The Missing Trees

Published June 13, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” was running through my head as I sat down to write this column.  I think it was being broadcast telepathically from the Lindsay Olive Bowl, our historic sports complex that hosted adult baseball teams in the past as well as youths’, and high school football games as well.  The olive-shaped scoreboard, donated by Lindsay High School Students and Lindsay Ripe Olive Company, still has places to record the downs and quarters as well as the runs and innings.  Going there, even when it is empty of people, provides an experience of continuity, being part of Lindsay’s past better days as well as the better ones we hope will come.

           

     But if you’ve been following the plans for Lindsay with even a half-open eye, you’ll know they’re not coming soon.  We have at least two strikes against us, if not three:  the half-baked plans put forward by staff and the lack of critical questioning and oversight of those plans by the council.  The third strike is we, the people, who do not believe we can influence this process and just stay out of it.

           

     I think the reason the Olive Bowl was singing to me is the memory of the missing trees at the Lindsay Public Golf Course, which was closed in February to prepare for its renovation into soccer fields.  The grant money that had been secured to renovate the Olive Bowl was moved from that purpose to the purpose of demolishing the golf course in order to build five new soccer fields (at the proposal of staff, the approval of Council, and the excitement of the youth soccer teams who stood to benefit from these new fields.)  The coaches of the baseball teams got the word a little late, and so were not able to muster their youthful players to be at the council meeting where this approval occurred.

           

     The reason given for this money-shifting was that the Olive Bowl’s renovation plans had been stymied by the death of the engineer in charge, and with the non-extendable deadline of June 30 for the expenditure of these funds, the money would be rescued from potential loss by diverting them to this more easily completed project.

           

     Since February I have been watching the golf course with an anxious eye, hoping for a reprieve.  Even as the grass grew long this spring, golfers were going out and hitting balls in the rough, so to speak.  The leaves on the trees returned, and the landscape moved from being a well-trimmed park to a sortof nature preserve, still lovely, green-treed open space.

           

     Then the grass turned yellow, and sometime in late May while I was travelling, they cut the trees.  They didn’t cut them down, mind you:  they just beheaded them, cut off all their limbs, and left 10’ tall stumps standing bare-naked in the sun.  It looks brutal to me.

           

     And now there are less than three weeks to go before that money has to be spent to make soccer fields for all those excited youth.  When the kids thought of having soccer fields there, did they imagine the trees remaining to provide shade for the parents on the sidelines?  Did the coaches realize the city intended to turn a simple paradise into yet another shadeless desert in summer?  Did any of us?

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Trudy Wischemann is a pained tree-hugger who lives in Lindsay.  You can send her your thoughts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

           

We Need to Talk

Published May 9, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     The phrase “We need to talk” can sound menacing when it comes from a boss or a mate, implying the need for some change the hearer may not want. And it might sound menacing to you when I say it regarding immigration issues.  These issues are so longstanding here in the Valley that we think our lives depend on them.  They’re part of the status quo, and that’s what I think we need to talk about.

           

     Monday morning’s Fresno Bee carried yet another front-page story about the trials of people facing deportation who were brought here as children through no fault of their own.  I’m going to call them “importees” from now on, for the sense of involuntariness is what moves us to care, and it should.

           

     This man, Vanna In, considered Cambodian but born in Viet Nam in the mid-1970’s when our war on that country was just ending, leaving rice paddies, roads, villages and towns in ruins, has become a minister to gang members, having been one himself.  He’s not just a productive member of society, he’s a healer of one of this society’s wounds.  But his early childhood education, so to speak, leaves him extremely vulnerable in this tragic political moment, when Congress is too hamstrung to act.  He faces deportation to Cambodia, where he has never lived.

           

     The article, written by Carmen George, who has been bringing us compelling pieces of beauty from our region for several years now, tells how we might help this singular man.  Rev. Vanna In has petitioned Gov. Jerry Brown for a pardon, which could lead to citizenship if granted.  A petition in support of that request is available at www.change.org, and has gathered over 7,000 signatures already.

