Blowin' in the Wind

Published in slightly edited form in The Foothills Sun-Gazette, Nov. 13, 2013

     VETERAN'S DAY, 2013.  The American flags pegged on porches and lawns are blowing in today's beautiful breeze.  Yesterday at church we asked the veterans to stand and saluted their sacrifices, their willingness to risk their lives for our sake.  My father would have stood with them if he were a church-goer, but instead today he will get a free dinner at Appleby's, a well-deserved salute from corporate America.

     As those three beloved men in our congregation who served rose to their feet, my heart went with them, then shrank back into the pew.  My brother Dave could have stood there, too, and pigged out with Dad at Appleby's if he had come back from Viet Nam.  I carry Dave's wounds in the back of my mind, but the shrapnel my family received is still felt.  The sacrifices of risking your life and losing it are not paid by you alone.

     The veterans themselves, of course, honor their fallen brothers every year; they know the sacrifices that were made better than we do.  That's the real opportunity of Veteran's Day:  to ask "What was it really like?" and hear the costs that are paid every time we think war is the answer.  The veterans' voices speak for the dead as well as the living.

     Veterans also speak for the educational aspect of war.  My father came back with stories not just of navigating mined waters and surviving a typhoon in the South China Sea (like one that swallowed two of Admiral Halsey's destroyers, crews and all,) but also of watching boat people at a harbor in North China skimming the water for food in the garbage dumped over the ships' sides.  I was raised to think about the poor people in China from his education:  never take more than I could eat or leave anything on my plate.

This is Dad's book. He spent several years writing it, and it's been a real gift to our family.  Any veteran who spent time on board ship would find company in these pages.  Published in 2006 by PublishAmerica, ISBN: 1-4241-4842-1


     Was  it this pre-kindergarten education around the dinner table that led to my education in land tenure and rural development, which turned me into a rural advocate?  I think so.  Revisit these words of Paul Taylor with me, written in Berkeley 34 years ago while I watched his dedicated mind at work:

     "Search for a congenial or at least tolerable relation between man and land has gone on throughout recorded time, for that relation largely shapes the relationship of man to man.  Societies can become homogeneous or polarized, depending mainly on whether landownership is distributed widely among the many or concentrated in the hands of a few.  Throughout time, wide distribution has brought stability, while sustained concentration has jeopardized the peace and fed the forces of revolt and revolution.  Our twentieth century is no exception.  On the contrary, it has witnessed the largest and most pervasive revolutions of all history in Europe, in Latin America, and in Asia."  (Paul S. Taylor, in the Introduction to Essays on Land, Water and the Law in California.  New York: Arno Press, 1979.)

     Paul told the story of an officer stationed in Viet Nam who recognized that land reform in the South was an alternative to fighting a losing battle with the North, and said so to his superiors.  When Paul asked him how far he got with that idea, the officer said "About three minutes at cocktail hour."

     It's not just wars that are caused by uneven land distribution, but also terrible poverty.  Our dilemmas about immigration are actually driven by land ownership and control problems in Mexico and points south created by American agribusiness firms and global traders.  The economic decline of the Valley's small towns is also driven by increasing inequality in land ownership.

     When will we get it?  Those flags blowing brilliantly in today's breeze prompted a song from the turbulent Viet Nam era:  "How many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died?  The answer, my friends, is blowin' in the wind.  The answer is blowin' in the wind."

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Trudy Wischemann is a Gold Star Sister who lives and writes in Lindsay.  You can send her your thoughts on Veteran's Day and land reform % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

How Time Flies

Published in slightly edited form Nov. 6, 2013 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     Fall Back.  We've re-set our clocks and our lives to the sun's shorter light.  It's the eleventh month of the year.  Now we get to watch the natural world prepare itself for the short slumber of California's winter.

     Looking back to this year's beginning, time has flown but not from having fun.  In January, I was begging the new mayor of Lindsay and reconstituted City Council to restore the language on public participation in council meetings that the city manager had removed from the agenda materials the year before without any action by the Council.  It seemed a no-brainer to me, but obviously I don't know everything.

     In the second month came the resolutions to approve two competing national chain stores, Family Dollar and Dollar General, which are actually more like mini-WalMarts than true dollar stores.  Both proposals were for new buildings at the edges of our two commercial centers (downtown and Olivewood Plaza) and would have subtracted trade from existing local businesses as well as adding some.  But the City never did that math and promoted both as boons to the community, not evaluating the costs in terms of jobs, goods and services, traffic impacts, or the loss of community landmarks, much less simple economics.  It was as if Scot Townsend had never left office:  same old song and dance.



The Central California Citrus Exchange Building, part of the giant Sunkist Growers Cooperative
that brought enormous economic well-being to the community of Lindsay and other towns in the citrus belt
of the San Joaquin Valley.  Designed and built by Southern California architect W.W. Ache in 1933,
the building qualifies for the national historic registry on all three criteria.  The building was in use
by the CCC Exchange through 2005.  It has been well maintained and little altered from its original design.

     Readers of this column know the wrestling match that followed:  our challenge over the historic value of the Central California Citrus Exchange building that would have been demolished by the Dollar General project; Dollar General's supposed withdrawal and the Council's failure to approve it, followed two months later by its sudden reappearance and slam-dunk approval after the Fourth of July weekend.  This time, instead of demolishing an historic, architecturally beautiful landmark, the project demolished a business, without warning to its owner or compensation for his loss, without recognition of the community integrity it represents or the community value of having it in that location.  Without respect.




