Vote for Joe

A teacher from Cleveland came to the farm we’re at in mid-Ohio on Saturday.   He dug in the garden and spread many wheelbarrows of mulch around.   At one point, this teacher looked at me and said that each horticulture class he has his city students grow something in a styro-foam cup.   “And they think it’s a big thing,” he lamented.   I couldn’t help but think that if you’re pretty much surrounded by warrens of brick buildings, webs of concrete pavement and are growing a bean plant in a styro-foam cup, not only aren’t you grounded in much — but you may be on the edge of insanity and not even know it.

A couple weeks back I was at Cleveland’s City Hall Building and saw a “Cleveland Hall of Fame Wall” that displays portraits of Clevelanders who somehow made their mark on the world.   For instance, Clevelander Garrett Morgan invented the first traffic light.   And Clevelander Alexander Winton “sold the first ready-made dependable car in the U.S., circa 1898.”   Ok, let’s take, for instance, the car.   There is a traffic fatality every 13 minutes in America.   This is the equivalent of a half-full airliner going down in America — every day!   And what about all the people who aren’t killed, but maimed for life each day.   Then there’s car exhaust which is contibuting significantly to a global warming phenomenon that could destroy the planet… Cars have also contributed significantly to the cancer of urban sprawl, which is constantly eating away at more and more farmland, wetlands, forests… And increased mobility because of the car has contributed significantly to the break up of family and community, as people keep moving further and further from their home towns… etc.   Note:   And we want to bail out   the car companies?   Are we nuts?

I was in Danville, Ohio, where I talked with a woman who had traveled to Pakistan several years ago.   She said among a good number of people there, she experienced a distinct “coldness toward Americans.”   One of the reasons is we have been sending unmanned, drone planes into the mountain regions of Pakistan/Afghanistan and bombing suspected Al Quieda and Taliban targets.   The problem is the bombing runs are also killing innocent civilians (men, women and children) in these remote mountain villages.   This would be akin to another country bombing in our Rocky Mountains to eradicate, say, terrorists; but at the same time killing some of our innocent men, women and children in places like Aspen.   I mean, how would we react?   Note:   A recent Green Party news release explained that Pakistan Green Party leader Liaquat Ali Shaik, in a tour of American cities, met with American Greens to discuss major points of agreement, including the need to “end drone attacks.”   The release said some 900 civilians have already been killed in these attacks and villages have been left in ruins.   What’s more, almost a million people have apparently fled the area for other parts of Pakistan, many ending up in refugee camps.   The Green Party calls for immediate relief and resettlement programs, including compensation for those who have been affected.   Our administration would agree with that.

I talked to Chris Knestrick who is  part of a  Christian Peacekeeper Team  in Columbia, South America.   He said it is not uncommon for subsistence farmers there, and their families, to “disappear” at the hands of para-military groups.   Some big international corporations want the land these farmers have been on for generations and will apparently go to any length to get it — including funding these para-military terror campaigns.   Since Chris (who is from Cleveland) has been back in the states, he’s traveled about giving talks and trying to raise peoples’ awareness of this issue.   Note:   Our administration would work stridently to help allow these farmers to keep their land, including aiding them with Peace Corps help, and the like.

According to National Geographic, Haiti is “dirt poor.”   That is, hunger is so bad for many there now that they have taken to eating cakes made of clay, salt and shortening.   Even though people realize these are terrible for their systems, the cakes “quell the hunger pangs” in the short term… As I read this, I couldn’t help thinking about all us “people of faith” who  each day go to  the corner store for pop, chips, cookies… and all sorts of other totally non-nutritional junk food in the face of such potentially relievable human suffering — and think nothing of it!   What’s more, we then ask God to “bless our   nation.”   Note:   Mother Theresa once said the United States of America  was the “most spiritually poor country” she came across in all her travels.   Trouble is, we’ve been so blinded by each of the seven deadly sins, like for instance: gluttony, that we can’t see it.