           

     We need to do more, however, than help people one at a time.  President Trump’s machete-like action cutting off the DACA program, which provided a measure of stability to some of these importees, was a rash challenge to Congress, a wielding of the power of the pen to provoke legislative action toward resolving our unresolved immigration issues.  But Congress cannot resolve them while we, the people, are so unresolved ourselves.

           

     There are people in this country, powerful people, who benefit economically from the availability of undocumented (“illegal”) immigrants.  Their political influence will make it difficult to find a national legislative solution.  Meanwhile, the economic costs are borne by the immigrants themselves and by the communities in which they live.  Rev. Vanna In’s story, luckily, shows us the benefits we also receive at the community level.

           

     Perhaps this story and others will help us start the conversations we need to be having at the local level about immigration:  about who qualifies as “American” and how we gain that status, the pathways to citizenship.  About what we do, as neighbors and friends, when ICE comes to the door of the house down the street, supposedly to “fix” the problem of illegal immigration, but ripping apart families, churches, neighborhoods, and communities instead.

           

     We need to talk, and we need to talk now, before ICE comes.  Let’s find a way to do it.

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Trudy Wischemann is the granddaughter of immigrants before there were laws to prevent them from entering.  You can send her your immigrant origins c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

 

 

Sources of Power

Published April 4, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “There are two kinds of power,” a man once told me, a black minister from South Africa I met in Davis.  He’d come to speak about peace at a conference we were holding through the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, and so I listened carefully to what he said.

           

     “The kind of power we normally think of is ‘power – over’:  the power of one person or group over another.”  That helped me understand why I automatically recoiled at the word.  Power Over is the greatest source of pain I can think of, for what it causes us to do to ourselves in defense of the threat of being overpowered by someone or something as much as the actual fact of it.

           

     “The other kind is ‘power – with,’” he continued, laying before me pictures of movements of peoples across continents and across centuries.  It is the power of unions, of co-operatives, of student groups and racial minorities.  In fact, it is the power of militaries as well: people committed to working together at risk of self for the benefit of something bigger than themselves.  Having just mentally walked through the Last Supper, that not-so-good cross of Good Friday, and the mysterious disappearance from the tomb of Easter, it’s not hard to see Jesus’ ministry as another form of Power With.

           

     Another man once told me of a third kind of power:  Power Under.  As a small farmer and a member of this community, he practiced this kind of power as a means of survival.  Many of us do.  It’s that “under the radar” form of self-protection and maintenance, staying out of harm’s way from those with plenty of Power Over.  So many of our undocumented neighbors have been practicing this form for so long, it makes it difficult to imagine another way.  It also makes it dangerous.

           

     As our young people have taken to the streets and the legislatures to protest our inability to protect them from gun violence in their schools, I have both cheered and wondered.  As the recent shooting of Stephon Clark by police in his grandma’s Sacramento backyard illustrates horribly, once again, our young black men aren’t safe anywhere.  Neither are the DACA students and their parents, whole families flying under the radar for years.

           

     Do we have the power to fix any of this?  I think we do, together.

           

     In a New York Times editorial last week, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens advocated repealing the Second Amendment.  His arguments were sound and based in the constitution.  Perhaps in the face of losing all gun sales, the NRA’s backers would be divided and weakened into allowing our legislators to pass regulations against the worst weapons, the ones we do not need in our closets much less on the streets.  Perhaps if fewer guns were in our closets and on our streets, our police officers’ fingers would be less itchy.

           

     Our undocumented neighbors, however, need another solution.  They need us to come forward into our public forums and speak for them, we who do not need papers, who do not face having our lives ripped apart by speaking.  We need to advocate for legislation to be passed in Congress to make legal pathways to citizenship for people who are operating as citizens but flying under the radar.  We need to be walking with them in spirit while they stay low.  It’s what our citizenship allows – and calls us – to do.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who often feels powerless but for words.  You can send her your ideas for reform c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Unhidden Figures

Published Mar. 21, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     A miracle occurred at last Tuesday’s Lindsay City Council meeting:  people came.   The largest percentage of them came because there were issues on the agenda which they wanted to address:  two resolutions asking for official support from our town, one on DACA, the other on moving Eagle Mountain Casino from the Tule River Reservation to some land the tribe owns near the Porterville airport.

