The Promise to Listen

Published  Dec.  19, 2012 in The Sun-Gazette.

 "Listening to someone is the most Christian thing a person can do," said Rev. Tom Elson the first time I heard him preach.  It was a long time ago, but I remember it well.  His explanation centered on the respect for the other person's equality - "thy neighbor as thyself" - that true listening conveys.

   On Tuesday, December 11, 2012, Lindsay's longtime mayor Ed Murray stepped down and the three top vote-getters of November's election were sworn in.  The top two vote-getters were new, and both had run on the need for change.  One of the biggest changes they noted was the need to listen to the people, the residents of this community.

   Rosaena Sanchez, who received the most votes by far, ran her campaign on the promise to listen.  On one of her flyers she is quoted as saying "The problem isn't that the people in this town are not engaged in their community.  The problem is that they have been ignored."  Almost prophetically, she ended "This is unacceptable and will change the day I am elected."

   We had to wait a month for the elections office to finish counting the ballots, but on the first day of her term, only minutes after taking the oath of office, things did indeed change.  Although Mayor Ed had chosen Pam Kimball to succeed him, an office Pam was certainly poised to take, the two new members quickly nominated Ramona Padilla for mayor.  When the vote was taken and Ramona added the third "aye" for herself, the City of Lindsay received a real Christmas present:  a new mayor who is capable of listening.

   It was a huge step for Ramona to take, away from the promise of being one of them to the hope of being more herself.  Anyone who knows her can congratulate her for making that leap.  It's possible her experiences on the council these past two turbulent years helped her choose:  Mayor Ed ran a tighter ship than she agreed with, I think.  Whatever the reasons, I think we're going to see real growth in the council's receptiveness to the public over the next two years.  Ms. Padilla is a community builder.

  What this means for me personally is that now I can go to city council meetings without strapping on a full set of armor, knowing it's useless anyway.  I can go with questions and suggestions.  I can ask for information ahead of time.  I can meet individually with 3 of the 5 members without being afraid I'll be rebuffed or ridiculed.  It means my notions of proper planning in a rural community might get some air play, might even be heard.  One or two of them might even be implemented before I die.  What this means for me is so large I feel light-headed, euphoric.  Friends have warned that my bubble could easily burst.

   But what it means for all of us is equally large.  The one thing about the promise to listen is that, in order to work, it requires someone to speak.  We've become so used to not being heard in this town that we're rusty when it comes to speaking up.

   So, friends, let's practice.  It's much easier speaking up in a warm friendly environment than a cold formal one.  Let's make it not only a new day in Lindsay, but a new year.  Merry Christmas!!!
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Trudy Wischemann is a half-cocked environmental planner and passionate agrarian advocate who writes.  You can send her your bubbles of hope % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 

On Gifts

Published on Dec. 12, 2012 in the Sun-Gazette

   Juni Fisher was in town last week.  Billed as “A Juni Fisher Christmas,” she sang to a small, appreciative audience in the Lindsay Community Theater, kicking off a string of concerts there that promise to be wonderful.  Nick Jones, the new promoter with the theater organization, is very enthusiastic about bringing high quality entertainment to this fantastic venue.  Tickets are only $10, so Juni’s concert was a Christmas present I could afford to give myself.

   For me, watching Juni sing and play and talk is watching a miracle.  She’s up there all by herself, pure faith that what she’s singing is about the rest of us, too, whether we knew that or not when we bought the ticket.  She started young, singing with her two sisters Louise and Susan, and playing Old West songs she learned from her father on her guitar.  At the same time she was becoming a horsewoman, riding, training, showing and working on cattle ranches.  Hearing more of her life story and how it unfolded was enchanting. Part of the miracle to me is that she has kept these two seemingly opposite parts of her life merged, and her songwriting is where we see that most beautifully.

   “I am a poor wayfaring rider,” she opened, the hauntingly beautiful old melody that runs throughout her third album, Cowgirlography, carrying slightly rewritten lyrics pointing to the loneliness of following a call.  I caught a glimpse of Joseph and Mary while she was singing it.  From that moment on, I knew we were going to hear a different kind of Christmas program.

   She sang a song about a famous bronc rider’s saddle now in the Rodeo Hall of Fame, written by Ian Tyson which she learned from him when they both performed at the Pendleton Roundup.  Unlike her other concerts I’ve seen, this time she sang many songs written by other people, songs from her years as a torch singer with the Bob Fowler Orchestra like “Woman Be Wise” and “Please Send Me Someone to Love” that can be found on her newest album, Secret Chord.  Hearing these songs from my parents’ generation that I learned as a child was like going home for the holidays.

   But she saved my soul when she sang her new song “Who They Are” (also on Secret Chord.)  Sitting there in the dark, my heart burst open while she, up there on the dark spotlighted stage, sang about artists and artisans of every kind, from painters and poets to horsemen whose “touch through calloused hand/whispers a bridge ‘tween horse and man.”  She’s singing about people who follow a call to be fully themselves, no matter the cost, and frankly, though she says “It’s who they are,” clearly she’s included, too.

   The song’s bridge carries her biggest message:  “And if God sends inspiration to share these gifts on earth, then who are we to wonder if those gifts have any worth?”  Then she finishes:

 “If not for them,
where would we turn?
They fill a need,
when will we learn?
They feed our souls,
it’s not their choice
They didn’t ask
to be our voice -
It’s who they are.”

Thank you, Juni, for being my voice these past ten years.  Love, Trudy

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-Trudy Wischemann is an operatic shower singer who has loved horses since she was born.  You can find Juni’s albums and concert information at junifisher.com.

Lost Sheep

Published on Dec. 5, 2012 in the Sun-Gazette

     “All WE LIKE SHEEP,” the huge choir sang Sunday night in Lindsay’s First and only Presbyterian Church, “have gone astray, have gone astray, have go-o-o-o-o-o-on astray.”  It is my friend Robert’s favorite chorus in Handel’s Messiah, and it’s pure pleasure watching him.  With no musical training, he’s still able to sing the complicated lines because Mel Tully, the incredible music director who has led this production 11 times over the last 15 years, found ways for even the untrained to learn their parts.

     The church was packed, a blessing itself.  They were mostly visitors from out of town who came to hear their friends sing or to sing along quietly with their own scores in their laps. But I saw my neighbors there, too. Carlos Sanchez, who has a HVAC business here, was there with his family because his son Danny was singing in the choir, his first Messiah. Singing is what Danny does, and it was pure light to see him in his suit and tie, glowing after the last “Amen.”

     A small orchestra accompanied the choir, mostly members of the Tulare County Symphony. I have occupied the flute chair a couple of times, and sung in the alto section, too.  The music is exciting to make in either position. My singing partner Jesse McCuin was in the bass section Sunday night, gladly joining the others in keeping each other together on entrances. Several years ago he sang two of the bass solos and was a knockout.

     But from my position as listener this time, I heard something new, absorbed another meaning from this ancient composer’s master work beyond the exacting melodic lines, chord progressions, and brilliant instrumentation.

     Seventy people standing in front of an audience confessing in one voice that we, like sheep, have gone astray is a very powerful thing. The miracle of a crowded church bearing witness to this fact is a very powerful thing. The blaring contrast between full pews and almost empty ones, which is what so many of our churches face every Sunday morning, is also very powerful. We have gone astray, and it’s only a small comfort that people in Handel’s time did also.

     This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the parable of the lost sheep. After Alfredo’s death, which I wrote about last week, there’s been a big stray dog in the neighborhood that has scattered my flock of porch cats three times. Never one to miss a meal, Sissy was gone for two days, and after two nights out in the rain calling for her, I was sure she was dead. But she popped up on the porch late Sunday night as I popped open the canned cat food. I was instantly flooded with gladness and let it spill all over her.

