Vote for Joe

Buckeye Back Road Tour:   I headed down the Appalachian Highway in southwest Ohio today, stopping first in Seaman, which is totally land locked.   Go figure.   At Best Hardware I handed the guy behind the counter a flyer that was signed “my best.”   And I’m doing this all without a political consultant.   I then stumped in the Seaman Barber Shop, which has a big, granite “10 Commandments” stone in the window.   The 10th Commandment jumped out at me:   “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors goods.”   So  let’s say  I have a perfectly good 1995 Oldsmobile Cutlass.   Then I watch an advertisement for a new Honda Accord, start to covet it, and eventually spend some 22,000 bucks on it (or whatever).   Some 22,000  bucks I could have spent helping homeless people in Cleveland.  So, have I broken the 10th Commandment?   Well, sure.   The only reason you’re not hearing that from the pulpit these days is most priests, ministers, etc., are, that’s right, driving new Honda Accords (or whatever)…   From Seaman, I drove to Winchester, Ohio, where I stumped with the regulars at Alice’s Restaurant where, that’s right again, “…you can get anything you want.”   (That’s actually what the sign says out front.)   And one of the things the menu says is that it is a: clean restaurant.   “Not necessarily squeaky clean in a neurotic sense, but comfortably clean like Grandma’s house.”   After then passing out some flyers around town, I headed further west to Sardinia, Ohio.   In Sardinia I talked to Dave Carrington at Carrington Auto Care.   He said he remembered the raitioning of sugar and gasoline during World War II.   I couldn’t help but think we should consider gas rationing in this country again in the face of the catastrophic global warming we’re facing now.   I mean it’s a war situation as well.   That is, we’re making ‘war’ on the environment with our gluttonous American lifestyles.   Note:   I put up a flyer in a gorcery store in Sardinia that said:   “Sardinia:   VOTE OUTSIDE THE CAN!”   I got a million of ’em.

Buckeye Back Roads Tour:   From Mansfield, we traveled south to Jelloway, Ohio.   (Not in anyway a reflection on the campaign of course, Jello.)   We stayed at the Hedge farm here where Liz and I stacked wood Saturday morning.   Amidst strain and perspiration, Liz quoted author Gene Logsdon:   “Wood warms you twice, once when you’re collecting it and  again when you’re burning it.”   That evening, we were involved with the equivalent of a small town hall meeting at Eli Hostetler’s home up the road here.   We talked politics in relation to the Christian message.   Everyone here, for instance, was pro-life and I added what I believe is another dimension to the pro-life message.   That is, if say in God’s mind he wants a family to have six children, but because of lifestyle choices and artificial contraception, the couple chooses  to  have only  three children — are the three children you don’t have: abortions?  

I was just telling someone yesterday that for Martin Luther King Day two years ago,  our family rode on a Koinoinia float in the Martin Luther King Day parade in Americus, Georgia.   Koinoinia was the backwater Selma and Montgomery of the early 1950s.   It was on the Koinoinia Farm that Blacks and Whites lived and worked together in community, with Blacks receiving equal pay, etc.   This was unheard of at the time in the segregated South.   And  the farm  became a lightening rod for protests, boycotts and violence.   Yet Clarence Jordan, the Koinoinia Community founder, wouldn’t back down.   Shortly after, I told the Montgomery (AL) News that it will take the same kind of vision, courage and sacrifice to help free people now from the “slavery” of inner city and rural poverty in this country and throughout the world.   Note: We are just readying for another series of campaign tours.   And we are trying to raise donations:   Schriner Presidential Election Committee, 2100 W. 38th St., Cleveland, Ohio 44113.   Thanks.

In the last blog entry, I wrote about global warming and how crucial it is to reverse it now.   I recently told the Mount Vernon News during an End Global Warming Bicycle Tour, that our family has created a Kyoto Protocol Home Zone and we urge everyone in America to consider the same.   As an example of  one of many  winter energy saving strategies we’ve developed (we live in relatively cold Cleveland, Ohio),  our family is  using a portable, oil-based radiating heater in our apartment.   In a room comprable in size to a master bedroom in many suburban homes, we have set up a series of inexpensive, moveable walls to provide privacy for the children.   The walls have openings in the bottoms and tops for heat flow. During the winter months, we all sleep in the same room with the portable heater on.   Concurrently, we turn the central heating furnace off because, well, it’s exceedingly senseless to heat rooms you’re not using!   We are in a three-unit house and learned the other day that one unit of comprable size to ours had a heating bill of $200 for the month of December.   Our heating bill for December was: $75.   Note:   In a story today about driving in India, the New York Times mentioned that a new car is being introduced there.   It is called the Tata Nano and is a mere 10 ft. long by 5 ft. wide.   And it has a small, two cylinder engine in the rear.   It is the world’s cheapest car, list price: $2,500.   And it is one of the least polluting.   We should be moving to this kind of vehicle en-masse in  America for the purposes of local driving, in tandem with going to way more mini-electric cars, bicycles, walking…   Anything less, it would seem,  is like rearranging deck chairs on the ‘Global Warming Titanic’ at this point.

We played “Social Justice Football” with the kids at the Catholic Worker House this week on a  somewhat soggy field.   In Social Justice Football, everybody gets a chance to run, pass, catch…   And although the score was 21 to 14, in Social Justice Football that really doesn’t matter.   (Except to the team that won and the team that lost, of course.   Ok, so I’m not a purest.)   Note:   During our Campaign 2000 travels, we came across “Itch Field” (a lot of misquitoes)  in tiny Arthur, Illinois.   Some Amish guys had cut this ball diamond out of a corn field, ala Field of Dreams.   I was told there was competition at “the Itch,” but not too much competition, during the games.   As an example, a guy who was developmentally disabled played first base next to another infielder who could have been on a high school All Star team.   If only the society at large  mirrored this paradigm more, huh.