           

     A third group, however, came to address an issue from the Council’s previous agenda Feb. 27^th:  the transfer of grant monies from the project of upgrading the town’s baseball facility, the Olive Bowl, to the new project of demolishing the city’s public golf course and building new soccer fields there.  Eight teenaged girls stood behind their little league coach as he demonstrated their need for community support.

           

     The overall effect, in my mind, was to disprove a theory long held by many in this town:  that no one cares.  Often here in Lindsay, as in small towns everywhere, people are reluctant to express their opinions, especially if their opinions appear to be at odds with the powers that be.  They can be reluctant to seem different, which is more difficult in small towns than in urban centers.  But when things matter, when things really matter, people will – and do – step up to the plate.

           

     Councilwoman Laura Cortes brought the DACA resolution to the Council’s agenda.  It says, in part, that “the City Council of the City of Lindsay stands in strong support” of the thousands of people affected by the pending loss of the DACA program.  It also urges “the swift passage of (S. 1615) and (H.R. 3440) Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act - of 2017. . .a bill that will allow thousands of young students that have lived in the United States for years, and call it home, to realize their education dream and give them a path to legalizing their immigration status.”

           

     As our newest council member, Cortes’ action was bold.  It was rewarded by passage 4:0, with Councilman Watson abstaining.  But the real value was seeing the youth of this town step forward to the microphone and tell the Council what it wanted:  relief for themselves and their neighbors from the terrible prospects imposed by the current U.S. ICE deportation efforts.  I was in awe of them and their leaders.  Our teenagers were every bit as eloquent in speaking up for the realities of their lives as those students from Parkland have been about theirs.  Their issue is no less threatening.

           

     Friday I stopped by the library and found a book at the front desk that was offered to me for free, part of a program to generate interest in reading.  It was Tim Z. Hernandez’ book All They Will Call You, published last year, about his project getting names on the graves of the unnamed deportees killed in a plane crash in 1948.  The crash – and the namelessness of the deportees – was memorialized in a song by Woody Guthrie titled “Plane Wreck Over Los Gatos Canyon” but known by many simply as “Deportee.”  The last two lines of the chorus say “You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane.  All they will call you will be Deportee.”

           

     As I took the book home, I realized that one of the beauties of this current movement to staunch deportations is that we are working, as a people, to protect against this namelessness, this loss of identity.  With students like ours, we are likely to succeed at least at that.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who always has a song in her head.  You can send her your concerns about Lindsay or other small towns c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Unite & Conquer

Published March 7, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette
 
     It’s been a sad week in Lake Woebehere, my adopted home town.  Last Tuesday, Feb. 27^th, the City Council voted 3:2 to demolish the historic public resource known as the Lindsay City Golf Course and build 5 soccer fields on the property instead.  We’ll be seeing bulldozers there very shortly.

           

     At the Council meeting there were 20 or 30-some little soccer players shepherded there by a few mothers and their coach, Mr. Faustino Perez.  The three women who spoke on behalf of the soccer players are employees of the City, and they spoke confidently of the need for greater access to playing fields for this burgeoning youth activity.  Mr. Perez followed their comments with a description of the hardships these youth were experiencing for lack of places to play.

           

     Four adults representing Lindsay’s youth baseball teams were also there, because the money for “repurposing” of the golf course is coming from a grant recently acquired to upgrade the Olive Bowl (our historic baseball facility) and Kaku Park, an adjoining triangle of ground with facilities for children in an area where there is very little for children to do.  These coaches were not as prepared to defend against the “repurposing” of the money granted to support their efforts; their day jobs don’t give them direct access to the powers that be.

           

     There were some silent majority types sitting in the audience, too, adults from the boomer generation for whom the destruction of the golf course feels like destruction of their personal history, not to mention golfing future.  “I feel like crying,” one woman said to me after the meeting, though she did not address the council when it came time to speak.  When the bulldozers arrive, I imagine a lot of us will feel like crying.

