They are proud to live in Toledo and want everyone to know it. They also want to give others a chance to show it.
At least half a dozen entrepreneurs in the Toledo area have independently created pro-Toledo T-shirts, which have been popping up on everyone from local festival-goers to Mayor Mike Bell and members of City Council.
John Amato, founder and president of local clothing company JUPMODE, said the mainly grassroots effort was unplanned.
“I’ve never really seen it as a movement, but recently it has been more noticeable, and you could probably call it that,” Amato said. “We all kind of did it independently. I think it shows there are a lot of people out there realizing the same thing — that they really like Toledo and they want to showcase that and let other people know.”
Amato said the designers are supportive of each other.
“Even though we’re technically competing because we’re making similar T-shirts, we want each other to do well,” Amato said. “I want all those other people selling shirts to sell a lot of shirts because it’s good for Toledo. I think they all share the sentiment of the more shirts like this out there, the better it is for Toledo and Toledoans. It’s all the same message. It’s all about Toledo pride.”
Shirts range from $10 to $26 and are sold at local businesses, including Bozarts, 151 S. St. Clair St.; Downtown Latte, 44 S. St. Clair St.; Glass City Café, 1107 Jackson St.; and Loonar Station, 3142 Markway Road or 5801 Telegraph Road.
Amato’s designs are online at www.jupmode.com.
One of JUPMODE’s 10 Toledo designs features the slogan “You will do better in Toledo.” Mayor Bell has worn the shirt to several recent events.
“For me that was really neat,” said Amato, who grew up in Sylvania and counts himself among those who chose to counteract Toledo’s “brain drain.”
“We aren’t here by default; we’re here because we like Toledo and see opportunities here,” Amato said. “I think the shirts like ‘You will do better in Toledo’ speak to a lot of people because it’s a positive message. These are people who are proud of Toledo and are happy to be here. They want a shirt that says that. You can’t show your pride for Toledo in any better way.”

From left, Max Reddish, Joshua Kulpa, John Amato, Matt Crouse and Rachel Richardson.

