Vote for Joe

We traveled to Lander, Wyoming, as our next stop in our Roaming Wyoming Campaign Tour.   There was a “Community Meal” in a downtown grocery store parking lot to celebrate the town  pulling together to make it through a recent flood.   There were a number of politicians there stumping, including, well,  us.   Liz and I walked throughout the crowd of some 1,000 people, shaking hands passing out a lot   of  campaign fliers.   As I walked away from one table, after explaining I was simply an  “average guy with some common sense from Cleveland, Ohio,” I overheard one man say to the others:   “Now, that’s what  this country needs.”   …While in Lander, I also  talked with  professor Jason Baxter, who just took a job here with Wyoming Catholic College.   (He was formerly a professor at Notre Dame University.)   He said students at WCC aren’t allowed television sets, i-pods, video games…   Professor Baxter said they are here to study, discuss what they’re studying, and get to know each other.   “We’ve become a culture of infinite distraction,” he added.   Note:   On the way to Lander, we stopped in Lamont, Wyoming (pop. 4), and they were all at the Grandma’s Restaurant when I arrived.   If we don’t carry Lamont, I’ll be surprised…   We then stopped at Muddy Gap Junction gas station, where I stumped with five Wyoming University College students chillin’ in the back of their hatchback.   They were  on their way to a mountain biking weekend.   We discussed global warming, the economy and immigration.   One of the students was from Phoenix and said she was opposed to the new Arizona immigration law because she felt it would lead to, among other things, “racial profiling.” …Inside the store at Muddy Gap, the walls are absolutley filled with all kinds of magic marker writings.   After some strategic thinking, I decided to write:   “Vote average Joe Schriner for president” — in a blank spot just above the urinal.   Once again, we’re doing this all without any paid political consultants.

While in Laramie, Wyoming, we also met up with some old friends from our Bluffton, Ohio, days.   Matt Frances, his wife Kristen and daughter Penelope have been in Laramie the past two years.   Kristen is a teacher in the elementary school and Matt works in the Archive Department at Wyoming University.   When we knew them, they were both students at Bluffton College and quite active with social justice causes.   At one point, they participated in a week-long tent city on the Bluffton Campus as a show of solidarity with refugees all over the world.   (During the week, the students raised enough money to fund a Habitat for Humanity home in Afghanistan.)…       While in Laramie, we also met a man who was a recent graduate of Wyoming University.   He told me during a Public Speaking course, he chose the topic of abortion.   The visual aids he used during the talk, were pictures of unborn babies who had been dismembered during the procedure.   He said it evoked quite a strong response…   Note:   Also while in Laramie, I found myself in line at a grocery store behind a man wearing a t-shirt with a tremendously complex set of mathmatical equations (E=MC 2, and the like).   Above the equations, it read:   Don’t Drink and Derive!   (He, I found out, was (What else?) an astro-physics professor at the university.)

We have launched our Roaming Wyoming Tour.   (And yes, we’re  continuing to come up with  this all without any professional consultants.)   Our  first stop was Cheyenne, where we took in a rodeo at the town’s 114th annual Frontier Days…   After the rodeo, we stopped to view the Churck Wagon displays.   Susan Patrick of Watertown, South Dakota, was cooking near her Peter Schuttler Wagon   (circa 1849).   She told me there was actually an American Chuck Wagon Association, with collectors finding the wagons at auctions, antique shows, out in the fields…   Once fixed up, the wagons  can range in cost from $12,000 to, well, whatever.   Mrs. Patrick is an elementary school principal and said she often takes  her and her husband’s  chuck wagon into schools to teach children about them, in hopes of helping keep American heritage alive…   And speaking of American heritage, I then took in a Frontier Days parade of old horse drawn carriages, and stuff.   There was a horse drawn stage coach, dairy cart, ice cart, U.S. mail cart, even a funeral home cart…   Because the parade vehicles were so slow, I was able to pass out average Joe campaign cards to most of the people in the carts.   Meanwhile, my wife Liz took advantage of a long corn dog concession line at Frontier Days to pass out more cards.   She then took the kids to the chuck wagon display where they got a whole lot of free samples (beans, biscuits, buffalo meat…)   Have I mentioned it’s a low budget campaign?   Note:   I just saw one of the best   book titles:   If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat.   by John Ortbery

