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Founded in 2008, The Erie Wire is a communications organization where dedicated citizens bring productive substance-based information for the improvement of Erie County, Ohio.

The Erie Wire upholds the definition of a Land Ethic, proposed in 1948 by Aldo Leopold, as a standard to collect and analyze information.

“[A] land ethic changes the role of Homo Sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively: the land.

A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity.

It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value. By value, I of course mean something far broader than mere economic value; I mean value in the philosophical sense.

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

Local agriculture is The Erie Wire engine. It is the backbone principle of Erie County’s culture. Through documentaries and investigative reporting, we aim to encourage the transformation of the local agrochemical farming industry into chemical-free organic agriculture, or permaculture in order to preserve our resources. We also aim to expose the “corporate lie” in order to stop hegemonic islands from owning Erie County’s capitol circulation.

Preserving architectural integrity is a cornerstone The Erie Wire wishes to uncover from the corporate shroud. Architecture does, in fact, play a vital role to the well-being of an individual. With downtown Sandusky home to many historical buildings, it should be used when centralizing the local economy. These significant structural designs can produce significant individuals.

We work towards removing the ‘bottom line’ as the initiative to succeed; to get past self-indulgence and into self-sufficiency.

We are here to organize information that will support, improve, and encourage the development of creative, imaginative, ‘innovative’ individuals and their potential to provide ethical services to our community.

We inform those who demand a higher standard of living. By producing innovative cultural, commercial, industrial, agricultural, environmental, nutritional and scientific communication we can one day hope to improve the reciprocity of the community within Erie County.

The Erie Wire will reference these divisions of society as they develop an ideology of cultural products manifested in a cooperative of local resources.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Arts & Culture - Poetry - Teak, Ohio by Christof Scheele

Ohio has racoons & no more

courage than a milk snake or the new

cow's mottled udder, swelling half-in, half-

out of the steaming helpless pail.

They say I lived there once. There could be more

I don't know. It was dark, a shadow

lightly palmed the curbside trash, no

angel came to suckle me, I ran.

They must be right. They must know more

or less as much as me. I had one timid

hook. I fished all day. The place fell

off their maps. I taught the gods your name.

Christof Scheele teaches composition at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. His poems have appeared in Quarterly West, Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, and Hayden's Ferry Review. In 2003 he received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry.