Having Say

Published July 30, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


            The Lindsay City Council took another step forward at the July 8 regular Council meeting when it refused to give direction to the city’s staff regarding historic preservation. While the Sun-Gazette’s article made it sound like the Council was indeterminate, actually they were holding firm against an attempt by staff to squelch community interest and involvement in the shape of our downtown.

            In early June, without the knowledge of at least four of the five Council members, the city staff sent a 2-page letter to all property owners within the Central Business District asking “if you desire an historic district” at this time.  The letter briefly described what that might include, and the potential impacts on their properties. 

             The letter also included a two-question survey which the property owners were encouraged to return, noting the survey’s results would be presented at the July 8 Council meeting.  The letter indicated that if the majority of those property owners answered “no,” the matter would be laid to rest until some future time. (This letter can be viewed in the Council agenda packet for July 8, either at the library, city hall, or online at www.lindsay.ca.us under Council Agendas. After the initial posting of this blog, the historic preservation "initiative" was added to the City's website.)

             The staff was clearly giving veto power to property owners, regardless of the Council’s response to the survey.  No one else was surveyed, such as business owners, who might have a greater interest in the benefits of historic preservation than property owners, who might bear some of the costs.  Forget the residents of the community, whose lives are shaped by the quality of the environment we live in.

            One sentence near the end of the letter showed their hand.  Before encouraging property owners to return the survey as soon as possible, a sentence underlined for emphasis read: “Do not leave this important decision to activists or other special interest groups.”  At the Council meeting, Councilman Mecum asked City Manager Rich Wilkinson, who signed the letter and said he was its author, to give his definition of “activists and special interest groups.”  After thinking a moment, Rich replied “Those who put their opinions over something they don’t have any say in.”

             Apparently that moment wasn’t long enough for a quality answer, because at the end of the meeting Rich asked to modify it.  After pausing much longer, he said “I think I need to give clarification on my definition of an activist ... for Mr. Mecum.  You caught me off guard!  So you got a real quick shot there, but you know really it’s someone that’s promoting their, or promotes social change that’s close to their … beliefs system.  And sometimes it infringes on those other rights that other individuals have that are important to them as well.

            “In this case the activist is that who is promoting a social change in respect to some of these personal property rights.  So there’s my reference there.”  To which Mecum replied “Cool.”

             Historic preservation is much more a public concern than private property owners’.  Historic preservation gets its energy from the recognition that preserving a community’s history, its physical record of existence in a place, is a community value to be weighed with property values.  It usually is instituted to balance the private property owners’ rights with the community’s needs for belonging, for maintaining a sense of place.  This is something the public very much has a say in, and the staff’s attempt to exclude us from the discussion is shameful.  Kudos to the Council for refusing to buy in.

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Trudy Wischemann is a carpenter’s daughter who loves old buildings more than new ones.  You can send her your thoughts on historic places c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or  leave a comment below.

Death and Life Revisited

Published in slightly edited form July 16, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

Monday, July 14, 2014.  I asked my customers at the market last night what I should write about.  One said “the heat.”  Another said “the city council.  Or the heat.”  When I woke up this morning to ominous cloud cover, it certainly looked like the heat was winning.  But what’s on my heart is death, and life.

     This past week had more than enough death in it for me, and more than enough life as well.  Two of the animals I’ve tended for years came to their ends, assisted by our beautiful vet Jamie Wilson and the women who work with her.  “Sisters of Mercy” ran through my head all week as I dug their graves and set aside their feeding bowls.

     Another cat I’ve loved since 1998, when she came as a one-eyed kitten, rescued from the park by some teenage girls, seems to have gone off her food.  She doesn’t do well in the heat, so I’ve been watching her closely and holding her more often, lining up my cat-saving supplies: oral electrolyte, tuna in water, canned Friskies, petromalt.  Thank God it seems to be working.

