Hard Ride of Rte. 95 / Summer '2005

• While our children played a sandlot baseball game with a group of Amish children in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, I interviewed Elvy Miller.  He told me the Amish here were feeling a spiritual calling to help facilitate reconciliation with the Native Americans in the area.  Elvy said because of the intense persecution his people felt in Europe prior to coming to America, they felt a special empathy for the persecution the Native Americans have experienced here.  (Miller had recently talked at Gonzaga University's "Institute of Hate Studies" about these types of issues.)

•      I told Janet Hanson, a reporter for an online newspaper in northern Idaho, that our platform was strong on social justice.  She asked how so?  I said, for instance, that we point out that many American priests, pastors, and so on, sleep in $300 beds, while a majority of those in the Third World sleep on straw matts -- and there is no medicine for the children.
•      In Cottonwood, Idaho, I interviewed Sr. Carrol Ann Wasmuth, who is the "Forest Manager" for 1,000 acres of forest at the Monastery of St. Gertrude.  She said there is a way to log "and keep the woods healthy and sustainable."  And that starts with a more conservation oriented mind set.  For instance:  "Don't chop down a tree, just to make sure we have cheap paper,"  Sr. Carrol said.
•      In Grangeville, Idaho, I told the Idaho County Free Press that one of the biggest problems in America is the breakdown of the emotional health of the nuclear family.  More and more kids are growing up with moms and dads who are abusive, or seldom there (if at all).  As a result, these youth are growing up angry, and violence on the streets, or domestic violence in homes, spikes in the next generation -- as an example.
•      Further down Hwy 95, we went to a three-day conference at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.  The conference was on:  "One Vision for a Nuclear Free World."  Janet Chisolm, who is the coordinator for the national Episcopal Peace Fellowship, said she was once married to a U.S. military officer who was in charge of targetting 100 Russian cities -- with nuclear missiles.  David Robinson, Executive Director of Pax Christi USA, said to truly end the Cold War Era, we have to put down the nuclear weapons and work together as nations with a spirit of openess and tolerance.  (To this end, our administration would propose a U.S. Department of Peace.)
•      I interviewed Dr. David Brooks in Bythe, California.  He operates Salude (Health) Clinic here.  A significant percentage of Blythe is poor, he said.   And Dr. Brooks provides his services through Salude Clinic on purely a donation basis.  (He established the Clinic in 1969.)  When asked his motivation, he said he believed it was his spiritual responsibility to help the poor.
•      In Kayente, Arizona, Fr. Jerome Herff told me he supports the group:  Feminists for Life.  he said the group, which has chapters nationwide, goes into liberal universities like Brown (Ivy League), etc., to educate young, impressionable students about Life issues -- so they aren't just getting all their information from Pro-Choice groups