We happened across the Creston (OH) Carving Festival yesterday. Thinking it was going to be a laid back, quiet Saturday afternoon thing, we went to the park to see some hand carved pieces, some knife carving demonstrations, etc. Silly me. Each of the artisans were: “chain saw artists” and “chain saw sculptors.” The loud whir of 25 chian saws all going at once was, well, maddening — yet a good metaphore for our modern society. Here we are burning more fossil fuel, amidst a frenzied rush to produce as much as we possibly can, as fast as we possibly can… Today we traveled to Nevada, Ohio (pop. 800) where we met Ellen Walton who onws EJ’s Market downtown here. This small grocer has kept the market going the past nine years, in the face of encroaching Wal Marts and other chain groceries. Ellen said she is an evangelist for small business, but said many of the small stores in Nevada’s downtown have now closed — and been turned into apartments, and the like. Ellen said she is also concerned about outsourcing of American Jobs. She said Upper SAndusky’s AO Smith that employed her husband (and makes all sorts of small motors) has moved most of their operation to Mexico and China. Ellen said the plant used to have 800 workers, it now has: 15… We then went to Nevada’s Park for an afternoon baseball game with our kids. While at the park, I met Seneca County Sheriff’s Sergeant Scott Lantz. He said his Department utilizes as much prisoner labor as possible. That is, prisoners help fix up county offices, do maintainence at the park, mow isolated township cemeteries (including fixing up deteriorating head stones), and work for a number of charitable organizations. In return, the prisoners generally get a day off their sentences (usually they are in on misdemeanor charges) for every day worked. It’s a win-win situation which makes sense, I believe, common sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We happened across the Creston (OH) Carving Festival yesterday. Thinking it was going to be a laid back, quiet Saturday afternoon thing, we went to the park to see some hand carved pieces, some knife carving demonstrations, etc. Silly me. …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355","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=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}