     And they say that’s what the Father feels and does when we come back. I don’t think of God as a father or a parent of any kind, so that wording doesn’t really work for me. But shepherdess is a role I can understand, having looked for the missing so many times.

     Many people of faith have wandered away from the church because the churches themselves have gone astray. But scattered through all our small towns there are these empty pews, waiting for the lost sheep to come back and be what people of faith are meant to be to each other: companions on this spirit journey. May the Light of this season help guide us home.
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Trudy Wischemann is an unprogrammed Quaker who sometimes sings into the silence. You can send her stories of your spirit journey - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA  93247.
- This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of The Foothills Sun-Gazette newspaper.

A Prayer for Alfredo

Published on Nov. 28, 2012 in the Sun-Gazette

     “Say a prayer for Alfredo,” I asked my friend Robert Friday night, feeling the urge myself, not knowing what kind.

     Alfredo was a cat who’s lived on my front porch for four years.  His end was visibly coming, and for months I’ve spent extra on canned Friskies to buffer the ill effects and comfort him with my caring.  The truth is, he’s comforted me with his appreciation and caring since he arrived, and I wanted to receive that comfort as long as possible.

     But Thanksgiving Day I didn’t see him, nor that night.  Friday he was still missing, and when dinnertime came but he didn’t, I began to sense Alfredo’s time had come.

    He left his body where I could find it, thankfully, and Saturday morning I buried him near the porch.  Then his spirit showed up in a cascade of scenes reminding me why I loved him:  his crossed blue eyes looking up when he’d greet me; his thick creamy coat in winter with handsome mink-colored face and tail; his peaceful, non-warrior nature; his nurturing of Taffy’s litters of kittens and the way she loved him.  His patience, and the hole he scratched in the front door to let me know his patience might be wearing thin.  His contentment.

     I’d like to say he lived a good long life, but I suspect his time at my place was a demotion. He was elegant and had manners, possibly purebred.  It was not hard to imagine him living indoors in style, bathed and brushed.  Had my inn not been so full, I’d have taken him in, though he was still intact.  But Honey Boy, my yellow neutered male I’d brought in years before, attacked Alfredo every chance he got, leaving clumps of white fur behind.  Honey has stayed indoors for four years as a result.

     So I protected Alfredo the best I could.  He was at home here, and for that I’m grateful, though he deserved more than a yard.  When it turned cold after Halloween, I resurrected a hidey-hole for him on the porch with a recycled cat bed he’d claimed last year, padded with a towel.  I placed a stool over it and draped the stool with a blanket over a bassinet pad that insulated the small space well.  Just as I finished its construction, he crawled in, curled into a ball and went to sleep, rewarding my efforts enough to make me cry.  Minutes later it started to rain, but I went to sleep thankfully knowing he was dry.

     This morning, as I placed his cold, stiff body in his grave, I saw that I, too, one day will be cold and stiff, the breath of life gone.  It made the day better, somehow, and his passing less sad, another gift from him to me.  Some words from William Penn then passed through my head. “Death, then,” he said, “being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live, if we cannot bear to die.”

     This is a prayer of thanks, then, for joy of loving Alfredo to the end.
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Trudy Wischemann is an animal-loving homemaker who also writes.  You can send her your animal love songs - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay, CA 93247.
- This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of The Foothills Sun-Gazette newspaper.

Thanks for a Place

Published on Nov. 21, 2012 in the Sun-Gazette

     Watching customers gather ingredients for their Thanksgiving meals at the market where I work, I’ve been reflecting on the holiday’s meaning for me. Never much of an eater or cook and hard of hearing in noisy settings, I don’t relish the idea of getting lots of people together to eat piles of food that some woman (usually) has spent days preparing and now has to clean up. But clearly it’s important to many people. What we’re really celebrating is the place of Family in our lives.

     This is my twentieth Thanksgiving in the Tulare Lake Basin where I moved deliberately to make home. Most of my family lives six hours away when the car’s running well. Most of my years here the car hasn’t been, so I’ve missed many chances to celebrate their place in my life. For their understanding and support of my Homemaking efforts I am thankful.

     My first Thanksgiving was spent raking leaves in the backyard, grateful for both the yard and my shiny new rake, the beauty of bright yellow piles and the peaceful quiet. Then I shoved some leftovers into my small backpack and took a hike up Rocky Hill to the Yokuts paintings Bill Preston showed me earlier that year. From that spot, looking back on the valley, it’s possible to imagine this region’s entire history. Bill’s book, Vanishing Landscapes: Land and Life in the Tulare Lake Basin, was my introduction to that history, and his friendship was the wind under my wings in moving here. After all these years, that spot is my touchstone and he’s family.

     Then I came home and wrote my second essay for Southland Magazine called “Going to the Mountain,” which still speaks what I think and feel. Jim Chlebda, then editor and also publisher when it became South Valley Arts, was the first person here to give me a place on his pages, to carry my voice out where it could be heard. Being published so beautifully and freely gave life to my dream of speaking for the land here, for the small farms and rural life we still have. Our friendship today is a priceless gift from this place to me.

     Then there’s this newspaper. All the way back to when John McNall ran the Lindsay Gazette, I’ve been given space here. Under various editors and column headings, this paper has made a place for me to speak out, to commend various books to read or places to visit, to point out some small detail or huge omission, or just make a comment on the beauty of the weather and the lives we have here. Especially under Reggie Ellis’s leadership, writing for this paper has become fruitful as well as fulfilling. I owe him for this podium, and treasure his friendship and support.

     And then there’s my place at the market. What that gives me is more than a paycheck and co-workers: it gives me a place in the community where we can get to know one another on good days and bad. Where you can come tell me when you agree or disagree with what I’ve written. Where we can all grow in communication skills, and become more of a community. Where now, as neighbors, we can more fully inhabit this perfectly imperfect place.
 
     For having a place here in this amazing place, I give thanks.  Happy Thanksgiving everybody - enjoy your feasts!
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Trudy Wischemann is a gluten-intolerant reluctant eater who still remembers fondly the taste of hot dinner rolls with butter dripping down the side. You can share your favorite meal memories with her % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247.
This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of The Foothills Sun-Gazette newspaper.

We Won

Published on Nov. 14, 2012 in the Sun-Gazette



     Looking back, it seems even the weather was holding its breath, waiting for the outcome of last Tuesday’s election.  Once the preliminary results were in, it let go and gave us the Fall we’ve been waiting for.


     And the results are still very preliminary.  The massive confusion at Lindsay’s sole polling place was the result of changes made by the county elections department in response to state requirements regarding district boundary lines and the inadvertent creation recently of scads of tiny “precincts,” which spawned Vote By Mail ballots sent to tens of thousands of people (like me) who didn’t know they were coming or what they were when they arrived.  It also eliminated polling places all around the state, including Strathmore’s.


     Unfortunately, the county elections department didn’t anticipate the confusion, and the workers manning the polling place, many who have done this for years, were not prepared and were terribly upset by it. Rita Woodard herself spent at least four hours in Lindsay doing damage control, sending for additional supplies, unsnarling tangled procedures, and trying to understand what had happened.


     According to one of the election observers who stayed to observe the ballot count after the polls closed, of the total 1,521 ballots cast in Lindsay on Tuesday, only 465 were regular ballots that were counted electronically that night.  That’s only 30%.  The results that were posted Tuesday night included mail-in ballots that had been received and counted as of Nov. 2, four days before the election.  But they did not include the vast majority of people - 70% - who voted on Tuesday.


     It’s possible the results could change when (and if) all the ballots are counted.  I say “if” because it’s possible that many of the uncounted ballots won’t be, and I will be following that question as closely as possible.  But I don’t expect our “win” to disappear.