     On the life side, I found homes for two pups who’d been running loose in the neighborhood.  I’d corralled them on the front porch, re-establishing the fence that had not kept in the three little dogs who eventually were taken by the Central Valley Rescue Railroad.  When their owners didn’t come claim the pups, I changed my sign from “FOUND” to “FREE,” and two lovely families each took one home.  Now their lives as the family dog can begin.

     And all of that, it seems clear to me, was preparation for the news that came Saturday morning about my friend Jim Chlebda.  Some of you may remember him from the years he lived in Springville and published South Valley Arts Magazine.  Some of you may remember him as the publisher of Wilma McDaniel’s books of poetry and prose, and certainly her biggest promoter as well as stand-in son.  If you ever met him, you wouldn’t forget him:  he’s the most remarkable person I’ve ever known.

     Jim has been up at Stanford the last few weeks, waiting for the double lung transplant that could save his life.  He was born some 58 years ago with cystic fibrosis, and his lungs have finally succumbed to the bacteria that kills people with this disease.  The normal life expectancy for people with CF is still around 20; he’s tripled his life by taking care of himself and living with more abandon than most people risk.  His lifelong awareness of his own probable death let him live each day fully.  He helped people come into print who otherwise would have stayed wistfully on the margins, including me.  He encouraged people to risk living who didn’t have a life-threatening disease in their genes, including me.

     Friday Jim was taken off the list for a new pair of lungs.  We’re still investigating the reasons and hoping for a reprieve.  Today they will be meeting to set up palliative care and hospice arrangements.  My heart is still throbbing, dull, with the meaning of all this, trying to adapt to a new reality: that Jim will be living inside of me now, and not outside anymore.  That Jim will be present whenever two or more of his friends are gathered, but not physically in the room, able to surprise and delight us with his wildly life-affirming perspective and humor.

     Trying to adapt, finally, to this simple fact:  this is life.


(Note:  At 7:57 this morning, just as I was posting this piece, Jim Chlebda went through "this other window," as he called it the last time we spoke, and crossed into the eternal.  Thanks be to God for keeping him here as long as he was, and for taking him quickly in the end.)

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer, thanks to Jim Chlebda, who lives in Lindsay.  You can send her your stories about Jim c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Home of the Brave

Published in slightly edited form July 9, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette.

     Sorry to have missed you last week, but I was busy with Independence Day preparations: gathering signatures to protect the diagonal parking on Gale Hill Avenue against the machinations of the Lindsay Bicycle Plan. 

     As I worked, I kept hearing the last lines of the Star-Spangled Banner, a popular tune this time of year.  “In the land of the free” is the next-to-last phrase, escalating to the highest note in the song, often held out with a fermata and given a dramatic break before the final line.  The high note singing “free” sets our hearts on fire; fireworks explode behind our eyes, in our imaginations.  Then we drop back down to the solemn, peaceful thought:  “and the home of the brave.”  Home.  Always good to be home.  And brave.

     The importance of being brave when it comes to home -  that’s what we suddenly recognized two weeks ago when the city’s plan to install bike lanes and parallel parking on the four block stretch of Gale Hill between Hermosa and Apia to Mirage became evident.  For two years, since these blocks were repaved, the possibility has existed that this plan would be implemented, but few knew of it.  When I’d mention it to people who would be impacted, they’d look askance, as if I were just trying to stir up trouble.  But on Tuesday, June 17th, when the markings for the bike lanes were painted in preparation for the striping, people could see with their own eyes what we were about to lose. 

     The first to respond was Pastor Rosa Medina of Iglesia Del Nazareno Roca de Salvacion, who went immediately to city hall to ask for an explanation.  They told her they’d have someone call.  She was still waiting for that call Wednesday when I called to ask if her church would like to sign a letter requesting they restore the diagonal spaces. 