           

     With the little soccer players standing there behind the podium, it was hard to question the rightness of Bill Zigler’s decision to propose this change, promoting one sport (soccer) to the detriment of two (baseball and golf.)  Councilman Velasquez did, however, providing multiple reasons why destruction of the golf course should be reconsidered, and lodged one of the two No votes.  Mayor Kimball also expressed regret about the loss of this public resource and concern about the hastiness of the decision, casting the second No.  Councilman Salinas argued that at least it will remain open space rather than being developed with housing, while Councilman Watkins expressed hope for the resurrection of active use of this public land (he golfs in Exeter.)  Councilwoman Cortes was adamant about the importance of supporting soccer in this community.

           

     I agree with all of them, but I question whether this decision is fiscally responsible.  The City owns a facility with two indoor soccer fields, which were built entirely with public funds that were garnered on behalf of serving the underserved.  Building new soccer fields which will compete with our indoor facility, while continuing to neglect the baseball park (long overdue for maintenance) and demolishing one of the last remaining public golf courses in Tulare County, seems like just another bad decision in a long stream of bad planning.

           

     But to challenge this decision, it will take the residents coming together to support all the recreational needs of the community.  It will require us to take back our voice as the represented public, and tell them what we really need:  a city government responsive to its citizens, not the bulldozers.

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

The Hope of Action

Published  in edited form Jan. 30, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette
 
     “How many names will it take to stop this thing?” a woman asked me after last week’s Lindsay City Council meeting.

           

     She was referring to the proposed roundabout at Hermosa and Westwood and the signature-gathering effort she’d participated in a few weeks before, heroic by this (or any other) community’s standards.  I don’t remember my answer, although I’m sure it wasn’t encouraging, clouded by my experiences here over the last 7+ years.

           

     Yet, before they’d gathered those 800+ names, there was no hope of stopping this thing.  Before individuals started asking questions about the safety of school children crossing there, the potential increase in traffic congestion, the high cost and possibly better (and cheaper) solutions, there was no hope.  Not one drop.

           

     When she asked that important question, we were standing in the dark in front of city hall, the meeting still going on.  The agenda item to approve the roundabout’s environmental document (called “Initial Study/ Mitigated Negative Declaration,”) had been put off for the second time, this time without explanation.  Perhaps it was because two of the five council members, including Mayor Kimball, were absent.  Perhaps they expected challenges from outside experts called to testify by the San Joaquin Valley Environmental Defense Center, a non-profit in which I participate.  Perhaps they expected a large turnout of community people and wanted to discourage the effort.  Or perhaps they actually knew the document wasn’t ready and wanted to give staff more time to improve it.  Who knows?

           

     What I know is that those 800+ names gathered in the first four days of 2018, when most people were just recovering from the holidays, are what kept the Council from approving the roundabout on Jan. 9^th, and again on Jan. 23^rd.  Those community members’ questions, requiring answers in the document, have delayed the normal rubber stamp approval of yet another one of Lindsay’s Follies. And the persistence of community voices wanting to be part of the solution is the only thing that’s going keep yet another community design disaster from happening.

           

     Last week’s Sun-Gazette carried a fiery editorial about Lindsay’s bad attitude toward repaying TCAG for misused Measure R funds.  It made a very important point that should be remembered now, as the City once again contemplates spending public funds they consider “free” (meaning they come from some coffers other than the city’s tax base.)  That point is that these “free” funds are still taxpayer dollars.  We all have contributed, one way or another.  They’re our monies, and in our behalf, conditions have been placed on their use to ensure they go toward real public improvements, not boondoggles.

           

     The City of Lindsay has not demonstrated an awareness of that fact, much less respect for it.  When one resident questioned the high price tag of this roundabout, the city’s response was, essentially, “it’s not our money, don’t worry about that.”  We do worry.  We’re offended by extravagant, wasteful projects in our town (which unfortunately we have in abundance) while we jounce uncomfortably down our un-mended streets.  And it is our money.

           

     So, friends, look at what we’ve done so far with our actions, large and small.  There is hope of solving some of the traffic issues at that intersection if we don’t let up.  We must require the City of Lindsay to respond to the concerns and voices of its residents, now and in the future.  That’s where Hope lives.