The former "Ed's Auto," now M&J Auto Repair at the corner of Elmwood
and Hermosa in Lindsay.  This site has been an auto repair shop for nearly 40 years
serving all segments of the community.  Its location downtown is convenient for those
working in businesses there as well as for people living in the nearby neighborhoods. 

Miguel Chavez, owner of M&J Auto Repair, a great mechanic
and an even greater family man whose wife and son help him in this business.

     In the name of that blatant disrespect for the community's businesses as well as the laws governing cities, at the end of the ninth month we filed suit against the City for approving Dollar General II without adequate attention to economic impacts and traffic congestion. We included the 24-year failure to implement the historic resources section of the General Plan, and the fact that public participation in council meetings has been inordinately limited to the three minute public comment period.  The media reported that the threat of litigation caused Dollar General to withdraw its proposal, which may be correct.  But it didn't cause the City to reconsider its approval of DGII, or rethink their approach to public participation much less how to preserve our town's historic buildings.  Instead, they have chosen to go to court.

Miguel's window in the ninth month of 2013.

     And Miguel Chavez is moving his auto repair business to the old site of Martin's Tire, across from the former Lindsay Foods site which would have been perfect for Dollar General (or Family Dollar, for that matter, whose plans are currently stalled by the City's "conversation" with CalTrans over the relocation of Highway 65.)  "The city doesn't want me here," Miguel said when I told him about Dollar General's withdrawal.  "They told me the zoning doesn't permit me to work on cars outside," under the awning of the former Shell Station where Ed Schapansky worked on cars for 30 years before Miguel took over the business. "And they told me if I bought the place, I'd be liable for the contaminated soil beneath the blacktop.  So I'm going to move as soon as that place is ready," he said, no matter the costs.

The future home of M&J Auto Repair.  There is no comparison to the
 current site in terms of location, quality of facility or visual appeal.

     We can pray the new site works for him better than the old, that he can make up these moving costs without killing himself doing it.  We can do more than pray:  we can go support his business.  And we can start to lean on the City for the changes required to not let this happen again.

     But there's one more thing.  Twelve months from now we can elect two new council members, perhaps changing the balance of deciding votes.  Time flies regardless, so let's make it work for us.

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Trudy Wischemann is an untimely poet and prophet-seeker who writes in Lindsay.  You can write to her at P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Two Bricks Shy

Published in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette Oct. 23, 2013

     "So, we're going to lose what we were trying to save....," Lindsay Councilman Danny Salinas essentially said the first time he heard city planner Bill Zigler's endorsement of the new Highway 65 realignment plan.

     The new plan proposed by Caltrans is in response to the City's opposition to the old one, which would have hampered access to the motel and the handful of businesses on the northeast corner of Hermosa and the highway.  The old realignment would have begun to veer westward from that intersection.  In the new plan, the westward veering will start at Lindmore on the south edge of town and bypass Lindsay completely.

     Danny was stating what anyone with eyes could see:  that those businesses would now lose the highly-important visibility factor of being along the highway, far more important than a tricky driveway entry.  What he didn't say is that now every business in the Olivewood Shopping Center on the south side of Hermosa is also at risk, not to mention those businesses along Fremont Trail on the west side of the highway, some of which will be sliced like a pie by the new route.  Last, and certainly not least in my mind, is the loss of acres of farmland and the farmability of 20-30 groves of oranges that now will be dissected.  Those farms are businesses, too.

     As I sat there listening to Mr. Zigler's advocacy for the new route, I felt incredulous, and sick.  I thought I was one brick shy of a load when we took on the Dollar General project, and now here was one even more damaging to the community.  We had just filed the lawsuit against the Dollar General II proposal, wanting the City to evaluate the economic impacts on businesses before going forward with the project, as well as to study the potential traffic problems at the roundabout. Those impacts would be small compared to this.

     "What can he be thinking?" my mind quizzed, when suddenly the answer came out of his mouth.  "It's a great opportunity for developing new highway commercial businesses," he said knowingly, not acknowledging the potential loss of our current highway businesses.  Then I saw it:  it's land development driving this thing, not community development.  That's what was behind the Dollar General project, too.

     For the moment, the threat to our existing businesses from Dollar General is gone:  Embree Group has pulled out of the project.  One of my biggest concerns for the community was the potential for losing Rite-Aid, whose product lines most closely resemble Dollar General's.  Rite-Aid has been our only pharmacy since the Monge's retired and closed Redwood.  The thought of all those people currently dependent on Rite-Aid for their prescriptions having to drive to Exeter or Porterville especially during flu season (talk about leaking retail sales!) made my head swim.  Fortunately, a new pharmacy opened last month in the Redwood building, so by Grace there may be another option should Rite-Aid throw in the towel.

     As I said in the public comment period at the Oct. 8th Council meeting, this re-realignment of Highway 65 was initiated by the City.  Caltrans proposed the new route in response to the formal letter signed by Mayor Padilla and approved in the consent calendar at the July 9th meeting.  If the City initiated it, the City can take it back.

     At the Oct. 8th meeting, many of the council members expressed concern about the possible impacts of this new route, including Mayor Padilla and Pam Kimball.  Now is the time for this community's residents, from town and countryside alike, to contact the Council members about these plans, before the city's staff and Caltrans set our future in concrete.
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Trudy Wischemann is a community researcher and writer who thinks this plan is a couple bricks shy.  You can send her your evaluations % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.