     We all won big-time in this election, especially locally.  Even Tim Daubert won, who didn’t receive enough votes to beat out the incumbents.  Tim’s primary goal all along has been to see change in Lindsay’s city government, and the people gave him that.  He sparked the campaign with his signs, he wrote to the voters explaining his position (in English and  Spanish,) honoring them.  Tim even gets the credit for convincing me (and many others) to care enough to begin attending city council meetings two years ago.  As a result of his heroic efforts, we have at least two new city council members and one incumbent who does her homework. Mayor Ed’s iron fist on the gavel will be heard no more.  We owe Tim for all this.


     Here in Lindsay we won because we finally believed we might make a difference. We came to the polls in great numbers, some of us for the first time, and put our hope on our ballots.  We voted for hope, and now we’ve got it.  Let us now turn that hope into action, and start to find ways to contribute to a new Lindsay.
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-Trudy Wischemann is a 20-year resident of Lindsay who never really believed “It’s always been this way - you can’t change it.”  You can send her your hope sightings - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA  93247.

If You Like Cities

Published on Nov. 7, 2012 in the Sun-Gazette

Working at the market one night I ran into one of the great human divides: rural vs. urban.
A friend and I were talking as I scanned, and he bagged, a customer’s groceries. I mentioned having gone online to look at photos of the disaster in New York from Superstorm Sandy, and that I’d recognized many of the place names from having lived on Long Island.
“You lived in New York?” he asked incredulously. “Why would you move away from the most fantastic city in the world?”
“It’s OK if you like cities,” I replied, to which both he and the young woman bagging at the next register said “Oh, yes, I like cities.  Cities are much better places than a town like Lindsay.”  They rued the day they each moved here, and dreamed out loud what it would be like to live in a city like San Diego, close to the border and the sea.
I felt a sense of loss, as if they’d already moved away to some better life, which is what I want for them as their friend.  It made me remember the opening line to Frank Sinatra’s song about New York:  “Those little town blues...”
I only went into New York City a dozen times in the three years I lived on the north shore of Long Island, an hour away.  For me it was terrifying, and it wasn’t just the unfamiliarity.  It was the terrible sense of vulnerability of so much weight packed on such a small piece of land:  the concrete and wires, people and cars, the multiple old bridges, the tunnels below water, below riverbed and sea floor.  It was the huge amount of energy and money required just to keep water, food and energy supplied to the people who live there as well as those flowing in and out like tidal surges twice daily.  Even in good weather my body tensed at the clear possibilities for disaster, and it was hard to breathe until I got home to our low-density community.
So looking at the photos online just made me sad, and a little homesick.  Sad for the losses of life and loved spaces, sad for the horrible shock they’ve faced that their lives aren’t safe, that death and danger from that kind of living are real.  Sad for all the small business owners who make livings helping people hold that kind of life together, now faced with holding those businesses together until things return to normal.
“I bet you’re glad you don’t live there now,” said another friend after listing the environmental damages behind and the engineering nightmares ahead.  I went through one hurricane while I was there, and the risks were clear though the damage from that storm in our rural area was minimal.
But New York is not particularly dangerous geography.  It’s the high concentrations of people that create disastrous impacts from natural events like storms, tornados and earthquakes.  What it takes to build, sustain and repair places like New York and New Orleans, San Francisco and Los Angeles is enormous, and we all foot the bill one way or another.  Thanks, but I’ll keep my little town blues.
-Trudy Wischemann is a writer who was raised by a city-phobic father and a city-loving mother. You can send her your feelings on cities - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay, CA  93247.
- This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of The Foothills Sun-Gazette newspaper.

The Need for Change: Hope

Published on Oct. 31, 2012 in the Sun-Gazette

“If you’re unhappy, there’s always November,” folks told many of us who were working on the recall effort last winter. Well, here’s November. The signs are up, the fliers folded. Election day nears, with real potential here in Lindsay for improvement over the status quo.
“I don’t know,” a man said to me Sunday night “who I should vote for,” doubting there’s real hope for improvement. I gave him my reasons for hope, and will give them to you now.
On the Lindsay city council we need people who can ask hard questions, not just rubber stamp staff projects. Timothy Daubert, Steven Mecum, and Rosaena Sanchez have been asking hard questions for more than two years, fighting City Hall and winning back precious yardage that the incumbents gave away with their polite headnodding.
On the Lindsay city council we need people who understand how the public has been disenfranchised and who have ideas how to reconnect the community with its government. The incumbents are happier with no public input, and resist or even blockade efforts to give it. Daubert, Mecum and Sanchez all intend to add community oversight committees and a planning commission to bring the citizens’ voices back into Lindsay’s city government.
For example, every other city in this region has a planning commission. This gives their residents a chance to find out what is being proposed, ask questions and give input  before it goes to a vote before the council. It also gives the media - including this paper - a chance to alert their readers to the issues before they’re decided by the council. We in Lindsay have only the 72 hour period before the council meeting to discover what will be presented and decided, totally inadequate notice for real public participation.
And finally, on the Lindsay city council we need people who understand how the lower 75% of us live. Many of the projects sponsored by the incumbents have been designed to appeal to the upper 25%, and their support rests largely with the group of people who can afford or appreciate gym memberships and weight training, festivals and art exhibits, the glitz of neon-lighted palm trees and marble fountains.  They see those “improvements” as benefiting everybody, ignoring the costs that have been extracted from us regardless of our incomes, costs that will continue to be extracted through taxes and higher rents for decades to come.
A year ago in this column I asked people to consider hoping for a New Lindsay.  It was after the release of the first serious audit in years, which documented the tremendous waste, fraud, and corruption flowing below the glitzy development. The public reacted, and it wasn’t just about the bad news of our finances. It was about the betrayal of public trust by the incumbents, who continued to act as if nothing was wrong and told the public they were wrong to be upset.
We weren’t wrong. So I’m asking you now to do something heroic: hope. Let that hope carry you to the voting booth. Bring your friends, make a party out of it.  Celebrate the end of disenfranchisement, no matter the outcome. We’re on our way to a New Lindsay already.
- Trudy Wischemann is an open-government advocate who writes and hopes.  You can send her your hopeful sightings - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA  93247.
- This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of The Foothills Sun-Gazette newspaper.

The Need for Change: Open Government

Published on Oct. 24, 2012 in the Sun-Gazette

Many of Lindsay’s problems have been described as resulting from Scot Townsend’s administration and this City Council’s oblivion.  But the biggest problem in Lindsay is its closed form of government, which has grown even tighter under Rich Wilkinson’s management, completely with the Council’s blessing.        
Where this is easiest to see is in the rules for public participation at city council meetings.  These rules are found in two places: on the agenda packet cover sheet under “Citizen Participation in Meetings” and on the agenda itself.
When Rich was appointed interim city manager, the cover sheet was spiffed up and the wording made to look inviting.  Citizens - in fact, any member of the public - could 1) speak during the three minute public comment period; 2) ask to have items removed from the consent agenda and be discussed and voted on separately; 3) speak to items on the agenda during their discussion; and 4) place an item on the agenda by contacting the city clerk.
Mayor Ed Murray did not operate the meetings according to those rules (advised repeatedly by City Attorney Julia Lew that it’s Council’s discretion,) but at least the wording was there suggesting otherwise. That is, the words were there until the public started trying to use the rules.
It was during the park renovation controversy when words started disappearing. Last fall a plan for renovating the park, designed by Pam Kimball’s nephew Steven, was approved by the Council.  One of the largest features was Sierra View Avenue Extension, which dissected the park and the community center, paving over 1/3 of the park’s remaining land. When citizens who wanted public input on the park’s redesign asked to be put on the agenda, they were told they couldn’t. When they asked to have items removed from the consent calendar or to speak during an agenda item’s discussion, they were denied.  When they pointed out the words saying they could to Mayor Ed and the rest of the council, the words disappeared before the next meeting.
In fact, the only real way to “participate” has been during the 3-minute public comment period, during which the Council does not need to respond.  This leaves those brave enough to speak their minds with the sense they’ve just talked to the wall. Which they have.
The possibilities for change, however, were demonstrated beautifully two weeks ago at the Candidates Forum held by the Dolores Huerta Foundation. The audience held people from both the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking portions of our community. The event was translated simultaneously from English to Spanish by Brenda Cervantes, a certified translator, through earphone equipment loaned by United Way of Tulare County.
I watched Brenda quickly crafting Spanish sentences from English ones, watched Spanish-speaking people attentively following the proceedings. Yet when our incumbents - Murray, Kimball and Velasquez - were asked if having the Council meetings translated was something they’d consider, all three essentially said “no,” saying it’s too expensive and/or not necessary.
Our new candidates - Daubert, Mecum and Sanchez - had different answers. They know how necessary it is, and how expensive keeping people in the dark has been. They’ve also learned where the closed doors of this city need to be opened, and want to get more of us walking through them. Lindsay may have always been like this - shut tight - but it doesn’t have to stay that way. Vote open the doors.
-Trudy Wischemann is an open-government advocate who writes.  You can send her your translations of what this all means - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247.
- This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of The Foothills Sun-Gazette newspaper.

