Vote for Joe

In Waco, Texas, I gave a talk at St. Jerome’s Church.   I said that we so often get puffed up with patriotism here; but Mother Theresa once said America was the most spiritually poor country she’d ever visited. A dichotomy?   Yep…     In Waco, we also met with Baylor University professor Tyler Horner.   He said part of the reason society has lost some of it’s spiritual moorings is because recent generations are becoming more and more “self-focused.”   This, in turn, leads to less and less volunteering.   Tyler, who volunteered with Ameri-Corps and teaches about children and families at Baylor, said “every human has a need to leave a legacy.”   And people who just focus on working to make a buck, start feeling quite unfulfilled later in life.   Tyler, on a personal level, is trying hard to leave his own ‘legacy.’   He’s involved with Church Under The Bridge for homeless people here and is helping coordinate a program with the city to  develop a high-quality,  early childhood learning curriculum.   It is in early childhood, Tyler says, that a lof of the personality, learning styles, and so on, are formed.   Note: T-shrit sighting in Abilene, Texas:   “I follow all the voices… in my wife’s   head.”

We stopped at Serenity Pond in Kurten, Texas.   This is 10-acres of private property that Patricia Jane McCain turned into a “Wildlife & Bird Sanctuary.”   She built a home on the property in 1987 and then set about, not only preserving as much as possible, but adding even more touches of natural habitat.   Ms. McCain wrote regular columns for the Bryan (TX) Eagle.   And  the writing and preservation work on her own land inspired many in these parts to become more naturalist oriented.   She also is part of the Backyard Natural Habitat Project,   which many states now have.   On a tour of her grounds, she told us the species of birds here include painted buntings, black birds, woodpeckers, cardinals…   Besides the writing, she regularly conducted tours at her place for deaf children, inner city children, local school children…   Her philosophy is to “…live in harmony with nature.”   Note:   Ms. McCain was married to a first cousin of Senator John McCain.   What’s more, her father,  William Tillinghast, did major renovations to the inside of the White House during the Truman administration during the 1950s.

While the immigration debate continues to heat up, we went to the Casa Juan Diego House of Hospitality in the heart of Houston to look at this issue ‘up close and personal,’ so to speak.   The Casa Juan Diego is a cluster of 10 Catholic Worker Houses that take in illegal immigrant women, children and men.   Men like Juan.   Juan and his brother lived in rural Guatemala. He told me he made $2.75 a day as a woodworker, his brother made $1 a day as a small farmer.   Their elderly mom got sick and needed a heart operation.   It would cost $2,000.   They came to America together to raise money for the operation.   It took them three months of walking, stealing away on the outside of train cars, being shaken down and extorted by Mexican immigration agents…   They, consequently, have been put up at Casa Juan Diego in Houston.   Here their room and board is free and they have access to medical attention.   During the day, they hire out from street corners to do day labor.   But because of the recession, work is sporadic at best, said Casa volunteer Josh Johnson.   Johnson has heard the heartbreaking stories, over and over.   Of immigrants who have lost limbs falling off trains in Mexico on their way north.   Of desperate mothers and children who have died in desert crossings near the border.   Of immigrant women who have been raped and killed by drug cartels…   Johnson said “first generation immigrants in this country,” for the most part, are not criminals.   But if they are marginalized and not helped, the next generation is more prone to commit crimes.   He also said that often immigrants don’t come here to live long-term.   But rather they are here to make enough to raise both themselves, and family back home, out of dire poverty.   Note:   Mark and Louise Swick, co-founders of the Casa Juan Diego House, have recently published the book The Catholic Worker Movement   (Intellectual and Spiritual Origins).   The ethos of the Catholic Worker Movement is to, well, do just what they are doing in Houston.   Help those less fortunate.   For more on Casa Juan Diego, see…

We did a street corner, whistle-stop event in downtown Orange, Texas, yesterday as part of our Deep in the Heart of Texas Tour.   Afterward I was interviewed by reporter Tommy Man Jr. of the Orange Leader newspaper.   I said we’ve just crossed the 50 million abortion mark in America, global warming looms like a scary doomsday scenario, violence and drugs have turned the inner cities of America into war zones, we have a $12 trillion National Debt…   And the common denominator?   For about the past 20 years, we have had presidents out of Harvard and Yale.   I said that this might, oh, indicate that what you learn at Harvard and Yale doesn’t equip you to solve these kinds of societal problems.   In fact, maybe what we need in D.C. is some “good old fashioned common sense.”   I mean…     While in Orange, I also interviewed Vivian Kelly who is the director of Birthright here.   They provide counseling, food, clothing, monetary help… to women who choose to keep their baby.   “We were able to save 41 babies last year,”   said Ms. Kelly…   Incidentally, a bill just passed in Oklahoma that requires women to undergo an ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the unborn baby before getting an abortion.   This includes information about the arms, legs, internal organs, heartbeat… All the things that, well, human beings have.   Note:   Tonight we protested abortion on a street corner in Orange.   The sign I held simply said:   Abortion Kills Children.   And it does.

Our Louisiana Gumbo Tour continues…   While we’ve been down here, the Deep Water Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf 50 miles south of New Orleans.   As of today, the oil spill was at 42,000 gallons a day and had already spread out over 1,800 square miles.   And indications are it could get much   worse…   Earlier today, I talked with Jim Mathus back in Cleveland.   He recently retired from the Army Corps of Engineers as a marine engineer and he also worked for Shell on some of their oil rigs, also in the Gulf of Mexico.    Mathus drew a corollary between these rigs and, say, one’s car engine.   He said these oil rigs have a lot of working parts, just like a car engine.   If a piston in a car engine breaks, for instance,  oil can spew out on a manifold, igniting a fire.   The dynamics can be somewhat simimilar (on a rudimentary level) to these oil rigs, Mathus said.   The bottom line with this is that, in a sense,  it seems that we’re playing Russian Roullette with things that can be fraught with human error.     The gun being held to: the environment’s head.   Note:   According to a recent Newsweek article, environmentalists warn that the thousands of gallons of mud that deep water drilling unearths contain toxic metals — mercury, lead and cadmium — that may end up in the seafood supply.   What’s more, hurricanes Rita and Katrina led to 125 spills from platforms and pipelines on the Outer Continental Shelf, releasing nearly 685,000 gallons of petroleum products into the ocean, also  according to the Newsweek article.   Note 2:   At Sunday Mass at St. Aloysius Catholic Church  in Baton Rouge, we learned one of the parishioners here had been killed in the Deep Water Horizon explosion.   He  was the father of two children.    Like with the coal miners, are these oil rig workers becoming part of the “inevitable collateral damage” of our energy gluttony in this country?