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Trudy Wischemann is a community researcher who writes.  You can send her your active hopes c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Come On Home

Published in edited form Jan. 17, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


“You’ve got to exert your ownership over the place you live in,
        or you won’t have that place.”
               
                Bruce Springsteen, saying what the song “This Land is Your Land” means
                in the PBS documentary on Woody Guthrie, "I Ain't Got No Home."


     “Do you have to fight about everything?” a friend asked in an unfriendly voice.  We were talking about Lindsay’s proposed roundabout at Hermosa and Westwood, adjacent to Jefferson School and half a block from the entrances to the Olive Tree Plaza.  “I wish I didn’t,” is what I wish I had answered her.           

    
    I’ve got a thing against fighting.  Most of us do.  I got mine from my small-town mother, who abhors fighting in general and understands the underside of the silent class wars that go on in small towns.  Better to go along and be friendly or at least not noticed, because standing out can make you an outsider fast.

           

     But a small handful of Lindsay residents, most of them lifetime members, got up the gumption to gather signatures on a petition against this project.  They gathered over 800 names in four days, 300 more people than voted in the last election.  They overcame their fears about fighting city hall, motivated by concerns about the negative impacts of this project.  I think more of us need to join them.

           

     At the next City Council meeting, Jan. 23^rd (which begins at 6 p.m.), the staff will address some of the questions raised at the public hearing on Jan. 9^th as well as some raised at the public information meeting Jan. 4^th.  The Council then will decide whether to approve the environmental document prepared by the city planning department, a requirement of CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act.)  This is the only point where citizen input has to be considered.  After that, the Council is free to approve the plan regardless what the public thinks or feels about it.

           

     There are genuine defects in the environmental document.  With the aid of experts in the fields of traffic engineering and design, the San Joaquin Valley Environmental Defense Center will address technical flaws in the report.  What is really absent, however, is public participation and a public vision of the town’s future.

           

     There’s a song by the Milk Carton Kids called “The Ash and Clay” which pertains to our situation.  I first heard it at the end of a movie about a rural community that nearly fell prey to a corporation seeking to drill natural gas wells through their aquifer, potentially contaminating their only source of water.  Many in the community wanted the leases as a way to survive financially in an area whose economic base was waning.  A few fighters struggled against both the corporation and the general community’s fears of repercussions, and I thought the film represented well the struggle of public resources and community well-being.  Some lines from the song, however, capture this moment perfectly:

“I know we want what’s best for us – I know it has to come at a price;
I also know the trouble that you find when you stop being nice.
You look around you one day; what you once knew didn’t stay….
Come on home before the girls are grown, come on home to fight.” 

           

     Come be part of the solution Tuesday night, Lindsay City Council chambers, 6 p.m.

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Trudy Wischemann is a small-town researcher who always has a song in her head.  You can send her your thoughts about our roundabouts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247

People Care

Published Jan. 10, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     There was a meeting at Lindsay’s Wellness Center last Thursday about the proposed roundabout at Hermosa and Westwood.  It was sponsored by the City of Lindsay and attended by 30-50 townspeople.  Though not a city council meeting, the two newest council members attended: Laura Cortes and Brian Watson, supporting staff members Bill Zigler, Mike Camarena and Neyva Amescua.

           

     A small handful of women, however, brought evidence that more people here really care about the future of our town:  815 names had been gathered on a petition against the roundabout over a span of four days.  That is spectacular evidence of both the commitment of the signature gatherers and the concerns of the public at large.

           

     I find it hard to imagine a roundabout there, much less that it will improve traffic congestion at the times when students are coming or going.  The roundabout will reduce the number of on-street parking places which are highly sought at certain hours and normally overtaxed.  It will reduce the four lanes of Hermosa to two, funneling a high-energy stream of traffic coming into our town right at the point where the entrances/exits of the shopping center add some excitement already.  And if it’s anything like the roundabout we already have (God forbid), attempts to avoid that intersection will further confound drivers trying to get into or out of town.

           

     The meeting, however, demonstrated another real circulation problem chronic in Lindsay, which I will lay directly at the feet of the city manager.  Information flows only one direction here, from his desk down.  Despite his attempts to look civic-minded, information coming up from “below,” from the residents of this community, is unwelcome and rebuffed the moment it appears to be in conflict with what he “knows.”