     The second to respond was Councilwoman Kimball, who was unaware that plans had changed.  Like me, she’d seen the markings for diagonal spaces marked in on Monday, June 16th.  When she heard those markings had been blacked out and the bike lane markings painted over them, she called down to city hall and got the striping stopped.  After pestering Mike Camarena’s office all morning on Thursday June 17, I received an afternoon call from Rich Wilkinson saying the issue would be on the June 24 Council agenda for a decision. 

     The possibility of influencing the Council’s decision kicked us into action.  All three churches - Methodist, Iglesia Del Nazareno and Iglesia de Cristo Mahanaim - asked their congregations to sign the letter, and to attend the meeting on the 24th.  Since most Spanish-speaking people are still getting off work at 6 pm, those who came were mostly from the Methodist Church and the Cultural Arts Council.  For lack of a quorum of Council members, the meeting was cancelled and rescheduled for Monday, June 30.

     At that meeting, most of those who came also spoke during the three-minute public comment period, overcoming their timidity in defense of home.  And though I’m sure the votes had been gathered beforehand to re-instate diagonal parking, our presence there was an additional victory:  we came, we saw how things are run, and we let them know what we thought about it.  

     For years people on staff and the Council have portrayed Lindsay’s residents as uncaring, apathetic.  For years I have been countering that the way they operate discourages participation.  Monday night we saw that Lindsay is the home of the brave:  when push comes to shove, we have what it takes to stand up and defend Home.   That's also what it takes to make it the land of the free.  May we continue to demonstrate our courage.

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Trudy Wischemann is a music major who writes.  You can send her your brave comments c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

           

 

largo

Published June 25, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


largo adj., adv. Music: a slow and stately tempo; a direction to the performer.  Also a movement or passage at that tempo.

     When I was a young woman studying the flute, I relished the largo movements in the baroque concertos I learned.  Composers like to use flutes for the bright, happy, skipping, flighty, racy sounds in orchestral music, but speedy technique was never my forte.  What I love about my instrument is its breathiness, its sound, that it comes from my core going through its core.  Even in grade school while I was first learning to play, what people admired was my tone.

     Largo movements allow a performer to focus on tone, but the tempo is human in another way:  at 45-50 beats per minute, they move at the pace of a heartbeat at rest.  They’re reflective, thoughtful, peaceful movements, but deliberate.  They’re going somewhere the way a meditation is going somewhere even though the meditator may be sitting in place.  They arrive at the end without strenuous activity; they arrive at the end regardless.  Like we all do. 
     I was pleased to find harmonious definitions in my Spanish dictionary.  “Largo,” the masculine form, means long, free, or liberal;  “a lo largo de” means alongside of, or along.  “!Largo de aqui!” means Get out! (presumably “of here.”)  “Larga,” the feminine form, is used as a noun to refer to the longest billiard cue, but as an adjective or adverb, it means the same as the masculine form:  long, free, liberal.  “A la larga” means “in the long run.”
     It was from a gut-level understanding of the underlying meanings of the musical term largo that I chose it as the acronym for Lindsay Advocates for Responsive Government Organization (or if you prefer, larga, Lindsay Advocates for Responsive Government Association.)  Through the lawsuit we brought against the Dollar General II proposal, LARG(o) represented all those people who stood to be damaged by the City’s unwillingness to consider anyone but the developer’s and the landowners’ interests. 
     In attempting to focus on the process by which such decisions are made, LARG(o)’s lawsuit pinpointed areas where the City’s lack of responsiveness made them vulnerable to legal action.  It was a turning point, even if only a pinpoint, against the widely held sentiment that “It’s always been this way - you’re not going to change anything.”   Meaning, they’ll do what they want, regardless.
     Heads up:  things here in Lindsay are changing, even if at glacial speed.  With the help of more involvement from people in the community, those changes will better reflect the needs and wants of the people who live here.  This is a largo movement, slow and stately, steady, unstopping, moving at the pace of a heartbeat at rest.  In the long run, responsive government is what we will have.  You can bet your sweet, sonorous quarter notes on that.

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Trudy Wischemann is a musician who writes.  You can send her your favorite largo movements c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.