Other JUPMODE designs feature references to Toledo history, including Buckeye Beer, the Lion Store, former NFL team the Toledo Maroons and UT football legend Chuck Ealey.
“There are a lot of really neat things that happened here that people may not be aware of,” Amato said. “I like to showcase that history. It gives people from Toledo a reason to be proud because our history really is significant.”
One of the earliest pro-Toledo shirts was actually made as a joke, said Jules Webster, a Toledo native and owner of Shine Ceramics.
Webster, a Toledo Free Press Star contributor,  designed a shirt reading “Chicago doesn’t need you” for Ryan Bunch’s [performing and literary arts coordinator at the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo] birthday party last year only to get orders from members of City Council.
“They debuted as a joke and they sold out instantly,” said Webster, who later made a Portland version as well as a “Team Toledo” design.
Webster and Dana Syrek are opening The Art Supply Depo at 29 S. St. Clair St. on July 21.
Designer Matt Crouse is excited to see pro-Toledo sentiment growing.
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw the first Toledo shirts; now there’s so many of them,” Crouse said. “It’s a pretty cool thing.”
Crouse’s family, who owns Erd Specialty Graphics and the Glass City Café, has designed seven Toledo shirts, most recently a depiction of the carousel at Walbridge Park.
The café sells shirts from several designers, including Jemma Hostetler, whose shirt reads “I chose Toledo over your bulls–t city.”
Crouse said the shirts get plenty of attention, especially when he wears one while working.
“If I’m wearing someone’s shirt, I sell at least one, two, three shirts a night just by wearing it,” Crouse said.
Crouse said he sees Toledo pride spreading beyond Downtown and Old West End to all corners of the city.
“Years ago, it was embarrassing to say you were from Detroit; now people from Farmington Hills are proud to be from Detroit. I feel like that same thing is happening here,” Crouse said. “I think it’s started to spread. I think people are not as ashamed anymore. It’s becoming cool and kind of accepted to be from here.”
Max Reddish quit his factory job last year to open Reddish Printing, a screen printing shop he operates out of Reddish Sporting Goods, his family’s store in East Toledo.
He has since designed six Toledo T-shirts, including one stating “Boring people hate Toledo,” one with the word “Explore” above a map of Toledo and one depicting the Skyway Memorial Bridge that asks, “Does yours change color?”
Reddish, who sold his shirts out of a backpack until setting up shop at the Erie Street Market on Saturdays, said the shirts offer a Toledo pride alternative to Mud Hens gear.
“The only Toledo swag around for years has been Mud Hens stuff,” Reddish said. “That’s one of the main things I was hearing from people. People love the area and they want to support it and they want to show their support, but there hasn’t been anything around.”
Detroit native Joshua Kulpa came to the same realization. After moving to Toledo for work more than a year ago, Kulpa has fully embraced his adopted home.
“I just started to realize, wow, this was a city I’ve always wanted to live in,’” said Kulpa, citing nice people, gorgeous Metroparks, urban agriculture, a thriving art scene and “a real sense of community spirit.” “The city, just by every measure, is just one of the best cities I’ve ever been in, period.”
He wanted to buy a Toledo shirt to show his support; not finding one, he decided to make his own.
Kulpa’s design, which reads “Toledo Love” in stacked block letters, was inspired by New York City’s iconic “I (heart) NY” shirt.
“I know it’s become cliché now, but the original was a very real and genuine statement people felt and connected with,” Kulpa said. “I think we’re kind of at the same place where New York was when that shirt was made, when it still had the stigma of the ’70s on it. People were like ‘Why would you go to New York?’ But people were like ‘No, it’s fantastic.’ You might have to look a little deeper, but they realized it’s awesome.”
Lifelong Toledo resident Rachel Richardson, founder of Art Corner Toledo and co-founder and co-director of Independent Advocates, recently designed a shirt that reads, “When you’re famous … tell them Toledo sent you.”
“I just feel like everyone in Toledo is so talented,” Richardson said. “I just feel like I personally am a product of Toledo and I hope everyone else feels the same way. I hope we give Toledo and the surrounding area thanks for helping us achieve what we are achieving right now.”
Richardson, a Toledo Free Press Star contributor, said she is excited more people are embracing Toledo.
“I’m thrilled,” Richardson said. “I’ve got a whole drawer of Toledo T-shirts. It’s like my entire wardrobe, There’s so many unique messages, but they’re all basically saying the same thing, which is that Toledo is a really great place to live.”

In celebration of its two-year anniversary, Bozarts Fine Art and Music Gallery is calling for all artists and citizens to come celebrate on July 2 from 11 a.m. to midnight at its location on S. St. Clair Street.
“This is as much a celebration of two years in business as it is a celebration of you,” Bozarts Owner Jerry Gray said. “There are so many skilled and spirited people in this city that I have come to know as passionate comrades — it’s overwhelming. Please come down and participate, spectate and enjoy each other with one another.”
Gray said Bozarts hopes to have a large contingent of Toledo’s art community present to show off or sell their work. Artists are asked to bring anything suitable for outdoor display. Filmmakers will have a DVD projector provided to share their work and photographers can bring their prints.
Also encouraged to attend are live performances from musicians, poets and performance artists. Musicians are to play acoustic only and may bring down CDs and merchandise to distribute and sell.
Gray is also encouraging cooks to come down to share or sell food. A charcoal grill will be available for public use.
The celebration will have a picnic feel, so canopy tents for shade are welcome along with blankets, pillows, coolers and small tables.
Gray has asked however to not bring chairs or large tables. If you don’t plan on attending to perform or display your work, Bozarts encourages the public to come view some of what the artistic community has to offer in Toledo.
“If you do not have anything to sell or distribute you are just going to have to enjoy yourself and check out a very organic collection of culture in Toledo,” Gray said. “Make no mistake, this will be a sincerely awesome day.”
CAC yard sale
The Collingwood Arts Center is hosting a yard sale in support of local artists from July 9-10.
Among available items at the nonprofit arts facility will be artwork, books and clothing.
The sale will take place at the Parkwood entrance of the facility from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. For more information, visit the website www.CollingwoodArtsCenter.org or call (419) 244-ARTS.

