Vote for Joe

Buckeye Back Road Tour:   We stopped in tiny Dunkinsville, Ohio, early this morning.   There was a church with a yard sign out front that had a flag and the words: God Bless America.   I left a flyer for the pastor and wrote on the top:   God Bless America (and the rest of the world, too)…   We then went to Mass at Holy Trinity Church in West Union where, wouldn’t you know, the  opening song was, well, This Is My Song.   A few lines:   “This is my home, the country where my heart is; Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine; But other hearts in other lands are beating, With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.”   Referencing the song, Holy Trinity Pastor Fr. Ted Kosse said that maybe we “have this immigration thing wrong.”   That is, “home is home,” he continued, and seldom do people want to leave their home for another land.   It’s just that the poverty is often so extreme that people are forced to go elsewhere just to feed their children, etc.   (At one point, our research took us to the border town of Juarez, Mexico, where 200,000 people live in cobbled together shacks with no running water, no electricity and the adults are making a mere $3 a shift at multi-national factories.)   Fr. Kosse suggested we mobilize  many humanitarian initiatives  into some of these other countries to help make them as sustainable as possible, so people didn’t have to leave their homes.   Note:   Several  days earlier during another church service, Fr. Kosse noted that we are currently spending $2 billion dollars a week on the Iraq War.   And he said he thought this money could be much better spent on water purification systems for the Third World, on food for those starving in the Third World, etc.   Today he said our policy on Iraq exudes “arrogance.”   That is, the U.S. seems to be erroneously saying with it’s actions that it is “working on God’s behalf to take care of the globe.”   What’s more,  Fr. Kosse said to the Iraq culture (and others in the Middle East) our blatant sexuality and blatant greed are the anti-thesis of their cultural moores; yet these things  are now invading, and tremendously influencing, some Iraqis.   Fr. Kosse also added that  the U.S.  also displays “blatant selectivity.”   He pointed to China and their human rights abuses and said we wouldn’t take them on over it because China is a “big boy.”   However, we’re not afraid to take on smaller countries.

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.

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.