           

     He went to a great deal of effort Thursday night to establish that what he “knows” (i.e., that a roundabout is the best solution to the traffic congestion at that intersection) is supported by outside experts, in particular two community development geniuses who came in 2006 and gave their on-the-spot advice that a roundabout is what we need.  Reading their 2-page resumes in English, which councilwoman Cortes translated into Spanish, consumed 15 minutes of the meeting.

           

     Yet when questioned by one of the residents who came, a man who asked simply for a cost comparison between the roundabout and a four-way traffic signal, our expert city manager shut down.  Although that information was easily at hand, he replied “I’m not going to answer that question now.  This meeting is for information only.  We’re writing down your questions and we’ll answer them individually after the meeting.”

           

     The difference in costs of alternative solutions sounds to me like pretty simple information to offer at such a meeting.  Yet he stonewalled, and I believe it’s because he really does not want to, or cannot handle the ideas of other people.  At one point folks became so aggravated by this response, one of the women who had gathered signatures asked “Is this thing set in stone?  Are you wasting our time here?”  Then she added “How many names will it take to stop this thing?”  Her question went unanswered.

           

     People in Lindsay really do care about our town.  That caring is a resource that should be nurtured and incorporated into the development of our future.  There are planning methodologies that recognize this powerful component of community design, and I think we should bring some of those experts to town.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate with an all-but-thesis Masters degree in environmental planning from Berkeley.  You can send her your thoughts on roundabouts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below

O Little Town

Published Dec. 20, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     The gingerbread woman reappeared when I opened some boxes of ornaments this weekend.  I wanted to do a little light-handed decorating, at least in my kitchen window, my hearth. I pulled back the tissue paper wrapped around her plump little body, saw who it was, and tenderly wrapped her back up, deciding against that trip down memory lane.  Then I found the little wreath I’d hung to frame her years before, and my hands decided to go back after all, back to the time when she meant something real to me.

           

     I’d written about this cheerful kitchen angel in this column, so I dug up the piece from the notebooks where I’d once kept them organized. What I discovered when I re-read it surprised me.  In the first week of Jan., 2011, I was still in love with my community, tender toward its complexities, not yet tortured by them.  It felt good to remember.

           

     The gingerbread woman reverie was triggered by community pain I was just coming to know thanks to my new job at RN Market.  A much loved woman, Inglatina Huerta, had been killed on her way to work around 5 a.m. on New Year’s Eve Day.  She had a head-on collision with the son of one of Lindsay’s first families, who was coming home from a party. The story I heard is that he was not tested for alcohol.  An Hispanic woman on her way to work, killed by a white boy on his way home from a party and not made to bear any consequences: it was an old story that could have happened anywhere.  People suffered in silence.  That’s how we do it here.

           

     People had just begun to not suffer in silence two months before, when the revelations about high salaries Lindsay’s top employees were being paid splattered against the reality that a high percentage of the town’s residents have trouble paying their water bills.  In mid-October 2010 about a thousand people met in the high school gymnasium for a highly-guarded city council meeting, purportedly to hear their complaints.  At first I was reluctant to get involved, so I simply wrote about it.  The first families fought back.  In the columns before the gingerbread woman, I was just beginning to feel the effect of moving socially from one side of the community to the other, and still holding some middle ground.

           

     That was before the housing fiascos were revealed, and before the effects of Rich Wilkinson’s appointment to city manager could be accumulated.  It was before coming to the podium during public comment period at city council meetings and discovering we had to fight for the right to speak, before the plan to demolish the Citrus Exchange building, and before the lawsuits we filed to try to keep that from happening.  Back then I was afraid of losing my sense of home in this town through the act of protesting. I didn’t know that loss would occur inside of me.

           

     “It’s just love,” the gingerbread woman had told me about Inglatina’s accident and all the pain and silent discord that followed.  “Grief is the price we pay for love,” I’d quoted a fellow Quaker then.  It’s hard to remember.  But as we, against the dark, deck our homes with the lights of life and share our wonder about a birth on the wrong side of the tracks in Bethlehem 2017+ years ago, maybe perspective will come.  All this fighting is just about love for a little town.

