Vote for Joe

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.

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…

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…

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.”

While in Abilene, I was interviewed by Bob Bartlett at NBC News   here.   Then we traveled to Sweetwater, Texas, where I passed out fliers downtown and was interviewed by the Sweetwater Reporter newspaper.   The previous Sunday, the newspaper had done an extensive piece on all the wind turbines on the Texas plains here.   It noted that Nolan County was home of the five largest wind turbine projects in the world, outside of China.   There are 150 wind farms in the Nolan County area…   Coming out of Sweetwater, we found ourselves in a virtual sea of big, white twirling turbines.   In this corridor, the wind blows consistantly, as it does in parts of Wyoming, Montana…   Our administration would offer subsidies to encourage the building of similar wind farms in many locations nationwide.   Heading north, we stopped in Post, Texas, then it was on to Lubbock…   In Lubbock, we met Joe Mata, 37, who could be playing basketball in the European League, he’s that good.   He plays in “three on three” tournaments around the state and has won a good number of trophies.   He invited Sarah, Joseph and I to play with a group of guys he plays ball with every Friday.   The game started with a prayer, there was no foul language (Except from our Joseph, who picked up a few four letter words at Cleveland’s Rec. Center.   I benched him with a “technical.”), and there were no fights.   Just good, clean competition.   Call me “old school,” but isn’t that how it should be?   Note:   As I was typing this in a library in Amarillo, I looked up to see the following on a guy’s t-shirt:    “One man practicing good sportsmanship is far better than 50 others preaching it.”   — Knute Rockne.