Buckeye Back Roads Tour cont.: Campaigning last week, we spent the weekend at Ann and Tim Miller’s small farm in Lisbon, Ohio. They practice: “Apostolic Farming.” That is, they look at farming as a sacred trust between themselves and God. To honor this, they don’t use toxic pesticides, herbacides, fertilizer… that can damage humans and the soil. And as they look at farming as a sacred vocation, they look at family as a sacred vocation as well. They don’t listen to television, they listen to each other. The children begin to learn a sound work ethic at an early age as they all pitch in around the farm to help. They pray a Rosary together every night. (Our family prayed with the Millers both Saturday and Sunday night and it was nothing short of what could be referred to as a monastic family experience.) As a result of all this very intentional parenting, I find the Miller children to be some of the most spiritually centered and emotionally grounded youth we’ve come across anywhere in the country. Note: I told CBS News in Monterey, California that to heal the country, you have to heal the family. And the Miller family in Lisbon, Ohio, is an excellent model for how we can start to do some of that.
4/24/08
Buckeye Back Road Tour cont.: We stumped at the Steel Trolley Diner in Lisbon where a man from East Palestine, Ohio, told me he was out of work for a year (actively looking the whole time) when he finally got a job at the local steel mill. “There doesn’t seem to be a middle class anymore,” he sighed… We drove on to Scio, Ohio, stopping to talk with people in little villages along the way. We talked with George at “George’s Automotive” in one of those villages. I asked him how he came up with the garage’s name… In Scio our son Joseph, 10, was allowed to practice with a Little League Team. We cheered Joseph on and passed out some flyers in the stands… The next day it was more back road stumping on our way to Steubenville, Ohio, where I talked to a group of Franciscan University students at an “average Joe Politics in the Backyard Barbeque.” I said that in a speech to the United Nations, Pope Benedict said we must “…eliminate inequalities between countries.” To put a face on this, I said we had done research in Juarez, Mexico, where 200,000 people — many of them families — live in one room, cobbled together shacks the size of the porch I was talking on this night (about 15 ft. by 15 ft.). If we want to bring “equality” between nations, shouldn’t the average American family go to “house sharing” with one, two, three… more families, and take the savings so that many people in Mexico (Haiti, Uganda, Nigeria…) had at least the basics in adequate shelter? Of course we should.
4/22/08
Buckeye Back Roads Tour cont.: I gave a talk at St. George Church in Lisbon, Ohio, yesterday. I said the rising price of wheat, rice, etc., is devastating to many in the Third World. A NY Times article (mentioned in the last blog entry) reports from a sprawling slum in Haiti, where one woman offered one of her five young children to a stranger. “Take one,” she said, cradiling a listless baby and motioning toward four rail-thin toddlers, none of whom had eaten that day. “You pick. Just feed them.” …I then said to the St. George congregation: “Air conditioning, unnecessary driving, too many clothes, dinners at Bob Evans… while this mother in Haiti has to give up her children to strangers, to starvation?” …And at the Last Judgement they will say: “But Lord, when did we see you hungry?” Note: I just did an interview for Ken Leanard’s blog http://1truebeliever.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/
4/21/08
We launched on yet another tour Saturday. We did a “round table” discussion at the Friends Roastery Coffee Shop in Salem, Ohio, that day. Before the discussion, I told reporter Mary Ann Greier about a New York Times article I’d just read about the rising price of wheat and rice throughout the Third World nations. In a vignette from the country of Haitti, the times noted that three-quarters of the populaiton earns less than $2 a day and the one business that is booming amidst the intense, sweeping hunger that has taken hold in that country is the selling of “patties made of mud, oil and sugar.” Although nutritionally terrible, Olwich Louis Jeune said he is eating them because: “It makes your stomach quiet down.” I told Ms. Greier that our administration would do everything imaginable to try to inspire Americans to cut back dramatically on their lifestyles, so the destitute of the world can have at least the basics in nutritional foods — dirt not being one of them.
4/16/08
One of the first things Pope Benedict XVI said on his plane coming into America dealt with the issue of immigration. According to a New York Times article, the pope said that we should mobilize many more efforts into poverty stricken countries to help people become as sustainable as possible in their families, their neighborhoods, their culture…. so they don’t feel compelled to leave because of lack of hope. This, too, is the essence (in the long term) of our platform on immigration. Note: I mean, think about it. If you’d lived in Peoria, Illinois, USA all your life with family, friends, neighbors, the Chicago Cubs… would you want to just up and move to Juarez, Mexico. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t have used Peoria as an example. (There goes a few votes, huh.)