With her win Sunday at the Wegman’s LPGA Championship, 22 year old, Yani Tseng became the youngest golfer ever to win 4 majors. She finished at –19 under par for the tournament 10 shots better than the rest of the field. She dominated the entire week. Let the Tiger Woods and Annika Sorenstam comparisons begin.

Tseng only needs to win the U. S. Women’s Open, July 10th at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colorado to complete the career Grand Slam. Of her 7 wins since joining the LPGA Tour, four have been majors. Her first major win came at the McDonald’s LPGA Championship in 2008 followed by The Kraft Nabisco and The Women’s British Open in 2010. She also was named Rolex Rookie of the Year in 2008 and the second youngest player ever to win the Rolex Player of the Year in 2010.

Her LPGA Championship win was her third title this year to go along with 8 top 10 finishes in just 10 starts. Not a bad year so far. Since joining the tour in 2008 she has a total of 7 wins and 40 top tens in 80 events. A 50 percent top ten ratio is pretty amazing. No one currently on any tour PGA, European, or Asian can come close to that number.

The LPGA does not get the vast media attention that the PGA and European men’s tours receive. The LPGA schedule only has 12 tournaments in the continental United States. It is a worldwide tour and has had a tough time gaining mass acceptance. It drastically needs a dominant player to step into the shoes left void with the retirements of Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa. Tseng, a native of Taiwan, is trying to Americanize her image by learning English and residing in Orlando.

Yani Tseng demands attention. If the sports media wants to talk about Rory McIlroy as the next great thing they first have to respect the fetes of this unassuming, long hitting female golfer who is establishing the “Tseng Dynasty” and leaving every other professional golfer in her dust.

You can read more from Fred on the Back 9 Blog

Toledo women’s track and field and men’s and women’s cross country coach Kevin Hadsell is unlike many in his profession, and it’s a big reason why UT Athletic Director Mike O’Brien recently gave him a new three-year contract that will keep him with the Rockets through June 30, 2014.

“Kevin is one of the most respected track and cross country coaches in the country,” O’Brien said in a statement. “He has an outstanding history of achievement, both in the Mid-American Conference and on a national level. His student-athletes also have been consistently outstanding in the classroom and in the Toledo community. We are pleased that Kevin will continue to lead our program for a long time to come.”

Hadsell arrived to Toledo in 1998 as the men’s and women’s cross country coach and took over the reins as women’s track and field coach in 2003. Between his duties as coach for both programs, Hadsell has produced a total of 27 Mid-American Conference champions and 23 MAC runner-up finishers.

“People are going to be attracted to different types of coaches,” Hadsell said in a phone interview with Toledo Free Press last month. “I tell everybody, ‘If you want to be coached by a librarian, then dude, I’m not that coach. There’s plenty of coaches out there that look and act like book librarians. You want a coach that’s going to make you laugh and is going to motivate you and give you training that’s going to make you great, then maybe this is the place for you.’”

Hadsell’s affable coaching style first developed at Coastal Carolina under the tutelage of the Chanticleers’ head women’s cross country/track and field coach Alan Connie, where he served as an assistant coach and assistant sports information director from 1993-97.

“He is one of my best friends, and it was really his style,” Hadsell said. “This is the type of person where you can just be yourself. You talk to any of my friends from high school or any of my friends from college that ran with me and my teammates, [and] they would tell you that I’m no different now than I was 20 years ago. I love to joke around. I love to laugh and everything else.

“So really, in terms of the way that I interact, that’s more of just I’m able to be myself. I don’t have to pretend to be anybody, but then my coaching style in terms of how I deal with maybe adversity, or how I deal with discipline and these things, those came from coach Connie, who’s my greatest mentor. I would say those two things put together, that’s how I’ve molded myself into the coach that I’ve always been.”

After taking over a women’s cross country program that finished last in the MAC 13 times in 18 years prior to his arrival, Hadsell has guided the team to three MAC Championships (2001, 2002, 2010), receiving MAC Women’s Cross Country Coach of the Year honors in each of those seasons. He has coached an NCAA Regional Cross Country Champion and NCAA Regional Cross Country Athlete of the Year (Briana Shook, 2002), the only women’s coach in MAC history to have that on his résumé. Hadsell has also coached five of his cross country athletes to MAC Runner of the Year awards, another five of his athletes to MAC Athlete of the Year in track and field and five different women to Top-25 World Rankings (Shook, Tuula Laitinen, Everlyne Lagat, Ebba Stenbeck and Ari Fisher).

