Vote for Joe

After Belmont Abbey College, we headed out of North Carolina, through the northwest tip of South Carolina and crossed the border into Georgia at Lavonia (pop. 1,845).   And all (well, most ) of the 1,845 residents were on the downtown streets for a town Halloween celebration.   And if there was ever a time for some average Joe campaigning, it would be now.   So while the kids played some basketball at a local park, I walked up town —  amidst witches and goblins — dressed in my costume.   I was dressed as (You guessed it.) a: presidential candidate.   Original, huh.   I eventually stood on a heavily foot trafficked corner and  passed out campaign cards.   (I probably would have done better passing out Tootsie Rolls.)   After a time, I walked about a bit continuing to pass out cards.   It was then I came across a full grown man with bright orange hair standing straight up, a rubbery kind of ghoulish-looking mask and some clothes with odd looking patches.   I gave him a card and said I was looking for a vice-presidential candidate.   He said he’d think about it.   I then turned and came face to face with a woman wearing a t-shirt that read:   “Yet despite the look on my face, you’re still talking!”   And from the actual look on her face, I could tell the t-shirt wasn’t part of a costume.   Note:   After Lavonia, we headed west into Atlanta traffic — which is often described anecdotally as a “stream of ants at an anthill.”   And  boy was  it.

Still in Mt Airy, North Carolina (aka Mayberry ):   The boys and I walked about downtown here looking at Andy Griffith Show   memorabilia and passing out campaign cards. We came across three older women gathered around a park bench.   I passed out some cards and one of the women, who was a retired school teacher, said rather tongue-in-cheek:   “I know, when you get to D.C. you’re going to lower our taxes.” I responded:   “Not exactly.”   I said the current debt is almost $13 trillion dollars and I didn’t want our seven-year-old son inheriting it.   I also said I just read that there are currently some 173 different types of tax breaks written into the tax code.   And if a number of these were eliminated, we could actually balance the budget in a relatively short time.   I then added that we were in “Mayberry.”   And one of the attributes “Mayberry” represents is good-old- fashion frugality.   So wouldn’t this frugality mean we should tighten our collective belts in America, do without some of these tax breaks, and (Are you ready for this?) actually pay the debt off.   Note:   I learned all three of these women were retired school teachers from Cumberland County, North Carolina.   One of them, Leigh Furmage, was a science teacher who regularly spent her own money on lab equipment, and so on, to get things the school budget didn’t allow for.

We headed further south through Virginia on I-81, stopping at the Radford Rest Area.   I love rest areas.   I must have passed out campaign cards to people from at least 10 different states.   At one point in the campaigning, after several cups of coffee that morning, I had to, well, urinate.   And that’s another thing that’s great about rest areas, there’s a readily available place to, well, urinate.   Turns out, not only were urinals readily accessible here (that is, after several truck drivers got through), but these urinals were also rather unique.   They were no-flush “Sloan System Urinals.”   According to a sign above the urinal, which you inevitably have time to read because, I mean, you’re just standing there, one Sloan urinal saves 40,000 gallons of water a year.   There apparently is a cartridge at the base of the urinal that collects uric acid from your urine.   The remaining liquid, which is not corrosive, then just flows down a pipe.   Whenever I urinate, I always feel better.   But this all made me feel doubly better.   (If my wife Liz knew I was writing the blog entry like this…)   I recently gave a talk at Notre Dame University.   During the talk, I noted that some one-sixth of the world’s people don’t have access to clean drinking water.   What’s more, we’re increasingly polluting the fresh water we do have.   But with much more of this new sustainable water technology, we could begin polluting way   less, and saving money to boot.   Money that could be funneled into Developing World clean water projects.   Note:   The late Pope John Paul II   once said that economic justice is about considering the universal destination of the earth’s resources, especially in regard to the “common good for society’s weakest members.”   Translated, those of us in the Developed World, must do everything we can to get clean water to our brothers and sisters who don’t have clean drinking water.   And there are tangible steps we can take to do that.

We launched our Common Wealth Tour   through Virginia…     We arrived at a city park in Woodstock (no relation to the   Woodstock), Virginia, just before sunset.   A local kids soccer team, “The Tigers,” was practicing.   They let our Jonathan, 7, practice with them.   The coaches couldn’t have been friendlier and Jonathan, while not Pele, held his own…   The next morning a Jehovah’s Witness approached me in Woodstock and asked if I’d noticed the world was getting progressively darker.   I said yep.   (Wouldn’t take a moral theologian rocket scientist…)   We talked for awhile about spiritual philosophies.   It was a friendly exchange, and probably a first for me.   That is, this  Jehovah Witness  was actually able to laugh a bit in regard to his religion.   He told me Johnny Carson, after  one of the  major earthquakes in California, joked that Jehovah Witnesses probably fared the best in the quake.   “Because they’re always standing in doorways.”   …Before leaving Woodstock, I passed out some campaign cards to a group of guys  talking in front of a Sunoco station, all dressed in camouflage outfits.   And not one of them (Are you ready for this?) asked me my stance on gun control…     We then headed south on Rte. 81 through the Shenandoah Valley.   Fog shrouded the mountains, pierced at times by scattered rays of sunlight…   Down the highway, we campaigned in Harrisburg, Staunton and Verona.   In Verona, we spent the evening with the Maggie and John Nilo family, including their 10 children.   Our kids paired up with  some of their kids  and had an absolutley  great time (except for the BB gun incident).   This evening, several other couples stopped by for a Bible study.   The reading was about the story of Zacchaeus (the tax collector).   The Bible study leader said tax collectors in those days were scorned, in part, because they were known to skim some of the tax money off the top for themselves.   I  enjoined that  with 173 loop holes in our tax code in America, don’t many of us (who really don’t need the money) skim tax money off the top with these deductions?   Money that could go to schools, social programs for the poor, to pay off the $12 trillion National Debt…   It got somewhat quiet in the Bible study room for awhile.   There goes a few votes.   But isn’t it time a politician called a spade a spade?

In Hagerstown, Maryland, we talked with Fr. Nixon Mullah who is from the country of Cameroon.   While he now lives in America, Fr. Nixon goes back to his village in Cameroon for a month each year.   There he mobilizes groups of people to work on roads, build classrooms, and the like.   He told me that the central government in Cameroon is slow to do practically anything.   Given that he thought: ‘Why can’t people take the initiative on their own?’   Common sense.   What’s more, he and a small group of others are starting a Mambu Development Institute to raise $50,000 so people in the village can have access to clean drinking water in their homes.   To donate to the project, write to Fr. Nixon at St. Joseph Seminary, 1200 Varnum St., NE, Washington, D.C. 20017…   In Hagerstown, we were also invited to dinner at the Przywieczerskis (I still don’t know how to pronounce it.).   The husband Bob is about 50 years old and still plays competitive ice hockey with friends.   A weekend warrior after my own heart, he has recently broken a wriist, injured his ribs…   Yet he has no intention of ‘retiring.’   “I’d rather wear out than rust out,” he smiled.