Our whirlwind Rocky Mountain High Tour continues through Colorado… In rural Fremont County Colorado (elevation 8,500 ft.) we stopped at the East Creek Grade Restaurant where many people were “packing,” a sign read Parking for Republicans Only and a sign in the front window said: Abortion Kills… Then in Westcliff, I stumped with some guys leaving a prayer breakfast at the bowling alley. I said, in essence, that a lot of our platform embodied the gospel message. They said they’d be interested in that… In Westcliff my son Jonathan and I also attended a pro-life biker rally put on by the Lighthouse Pregnancy Resource Center here. And earlier in the morning, we stopped by the Silver Cliff Colorado Mining Days festivities. This is an annual celebration of gold and silver mining in the area. Ironically, the day before attending the festival, there was an Associated Press article out of Yargalma, Nigeria. It seems some 160 villagers here (at last count) had died from “lead unearthed by villagers digging for gold.” Many of the dead were children. The soaring of gold prices in recent years has sent poor herdsmen into the bush to search for it. But at what cost, huh?
‘Colorado two-step’
We headed out of Huerfano County, Colorado, and up Rt. 69, a two-lane road that took us up another 2,000 feet into the mountains. It is one of the most beautiful drives we’ve experienced in the country… We stopped in the small town of Gardner where I put up an autographed flier on the community bulletin board in front of the post office. (In the battle against multi-million dollar advertising — sans the most recent Supreme Court ruling striking down campaign finance reform — we believe well placed fliers is the grassroots answer. Once again, we’re doing this all without paid political consultants.) Then it was on to Silver Cliff, Colorado (elevation 7,950 feet). It was Tuesday night and the “town band,” with a strong leaning toward country music, was playing at the Mining Company Restaurant downtown. Now when I say “town band,” anyone who can play an instrument and/or sing, is welcome to join in each Tuesday night. And sure enough, every few songs someone else joined in, or had to leave, or… And I gotta say, no matter what the combination (for the most part), these guys not only sounded good, they had people up dancing –primarily the ‘Colorado two-step’ — and everything. Note: I mention (often) putting up campaign fliers on bulletin boards around towns, and the like, as we travel. And we’re asking our supporters to do the same in their towns. To down load our flier …
” That was enough of a sign…”
Our Rocky Mountain High Tour continues… Last weekend we met with Mary Jo and Dave Tesitor in Huerfano County, Colorado. They have three adopted children. The Tesitors, driven by their Catholic faith, adopted children with special needs. The first child was the result of a crisis pregnancy and preliminary tests showed the child could have some significant mental disabilities. The child was, indeed, born with some mental impairment. The Tesitors were in earnest prayer asking God for a sign about whether to adopt, given the condition. (They hadn’t yet gone to the hospital to see the baby yet.) However, during their discernment process, they decided if they were going to adopt, they would name the baby: Maria. After some time, they called the hospital to make an appointment to come in to see the baby. When explaining about which room the baby was in, the nurse said: ” ‘Baby Maria’ is in room…” “That was enough of a sign for us,” Mary Jo smiled. Note: Dave Tesitor also writes articles for the Huerfano World Journal newspaper here. He called his editor and said he’d like to do a story on our campaign. She said ok, unless of course I was like the last independent presidential candidate they’d interviewed. Dave told me that just before Election 2008, a woman showed up at the newspaper saying she was running for president as an independent candidate and that one of her platform points was: “Making Mars the 51st state.” I told Dave to call his editor back and tell her how ridiculous I thought that was. “Then tell her I think the 51st state actually should be Pluto.”
…it’s time we reasses
We were in the Spanish Peaks Country in southern Colorado over the weekend. While there, I stopped at the Walsenburg Mining Museum. At the museum, George Ree told me coal mining started in these parts in 1878 and one of the mines, the Walsen Mine, covered a phenomenal 157 miles. Over the years, 69 seperate mines were established in the area, yielding some 75 million tons of coal. (Colorado is 7th in the nation in coal reserves.) As I mentioned in the last entry, once coal was discovered it was mined at breakneck speed — leaving in it’s wake massive plumes of global warming gasses. And now, although there’s very little mining going on in southern Colorado, we’re blowing the tops off mountains in West Virginia to get to more. It’s time we reasses all this, in a major way. Note: Bumper sticker sighting in Walsenburg, Colorado: It’s apparent our technology is now outpacing our humanity.