We met with Dr. Kimberly Schmidt in Ft. Collins, Colorado.   She is author of Parables of the Flesh (The Creator’s love story).     Inspired by the  depth of  Pope John Paul II’s book The Theology of the Body, which speaks to the complexities of being male and female in the image of God, Dr. Schmidt started to draw corrollaries between physiological systems going awry in the body and links to things like psychological trauma that hadn’t been processed.   For example, Dr. Schmidt talked about trouble that happens in the colon (chronic diarrhea, chronic constipation…).   “Constipation speaks of holding on too long,” she writes.   People die, babies grow up, friends move away… and in this process we must learn to let go — realizing God, ultimately,  is the author of life.   “Constipation may represent a reluctance to let go,” writes Dr. Schmidt.   In her work with patients in these cases, for instance, Dr. Schmidt will ask Jesus to enter the session to help with the person going through the stages of grief necessary to internally let go.   And in this process, often the constipation will stop as well.   Dr. Schmidt told me during the interview that we are becoming a “society that has  forgotten about God.”   We often look at things that come at us as merely random happenstance, as opposed to situations allowed by God to grow from.   So we continually try to avoid hardship, numb pain… with alcohol, drugs, over work, sexual addiction, television addiction…   In the ilk of M.Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled,   Dr. Schmidt believes that her psychological counseling must be intertwined with spiritual warfare.  “I’m challenging you to probe so deeply into your soul that you can hear God’s voice echoing in  the sinews that knit you together,”  writes Dr. Schmidt.   For more on Dr. Schmidt, her practice and her writing, see: www.incarnationalhealing.com      

We’ve been in Ft. Collins, Colorado, the past week stumping and doing some campaign vehicle work…   While in Wal Mart picking something up, I noticed the woman in line in front of me was buying six boxes of Cracker Jacks, that’s all.   I asked.   She said she had a soft spot for Cracker Jacks — “…because that’s where my first wedding ring came from.”   She continued that her husband was just back from Vietnam, was broke and found an orange plastic ring in a Cracker Jack box that he gave her, as, well, a down payment.   They’ve been married 40 years now and she held up a gold wedding ring with a big diamond in it.   “He’s done pretty well since then,” she smiled…   The other night, our family was invited to an outdoor barbeque at a local architect’s home in Ft. Collins.   He told me his profession has been  hit hard  by the recent recession, including the bubble bursting around the housing market.   I said with so many foreclosures, and people on the verge of foreclosure, it amazed me that more people haven’t gone to things like house sharing between families, or at least renting out a room to a single person, etc., to stay afloat financially.   I mean, common sense says it’s time to be creative.   On an earlier campaign tour, we learned Winona, Minnesota, actually had an online House Sharing Program that matched people according to housing needs.   Note:   An article in the Denver Post   today reported that the number of deaths among illegal immigrants crossing the Arizona desert from Mexico is soaring because of the increased heat.   Some 40 bodies have already been found and the deaths could top the single-month record of 68 in July 2005.   “Authorities think the deaths (men, women, children…) are likely due to the unrelenting heat in southern Arizona and the tighter border security that pushes immigrants to more remote, rugged and dangerous terrain.”   Several years ago, we did a “Border Tour” that took us into Juarez, Mexico, where we saw extreme abject poverty and thus: the reason some people come here.   On a radio show in Ocala, Florida, I said to turn our back (or build the fence higher) on such  tremendous need is absolutely unconscienable.   That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t fight drug cartels, etc.; but it does mean we’d ramp up help to people in genuine need.