I rode my bike to the library in downtown Albert Lea today, which is actually more up than down. Downtown is almost exactly north of where we live. About halfway there, cutting Albert Lea diagonally in half, are railroad tracks.

I pulled up next to a guy who was also on his bike waiting for signs of the last car.

It was the fastest I’d ever seen a train go through town, any town.

“This train is going fast,” I said.

“They have to,” he answered. He had a little bag attached to the inside the frame of his red, smallish bike. Like me, he probably used his bike instead of a car for regular travel around town.

“Really?”

“They have to go twenty miles an hour,” he replied.

“They have to go at least that fast?”

“Yeah,” he said, watching the train carefully.

My curiousity wasn’t going away.

“They have to go at least twenty miles an hour?” I asked again, not really believing my ears.

“Keeps people from trying to make it.”

“Oh,” I said. The twenty mile an hour speed requirement finally made sense to me. If the train goes too slow, folks are more likely to think they can make it. They’re also more likely to look both ways before they cross…and mind the warning lights.

On my way back from the library, carrying two movies and a book in my left arm, I found myself cautiously looking both ways before crossing the same tracks again. I held a picture in my mind of getting smacked clean off the tracks, my guts and books everywhere.

The detective’s notes would read: “One copy of Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World and two movies: The Pianist and Bruce Almighty.

“Hmm, I haven’t seen that one yet,” he’d say.

Jen and I are both Lutherans from the git go, but we haven’t limited our church search to Lutheran churches alone. Since we’ve moved to Albert Lea, Minnesota, we’ve visited two Lutheran churches and one Methodist.

And last night, for a refreshing change of pace, we decided to attend Catholic mass at the one Catholic church in town, St. Theodore’s on Clark Street. The priest there is a young, lively, well spoken man who kept the attention of his parishioners from the start of his homily to the end.

The text for his message was the parable of the workers in the vineyard. In his homily he talked about God’s generosity and integrated his refections from a well-cited considerations of Catholic social teaching.

The sermon spun itself back to a healthy re-visitation of the Christian call to help those who live in poverty. We actually prayed for “those who do not earn fair wages.”

This is a Catholic church in relatively rural America, mind you. I’m embarrassed at never having been to Catholic mass. (And I do believe we might’ve been the only protestants there — made obvious by the fact that we awkwardly recited the parts of the creed that matched with our own Lutheran tradition and genuflected several seconds after everyone else did.)

But if all Catholic churches are at all like St. Theodore’s, I’m very hopeful about the future of the Catholic church.

Sure, the Catholic church has struggled with sex scandals and the like: painful, regrettable stuff, but after last Saturday, I’m reminded that we cannot let scandal tear down that which does work and have a lasting, essential impact on society. The Dorothy Day’s, Mother Theresa’s, and Oscar Romero’s of this world are irreplaceable. And Catholic social teaching shines through as a testament of what it means to follow Jesus today.

Wal-Mart is the largest company Earth, capturing unimaginable amounts of market-share; unrestricted by national borders or regulations that keep strategic bottom-line thinking from remorselessly taking advantage of workers, the environment, and state and local infrastructures.

Supposedly, Wal-Mart “helps” their suppliers. According to those I know who’ve either worked at Wal-Mart or spent time researching the retail giant, Wal-Mart has redefined the term “bottom line” and forced it’s suppliers to unprecedented levels of efficiency. The right products arrive at exactly the right time in exactly the right isle’s…on exactly the day they’re needed.

If suppliers don’t have the capability of keeping up with Wal-Mart’s unparalleled zest for satisfying their consumer’s material appetites, then Wally World either stops doing business with that supplier or sends a team of efficiency professionals to their supplier’s manufacturing headquarters to shake things up a bit, if you will. Often times this shake-up will take suppliers to unimagined levels of performance. Which often results in substantially lower costs for a product.

Wal-Mart’s prices are fantastic. When I’ve gone to Wal-Mart to shop, (Wal-Mart’s livelihood depends on hypocrites like me, though I do shop there now only when I deem it necessary: two or three times a year), I often find myself in a state momentary reverse sticker shock. It’s great to discover that I won’t have to spend as much on something as I first thought.