4/12/08
Dan Kremer, an organic farmer in Yorkshire, Ohio, just sent me something from the National Catholic Rural Life Conference. It was titled: Eating Is A Moral Act. One of the issues raised was: “Supporting fair wages and healthy working conditions for farmworkers.” (On a research tour of the San Jauoquin Valley in California we learned about just the opposite, with many farmworkers making extremely low wages and working continually in extreme heat amidst toxic herbacides and pesticides.) Another NCRRLC issue: “People around the world have a right to food security.” However, at a seminar in Bluffton, Ohio, I heard Bluffton College Economics Professor Jim Harder explain that American corporate farms can grow at such high volumes these days, and ship cheaply enough — that they can undercut subsistence farmers selling to local markets in, say, Ecuador. This isn’t about ‘America being able to compete with any country in the world,’ this is about nothing less than: a tremendous social justice travesty! Note: Dan Kremer left a corporate, urban lifestyle in Dayton for a “simple rural way of life” in Yorkshire, Ohio, where he does everything in accordance with National Catholic Rural Life Conference values. For more on his farm/apostolate, see: www.eatfoodforlife.com Note 2: This weekend events to raise awareness about the crisis in Darfur will be conducted all over the country. We have a detailed position paper on Darfur with suggestions of what can be done to help. In addition, see www.tentsofhope.org
4/9/05
We are readying to launch on yet another tour at the end of next week. We will be accompanied by Stephen Piscura, who is doing an ‘On the road…’ documentary about our campaign. We are trying to raise donations for this tour. If you can help, our address is: Schriner Presidential Election Committee, 2100 W. 38th St., Cleveland, Ohio 44113. Thank you.
4/5/08
Time to weigh in on this house crisis thing… According to a Washington Post article this week, the Bush Administration is “completing a plan to help thousands of homeowners at risk of foreclosure by helping them refinance into more-affordable mortgages backed by public money.” If it was my administration, I would let the crisis run it’s course and in tandem promote: “house sharing.” Don’t laugh. During a campaign stop in Winona, Minnesota, we learned about that city’s House Share Program. (They’ve set up a data-base to connect people who want to house share.) With house sharing you share heated and lighted space, which significantly helps reduce global warming. With house sharing you halve expenses, which frees up more money for: carbon offset projects, for the innercity poor, for those starving in the third world… With house sharing, you start to reverse the environmental cancer of urban sprawl. With house sharing, shared house responsibilities free up more time for civic volunteering. With house sharing, you exponentially increase community building skills… I could go on with this, but I think you get the common sense to point. Note: We have become so spoiled (read: gluttonous) about our ‘space’ in this country; meanwhile billions of families worldwide live in spaces comparable to the size of our garages, or less.
4/1/08
I talked to a farmer from Othello, Washington, over the weekend. She said that on a farm you are tremendously dependent on oil products. Not only do you need gasoline to power tractors, combines, and the like, but fertilizers, pesticides, etc., are also petroleum based, she said. Conversely, I told the Bellefountaine (OH) News that our administration would try to inspire many more small, organic farms with low- tech farming implements — for instance, think Amish plow horses. Note: Results of an Associated Press poll that was published today showed our campaign is now only a few percentage points behind Clinton and Obama. [That’s right: April Fools!]
3/31/08
The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a story yesterday about a home in Shaker Heights which is being considered one of the “greenest new houses in the nation.” The home features a cistern for rainwater collection, windows to maximize solar input and breeze flow, ultra-low flow shower heads, geothermal tubing for heating and cooling… While doing research in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I interviewed a man who had put in similar geothermal tubing. His highest winter month heating bill the year before had been an amazing: $17. In Manchester, Michigan, we talked with a college instructor who’s class designed an award winning “Zero Energy Home” using a series of active and passive solar strategies… During a campaign swing through Colorado, I told the Valley Courier newspaper in that our administration would offer creative tax breaks and other incentives to inspire as much ‘greening’ of American homes as possible. For more on this and other parts of our Energy Policy, see…