coal country
We have headed into Colorado for our Rocky Mountain High Tour. (Once again, originality is the hallmark of our campaign.) We have entered near the southeastern corner of Colorado, “coal country.” In fact, we got to Trinidad, Colorado, the day of a dedication ceremony for a new (and rather striking) sculpture depicting men in a mine working around a coal wagon. Like the discovery of oil in the Texas panhandle (see last entry), with the discovery of coal, people flocked to this area at breakneck speed. Coal “boom towns” rising, falling and rising in the next spot… The day we arrived in Trinidad, the Pueblo (CO) Cheiftan newspaper carried a story of the ongoing, catastrophic, Gulf oil spill. The oil was spreading like massive clouds and coming ashore in Lousiana, Alabma, Florida… I couldn’t help but draw a parallel to the coal. Over the years, it’s been burned and burned and… sending up massive (invisible) clouds of carbon dioxide that are coating the stratosphere and are now ‘coming ashore’ in the form of global warming: melting glaciers, rising sea levels, increased droughts, super-charged hurricanes and typhoons… Note: For a solid answer to our energy issues in this country, see our position paper on energy. Note 2: We made it to Walsenburg, Colorado, later this evening. The annual Black Diamond Jubilee Festival was going on. I went downtown to pass out campaign cards and listen to some country music. Upon arriving, the first song I heard was Waltzing Through Texas With You. I had to smile, thinking back on our just completed month-long tour of Texas. Although I doubt whether the ‘almost First Lady’ would have seen it as ‘waltzing.’
lassoing loose ends from Texas Tour…
Tying up loose ends, or rather, ‘lassoing’ (sorry) loose ends from our Deep in the Heart of Texas Tour… While in Lubbock, we stopped at a park where a soccer team was practicing. Our Joseph joined in. Afterward, I talked to one of the fathers/coaches who is part of a band called Birds Eye View. It’s a Christian band. Richard Smith and I both lamented some of the loss of innocence of today’s youth as they grow up in darker and darker times… A ray of light in these dark times, was meeting up with members of the Southland Bible Church at the same park in Lubbock the next day. They invited our kids to play football with them, then stop by the pavilion for some burgers. That same day in Lubbock, I met a man who had been in the Navy and stationed for a time at America’s William’s Field Base in Antarctica. He was stationed there some 35 years ago, yet he still vividly remembers one particular trip he took while there. He and some other service people flew the 600 miles to the South Pole. On the way back, after flying over some 550 miles of pristine white snow, they all noticed that from about 50 miles out from the base the snow had turned quite dirty from the diesel fuel and other contaminents that had leaked out from base over the years. Interestingly enough, just a few stops back in Waco, Texas, I had talked with an engineering professor at Baylor University who has an interest in astro-physics. He lamented that we now had some 22,000 pieces of “space junk” in orbit around the earth. He said the debri in this orbital path was quickly reaching a “point of no return.” Whether the space junk in orbit, or the leaking diesel fuel in Antarctica, I couldn’t help but think how cavalier we’ve become about trashing God’s environment (ibid. offshore drilling)… While in Canyon, Texas, we visited the rather elaborate Panhandle Museum. A documentary on Panhandle oil noted: “When there was achance to make a fortune (with the discovery of oil here),” people flocked to the area. And speculators gambled heavily at the chance to make quick, and big, bucks. Boom towns with names like Magic City and Electric City rose and fell. Everyone was looking for an “easy mark,” the documentary noted. What I couldn’t help but wonder, all these oil leaks and global warming later, was: Was anyone (except, say, the Amish) wondering about how all this oil production was going to trash the environment on any number of fronts? The day we visited the Museum was Memorial Day. That day, I gave a talk at a Memorial Day Service at a Canyon Cemetery and I also talked with several veterans throughout the course of the day. One was Ed Bowman, 83, from Belmont, Illinois. (He was just traveling through. He fought in the South Pacific during World War II, and one son fought in Veitnam, another son fought in Iraq…
“…a tsunami of elderly”
We headed north on Rte. 87 inching closer to the northwestern top of Texas… In Hartley (pop. 600) we met with Nancy and Ed Weber who operate the new Loreto House for the elderly. Their ministry is to help people “die with dignity.” Ed said because of the Baby Boomer generation phenomena, some 9,000 families are entering into care giving situations in America, every day! “A tsunami of elderly is approaching,” said Ed. Nancy said that because this generation was inculcated with the notion it’s “important to be productive,” when this particular set of elderly start becoming dependent on others — they are more prone to look to end of life options like euthanasia. The Webers, who are Catholic, point out the church teaches that assisted suicide is wrong, period. They said the death should come in God’s timing, which allows the person the maximum amount of time to get right with God, for the family to grieve and heal, and for others even outside the family to help. Ed noted that many people in the community donated time and money to the non-profit Loreto facility, and even local prisoners provided some of the labor… We then went to Dalhart, Texas, where I talked at St. Anthony’s Church about ‘beginning of life issues,’ abortion. I said we had just reached the 50 million abortion mark in America, a tsunami of huge proportions… Afterward, we went to dinner with Fr. Scott from St. Anthony’s. Wonderful priest. St. Anthony’s is undergoing a building program and Fr. Scott proposed putting in a rainwater collection system for one of the buildings. We talked about how important it was for the Church to become a good model for environmental stewardship in this age… After dinner, we headed even farther north, getting to Texline, TX, at sunset. Our kids played basketball with three Hispanic kids in an old sandlot court in the middle of this dusty town. (Were these kids legal or illegal? We didn’t ask. There seemed enough room on the court for everyone.) We then parked for the night on a dirt lot next to the town gas station. The last stop on our Deep in the Heart of Texas Tour.
trumping human rights?
