that was all rubble, except for a lone wall of one house that was still standing.   Rummaging about a bit, our young son Jonathan found  two items that  seemed to be the only things  that were  intact in all the debri.   A Bible and a small Composition Book with the name “Maddie” on the cover.   I leafed through the book, noting Maddie seemed to be a first or second grader who made daily entries, and drawings, in the book.   There were entries about playing with friends, going to a birthday party, learning about pumpkins at school, and… a page in the middle stopped me.   Maddie had drawn a picture of a tornado.   Her entry on that page read:   “I’m looking forward to going on the field trip tomorrow.   We are going to do a lot of experiments.   Of course I already know how to do one experiment.   I know how to make a tornado.”   As I looked again at the drawing, then looked up at all the devastation, there was this, I don’t know, this erie feeling.   Note:   We learned two people had been killed here.   I was hoping one of them wasn’t Maddie.

Catching up…   We came out of the Florida Panhandle, heading into Alabama in the early evening one day last week.   And we found ourselves caught in the cross hairs of a huge thunder storm system.   We turned on the Weather Channel on our radio and it was reporting the cell had wind gusts of up to 50 mph and was at an extremely high ceiling of 50,000 feet —  and there were some “swirling  wind patterns.”   (While not being a meteorologist. I could still kind of figure out that last part could spell: tornado.)   Lightning was flashing all around us, but there was no rain yet.   This, needless to say, is not the type of weather you want to be driving high-profile vehicles, like our motor homes, through.   We decided to make a dash for a truck stop in nearby Geogiana, where we parked behind some 18-wheelers.   And while the storm passed with little incidence, it gave us a small inkling of the trepidation people around the country have been feeling as the threat of potential tornadoes approached them.   Needless to say, it’s a scary feeling.   Note:   Foremost in Liz and my minds that evening was the safety of our kids.   That was also on another parent’s mind in Massacussetts yesterday.   As the tornado sirens were going off, she placed her young child in a bathtub, then lay down on top of her.   The tornado made a direct hit on the house.   Everything collapsed.   The mother died.   The child lived.   The Bible says there is no greater love than to lay down your life for another.   And such was the case with this mother.