The Need for Change: Complicity

Last week I wrote about one of the needs for change on Lindsay’s City Council:  the “plain ignorance” of current members about the economic facts of life for most of our residents, as well as ignorance of the City’s actual financial condition during Scot Townsend’s administration.
If it was just ignorance, however, one would expect a stronger reaction when the facts were discovered than we received from this Council.  In fact, one would even want to see them take some action to recover lost money and restore funds to their proper uses. That didn’t happen.
I was reminded of this by a question asked at Thursday night’s candidates forum held by the Dolores Huerta Foundation.  “Many believe City employees misused funds.  Would you take steps to investigate this further?” the candidates were asked.  The incumbents essentially said “No,” taking the position they’ve held since the 2009-2010 audit confirmed massively bad bookkeeping, unlawful use of funds and wasteful spending that citizens had raised questions about for months: “Nobody did anything wrong.”
After reviewing the HomePages from the past two years and seeing this same kind of response to one issue after another, I am willing to lay the charge of complicity against this Council. The dictionary’s primary definition of “complicity” is “the fact or state of being an accomplice; partnership in wrongdoing.” The current members of this Council are complicitous with the staff and are either blinded or made mute by their interests in seeing the staff’s programs continue no matter the costs to the community.
Those costs are both economic and social. The staff’s response to the City’s possible bankruptcy headlining last week’s edition was a perfect case in point. “(T)he City of Lindsay would still NOT entertain the idea of declaring bankruptcy because there are no lenders that can take anything from us,” said the finance director. Bankruptcy is the legal form creditors use to defend their assets from lenders while restructuring their finances. TCAG can’t repossess the Downtown Improvement Project; the USDA can’t take back Tulare Road, the Aquatic or Wellness Center - and who would want an economic albatross like McDermont?
But bankruptcy wasn’t the issue raised by the 2009-2010 audit, or even the 2010-2011 one. “Solvency” is. To be solvent is “to be able to pay all one’s debts or meet all financial responsibilities.” The city finance director says we have and we will, but that is totally dependent on how forgiving the lenders and grantmakers will be about the requirements attached to the various monies the City received and spent like wastrels.
According to the new audit, Lindsay continues to be a going concern, noting this Council’s complete agreement with Townsend’s “overambitious City transformation schedule,” which the staff still plan to accomplish.  “(T)he bottom line,” concluded the finance director in last week’s article “is that the vision has been accomplished - Lindsay has been improved... and Lindsay residents do have access to better facilities, i.e., the City Library, McDermont Field House, Sweet Briar Plaza Park, the Aquatic Center, the Wellness Center, and very soon the renovated City Park, than any other community in this Valley.”
If only they had transformed the city into something we, who have trouble keeping the lights and water on, could pay for, I might feel a little more gratitude. But all I see is that the upper 25% of this community (which includes the current city council members) now have better places to play while the rest of us work overtime.
- Trudy Wischemann is a community development researcher who writes. You can send her your economic disparity observations - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA  93247.

The Need for Change: Plain Ignorance

In less than five weeks Lindsay’s citizens will have the chance to vote for city council members for the first time in 6 years.  Three incumbents are being challenged by four community members hoping to change the direction of this city’s future. But what is the need for change?
The greatest need is for people who will represent and be responsive to the needs of the all of the residents of our community, town and country alike. Three of the challengers -  Tim Daubert, Rosaena Sanchez, and Steven Mecum - have been central in raising awareness of just how unrepresentative the current council members are. For the past two years all three have spent untold hours and energy investigating the City’s entanglements and looking for ways to open this government to its people.
Let’s go back two years to the old high school gym where, on Oct. 19, 2010, nearly 800 people gathered for a special city council meeting, hoping to speak their minds about the high-rise City salaries in a low-rent town. It was a tightly structured meeting, where the City’s supporters (who made up maybe 15% of the crowd) were given equal time to speak, seeming to outweigh the other 85%, whose basic question was “How can you justify paying these people this much in a town where half of us can’t pay our water bills?”
They received no answer. Mayor Murray picked up on the water bill half of the question, and flatly stated that they have to charge that much because that’s what it costs and the city charter says they have to. A year later, after the 2009-2010 audit was completed, they would discover that a hell of a lot of extra salaries were being paid out of the water fund in a bookkeeping nightmare so snarled it took nine months for the auditors to figure it out. Nobody apologized for the error, or for the fact that their ignorance of what was going on has put this city $36 million in debt. Two years later we are paying $70,000 (paid for by grants, of course,) for two studies of our water system to tell us if it’s in the black and if it can handle the growth Townsend was trying to generate with his development dreams.
That night in the gym, Sr. Seraphim Rivera said it best in perfectly clear Spanish. Speaking directly to the Council members, he said “I don’t think you know what it’s like to lie awake in the night not knowing how you’re going to pay your water bill.” He wasn’t complaining about the water bill so much as he was pointing to the council members’ ignorance of the life circumstances and living conditions of a great many of us. The few well-paying jobs they initially created at McDermont (and funded lavishly with City money) they gave to Murray’s kids and Townsend’s sister and her son, as well as to others from out of state. When challenged with conflict of interest claims, all we concerned citizens received was blank stares. They could not comprehend what it felt like to be on the wrong side of the privilege line.
This kind of ignorance is all too common, but Nov. 6th we get to decide how much we want to suffer from it. Please remember that your vote counts for something for the first time in a long while, and support the candidates who know who we really are.
-Trudy Wischemann is a working-class open government advocate who writes. You can send her your bill-paying nightmare stories - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay, CA  93247.