Fact is, every time I make a purchase there, it’s like I’m saying, “Wal-Mart, good job! You are doing the right thing.”

Ironically enough, those who protest Wal-Mart setting up shop in their communities often find themselves there years later, buying things like gallon jars of pickles priced just below three dollars. And, as many know, those gallon jars eventually put Vlasic out of business; as the supplier for Wal-Mart’s dirt cheap gallon jars, they couldn’t keep their prices low enough without eventually filing bankruptcy.

All this said, I’d like to suggest an introductory solution to the Wal-Mart problem. My weakness is my wallet. When I know how much Wal-Mart charges for something and I know how easily it will be for me to get nearly everything I think I need…all in one place…I find it hard to resist shopping there.

If you can’t stop shopping there, simply shop there less. If you plan to get three things at Wal-Mart, see if you can’t buy two instead. Take it one step at a time and see if you can’t lessen your dependence. I’m a realist. I know it’s hard, but I find the littlest things we do can make the biggest difference. Wal-Mart owes a lot more to this country than the trucks they sent to New Orleans to bolster their image.

They owe us all the decent paying jobs that have been shipped over-seas because manufacturers can’t compete in the US any more. They owe us for the environmental damage they’ve done to land around the world, both with their store placement and with the bottom line practices of their suppliers and manufacturers. They owe us for the suffering of sweat shop laborers who now have no choice but to work for Wal-Mart because their culture and way of life has been overcome by the presence of manufacturers who promise cash for souls.

Try turning that twenty visits to Wal-Mart a year into ten and you’ll be making a difference. You’ll be casting that many fewer votes in favor of overblown capitalism at its worst.

My own sad confession: I bought my computer at Wal-Mart a year ago. It cost me very little and it’s been a wonderful computer, but I promise you this, when it’s time to get a new computer, I’m not getting it at Wal-Mart.

I share this article with you not as a socially responsible angel, but as a self-conscious hypocrite who has a legitimate concern for what a Wal-Mart dominated future holds. If you can’t boycott the place, simply buy less. If we all buy less, and boycott if we’re able, then Wal-Mart will have reconsider the effectiveness of their bottomless bottom line business model. We must stand strong against Hurricane Wal-Mart by keeping levees of economic justice and a concern for the common good in tact.

Check out my new online magazine: The Albert Lea Journal. It’s an attempt to create a local publication about events and places in Albert Lea, MN. My wife and I moved here just a few weeks ago and we love it!

It’s apparent that tax breaks for the wealthy under the guise of ‘trickle down economics’ do not work. Water, not money has trickled down into New Orleans, and lots of it. Now we have situation where we’re going to need a whole heck of a lot more than a trickle of money to fix the problem.

Federal policy making like what led to the New Orlean’s disaster (cutting funding for work on New Orlean’s levees and pushing the poorest of the poor into flood zones) is happening all over the U.S.

Here’s what I suggest with respect to policy decisions in the weeks and months ahead:

1) No repeal of the estate tax. This is money we need to support our nation’s infrastructure. Businesses and corporations cannot turn a profit without working highways, law enforcement officers, teachers and educators, regulators (believe it or not), and all those things that we take for granted as that which is paid for by someone else, but not us. (Ask Bill Gates Sr. He’ll tell you.) No corporation can survive without the services for which all United States Citizens pay. If we take away the estate tax, we cannot fix our nations levees. And, in the end, everyone will lose, not just those who live in poverty.

2) Keep social security alive. Do not sweep it under the carpet of privately held investment accounts. Social security did not come into being as a retirement plan for the wealthy and upper middle class. It is a measure of protection that supports those who live in poverty when they are no longer able to support themselves. For the most part, private investment accounts will not help those who live in poverty. Many do not know the first thing about how to invest because they’ve never had the money to do so. Let’s not let social security dwindle. If we do we’ll have broken levees and a mess much much bigger than we could’ve ever imagined.