In addition, Hadsell has had 15 Rockets receive NCAA All-Region selections since 1999—twice as many as any other MAC school in that same time frame—and guided seven Toledo athletes to the NCAA Championships in the last eleven years, which is more than the rest of the conference combined in that period. This past fall, the women’s cross country squad earned its’ first-ever bid to the NCAA Championships.

“I think that—being honest—it’s not just me that people come here,” Hadsell said. “My personality is such that I’m friendly and I’m outgoing, and I know that I’m a lot different than other coaches. That’s pretty clear, but if I were coaching at a really crappy school with crappy facilities and crappy academics, I don’t necessarily think we’d be having this conversation right now. I’d just be like this nice guy who likes to tell jokes at a crappy school.”

Like most recent college graduates, Melissa Goodall is wondering if she will have a full time job soon, but the circumstances surrounding the former UT basketball player’s situation are different than the ordinary student.

Goodall is preparing to travel with her former team to Israel in August, where the team will play in a few exhibition games along with site-seeing and experiencing Jewish culture. Her opportunity to go with the Rockets comes with a caveat though: she has to remain an amateur.

The Lexington, OH native, who averaged 12.9 points and 6.9 rebounds per game, concluded her college career in April when the Rockets defeated USC to win the WNIT.

“It was pretty much a dream season,” Goodall said. “To be a part of one of the two teams that get to end the season as a champion was a surreal feeling. I wouldn’t trade last season for anything in the world.”

With Goodall’s height (6’2) and her skill level, a career in the professional leagues in Europe seemed like the next step in her hoops odyssey, until coach Tricia Cullop called with some good news.

All during last season the Rockets were engaged in fundraising efforts to fund a team trip to current player Naama Shafir’s homeland of Israel.

“The trip is really an opportunity for our team to bond and also support Naama,” Cullop said. “To have the chance to see where she comes from and meet her family and friends is a great privilege for our team.”

With Goodall’s eligibility expiring at season’s end, she and teammate Jessica Williams thought they weren’t going to join the team overseas.

“Jessica and I participated in the fundraising events, but we didn’t think we were going to get to go,” she said. “But then coach [Cullop] called and told me that the university was going to take us along.”

The chance to travel to with the Rockets and see Shafir, who is Goodall’s roommate during the school year, was a dream come true, but the opportunity came with a catch.

The NCAA will require all players traveling with UT to have an “amateur status.” The NCAA says that a player’s amateur status ceases when either of the following happen: paid (in any form) or accept the promise of pay for competing in an athletic contest or verbally commit with an agent or a professional sports organization.

That means that Goodall cannot sign with any European team or agent prior to returning from Israel at the end of August.

Goodall also can’t be in direct negotiations with any teams either, which will make it difficult to secure a spot on any professional basketball team.

“It’s kind of a weird spot to be in,” Goodall said. “I really wanted to go on the trip, but I wasn’t sure if that meant I would be able to play professionally.”

Goodall spoke with Cullop and several of the coach’s confidants about the challenge that lies ahead.

While all seem confident that she won’t have too much of an issue finding a team at the conclusion of the trip to Israel, none can say for certain whether she will be signed or not.

“There are always some nagging doubts about the process,” Goodall said. “But after talking with Coach and her contacts, I am pretty comfortable going forward with the trip.”

A few advantages Goodall has are the European basketball schedule and the position she plays.

The European leagues play a more traditional sports calendar. Basketball season typically runs from fall through spring, as opposed to the WNBA, which plays during the summer months in the United States.

“Most European teams aren’t signing players until late August or early September,” Cullop said. “Melissa will be just a little behind that time schedule.”

The other is Goodall’s position. According to Cullop, players like Goodall will still have a good chance of being signed late in the free agency period.

“If she were a guard, I think there would be a little bit more trouble, but because she is a post player who is versatile, the process should be easier. I would be surprised if Melissa had any problems when we get back.”