Coming out of Amarillo, we stopped in Prayer Town, Texas (yes, there is a place named that), where I gave an impromptu talk to a group of Catholic Nuns there. One of their Sisters had just gone to China to look at human rights issues. I said letting economics (China owning so much of our debt and granting China favored nation trading status…) trump human rights is an absolute travesty… We then stopped at the Cow Girl Cafe (How the West was really won) in Channing, Texas. I put up a flier and talked with Crawford, an 81-year-old farmer/rancher. He said this had been the best year for wheat because of all the snow they had here last winter. I gave him one of our cards and he wished me luck… Then it was on to Hartley and Dalhart…
Armadillas and Memorial Day
We continue on in the Amarillo area… We went to an Amarillo Dillas (short for Armadillas) baseball game with the kids. (The “Dillas” play in a semi-pro independent league.) It was a full-house with some 7,500 fans. Our Jonathan, 7, got a foul ball and I took him down to the runway to get some player signatures on it after the game. The signatures, for the most part, were illegible. But the guys put their numbers next to their names so you could cross reference them with the program… The next day we headed to nearby Canyon City, Texas, for a Memorial Day Service at Dreamland Cemetery. There were about 100 people in attendance in this small town. Bill Green, the curator of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, told those gathered that it was extremely important to study history and to come to the cemetery often to remember those who have gone before us. I talked last and said that we would like to see every cemetery in America become “living cemeteries.” That is, each cemetery would have a building with the archived stories of those who were buried there, so we could learn more from these stories and enhance the heritage of each town. I then read an excerpt from an Amarillo Globe News article that had appeared in the paper today about our campaign. “Schriner’s thoughts turned to Memorial Day… He said his administration would offer life long support to veterans, including opening the Lincoln Bedroom to homeless vets sleeping on the streets of D.C.” Note: Afterward, a number of people asked me to sign their programs. I signed them, my signature about as illegible as many of the Amarillo Dillas players. Next to each one my signatures, I wrote: #11. Someone asked. “Oh, that was my high school football number,” I smiled.
“Houston, we have an ‘opportunity.”
We keep traveling north for our Deep in the Heart of Texas Tour… I was interviewed by the Plainview Herald newspaper. Reporter Haley Anderson asked me about the astronomical national debt. I said I gave a talk in Ohio one time, including a quite astute and complex (I thought) answer to solving the national debt situation (now at some $12 trillion). An Amish man in the audience said that my answer sounded good and everything, but he thought he had a better idea. “We need someone in D.C. with a calculator, that works,” he said. Since then I’ve scrapped my complex, long-winded answer, and adopted his… We then stopped in Happy, Texas (pop. 632 and home of: “The town without a frown.”) I talked with the town judge there about Hispanic immigration issues, played some sandlot baseball with our kids at a local park, then stopped for lunch at My Happy Place Cafe. As you pull into the restaurant’s driveway, there’s a sign that says: No Trespassing! (Honest.) Then the first thing we were greeted with inside the restaurant was waitress Billy Jo who had on a t-shirt that read: “I’m not mean, I just don’t like you.” Then Billy Jo greets the next customer in with: “Hey, ornery!” What about My Happy Place Cafe am I not understanding? …Then it was on to Amarillo, ‘by morning.’ (Sorry.) Actually we were late, getting there in mid-afternoon. It was high school commencement weekend and we met Dave Davidson who comes here from Newman, Georgia, every year at this time. Davidson, 76, is a graduate of nearby Vega High School. He said he played point guard on the basketball team at Vega, averaging three points a game. “We had a couple really big guys underneath,” Davidson smiled. Davidson said he and fellow classmate Harold Dillehay played basketball and football together, but both struggled coming from “the other side of the tracks.” Later in life, both made it in the business world and decided to set up a scholarship fund to help those who might be struggling at Vega, like they had. For the past 20 years, the pair have given out 61 scholarships for $6,000 a piece. He said of those who have gotten the scholarships, 90% have graduated from college. (The fund was set up through the school and started with a mere $2,000.)… While in Amarillo, we attended the Holy Cross High School Graduation. The featured speaker was Hal Leedy, who owns a quite successful local Chick-fil-A franchise. He told the students to beware of simply chasing “success,” the way much of the world looks at success. That is, we can be so driven in chasing the quintessential “American Dream” for ourselves, at the expense of not being “useful” and a servant to others. Which is what the gospel message calls us to, said Leedy. He also said we so often frame challenges and things that go wrong as “problems,” when we should be looking at these as “opportunities.” In fact, he said his employees are told they are not allowed to come to him saying, for instance: “We have a problem in the kitchen.” Rather, they are to approach him saying: “We have an opportunity in the kitchen.” Afterward I joked with Hal that maybe we could get NASA to follow suit. That is, the next time something on a spacecraft goes haywire in deep space, maybe we’ll hear the astronaut say: “Houston, we have an opportunity .” Note: Leedy also exhorted the students to: “Be yourselves.” I told him we were once at a motivational seminar where the speaker said to those in the audience: “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”