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

 

           

Preserving the Future

Published in edited form Sept. 20, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     While in Dunsmuir two weeks ago, I overheard something wise from an acquaintance, who’d been told “You can drag the past around with you like a dead horse, but you can never bring it back to life.”  I was struck by the truth of the imagery, and put it in my mental pocket for future use.

           

     But something else I brought home from Dunsmuir convinced me that the past is an ineradicable part of the present, as well as necessary for the future.  It is a small book on Dunsmuir, one of the “Images of America” series published by Arcadia Publishing Co.  I fell in love with these books when I worked at the Book Garden in Exeter ten years ago, and exactly for this reason:  they show us – literally, in photographs with captions - the connections between our past and our present.  They help us understand what might be possible in the future.

           

     As a carpenter’s daughter, I have a natural fascination for how things are built.  My father builds houses, and I have watched the process from building forms for pouring the concrete foundation to the last row of shingles along the roof’s peak.  I watched him build community, too, from co-operatively constructing a boat-launch/clubhouse on an edge of Puget Sound to forming a sewer district intended to keep us from polluting that body of water.  I watched as our primitive roads lined with wooded lots became neighborhoods during the post-war 1950’s.  My fascination with how things are built now extends to towns.

           

     Like many towns, Dunsmuir’s development was defined by the railroad, which was spurred by outside corporate interests to convey coal from British Columbia to San Francisco.  In turn, the railroad promoted Dunsmuir as a tourist resort, as well as carrying the products of surrounding forests to distant markets.  But it was the development of the automobile that brought prosperity to the little town, which seemed to thrive when Highway 99 ran down its main street.  Despite fires, heavy snows and avalanches, and flooding of the Sacramento River repeatedly reshaping the facts of Dunsmuir’s life, the little town has re-built on its past, retaining a sense of authenticity.

           

     And of course it’s the people who make that possible.  Ron McCloud, who co-authored the book with Deborah Harton, owns the True Value hardware store on the main street, which is part museum, with shining wood floors as well as inventory to supply everything you’d need to live there (visit www.dunsmuirhardware.com to see for yourself!)  Across the street, wedged between cafes, is a thrift store run by third- and fourth-generation Dunsmuirites whose profits support single mothers in need.   There’s a record shop/book store aimed at us Boomers, multiple shops featuring artists’ and craftspersons’ wares, and a storefront for the local watershed preservation organization.  There’s a dispensary for medical marijuana across from the Amtrak station.  And there’s a noon signal horn every day that becomes an emergency warning when it blows 5 times in succession.

           

     When I mentioned Ron McCloud to a friend here, he said “Oh, he’s like our Chris Brewer.”  Having worked for Chris and Sally at the Book Garden, I can say “yes.”  Chris has managed to bring the powerhouse of history into the preservation of the future in Exeter.  I think the example of both men is worth noting. But it takes a host of people dedicated to the community’s well-being to connect the past to the present – and that’s what preserves the future of our small towns.  Let us join hands.

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Trudy Wischemann is a community development researcher who writes.  You can send her your town development stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Rose-Colored Glasses

Published in slightly edited form July 26, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Last week I confessed the little fling I’m having with girly pink glasses.  But most of my life I’ve been associated with a deeper, and more consequential shade of eyewear:  rose.

           

     The phrase “rose-colored glasses,” of course, refers to the lenses, not the frames.  It’s a metaphor for a way of seeing the world in which its darker side is not visible.  People who are accused of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses are being criticized for not seeing (and not being willing to see, since glasses are removable,) the tougher, grimmer parts of existence.  They only want to see the good, not the bad.

           

      I can remember a time in my life when I qualified for that criticism.  It was before I left for college, when I still could watch the news on television and simply not comprehend the civil rights uprisings in LA, Detroit, Chicago and the entire southeastern U.S.  Then I left home and started trying to make a new one.  Then came the oil embargo of the 1970’s and the tortuous end of the Viet Nam War.  That’s when reality set in:  bad exists, as well as the possibility that it reigns.  Since then, the question for me has been where and how do you take your stand against that?