For now Goodall must dabble in the unknown. She will continue working out and try and improve her game to make herself enticing to a potential team.

“I am just getting in the gym and working on my game,” she said.

Goodall is working especially hard on her one on one skill set, which she feels will make her a better all around player.

“I think it will make me better and more attractive to some of the teams who might want to sign me.”

While she waits to find out about her basketball future, Goodall is looking forward to the trip.

“It is a great chance to be a part of a once in a lifetime trip. I get to go overseas with my friends and teammates one last time. I couldn’t be happier about that.”

Catholic Health Partners (CHP) and Mercy have announced major executive changes that will go into effect at the beginning of next month.
Steven L. Mickus will take over as president, health care operations and chief operating officer for CHP. He will be responsible for 31 hospitals and 14 long-term care facilities in three states.
“Steve has demonstrated outstanding strategic and tactical leadership to effectively establish and advance the mission,” CHP President and CEO Michael D. Connelly said. “Steve and his team will further work toward operational enhancements that contribute to high value and mission viability.”
As the CEO of CHP’s Northern Division, Mickus oversaw Mercy-Toledo in addition to other responsibilities. He has lived in Toledo since 1995 when he first started at Mercy and will relocate to Cincinnati for his new duties.
“For more than 16 years, I have been privileged to call Toledo home,” Mickus said. “My wife and I will miss the community but I look forward to continuing to enhance and strengthen the mission of CHP on a broader scale that ultimately will benefit patients seeking health care here in Northwest Ohio well into the future.”
Replacing Mickus in his former position as Northern Division CEO will be John Starcher. The former CHP CEO for the Eastern and Southern Divisions will be responsible for Mercy-Toledo, among other duties.
Also being promoted from the Northern Division is Samantha Platzke, who has been named CHP’s senior vice president, operations and systems effectiveness.
In the Northern Division, Platzke has been responsible for the patient flow initiative at Mercy-Toledo which aims to reduce length of stay, reduce employee overtime expenses and increase operating margin. Unlike Mickus, she will remain in Toledo.

Toledo Free Press will focus a six-week series this summer on the mission of Feed Lucas County Children (FLCC). From July 3 to July 17, Walt Churchill’s markets will participate in a “Round Up Hunger” campaign to raise funds for FLCC.

There are a lot of hungry children in Toledo.
In Lucas County, 29,962 children under the age of 18 — 27.4 percent — live at or below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census. During the school year, the National School Lunch Program ensures at least one meal a day for them. But that program halts during the long summer break, leaving many children scrounging for food.

