Buckeye Back Road Tour: We spent last the evening with Moses Keim, his wife and his son’s family in Oliver Township, Ohio. They are Amish. We talked about declinining, moral standards (like modesty of dress), our nuclear proliferation, abortion… I find many Amish to be extremely clear thinkers, filled with common sense and unfettered by much of society’s mad, convoluted rush at this point. And Mr. Keim is no exception. He is well read and quite a deep thinker. This evening we also talked about an accident that occured just up the road from the Keim’s. An Amish buggy with a family of six was hit head on by an SUV a couple weeks back. Although the whole family was ejected from the buggy, everyone, except the mother who had some head trauma, miraculously escaped serious injury. Mr. Keim said it would be best if we went back to a society where horse power was provided by, well, horses. That is, a decentralized society where people buggied, bicycled or walked most places locally. (This could also include, say, some slow solar powered and electric vehicles for local tansportation as well.) Meanwhile, gasoline would be reserved solely for public transportation and some necessary trucking. He continued that this would immediately curtail our dependence on foreign oil, which in turn would de-escalate international tensions. I couldn’t help but think how dramatically this would also cut back on our global warming emmissions, moving us toward much better environmental stewardship. And the streets would be safer, with an exponent of 100. And before any of us scoff at the proposal, maybe we should all be doing a whole lot more ‘deep thinking’ about it.
2/1/08
Buckeye Back Roads Tour: We campaigned in West Union, Ohio, where I was interviewed by People’s Defender newspaper reporter Carleta Weyrich. She lives on a farm and said she is concerned about rural issues, as are many people in Adams County. County Commissioner Brian Baldridge told me that many people here are now doing the “6 O’clock shuffle,” as he colloquially refers to it. That is, with the relatively new, four-lane Route 32 coming out of the Cincinnati area, many here are now commuting an hour each way into Cincinnati to work. This, for one, sends continual plumes of global warming emmissions upward. And with the advent of Route 32, Adams County will soon be in the jaws of urban sprawl, a cancer that is eating away at farmland all over the country. As a solution, we propose the “20-hour-work-week-shuffle.” Translated: We ask people to cut back dramatically on their lifestyles, go to things like house sharing to halve expenses, and job share in local settings.
1/31/08
Buckeye Back Road Tour: We were in Peebles, Ohio, today where my son Jonathon, 4, and I walked about the town passing out flyers. Afterward we went to the Village Inn Restaurant to get Jonathon some hot chocolate (well, I have to take care of the staff). While in the restaurant, I heard someone ask a friend for a cigarette. The friend suggested they should quit. “What I should do, and what I do — are two different things,” the smoker smiled… Later today I wrote a letter to the editor of the Peebles Messenger. (When you don’t have millions for advertising, flyers, local articles and letters-to-the-editor are often the best you can do.) In the letter I mentioned that many people these days seem to be like this smoker, not doing what they “should do, or not do” Then I mentioned, for instance, that there’s an astronomical 60% divorce rate in the country. In no small part because people are not turning most television off. During a talk to a Moral Theology Class at Bluffton College several years ago, I said that husbands and/or wives sit for hours watching prime time television featuring provocatively dressed men and women. (The actual act of intentionally watching these shows, in no small part, breaks the 9th Commandment about ‘coveting your neighbors wife/husband.’ And the reason you’re seldom, if ever, confronted by a priest or minister about this these days is because, you guessed it, the priests and ministers are watching the same prime time shows.) Anyway, unconsciously the other spouse starts to get angry and jealous about this viewing and begins acting out overtly or passive aggressively. This continues to escalate — compounded by other dysfunction — and eventually the couple becomes part of the 60% divorce rate, and children tragically get caught in the crossfire as well.
1/30/08
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.
1/29/08
Buckeye Back Road Tour: Worked on changing the transmission fluid and oil on our campaign vehicle with Eli Hostetler and Mark Hedge in Jelloway, Ohio, over the weekend. At Mass on Sunday in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, I talked with Kelly Schermerhorn whose daughter is going on a missions trip through Ashland University to an orphanage in Cambodia. During our Campaign 2004 research, I interviewed a Mary Knoll priest who was working amidst the abject poverty in Cambodia. He called Americans “food terrorists” because we massively overeat, let tremendous amounts of food spoil and spend billions of dollars on non-nutritional junk food — while 24,000 people starve to death every day in the world… On Monday we stumped on the square in Mt. Vernon and photographer Eric Burdett from the Mt. Vernon News captured it on film… We then traveled some backroads to Centerburg, Ohio, where I stumped at the In Town Restaurant which was located, that’s right, ‘in town.’ (Not much gets passed me.)… It was then on to Washington Court House, Ohio, where we campaigned at the Court House View Restaurant which has a view of, that’s right again, the downtown Court House. Afterward, I was interviewed by The Record Herald for a video piece on their website.
1/28/08
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?
1/26/08
Buckeye Back Roads Tour: We did a “whistle-stop” in downtown Mansfield, Ohio, yesterday. It was frigid 7 degrees. A reporter from, coincidentally enough, Channel 7 News asked me what some of my main issues were. I said one of the top ones was global warming (this day not withstanding)… After the event, my son Joseph and I walked over to the square to take some pictures of the Martin Luther King Jr. monument. It is a dark marble stone, with a tremendously moving, almost surreal-looking, painting of Dr. King leading a Civil Rights march.
1/22/08
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.
1/17/08
The blog entries have been thin in recent weeks because I’ve been dilligently working on finishing the books: Back Road to the Whitehouse 2 and Average Joe Runs for President… of Ohio. In addition… in a basement office I have here in Cleveland, I’ve been putting together an “Average Joe Almost Presidential Library.” Well why wait, huh? I just told my wife (and ‘almost First Lady’) Liz about the ‘Library’ and she responded: “You didn’t?”
1/11/08
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.