Not Now Dirt

Published August 16, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


            Saturday’s events in Charlottesville, VA are still news as I write this.  Most commentaries, appropriately, condemn the hate that fueled the protest over the removal of Robert E. Lee’s statue.  There probably also was hate fueling some folks who came to protest the parading of hate-based beliefs in public, although I heard reports that their leaders, mostly people of faith, emphasized the need to resist hate with love.  Still, I admired them for standing up to the fascistic forces, knowing they were risking harm.  Adolph’s day is done.  There’ll be no revival of the brown shirts, not here, not on my watch.

            The proposed removal of the statue, like the lowering of the Confederate flag, is a final defeat to some, a final victory to others 150 years later.  But the angst over the removal of these signs of the South is more a product of their cultural evolution than attachments to bronze and cloth.  The shifts in demography and political power over that same century and a half are the result of the industrialization and urbanization that followed the defeat of slavery as an economic institution.

            In truth, rural people and places in the South have been decimated by the same economic-political forces that left people in Flint, Michigan drinking water from their contaminated river and too poor to protest.  They’re the same forces that have depopulated the rural Midwest, Northeast, Pacific Northwest, and yes, even rural California.  These forces have made laborers out of farmers around the globe and are now making welfare families out of laborers with high-tech robots.  The erosion of work for working people is silently killing us, while the triumphs of technology are trumpeted.

            In the name of that invisible reality, I brought a bucket of dirt into the sanctuary of Exeter United Methodist Church a week ago.  I’d hoped to create an epiphany that dirt is not profane, but sacred, and that those who work in dirt are people for whom we, as people of faith, should have concern.  Then we sang John Pitney’s cheerful song “Get Down and Get Dirty,” which goes: 

Get down and get dirty,

It’s the name of the game.

Get down and get dirty,

‘Cause we’re made from the same.

Yahweh sure got down and dirty

When He made us from the prairie;

The fact that we are not now dirt

Is only temporary.”

            Many of us have fear about speaking up in public or putting our bodies on the line in the face of hate.  Heather Heyer, the young woman killed by that neo-Nazi’s raging car, was frightened of going to the protest and went anyway.  But there are other forms of violence that need our attention, too.   May the rest of us who temporarily are not now dirt use our God-metered breaths in service to humanity and Creation.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes.  You can send her your dirt-working stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

 

 

Saving Towns

Published August 9, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “How was your sermon?” a friend asked Sunday afternoon.  I forgot that I wrote about it last week, but was pleased she remembered.

     

      “It went well,” I said.  “The people were beautiful.  They sang along with me and listened to every word.  I felt so encouraged by their responses….”  My friend grinned, hugged me with congratulations, and went on with her day.

     It was only after I got home that I realized why I felt so heartened.  “There might be some hope for our towns yet,” I thought, an epiphany about the sermon’s true purpose.

           

     For years I have described myself as a small-farm advocate.  The substance of the Gospel According to John Pitney is that the church has a right and a responsibility to care about the structure of agriculture and be involved in making it more sustainable and just.  This is true in California especially, since we lead the country in mega-farms and the requisite “innovations.”  Some of those innovations make it possible to feed more people from land that would normally feed only jackrabbits and rattlesnakes.  Some of those innovations steal markets from other regions where water is less scarce and climate less accommodating, however.

     Some of those innovations also steal jobs, livelihoods, even whole industries.  And where the damage is felt first, second and third is in our rural towns.

           

     I didn’t speak Sunday about my fears for our citrus belt towns.  I sense an earthquake coming as I watch farmhouses disappear and groves of navels being pushed and replanted to mandarins destined for the mega-packing facilities in Kern County.  As these farms are consolidated, the lands surrounding our towns are tended by mobile crews who move from parcel to parcel with no one supervising the work or being there to watch the results.  Fewer acres are being tended by people who live there year after year and know the wet spots, the cold spots, the average crop, the normal bug population or how things are varying this year from last.

     Then there’s the ongoing mechanization of the packinghouses, which is eliminating 75%- 90% of the jobs at each one.  In the past, the availability of winter work in citrus packing has made it possible for the laboring population to move up occupationally and become permanent residents, keeping their kids in school and becoming citizens.  What will towns like Lindsay do when they’re no longer incubators for immigrant stabilization and progress?  Lindsay’s city fathers and mothers bemoan the loss of our middle class, but it’s the working people who have kept us afloat so far.  When they leave, we’ll look more like empty Dust Bowl towns than orange-growing communities.

     Most of our town governments do not see the connection between agriculture and Main Street.  That’s unfortunate, but one role the people of faith could adopt is to bring these realities to their attention.  I look forward to singing and speaking more with you in the future.

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Trudy Wischemann is a small farm/town advocate who writes.  You can send her your connectional thoughts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Imagining Justice

Published August 2, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     The good people of Exeter United Methodist Church celebrated Christmas last Sunday, July 30^th.  It was a beautiful service.  The bulletin bore a nativity scene on the cover, with shepherds and angels and wise men surrounding the holy family under the signal star.  We sang “O Come All Ye Faithful,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “Go Tell It On The Mountain,” and “Joy to the World.”  The children lighted a pint-sized Christmas tree, and in his sermon, Pastor Mark Smith excitedly ripped the ribbon and wrapping paper from a box, the forgotten present under the Christmas tree, the gift of faith.  “Be like little children with that gift,” he encouraged us, demonstrating the idea beautifully.

           

     I was grateful that I listened to my inner adult that morning and took myself to their church.  It was the perfect antidote to last week’s toxic news.  Between a truckload of dead immigrants from south of the border discovered in a Texas Walmart parking lot, the political MADness in Washington over healthcare, and North Korea’s ICBM, my faith account was overdrawn.  Being among people of faith celebrating their creation story was cleansing.

           

     I also learned that this coming Sunday, the 6^th  is the day I get to fill in for Mark, not the 13^th like I thought.  Although the fewer days for preparation might seem like an inconvenience, the timing couldn’t be better, because the message I want to bring is about the work of Christmas.  Now we can have Epiphany in August!

           

     My epiphany occurred back in April, a day or so before I ran into Rod Capps at RN Market.  “What are you up to these days?” he asked.  “I just discovered I want to preach the Gospel according to John – John Pitney,” I said boldly, surprised at the words that came out of my mouth.  “I have some pulpit vacancies I want to fill,” he said, getting out his calendar.  And here we are.

           

     Now, I’ve preached the Gospel of JP here in this column many times.  He’s the Methodist minister songwriter from Oregon whose body of work on land, the church, and the common good allowed me to see the faith dimension in my socio-economic research on agricultural communities.  His songs buttress me as I drive around our region, watching almonds replace stone fruit and vineyards, watching mandarins replace navels and valencias, watching small towns erode and small farms disappear.   They buttress me in my belief that we can find a better way to produce food and an economy,  a better relationship between ourselves and land which will produce more neighborly relations with others and fulfill our covenant with God.  They keep me imagining justice.

           

     And that’s the epiphany, really:  that there could be more justice in this world, and that the people of faith could be instrumental in bringing that about.  There could be more justice in our towns and our countryside, in our land relations and our politics.  And though the prospect seems daunting, claiming that truth begins with imagining.

           

     Come join us for Epiphany in August, Sunday the 6^th at 10:30 a.m.  All are welcome.

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Trudy Wischemann is a small town researcher who writes – and prays.  You can send her your land epiphanies c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.