Cindy Milbry

Feed Lucas County Children is trying to fill the need, serving up to 6,200 children a day at 67 sites around the county.
Children are relying on FLCC for more than food. The organization also fuels 55 partner programs that focus on everything from basic necessities to academics, sports and enrichment.
“They provide lunch every day and we’d starve without them,” said Sister Virginia Welsh, the director of the Padua Center of Toledo. The center’s staff tutors teach children about food through working in a backyard garden and run summer camps — this summer, the theme for every camp is being a hero.
“A hungry kid’s a dangerous kid,” said Betty Amison, who has been the executive director of Grace Community Center for 42 years. “Kids [who] are hungry are very uncertain, they’re angry, they misbehave … and they steal. They’ll do things.”
Amison said the center’s summer program focuses on nourishing children’s bodies and brains together. The camps incorporate music classes, visual arts and academics integrated around a central theme and end with a production. This year built around social issues like tolerance and acceptance based on the TV show “Glee.”
Anthony Johnson is a camp director for Kids Unlimited, a summer program dedicated to academics — particularly Ohio Achievement Test (OAT)preparation — and exercise. There is a strong link, he said, between whether a child has eaten and whether he can succeed academically. But without FLCC, the program could not afford to feed its campers, he said.
Johnson’s favorite success story for Kids Unlimited is of 13 fifth-grade boys who were not model students.
The students all attended Lincoln Academy for Boys, a school that has not traditionally scored well on the OAT, Johnson said.
“We had resistance you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “These were all boys and they were rough, and you’re trying to get them to do something they don’t traditionally do.”
In the camp’s 10 weeks, the boys burned out two teachers and were on a third. But when it came time to take the test, they scored an average of 42 points higher than any other school in the area.
“All 13 made it to high school,” Johnson said, “and all 13 are doing well.”
Other programs focus on even more basic needs.
“The average income in this area is $5,000 and below,” said John Savage, a board member of the Martin Luther King Kitchen for the Poor.
The kitchen’s workers clothe and feed people of all ages, hand out Christmas presents, provide emergency food packets and furnish apartments when they can.
“Whatever we can do, we do,” said Henrietta Armstrong, the kitchen’s supervisor. “We give money out of our pockets. People coming in crying — you just do what you do.”
Cindy Milbry knows about doing what she can. The first time she attended Redeemer Lutheran Church, she wasn’t sure how she had gotten there. She remembered falling down outside the church building and hitting her head while on her way to another church service. When she woke up, she was sitting in a pew.
But Milbry had sworn that she would never be a Lutheran.
“I grew up in a Missouri Synod [Lutheran] orphanage, and bad things happened to me,” she said.
That morning, members of Redeemer were discussing shutting its doors due to financial struggles. Milbry said she heard someone speak up, volunteering to run fundraising dinners, and realized it was herself. Those dinners raised $7,000, and the church stayed open.
Milbry heads the church’s outreach ministry. Last summer, Redeemer fed 150 children per day and hosted educational sessions in subjects such as music, science and tae kwon do.
One of the children was a young boy with a sour attitude and a destructive streak. But he wanted to help Milbry. She told him he would have to change his attitude, and he responded by becoming a leader for the other children. When he went back to school, Milbry said proudly, he began receiving all A’s and B’s in his classes.
Redeemer has about 20 active members on a good day, and struggles to fund its programs. But the money always comes through, Milbry said, sometimes from unlikely sources.
“Poor people are more generous than people who have means,” Milbry said. “If they have three slices of bread to divide between two people, they’ll turn around and give you two slices and split one slice between [themselves].”

Sister Virginia Welsh said she hates describing where the Padua Center is located. As the director, she said the center, boxed in by Brown Avenue and Klondike, Dorr and Hawley streets, has no easy name like Old West End, which is why the center is having a “Name our Neighborhood” contest.
The closest name they have is the outdated Kuschwantz, which means cow’s tail in Polish.
The free-to-enter contest, which involves writing suggestions for the area on downloaded forms, will last until June 30. The winning name will be picked at 6 p.m. July 7 at the monthly community meeting. First place will receive a $50 gift certificate, second place will receive a $15 gift certificate and third place will receive a $10 gift certificate.
“We’re trying to build up our neighborhood,” she said. “I think it’s very important to put an identity to the neighborhood. There are a lot of things going on, a lot of good things.”
The good things include neighborhood cleanups and a new Pickett Academy, as part of the Building For Success initiative with Toledo Public Schools. The school comes at a critical time, she said, because of the intolerably high number of suspensions for elementary school children.
“If children are to succeed in life, they need an education,” she said. If children are suspended from school, they miss homework, grades and lessons as they fall behind their classmates.
This lack of education is why Welsh said the center offers after-school tutoring and the Alternative to Suspension Program for students in grades K-6. She said the programs are paid for by grants and donations.
All prize certificates will be to local businesses, Welsh said. Keeping the money local will brighten the spirits of local business owners and create the “Christmas light effect,” she said; that is when one home decorates its yard with Christmas lights, inspiring the surrounding homes to also decorate. The pattern continues until every home in the neighborhood is decorated.
Oscar Shaheer, a board member for the Padua Center’s Brighten Up Community Organizing, said naming the neighborhood is overdue.
“It’ll instill a sense of pride in our neighborhood,” he said.

Political parties in general and politicians in particular seem to have a different understanding of the problems faced by government when they are in positions of lesser authority than when their power becomes greater.  When Republicans were out of power, they decried laws passed along party lines as a subversion of the democratic process, while Democrats saw it as getting the work of the country done.  Now that the roles are reversed, it’s Democrats in the House are complaining about their lack of democracy in the process, while Republicans see themselves as only doing what those who voted them into office asked them to.

