Thursday, February 10, 2000
Jesus-like figure now in Pennsylvania
BY KAREN SAMPLES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
“Jesus” is getting around. First Northern Kentucky, now the front page of the Washington Post.
Last week, the Post ran a story on the man known as Carl Joseph, who passed through here in August. Barefoot, carrying a Bible and wearing a white robe, he was stopped by Elsmere police, who saw him walking along Dixie Highway.
The officers were impressed by his cleanliness and polite manner. He told them he was a missionary on his way to Detroit.
By November, Mr. Joseph had walked to Hazleton, Pa., a coal-mining town of 40,000, the Washington Post reports. For several months, he has been living with the family of a woman who saw him walking down the road. She immediately felt she could trust him, she says.
Mr. Joseph has since shared his faith and devotion to Catholicism with troubled teen-agers, sick people and crowds of listeners at town meetings.
Depending on the goodwill of strangers, Mr. Joseph has passed through 13 countries and 47 states with no extra clothes and no money, the Post reports. “If I walk, I'm more accessible to people,” he told reporter Hanna Rosin. “Jesus walked. Buddha walked. And Gandhi walked.”
No word on how long Mr. Joseph will remain in Hazleton.
Thanks to readers Bill Lawrence of Villa Hills and Leo Flerlage of Mount Healthy for passing along the update.
SAVING GRACE: There's a new, old building near the Covington riverfront. It's a refreshing switch from all the new, new construction — the courthouse, the parking garage, the twin office towers that look like iridescent milk cartons.
By contrast, the old Mosler Safe Co. building has a certain, quiet class.
At Scott and Third streets, it was built in 1835. The original box gutters and many original windows have been saved. Original doors grace the front. The brick exterior has been painted a classic cream, with green trim.
“It gives us great visibility,” says Don Bahr, senior vice president of the Bank of Kentucky.
Kudos to the bank and its two partners, 722 Redemption Funding and Munninghoff Lange & Co., for saving this old treasure.
MATRIMONIAL MATTERS: Last week's column about getting a marriage license in Kentucky — where clerks always ask whether couples are related — drew a phone call from Stephen Hoffman, Kenton County's justice of the peace.
Because he's always available, I called him “the perfect guy for the impatient, the impulsive and the possibly intoxicated.”
Mr. Hoffman takes issue with the intoxicated part.
“They can't come to see me that way,” he says. “I have been known to stop marriages if it looks like they're blatantly out of it.”
Charlotte Gressett of Wilder writes that Kentucky isn't the only state where kinship comes up. “I actually witnessed a marriage between first cousins in Sayler Park, Ohio. The couple were married by a Catholic priest. They had to have genetic testing done before they would be approved for the union. Apparently there is some special dispensation that couples can get in Ohio.”
So there to anyone who said, “Only in Kentucky.”
BOO TO GOO: They're doing wonders with icky goo these days, so a new sewage plant in Boone County doesn't have to stink, I wrote recently.
Reader Mary Swiggum responds that smell isn't the issue. If it's true there are no plans to develop Belleview Bottoms, the remoteness of the location makes no sense, she writes. Instead, the plant belongs in a populated area where more people will benefit from it. After all, it's growth in those areas that has put such a burden on the existing plants.
Meanwhile, Amy Seibert writes: “I live near Belleview Bottoms and I don't want to smell it ... Even if the plant moves in, I imagine it will be decades before we get any of the conveniences it might provide. So here I am. I love my home, but I'm going to get stuck smelling your goo!”
Karen Samples is Kentucky columnist for the Enquirer. Her column appears Thursdays and Sundays. She can be reached at 578-5584, or by e-mail at ksamples@enquirer.com
SAMPLES ARCHIVE