Fear Talking

“That’s just fear talking,” I’ve reminded myself too many times lately. Fear shapes my mental conversations easily: I come from fearful parents, one afraid of authority, the other afraid of shame. The combination is both helpful and deadly, depending on degree. For me, keeping them in balance with courage and wisdom has been a lifelong effort.
I almost let fear keep me from attending my sister’s wedding this weekend. I focused on the obvious problems, physical and financial: how to get there, how to pay for it, both seeming impossible.  But underneath was a swift current I couldn’t see but knew was there: how could I possibly be myself with these family members clumped along two opposing branches? Would I revert to my old fearful self, forced to chose one branch or the other or forever dangle between?
With massive support from friends, the physical and financial problems were set aside. My fear of shame got me on the road, then family love pulled me there. The event itself was an emotional morass, but a good one, maybe even healing.
And that’s how it’s been these past few months, dealing with one fear after another. Every time I tackled one (and sometimes that meant sneaking up on it,) I experienced the truth that fear itself is so much worse than the thing we’re afraid of.
Many of us are living with a great deal of fear right now, mostly fear of consequences of our country’s economic decline. If you’ve lost your job, you’re fearful of losing your home. If you’ve lost your home, you’re fearful of losing everything, including yourself. If you haven’t lost your job, maybe you’re fearful of losing it. The possibilities are endless.
To some extent, those fears are the undercurrent of heightening fear surrounding the upcoming election. Whether we look at the Presidency, our federal and state governing bodies, propositions and bond issues, even our local city councils and district boards, a sense of fear is growing about the outcomes of November. You can taste it in your mouth, feel it in the air.
I think it matters very much who is in the White House, although I don’t think one man by himself can take back the power we’ve given to corporations. That will take millions of us, and we’d better get started. Likewise, I think it matters very much who sits on our city councils and school boards, but until the residents relearn the ropes of local participation, our communities will still be in too few hands.
Feel worried and stressed over the upcoming elections? That’s just fear talking. Make it hush, learn about the issues, and we’ll all have less to worry about come November. Fellow Lindsayites, come to the candidates’ forum at the Wellness Center Thursday, Oct. 11th at 6 p.m.
-Trudy Wischemann is an election-phobic writer on community issues.  You can challenge her with your ballot-box ideas - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA  93247.

A Foreign Language

At the end of this summer, as an antidote to the books I read on children and war, I read Living in a Foreign Language:  A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Love in Italy (2007).  It was written by Michael Tucker, an actor who starred on “LA Law” with his wife Jill Eikenberry, who together bought a small, rustic villa in the mountains of Italy. Their love for the place grew as they became intimate with the local food and the people who make it.  Finally deciding to become fully resident, they began to learn the language and speak it with their neighbors.
It’s a wonderful story about finding and making Home by two people who know real love.  “To have the partner of a lifetime - for a lifetime - is rare stuff....What extraordinary freedom it is not to care about up or down, rich or poor, East Coast, West Coast, as long as we’re in the taxi together,” Tucker concludes at his happy ending.
But a sentence in his story about attending Italian Language School found its mark in me.  “I must admit our language skills improved remarkably - even though my head felt like the inside of a golf ball, with all those tight little rubber bands wound around each other under four thousand pounds of pressure,” he noted humorously.  Unfortunately, that is often what my head feels like working at RN Market.
You might think “Yes, being immersed in all that Spanish,” but what you might not notice on your brief shopping trips there is that a great deal of Chinese is also spoken, with just as much enthusiasm but even less vowel and consonant recognizability.
I am happy for both language groups that they have a place to speak and hear their native tongues, but the inside of a golf ball is what my head often feels like. I had thought that re-opening my slim bag of Spanish words and phrases would help, and generally it has.  Unfortunately, it has also raised the expectations of Spanish speakers that I comprehend what they say in response, and those are the moments when I feel like an airborne golf ball on its way to the first hole.  Also unfortunately, when I find myself needing to communicate with some Asian speaker, sometimes Spanish comes out of my mouth, confounding us both.
Sometimes I look at these non-English-speakers and wonder what the insides of their heads feel like.  What it feels like to be standing there handing over hundred dollar bills they’ve earned picking grapes and olives for food they used to grow and harvest or butcher themselves.  What it feels like to have their little ones learn the word “quarter” before they learn sentences, wanting coins for the vending machines by the door.  To have their teenagers blindly texting, oblivious to the packages that need carrying to the car.
Many of us English speakers feel like we’re living involuntarily in a foreign language, and resent the people who’ve brought it here.  But it seems to me that we are all surrounded by foreign tongues and foreign ways.  This land will feel like a foreign country until we get inside each others’ heads and start to unwind those little rubber bands.
- Trudy Wischemann is an English-speaking writer who never learned her grandmothers’ mother tongues. Write to her - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247.

On Warfare

“Lindsay will probably be very quiet tonight,” the mother said to her son Friday afternoon as they stood at my checkstand.  I’d heard scraps of their muted conversation as I scanned their groceries, catching few words between the register’s beeps and clanging carts.  But I’d heard enough to ask why.
 “They killed a young boy today, over on Sycamore,” she said, starting to tell the facts she’d just heard from her son.  At that moment, the facts were still being gathered by the police; the “breaking news” was hours away.  But from her story it sounded like gang warfare.
This summer I spent some time reading about warfare, particularly the effects on children.  I wanted to see if there was a difference between fighting and war, where (and why) things escalate from one to the other.  Friday’s news sent me back to Roger Rosenblatt’s Children of War (1983) in which he explored children’s lives in the war zones of Belfast, Israel, Palestine and Lebanon, Cambodia and Viet Nam.
In general, he found the younger children loving and gentle, many waiting for peace and hoping to work for it when they grew up.  But as they got older, especially in places like Palestine where some became teenage soldiers, they’d become politicized, fighting for “the cause.”  The causes were (and still are) large and real: who has a right to live where. To call some place home. To eat. To exist.
When I found this paragraph, however, I saw shades of the reasons given for teens joining gangs.  Rosenblatt writes:  “I noticed in myself a general tendency to treat these children (soldiers) with respect....because I saw they had committed themselves to the most dangerous game in the world and were visibly dignified by that commitment.
“So is it valuable, then,” he asks, “this heightening, ennobling tradition that teaches the children of Rashidieh to leap over bonfires with guns in their arms, makes them more alert to each other’s welfare, gives them pride and a sense of importance?”
 “No,” he answers.  “For one thing, a state of war takes away the freedom of thought and opinion.  It provides an ideology, all right, but only one, and individual disagreement is called treason or sedition.” He adds thoughts about moral complexity and shades of gray, then concludes “War may be hell, but intellectually and spiritually war is also easy.  That may be why it is resorted to so readily, why in fact children can do it so well.
 “(T)he overriding reason that war can never be deemed useful, whatever benefits are evident or concocted, is that...the context of war is death.  For all its elaborate emphases on order and discipline, the final purpose of war is to create chaos and ruin.”
I don’t know who the Grand Marshals of our children’s armies are or what they hope to win from this violence.  But I  do know that almost all of us need to learn the harder way to live together.  Maybe we should start.
-Trudy Wischemann is a sometimes scrappy, sometimes remorseful writer who lives in Lindsay.  You can send her your peace stories - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247.