We likewise see reversals by members in Congress who spoke out for any way out of the conflicts in the Middle East in the person of Senate Majority Leader Reid and former Speaker of the House Pelosi under President Bush, but seem curiously silent on such issues when not seeking support for their continuation today.  Efforts in Libya also seem to be considered much different than other efforts in that part of the world under the previous Administration.

Perhaps no greater reversal of thought on some of the issues of the day has occurred in recent years however, than that of the President himself.  Once a champion of staying out of Iraq and Afghanistan as things outside of the American interests, he now finds himself the champion of not only continuing these efforts, but expanding them into Libya (and perhaps Syria and Yemen).

In 2002 as an Illinois state Senator, his words could be found rather inconsistent today as he said,  “Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power…. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.  But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors…and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.” Perhaps Muammar Gaddafi fits into a different category of dictatorial thug and murderer; but the only one that I can see is the job held by the man speaking.

We can likewise look to his views on raising the debt limit in this country; an area that he not only voted against in the Senate, but which he spoke out against during his time as the junior Senator from Illinois in 2006, “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

Recent pronouncements from the occupant of the White House, at least according to his spokesman, seem quite different.  Speaking on the recently failed vote for raising the debt limit we are told in an AP article,  Obama “thinks it was a mistake,” presidential spokesman Jay Carney told reporters. “He realizes now that raising the debt ceiling is so important to the health of this economy and the global economy that it is not a vote that, even when you are protesting an administration’s policies, you can play around with.”

It’s in 1 Corinthians, 13:11 that Paul the apostle gave us the now famous phrase, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child ….”; and perhaps that’s it.  Maybe only a few short years ago before seeking the office of president, he had a far less mature understanding of the problems facing the nation and world at the time; which is a scary thought.  This Biblical passage goes on to say however, “… but when I became a man, I put away childish things”.  This could mean that greater knowledge, maturity, and wisdom come with a position of greater responsibility, and one must set aside what can now only be considered flawed beliefs. On the other hand, it might simply be another elected official saying, ‘pay no attention to what I said, but instead to what I’m saying’.  Worse still it might imply, as he often seemed to accuse his predecessor of; when you’re in power, the rules don’t apply to you.

Some days are scary for a young company trying to get on its feet.
For Support Services International (SSI) in Toledo, those days come when the company has only a couple power audits left on the schedule. Scary, but not overwhelming.
“We know one phone call is going to change all that,” said Emily Peters, the company’s manager.
SSI, located at 5461 Southwyck Blvd., Suite 1J, bills itself as an engineering support service with a fluid range of services offered.
“There’s no one else around here that does what we do,” Peters said. Some companies do audits, she said, and others do surveys, but no one else runs the gamut like SSI.
With the upgrade to 4G rapidly approaching, the bulk of SSI’s business has been power audits of cell towers for major phone companies.
“We were going through knee-deep snow and climbing mountains to get to these cell towers in various states,” said Robert Peters, SSI’s founder and principal.
But SSI also offers customized training and certification, technical writing, information gathering and indexing and building surveys. Robert Peters spends most of his time working in Washington, D.C., managing nuclear energy projects through SSI.
“[The services] are actually very unrelated,” Emily Peters said. “We’re not afraid to take on new projects that maybe aren’t something we’ve done in the past, because we’re confident that we’ll be able to fill the void.”
Paul Chambers, director of marketing, said Robert Peters has more than 35 years experience in the nuclear energy field. Peters started the company as a vehicle for his interactions with companies several years ago, but officially founded SSI when he brought his daughter Emily on board in 2010.
“He’s always been an entrepreneur, and we work really well together,” Emily Peters said. “Whenever I get the chance, I’ll jump blindly into his idea and trust that we’re going in the right direction.”
The company saw rapid growth early. Two people in an office turned a week later into 14 employees in the field. The company went from one regular client to three, including SSOE. It is down to seven employees now, but Chambers said more growth is coming. “Our biggest problem right now is cash flow,” he said.
But SSI continues to work and, he said, the vision is in place for an expanding company. Emily Peters said the switch to 4G won’t stop that growth, because the next advance will start developing as soon as it comes. And development is where SSI comes in — after all, the company’s motto is “Our starting point is your blank piece of paper.”
The phone rings, and SSI has a hundred new audit orders.