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.