The Art of Irrigating

For the last couple of weeks I’ve had the privilege of moving water for a small farmer who was called away to a fire.  He balances his good and bad years in farming with the income he makes from CDF fighting range and forest fires, and so far that strategy has worked.  I balance my low income from part-time work in the food retail business with what he shares with me from the fires, as well as my other sources of self-employment.  So far I’m still here, too.ss
But mostly I do it for the joy.  For those of you who don’t farm, “moving water” is simply turning valves on and off  so that one batch of trees (called “blocks”) is irrigated every day, followed by the next batch.  After the water is running on the new blocks, I check the sprinklers to make sure they’re all working and no geysers have developed in the lines, then go home and take off my muddy boots.  Sounds simple, possibly even boring.
The joy is in the details.  Part of the joy is physical:  sun and wind on body, feet moving surely through the rows, hands employed.  Part of it is aesthetic: the sounds of water running, crows calling, doves suddenly fleeing in a whirr; the sights of cloud shadows moving over the landscape, the smell of wet earth.
Part of it is intellectual.  Irrigating puts me right into the heart of growing food and what it means to be someone who does it for a living.  Every micro-decision - whether to replace that old sprinkler head (“fan jet” in this case) with a new one or let it limp along, to patch or splice the hose or let it leak - enters me in the contest between man and land, the challenge of getting land to produce something for the market in such a way that it will keep producing in the future.  Our great society is dependent on winning that contest, though few seem to realize it.
For some, irrigating is a science.  Calculations of how much water a tree needs and how to deliver that water more economically given evapotranspiration rates and climatic conditions, soil qualities and slope, water pH, etc., are studied and discussed not only in the ag departments and journals of our universities, but also in the coffee shops and irrigation parts stores.  Fan jets come with different sized orifices that emit different amounts of water; farmers chose what size based on calculations of water pressure, age of trees, amounts of shade (dependent on their pruning and weed control strategies,) and other factors too numerous to mention.  That choice is a small part of developing an irrigation strategy that will work on their land with their crops.
Not involved in those choices, I simply practice irrigating as an art.  Part dance, part song, I move through the trees quietly so as not to disturb the wildlife any more than necessary.  I make sure each tree is getting a drink while observing the weeds’ growth patterns and examining what comes out of the plugged-up fan jets when I insert my trusty safety pin through the hole.  I marvel at the diversity of plant and animal life in each block of orange trees, what certainly would be considered monoculture.  And when I’m finished, I hear the trees quietly clapping for my performance, breathing sighs of appreciation as they move into theirs:  uptake H2O; transpire, converting CO2 to O2, turning carbon into oranges swelling with each irrigation.
Part song, part dance, the earth’s role far overshadows ours.  My biggest reward is remembering that and sensing myself as its tiny handmaiden.
-Trudy Wischemann is a writer with dirt under her fingernails.  You can share your irrigating stories with her - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247.

Jesse James....

 “We will burn your train to cinders,” is running through my head this morning, a line from the chorus of “A Train Robbery,” a song written by Paul Kemmerly about Jesse James’ life.  

My singing partner Jesse McCuin and I just performed that song and six others from Kemmerly’s  album Jesse James, where the characters in the story were sung by Levon Helm, Johnny Cash, Emmy Lou Harris and other fine country singers.  The album is unique, wonderful, and available through the San Joaquin Valley Library System.

Hearing “A Train Robbery” on Levon Helm’s album Dirt Farmer (also available through the SJVLS) started us down this path.  It wasn’t my favorite, but Jesse was captivated and that led us to Kemmerly’s album and several books written about the famous bank/train robber’s life.  As a Northerner, my only image of Jesse James and his gang was a bunch of bandits on horseback.  Jesse McCuin, with roots in Oklahoma and Arkansas, had been raised with a more favorable image:  a rebel hero.  But until we started reading, neither of us realized how the other Jesse’s story was rooted in the Civil War and the fight over slavery. 

And that fight, we discovered, was actually about the way land would be farmed in America.  In essence, slavery was an industrial form of agricultural production that pre-dated mechanization.  It was an economic answer to the industrialization of cloth manufacturing in the urban centers of the U.S. and England with huge human consequences for both people of color and small farmers.  Jesse James was born in a place and time where those consequences were being battered out between the people on the next-lowest rungs of the agricultural ladder:  small farmers caught up in the interstate war between Missouri and Kansas during the 1850’s, before the Civil War began.

Politicians set the stage through a series of compacts and agreements about where slavery could and couldn’t be used to raise crops.  Kansas was “free,” but Missouri was allowed to decide for itself.  As a result, it was mixed, and farms ranged in size from small, family operated units to 2- to 3,000 acres, operated with hundreds of slaves.  The people of Kansas, seeing the competitive disadvantage slavery created for them as producers, began an out-and-out attack on small slave owners in neighboring Missouri, including the James family.  

The James family fought back, first Frank, then Jesse.  Cole Younger and his brothers, who eventually joined gangs with the James brothers, were from a larger Missouri farm family with many slaves.
The violence in the story astounded me, and at first put me off.  But it shouldn’t have:  any time we’re fighting over land - who will control it, use it, make a living on (or a killing off) it - there’s likely to be violence.  Witness South Africa, and what it took to break apartheid and make it possible for the natives of that land to be allowed to live freely on it.

As a Northerner and a small farm advocate, I’m glad Jesse’s side lost.  I regret to say, however, that we have not stemmed the industrialization of our farming system and our food supply.  What it will take for that next, needed revolution - to get people back on our lands growing our food - will be more than violence.  It will take a whole lot of love.

Born A Girl...

“She can’t do it, 
she can’t change it -
It’s been going on for 
ten thousand years....”
-- adapted from 
“The Great Mandala” 
by Peter Yarrow 

She was born a girl. At 3, she couldn’t have had many other faults than that. But that’s what got Exeter’s little Sophia Acosta killed, a fact that’s churned through my mind since reading the fine article in this paper two weeks ago on the legal proceedings against her accused murderer.

Did you read the article?” I asked several friends.  “No,” was the most common, embarrassed reply. I didn’t want to either, for fear of nightmares.  But when I saw both Reggie’s and Mo’s names in the byline, I was moved to read what they wrote. By reporting the Exeter PD’s officers’ testimonies, they unpacked a very human story of the discovery of a monstrous event, a meltdown of human values so clear even a dog would recognize it. “I’ve gained a lot of respect for the officers,” Mo told me later.  “for what they have to face.”

Mo was born a girl. When I complimented her on the article, she said quietly “I was there the whole day.  I heard all the testimonies, saw all the photos.  He (meaning the accused) was sitting right there in the courtroom.” I offered my sympathy. “I had to tell myself  ‘Just breathe. This is my job.  Write it down.’”
Reggie is the father of two small children, one a little girl.  It couldn’t have been easy for him either.  But this is a community’s story, not just a family’s. In publishing the story’s elements as they unfurl, they offer us a chance to see where we may have failed this child, which may instruct us how to help the next.

Sophia’s great-grandmother was also born a girl. One morning this May she unfurled her story of trying to get CPS and other agencies to intervene, knowing something was horribly wrong. She also bemoaned CPS’s decision to give custody of the remaining daughter to her blood father, who never wanted her in the first place. That fact gave me, also born a girl, cold chills.

A simple majority of the world’s population is born girls. I don’t know whether that makes us more expendable or more valuable, but I do know that few of us become women without experiencing some kind of male tyranny.  Unfortunately, we are not alone: male tyranny is also exerted against males, with just as devastating consequences.  And I’ve witnessed enough female tyranny to know it isn’t carried on the Y chromosome alone.

What are we to feel, much less do, about this young man who tortured a 3-year-old with his manhood? “Sometimes you gotta thin the herd,” a friend replied to my question, a soft way of saying what I was feeling. My own tyranny was in full bloom: off with his head. Then I remembered I’m a Quaker. Quakers have been against capital punishment for centuries.  Then there’s “due process.”

I think the important thing is that we embrace this story, not run from it. The Bible, which many of us use to guide ourselves on a moral path, contains stories of just such horrors as well as proscriptions against them. It’s in our genes to treat others as worthless; we can’t keep it from cropping up. But maybe we can learn to protect or comfort each other better when it does.

A New Leaf....

“He can’t do it, 
he can’t change it -It’s been going on for ten thousand years....”-- from “The Great Mandala” by Peter Yarrow 

“How’s the campaign going?” a friend asked this weekend.  “Which campaign?” I asked back, wondering why he’d think I’d know.  Earlier I’d confessed to thinking like a political animal - he must have thought I’d become one.

Actually, I’m still celebrating the fact that we’re going to have an election.  This is the first year in almost a decade that city council seats will be on the ballot, thanks to the fact that we actually have candidates running against the incumbents. Que milagro!

My friend, who’s participated in many campaigns over the years, had several ideas about how to get new faces on Lindsay’s city council, hospital and school districts.  They all sounded foreign to me, being politically reclusive myself regarding elections.  But it raised a very important question:  what’s the right way to campaign in a town like Lindsay?
Bumper stickers and yard signs?  “Walking,” as the politicos call it, going door to door? Canvassing the big flea markets, having a booth at events? Holding a forum for candidates, a night out on the town where we can hear what they think? Space in this newspaper, interviews on KTIP Radio?