           

     I’m sure that people who met me when I first moved to Lindsay in 1993 thought I had rose-colored glasses strapped tightly to my face.  In response to their sentiments bemoaning this community’s losses, partly due to the 1990 Freeze but perhaps even more to Lindsay Olive’s collapse and Sunkist’s decline in market-power over the prior decade, I would smilingly say “but look at what you still have.”

           

     And I meant it.  What I found in Lindsay then was a level of authenticity and environmental intimacy that I hadn’t known since I moved away from Puyallup, WA.  As our economic shakedown continued, however, I began to experience losses in the community, too.  By the time the City started ripping apart the park and downtown, I was attached enough to this place to mourn its demise, even though the replacements promised to resurrect the community’s viability (which they haven’t.)  For years my metaphorical glasses were dark.

           

     Then came the Lindsay Uprising of 2010, when local residents found their voices and raised them in protest of exorbitant wages and unfair lending practices at City Hall.  They called it corruption, and though the people never found a way to legally prosecute these nefarious activities, it started a call for governmental accountability and transparency that still has teeth.

           

     All we wanted then was a city government that was responsible to its residents, not to special interests.  I think that’s still what we need, and what we still can work to achieve.  Call me hopeful, not blind.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who works to be clear-sighted.  You can send her your thoughts on lens colors c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

The Not-O.K. Corral

Published in edited form June 14, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     I grew up hearing the phrase “Meanwhile, back at the O.K. Corral, ...”  It meant that the real stuff was happening just around the corner while we were looking somewhere else.  That phrase returned to me last week when I learned about the passage of Lindsay’s Measure O.

           

     The O.K. Corral was a livery stable in Tombstone, Arizona where the most famous shootout in the Wild West occurred in 1881.  Wikipedia says it lasted 30 seconds, used 30 bullets, killed 3 out of 5 bad guys and wounded 3 out of 4 good guys.  U.S. Marshall Wyatt Earp was the good guy who walked away unscathed.

           

     It was an era when outlaws outnumbered lawmen in the western part of the U.S.   This time, however, the lawmen won, forecasting the future.  The West would eventually be safe for settling in towns, homes, farms and ranches.

           

     It’s hard to see the connection between that event and the City of Lindsay’s victory at the ballot box.  But there are some similarities, primarily that “the good guys” appear to have won, saving Lindsay from pending financial disaster.  At least, that’s the hope.

           

     Although I voted against it privately, I didn’t oppose Measure O publicly for several reasons.  First, I don’t know that it won’t help.  I have my doubts that it will help and fears that it will hurt, but I don’t know.  Second, I was chicken.  With all the perfect Vote Yes signs on the lawns of upstanding people in the community, a hand-painted Vote No sign on my lawn would have been politically incorrect.  Third, at least we had the opportunity to vote for or against this tax increase (thanks to state law,) unlike the property tax increases we experienced due to Townsend’s projects, which we had no say in whatsoever.

           

     But the fourth reason was political.  The current City administration thinks this column causes a lot of their problems.  I wanted to see if they are right.

           

    Looking at the results, it’s hard to call this a victory for democracy.  Of an estimated 8,000 voting-age residents, Lindsay has 2,789 registered voters.  As of June 12, only 561 people had cast ballots:  380 for, 181 against.  Less than 14% of Lindsay’s registered voters (and less than half of one percent of the voting age residents) raised our sales tax to the highest rate in the county.  Six percent of registered voters resisted that increase, without any campaign, any lawn signs or bumper stickers, or any prompting from this column.  A handful of people decided the future of Lindsay’s retail merchants serving 12,000 city residents and thousands more residing outside the city limits.  That’s not a victory for the town even if it is for the City.

           

     Things aren’t O.K. down at the corral.  Two weeks ago in this paper, editor Paul Myer advised vigilance on the part of community members to ensure that the hoped-for additional revenues will be spent as projected.  Unfortunately, thanks to this city’s uncivic practices, citizen participation is marginal at best.   I think we might need some new good guys to ride into town and give us a hand.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural community researcher who writes. You can send her your thoughts about our 8.5 % sales tax c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.