3) Support our public education system by giving schools what they need to hire more teachers and build an adequate learning environment in which all students can learn. Forcing teachers to give more tests, not adequately funding these tests and then taking money away when an achievement gap is exposed will not solve anything. In fact, it will weaken the levees of our educational system. More and more students will not get the education they need. Poorly educated children are a threat to national security.

4) Keep emission standards in place that reduce the amount of greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere. Right now the Republican majority is doing everything it can to destroy an environmental levee that might some day protect us from more natural distasters like Katrina. The reason hurricanes like Katrina are on the rise is because temperatures are on the rise. Folks, when insurance companies are adjusting their long-term assessments accoring to what they expect will be the effects of global warming, we can at least expect our very own federal goverment to do the same. If we don’t act now, the global warming levee will break and we’ll have a very very expensive mess on our hands.

The greatest threat to our nation is not terrorism, but selfish, shallow short-term-profit seeking on the part of our current adminstration and those who don’t want to support an infrastructure that makes them their money in the first place. If you want to make money in this country, you’ve got to pay your dues. And if you don’t pay now, you’ll pay later.

Lately, I’ve witnessed a fair amount of Bush bashing, either from my own mouth or from the mouths of others. Why didn’t our very own federal government respond immediately to its own suffering citizens in the Gulf Coast states? Is Bush a racist? A classist? Are we witnessing institutionalized racism first hand? Classism? Does Bush epitomize this reality? Has our civilized society revealed its selfish and unyielding malevolent underbelly?

My answer: ‘all of the above’ and ‘none of the above”. Friends, Bush is not to blame. We are. We are voting citizens. When funding for the infrastructure of this country falters, we must let politicians know that we disagree with policy decisions at the root of falterned funding. That well-funded engineers can maintain levees at a far better rate of effectiveness when they have the money and resources to do so. When folks living in poverty have no place to sleep and nothing to eat, it is our responsibility to let senators and members of congress know that neglecting the citizenry of this country, rich or poor, is not acceptable. All people should have a place to sleep at night. All people in this country ought to be able to get food when they are hungry; clean water when they’re thirsty.

Any power held by the Bush adminstration is there because we gave it to them. Bush’s sentiments, in a shameful measure, represent American sentiments. If not, he would’ve never been elected president in the first place, let alone a second time.

This is our country. And Bush is our president. FEMA’s response to Katrina was lousy. Bush adminstration policies concerning the environment, poverty, education, and the military are all mostly lousy,

But we all are no less lousy than the person who we decide should get all the blame. Every mess, whether it be Iraq, high gas prices, or a poor response to disaster in New Orleans, is a mess created by ‘We, the people…’

So I promise to take a break from my Bush bashing from time to time, in order suggest alternatives to the plans he proposes. I promise to be clear why I disagree, yet clearly state what it would take for me to agree. Yes, keeping troops in Iraq sucks, but what’s my alternative? What do I suggest we do instead? The federal response the Katrina aftermath: lacking, but what do I suggest we do now? What do I think it will take to get the Gulf Coast back on it’s feet again?

I’ll write about what we can do to make things right. I’ll talk about what we can do to heal as a a nation. What steps can we take to overcome adversity together? I’ll continue to bash those of a slightly different political bent than my own, but not without thinking carefully about what exactly I suggest we ought to do instead. Most folks know why they disagree with public policy decisions, but they don’t usually say much about what we ought to do instead.

Stay tuned as I try to temper a measure of my negative words with positive suggestions. As a nation we are in for challenges in the weeks and months ahead. We can only overcome them by using our imaginations to offer plans and ideas to counteract those plans we are certain won’t work.

Michael Moore to the Disaster President

Ouch!

Gas Supplies Tight; Bush Asks Drivers to Conserve

Never thought I’d see the day. Bush actually said, “Don’t buy gas if you don’t need it.”

Wow! What a novel idea! Bush, that left leaning liberal hippy, telling people not to buy something if they don’t need it. Oooh, that commie! That’s the last thing we need is an ‘activist’ president. Who does he think he is, telling people to consume less.