I sense that many people in this community are a little more like me than I’d like:  private, want to keep their political choices close to their chests, not demonstrate what “side” they’re on, just mark their ballots and wait for the results. This town’s reputation as “friendly” and “nice” was built by Lindsay Ripe’s sales pitch (“A nice town, a great olive”) and I think the urge to live up to that reputation is still with us even though Lindsay Ripe is not. Elections so seldom are nice that I think we shy away from participating even when our interests really are at stake.

Another reason we tend to keep to ourselves is that we have become demoralized about our ability to participate in the ordinary details of this city’s life. I’d blame it on the former city manager, who took demoralization to new heights, but it continues under the current administration with the full blessing of the council.  And then there’s the dirty little fact that no one can remember when it was different. “It’s always been like this - you can’t change it” is something I’ve heard since I moved here 19 years ago.

That demoralization is the most important thing at stake in this election, more important than getting the streets paved and the budget balanced. I don’t believe it’s always been this way, and I don’t believe it can’t be changed. It’s going to take some people willing to be candidates (THANK YOU, ALL!) and then to campaign and work for change if they’re elected. That’s going to require that we, the electorate, move out of our protective “nice” shells and start  participating in the process.

So, fellow Lindsayites, let’s turn over a new leaf and welcome this election, with all its potential for saving our American souls as well as our city.

Nine Seats....

“Take your place on the great Mandala

as it moves through your brief moment of time...”

                                                            Noel Paul Stookey

There are nine seats open for election in Lindsay’s city government, and only three require that you live within the city limits.  Six require that you live within the boundaries of the Lindsay Local Hospital District or Lindsay Unified School District, which broadens considerably the range of people who can participate in this community’s future.

Before I began trying to understand what was going on in our town, before the big splash Scot Townsend made with his exit, I didn’t understand how intertwined this city’s government had become with the community’s hospital and school districts.  No one did except the players themselves, because hardly anyone ever attended the public meetings of the three bodies.  Partly that’s because when they did, no one could understand what they were talking about.  But we, the public in both city and countryside, are at least half-way responsible for what has happened here because we were lame as citizens.

Now we’re 100% responsible for reform.

I called the county elections office to find out what’s required (624-7300.)  First, you go to there and fill out some forms for them to verify your voter registration, address and economic interests.  You can also get copies of the candidates guide there or online at their website: www.tularecoelections.org.  The candidates guide describes the qualifications and requirements of candidacy, and is a very valuable tool.

The three city council seats require 20-30 nomination signatures that must be gathered before the filing deadline of 5 p.m. Aug. 10.  Like we learned in the recall effort, those signatures must be verified as qualified registered voters within the city limits, so the county recommends getting 30 to insure the required number of 20 valid signatures.  The hospital and school district seats do not require nomination signatures.

There are no filing fees, but there is a cost for publishing the candidates statement in the County’s sample ballot.  This statement is optional and costs around $350, which must be paid in advance at the time of filing.  If you choose not to submit a statement, there’s no cost for filing.

There may be other costs, however, depending on how you want to promote yourself as a candidate, such as yard signs and flyers.  But the Dolores Huerta Foundation has offered to hold a candidates forum, which would be a wonderful way to get your message out free of charge.  This paper will also be reporting on the elections process, and I will be glad to make public any person’s position on city matters with this column, including the incumbents’.

When no one runs, there’s no elections.  That’s also what I didn’t understand before the big splash.  Let’s get some candidates on the ballot and see what we can do in our brief moment of time.

One World....

“Write down what you just said,” an old friend suggested in a phone conversation last week.  “What I wanted when I moved here was intimacy with a place,” I’d said, “and it’s come, largely through my poverty.”  


Like many, I often feel I inhabit two different worlds with an ocean separating them.  I sense it most when I talk with friends in the Bay Area or other urban ports-of-call, where the right to travel is guaranteed by the Constitution, a passport and a bank account. Living here, where many of my neighbors have had to assert the right to travel against the Border Patrol and enormous dangers with only a wad of bills in their pockets para progresar (“in order to progress,”) my life feels invisible to those far-away friends.


But it’s not only those far away whose lives seem remote from mine.  Recently, talking with a Visalia friend about land ethics and what might be required to instill better relations to land in our culture, he confided “We’re not going to give up our good lives.”  He was speaking in general, but it shook me to think he would draw the line between his life and mine, no matter what good might be gained from whatever good had to be given up.


In a dream last week I was trying to cross an ocean between the world I now inhabit and the one my grandparents inhabited, a world where most people still raised and killed the food they eat.  Many  people around the globe still inhabit that world; many of my neighbors have just recently left it, carrying with them only their recipes and appetites for food from home.  I’m privileged to witness this phenomenon secondhand as packages of beef tongue and tripe, calves hooves and pig skins pass through my hands at the market’s checkstand where I cashier.  Though it was hard at first, my need to understand that world got me through my initial waves of culturally-derived repulsion over my neighbors’ definition of “food.”


What’s the connection between “definitions of food” and “intimacy with a place”?  Most of those recipes and appetites carried by generations of immigrants, whether from Jalisco or Hamburg, Da Nang or Bombay, were cooked and eaten from plants and animals native to those places.  Those lands determined what plants and animals grew and how much, while the people learned how to make more and better.  Food is our primary connection to land, followed by shelter and territory.  Now that our recipes and ingredients have been globalized, our connection to land is less intimate, our sense of place minimized to road maps and weather reports.  


We are still dependent on land for our food  - now we just don’t know whose land it comes from, how it’s produced, or who gets to eat (or not) from the profits. There’s only one world that we all inhabit: Americans’ “good” lives are lived off the backs of others whose lives are not so good or even horrible by comparison.  If we are going to progress as humans - para progresar - we need to reacquaint ourselves with our own land’s productivity and adjust our recipes and appetites accordingly.

Dependence Day....

While the rest of you celebrate Independence Day, we in Lindsay must be content to celebrate only our Dependence, at least for the time being. Short of a large-scale citizen revolt or another lawsuit, our real independence is something we’re going to have to exert at the ballot box in November.


Last week’s city council meeting was a perfect example of the effective downgrade Lindsay’s citizens have received at the hands of their elected representatives. Rescheduled on Monday from its regular Tuesday meeting time to Wednesday, purportedly to have a quorum, few members of the public were able to attend.  At this meeting, two public hearings were held: one on the budget for next year, including the 5-year Capital Improvement Program, the other on a proposed lot line adjustment that will likely result in two sets of tenants needing to find new homes. If public hearings were taken seriously, these would have been rescheduled for a later date to provide proper noticing.


But the really glaring evidence of our lost democracy occurred during Item 10, “Study Session on Proposed Bike Lanes” presented by Bill Zigler, City Planner. I was at the council meeting last fall when Zigler, a confessed bicycle enthusiast, presented the proposed bike lanes during another “study session.” The council actually had questions then about the proposed routes and potential impacts on the neighborhoods from reduced parking. Some also questioned the need, noting the almost complete lack of use of the bike lane on Tulare Road. Zigler assured them he would take their concerns under consideration, and of course no action would be taken without first coming before the council.


Now back before the council, in a presentation any used car salesman would admire, Zigler’s plan got its first increment approved without even taking a vote.  The result will be the elimination of diagonal parking along both sides of the newly-repaved Gale Hill Avenue, replaced by a smaller number of parallel parking slots. It also cements the core of his bike lane plan into place without so much as a questionnaire or a parents meeting.  My attempts to contribute to the discussion went unrecognized.


