Buckeye Back Road Tour cont.: Ohio got hit by it’s first (Category 1) Hurricane, ever, yesterday. Hurricane Ike arrived in the Buckeye State with wind gusts of up to 76 mph. We were driving our campaign vehicle/camper when the hurricane hit. My wife Liz, who is in a perpetual state of denial about these things, said she thought the wind wasn’t “wasn’t really all that bad” — as big oak and elm trees swayed like bamboo all around us. In all our years of campaigning (9), except for Montana and North Dakota in January, these had to be the worst conditions we’ve ever traveled in. We eventually took shelter at a horse farm near Hillsboro, Ohio. And after the hurricane let up, the kids actually got some informal horse riding lessons to boot (a pun, sort of). We don’t campaign on Sundays because of religious beliefs, so the horse farm turned out to be a great stop. Note: This morning we stumped in Leesburg, Ohio, where we stopped in at Leesburg Hardware (old, dusty wooden floors, the whole small town thing). I gave owner George Smith $20 for a 39 cent black foam paint brush and told him to keep the change. It’s so vital these Mom & Pop small town stores continue to survive in the face of what amounts to the gathering sea of big box retailers. And what’s to keep any of us from, well, donating to their cause? For our position on this…
9/12/08
Buckeye Back Roads Tour cont.: It’s been somewhat of a whirlind since we launched on this final tour through Ohio. We stopped in Yorkshire, Ohio, where we met with the Kremers and the Smiths, both organic farming families who do everything in line with Catholic Rural Life Association teaching. They look at how they treat the land as a moral issue… We then stumped at the Annie Oakley Restaurant — she’s from this area– in Dawn, Ohio, where I put up a campaign flyer that said “…from a straight shooter.” (I’ve got a million of ’em.) Further down the road in Greenville, I told The Daily Advocate newspaper that Liz and I are running as your “average concerned Midwestern parents.” What we’re most ‘concerned’ about is our children inheriting a world of abortion, war, global warming, a nine trillion dollar debt… Heading further south, we campaigned in West Manchester, Eaton, Gratis, Carlisle, Waynesville and Wilmington. Then in Blanchester, Ohio, I talked with Jim Thie who did multiple tours in Vietnam spanning 41 months. He got a Purple Heart, Bronze Star and cancer (from his exposure to agent orange). What were we thinking dropping that?… We then headed on to Fayeteville, Mt. Orab, Sardinia and Peebles. Last night, I met with a group of Amish at a homestead on Tater Ridge Road, just south of Peebles. We discussed the Irap War (Amish are non-violent and don’t think Jesus would go to war), the economy, and the accelerating breakdown of faith, family and community in America. The Amish place extreme importance on faith, family and community — and boy does it show. One of the men said their lives are “a silent witness.” I said America would benefit from them being more vocal about it as well. Note: The discussion (over homemade ice-cream) last night was lively and I believe I convinced a number of the Amish that I, indeed, was the best presidential candidate. One problem: These Amish (because of religious reasons) don’t vote. Is there any wonder why I’m still, oh, a little behind in the polls? Of course ever optomistic, we’re just chalking that up to the ‘margin of error.’
9/10/08
Buckeye Back Road Tour cont.: Barack Obama spoke in Dayton yesterday and John McCain spoke in Lebanon, Ohio, yesterday, some 30 miles south of Dayton. Meanwhile we split the difference, stumping in Germantown, Ohio, yesterday, which is about halfway between. Dayton’s Channel 2 News did a piece on us. We don’t have a television in the camper so we didn’t see it, but I’ll bet the story contrasted the big campaigns with the small one. (Incidentally, we’d be the small one.)… After his talk, Obama met with employees of the troubled DHL headquarters in nearby Wilmington, Ohio. We parked for the night in the Wal Mart parking lot just across from the DHL headquarters. Incidentally, their planes, all their planes, take off between 4 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. Talk about loud ! And such are the trials of the more low budget campaigns.
9/4/08
Buckeye Back Roads Tour cont: A reporter frm the Wapakoneta Daily News noted that I would like to see a cutback in lifestyle in America and a shorter work week. This would free up more time for faith, family and community… In Kettersville, Ohio (pop. small), I stumped at the K-Village Restaurant with a group of area farmers. One of their bumper stickers said: OPEC… Drill This! Ethanol from Ohio corn… We then stopped in New Bremen, Ohio, home of the Great American Bicycle Museum. Instead of all this talk about “drilling,” maybe we should be, oh… bicycling. A friend of mine back in Bluffton has a bicycle sticker that says: Question internal combustion. Has anybody done that (except the Amish of course)? Note: Last week I talked with Loretta Dieringer who helped start the ecumenical Hands of Grace in Fulton County, Ohio. A non-profit, Hands of Grace has an adult day care for people who otherwise would have a hard time getting out. Volunteers also visit shut-ins and do lawn work, house cleaning and the like. They also take people for groceries, to the doctors and so on.
