{"id":1250,"date":"2011-11-19T14:48:06","date_gmt":"2011-11-19T14:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.wordpress.com\/?p=1250"},"modified":"2011-11-19T14:48:06","modified_gmt":"2011-11-19T14:48:06","slug":"hobo-campaign-swing-a-flint-rock-water-shortage-worldwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1250","title":{"rendered":"“hobo,” campaign swing, a flint rock, water shortage worldwide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Catching up on the last week…\u00a0 I met up with a homeless guy who we had taken in a few years back.\u00a0 He’s a modern day “hobo,”<\/strong> if you will.\u00a0 He has a bi-polar disorder and how it manifests is: he doesn’t do well in one place for long.\u00a0 He has traveled the country (hitchhiking, on buses…) the past 20 years.\u00a0 Coincidentally, I have extensively traveled the country the past 22 years doing research and campaigning.\u00a0 While my wife Liz wouldn’t call it a bi-polar disorder, she has referred to it (on her bad days) as being: “nuts.”\u00a0 Okay so we’re not ahead in the polls, yet…\u00a0\u00a0 Some of this campaigning has taken our 16-year-old daughter, Sarah, and I on a recent swing through northwest Ohio.\u00a0 (Sarah just got her temporary driving permit, and I have to believe this was a more pressure packed trip than all the other presidential candidates experienced last week — Herman Cain notwithstanding — combined.)\u00a0\u00a0 One of\u00a0our stops was at tiny Van Buren, Ohio, where I put up a campaign flier on the town bulletin board under “Community Events.”\u00a0 Well if I win,\u00a0people in Van Buren\u00a0would consider me being there a “community event,” right?\u00a0 In Upper Sandusky, Ohio (pop. 6,364), I did a little impromptu stumping at the Beca House Coffee Shop downtown.\u00a0 As we were leaving this quintessential, midwestern small town later, against a backdrop of kids walking home from school, colorful fall leaves… Sarah and I noticed an even more colorful (and graphic) “Girls Gone Wild”<\/strong> tour bus parked in front of a tavern downtown, apparently there to put on a semi-erotic show that night.\u00a0 I couldn’t help but think:\u00a0 “Girls Gone Wild \/ Society Gone Nuts.”\u00a0<\/strong> …I rounded out the week by attending a seminar on “Prmitive Native Skills”<\/strong> with our eight-year-old son Jonathan at Bluffton University.\u00a0 Wilderness Instructor Clint Myers fascinated some 70 students with demonstrations of how Native Americans lived (hunting, fishing, making clothes…) before the White man got here.\u00a0 When\u00a0Myers got to the demonstration about starting fires (without matches), he held up a gray rock and asked the class what kind of rock it was.\u00a0 70 college students stared blankly, until our Jonathan’s hand tentatively went up in the back.\u00a0 “It’s a flint rock,” he said.\u00a0 (For homeschooling\u00a0Jonathan has\u00a0been reading a lot of wilderness literature lately.)\u00a0 All 70 heads turned in unison, and apparently in awe.\u00a0 Or at least they were impressed, as was I —\u00a0who didn’t know what it was either.\u00a0 Myers then started\u00a0a small fire with the rock,\u00a0until\u00a0one of the more technologically advanced students said if it got any bigger “…the sprinkler system would probably come on.”\u00a0 And that was that.\u00a0 Note:<\/strong>\u00a0 Wilderness instructor Clint Myers said the average American uses 120 gallons of water a day (drinking, cooking, cleaning, flushing toilets, watering lawns…)\u00a0 Meanwhile in the developing countries, many people use a pail of water a day, if that.\u00a0 And often times it’s not clean water.\u00a0 On a stop in Stephens Point, Wisconsin, we interviewed University of Wisconsin Environmental Professor George Kraft.\u00a0 He said we are running into water problems worldwide, in part, because the developing countries are over-using water.\u00a0 Thus, our administration would ask Americans to cut back on their water use significantly and fund many more water projects in the Third World.\u00a0 “Common sense for the common good,” worldwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catching up on the last week…\u00a0 I met up with a homeless guy who we had taken in a few years back.\u00a0 He’s a modern day “hobo,” if you will.\u00a0 He has a bi-polar disorder and how it manifests is: …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}