Two weeks ago I wrote about the reduction of rights to participate in council meetings that city manager Rich Wilkinson has engineered over the last four months. During the public comment period at this week’s council meeting, I laid the responsibility for those reductions squarely on the shoulders of the council. It’s their jurisdiction how open or closed our public meetings will be. This council wants it below the legal limit, so I also laid on their shoulders the responsibility for the huge budget overruns for legal services this year and possibly next, as citizens wrestle their rights back through the legal system.


This city continues to function as if it knows best what’s right for the people, treating us like under-age dependents. It’s called “paternalism” in civil rights language.  But these people are not our parents:  they’re our public servants.  We need to require them to do their job or get out.

This Land is Your Land....

“You’ve got to exert your ownership over the place you live in, or you won’t have that place.  That’s what that song is about.” 
- Bruce Springsteen on Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” 


We may be forced into singing at next week’s Lindsay City Council meeting:  our City Manager has once again reduced our rights to participate in city council meetings with the full blessing of (but without a decision by) the Council.
It’s not the first time.  After the Feb. 14, 2012 meeting, where I’d insisted that the public had a right to ask for the removal of items from the consent calendar according to wording on the agenda, they took that wording out.  
By the March 13, 2012 meeting, they’d taken out another sentence, this one from the paragraph defining public participation on the agenda packet cover sheet: “To place an item on the Council agenda, you must contact the City Clerk or City Manager’s Department before 12:00 noon on the Wednesday immediately preceding the meeting to have the item placed on the agenda.”  After I’d asked for months about how to get an item on the agenda, that missing sentence was finally replaced in the June 12 packet cover sheet with this one: “If a member of the public wishes for an item to be placed on an agenda, he/she may also ask at this time (during the public comment period) but the Council will make the ultimate decision whether to place a requested item on a future agenda and is under no obligation to do so.”
On that same cover sheet I discovered the most recent disappeared/replaced sentence, which eliminates the right to speak to agenda items when they come up for discussion.  The missing sentence said:  “Those who wish to be heard on matters on the agenda should indicate their desire to speak when the item is ready for discussion.”  It had been replaced with “Members of the public are welcome to make their comments during the public comment portion of the agenda, as this is the place for public participation per the Brown Act.” This completely limits public participation in council meetings to the three minute public comment period (except during public hearings).  
Whether the Brown Act says that or not is a matter of interpretation, however.  The League of California Cities’ fine guide to the Brown Act says “Every agenda for a regular meeting must allow members of the public to speak on any item of interest, so long as the item is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the legislative body.  Further, the public must be allowed to speak on a specific item of business before or during the legislative body’s consideration of it.”
Our city’s attorneys seem to be interpreting the Brown Act’s word “before” as “way before,” like during the public comment period.  But if the League of California Cities thought that, they wouldn’t have used the word Further.
When they Nazi’s took away the Jews’ rights, they didn’t do it all at once.  They did it one small piece at a time, quietly, until it was too late for anyone to protest the dehumanizing effect of being without citizenship.  Come exert your ownership over this place we live in - let your presence be felt at Tuesday’s city council meeting.

Lawyers...

“How’s my favorite lawyer today?” I asked Starr Warson one evening when he came to my cash register.  “Fine!” he said brightly, then dimmed a little and added “I hope that’s good...”
Our friendship solidified in an act of human caring, not politics, and it was easy to assure him “it’s good.” I know many fine people who are lawyers who practice their craft ethically. The disparagement many people feel toward that profession is created by two things: a fear of the power they are able to wield, and experience with law professionals who wield it unethically.  Sometimes it’s the people hiring them who wield them unethically, often the powerful.  Our dislike of lawyers is actually a distaste for uneven power relations.
The other day it occurred to me that, without lawyers, there would be no law, which in our political system is the way we establish our ever-evolving ethical code and try to protect the rights of people and business.  Many of our legislators who make the laws are lawyers, and the laws are fine-tuned by litigation.  Also, without lawyers our laws would be useless: without fear of ramifications when laws are broken, our land would be ruled by lawless people.
Which brings me to Lindsay.  Last week’s article on Steven Mecum’s public records lawsuit quoted City Manager Rich Wilkinson about the financial harm this and other lawsuits could cause the city, right on the verge of its recovery from multiple disasters, including the prior administration’s “financial mess.”  He failed to mention that one of the new provisions of his employment contract (unanimously approved May 22, 2012 without one question by the council,) could be equally damaging.  It reads “In the event of involuntary separation of the City Manager, he shall be entitled to receive a lump sum payment as and for severance pay in an amount equal to eighteen (18) months salary.”  At his initial city manager salary alone ($12,000/mo.) that lump sum would be $216,000.  If you include his police chief salary as well, that puts it closer to $250,000.
Wilkinson also failed to mention that it wouldn’t have cost anything if Mecum’s  request had been treated respectfully.  Not only is there the potential $260,000 for Mecum’s attorney, Paul Boylan, there’s all the expense we’ve already paid for Nancy Jenner’s inadequate defense of the city and her firm’s bad legal advice about pursuing this course of action.
In an attempt to estimate that cost, I made a public records request to inspect all the billing statements/invoices for legal services from Oct. 2010 to May 2012, as well as a few other items.  Instead of the normal phone call from Maria Knutson advising me when the materials were ready, I received a two-page letter signed by Maria but clearly written by a lawyer.  From the language, I suspect it was Nancy Jenner herself, because the logic matched what I heard in the courtroom when she tried to make her case before Judge Reed.  After sifting through the legalese, her letter basically said it’s not in the public interest to know what they’re charging us for:  “the public interest in non-disclosure clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”
What kind of person could make that statement?  Only someone with an interest in keeping the public blind.  Is it the lawyer, or the people employing the lawyer?  That’s in the public’s interest to know.

A Land Ethic....

 “That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.  That land yields a cultural harvest is a fact long known, but latterly often forgotten.”  Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
For the past week I’ve been struggling to find words for what’s in my heart about land, words that will reach others’ hearts and influence their minds about the future of a particular piece of land with an exquisite history and present fertility:  Quaker Oaks Farm.  
The owners, Bill and Beth Lovett, who have operated Quaker Oaks Christmas Tree Farm there for almost 20 years, are highly aware of this land’s cultural and ecological value.  They wish to protect it from having those values stripped away when its economic value soars, tempting future owners to sell out.  There are multiple ways to do that, and a non-profit organization has been formed to help make those decisions and  steward the land in its new vocation.  But it seemed words were missing defining what’s being undertaken, so I offered my services.
I found myself pulling books down from a high shelf where they’ve been since 1993.  When my hands reached Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, I read the last chapter, “The Land Ethic.”  Found words.
This book was first published in 1949, just after Leopold (a forestry professor at the University of Wisconsin) died fighting a grass fire on a neighbor’s farm shortly after he became an advisor on conservation to the United Nations.  He was that kind of man.  He was 60.
The book was republished in paperback in 1968 and became a flagship for the environmental movement that us back-to-the-landers needed when we discovered how hard it is to live from the land alone. But what he says about the need for a land ethic is still fresh.
Writing less than a decade after the socio-ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl, Leopold announced in the book’s preface “Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land.  We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.  When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.  There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the esthetic harvest it is capable...of contributing to culture.”
He ends the book with this analogy:  “By and large, our present problem is one of attitudes and implements.  We are remodeling the Alhambra with a steamshovel, and we are proud of our yardage.  We shall hardly relinquish the shovel, which after all has many good points, but we are in need of gentler and more objective criteria for its successful use.”  
In between, in 25 short pages Leopold takes us through his logic and his experience, his loves and despairs, but leaves us with no magic recipe.  What he leaves us with is the simple understanding that we’re in need of developing a land ethic before our ethic-less treatment of land leaves us hungry and homeless.