8/30/08
Buckeye Backroad Tour cont.: We talked with a woman today in Bluffton, Ohio, who said she was quite disturbed with the Olympic: clothing. She said, for instance, that the women marathon runners, the women sprinters, etc. were dressed, well, immodestly. (Anybody remember that word?) They were all dressed immodestly except Rogaya Al-Gossra, a Muslim woman who ran the 200 meters event. She ran in a headress, full length shirt and pants down to her ankles. What’s more, in the preliminaries she won her race… We stopped in Lindsey, Ohio, where I talked with Keith Naus of Naus Bros. Hardware. He said several years ago he had a heart attack and now has to go in to get his cholestoral tested every couple months, at $350 a visit. Mr. Naus has no healthcare insurance and struggles to pay it each time. What’s more, his heart surgery was quite expensive, and he didn’t have healthcare insurance for that either. He paid that off, too, by himself. He said he’s hoping for a president who can help him. I said we could.
8/27/08
Buckeye Backroad Tour cont: We headed further west where we interviewed Clyde, Ohio’s Dave Woodruff. He is the founder of the organization Blue Collar Community. He is also a former employee of the Whirlpool Corporation, which has it’s main plant in Clyde. Woodruff said when he worked at Whirlpool the company went to profit sharing, which meant the employees would get shareholder statements — showing, among other things, how much money the guys (and gals) in corporate were making in comparison to the workers on the floor. “They’d get millions, and we’d get a lunch box,” Woodruff said of the salaries, perks. The CEO, especially, was “knocking down big bucks,” he said. So Woodruff sent him a letter protesting. One of the things Woodruff told me was that the company was cutting large amounts of money from different departments, but it didn’t seem the people in corporate were necessarily taking any significant cuts. Woodruff, through his organization, is now trying to organize blue collar workers in the area to come together and stand up for their rights. “There’s enough pieces of the pie to go around,” he added.
8/26/08
We traveled further west to Norwalk, Ohio, where we were asked to participate in a Farmer’s Market that’s coordinated by Chrissy Houtz. Houtz is a Vegan vegetarian who opposes the cruelty of factory farming. We also discussed, among other things, the phenomenal amount of grain used to fatten animals in this country — that could be going to feed the hungry of the world. Given that 24,000 people starve to death in the world every day, this is one of the biggest social justice travesties of our time… At the Farmer’s Market, I interviewed John Dickerson who has a land conservation service. A tremendously knowledgeable guy. He said that traditional farming methods (using pesticides, herbacides, etc.) are rapidly destroying the soil. But the ties between agri-business (that promotes this) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are so strong that changing this seems near impossible, he said. ‘Changing this,’ by the way, would mean going to a much more sustainable, organic small farm base in this country. Something our agricultural position paper wholeheartedly embraces.
8/25/08
We have launched on our final tour of Campaign 2008… In Amherst, Ohio, a barber named Ariel at the Olde Time Barber Shop told me he drives a $500 car and his wife drives a $1,000 car… “so we can spend more time with our kids,” he said. That is, they live simply, they live frugally, so Ariel’s wife can stay at home with the kids. And their simple life also means he doesn’t have to work long hours each week himself, so he has more time with the kids as well… The next morning at Mass at St. Joseph’s in Amherst, Fr. Lawrence Martello said that our modern life has become tremendously “complex.” And in that, we’ve lost our sense of the “simple,” and often what’s most important. Like, well, time with the kids…
8/11/08
Russia is escalating it’s assault on bordering Georgia, at the time of this writing. The New York Times reports that Georgia serves as a major conduit for oil flowing from Russia and Central Asia to the West. So the widening conlict, it would seem, is partially about control and monetary gain for Russia (not just retaliation against an aggressive action)… With the inevitably rough transition to a free-market economy in Russia, times have been hard for many there. Some of this Russia/Geogia conflict, I believe, could have been averted with much more of a proactive humanitarian outreach into Russia when it initially converted to democracy. At the time, I proposed the U.S. set up a “Sister City Program” with most of the towns in Russia. Besides cultural exchange, and the like, this program could have included a regular outpouring of Sister City donated money into each town. This would have not only helped the Russian people, but it would have helped stem (or at least temper) things like this incursion into Georgia because, well, the Russian economy would have been doing much better by now — with our help. Not to mention this would have gone a long way toward diminishing lingering Cold War tensions between Russia and the U.S. In fact, the window of opportunity for this massive Russia/U.S. Sister City Project is still there, but it seems to be closing fast. Note: The average American is much more well off than the average Russian at this point. Yet we are lavishing ourselves with extras (several televisions in the house, central heating and cooling, three full meals a day and snacks…) in the face of the Isrealite/manna story in the Bible. Author Richard Lowry writes about the concept of “Sabbath economics” and he says of the manna story. Families were told to gather just enough manna for their needs each day. In God’s economy there is such a thing as too much or tool little, as opposed to capitalism’s infinite tolerance of wealth and poverty, Lowry writes… We in America are confusing “wants” with “needs” in this country, out of self indulgence. As a result, others starve elsewhere, others are plunged into war, others…
8/8/08
Each of the major candidates have position papers on crime. We have a position paper on crime as well. And the following is a take on our paradigm around crime: National Public Radio did a piece the other day about a nationwide gathering of law enforcement officers in California this week. One of the officers, who is a gang specialist, said there are currently 50 gang related deaths every day in America. In the face of this, our administration would step-up: Community Oriented Policing on the streets, Restorative Justice in the prisons, and programs to end poverty and heal families in the inner city neighborhoods. Note: And we would create incentives for people to move from suburban and small town America back into the cities to live side by side with the poor. When we started abandoning the poor (white flight) for our suburban safety, our suburban comfort, our suburban status, et. al., we — in a very real sense — started abandoning the gospel message as well.