Beyond Dreaming

Published in abbreviated form June 21, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     This morning I woke with a dream that was more like a backward vision.  I was in the old Lindsay Gazette office on Honolulu St. awaiting the bad news (for me) from Reggie Ellis (who was still the editor) that I was being laid off, even though in the dream (as in real life) I was not an employee.  The paper simply no longer could afford to give me these column inches, he said, because “no one reads anymore.”  The paper’s fate was looking grim.

           

     I know the dream was in the past not only because the Gazette had not yet merged with the Exeter Sun, but because the town still had two hardware stores.  I had just written about one of them, a beautiful piece (I thought) about how the community gathered not only its goods there, but also a sense of well-being and purpose, as well as a portion of its local news (sometimes known as gossip.)  A good hardware store is even better than the grocery for reinforcing our domestic claim to this place and each other, since there we tend our homes and not just our stomachs.  Pipe fittings and curtain rods, nails, nuts and bolts; seedlings in spring, lawn rakes and leaf bags in fall; tools for the garden and garage, picture hangars and furnace filters, flags to fly on the Fourth of July – a good hardware store is really the hub of town.           

     Lindsay had two hardware stores when I moved here in 1993.  Then Western Auto closed, followed a couple of years later by Race and Landers’ True Value.  For several years we had no hardware store at all, until Art Serna re-opened the True Value across the street from the Race and Landers building, which remains empty to this day.  In my dream this reality was just a trajectory, the future foreseen but yet to be fulfilled.

           

     For someone in my research area, small towns are like canaries in the mine.  When they start to die off, it’s a sign that something toxic is in the air, figuratively speaking.  It’s easy to blame our small towns’ disintegration on the growth of Visalia, Tulare and Porterville, with their medical facilities, big-box stores and other worldly attractions.  But what’s really crumbling is the ground beneath our feet:  the smaller, resident, owner-operated farm system built by the agricultural cooperatives of Sunkist and Lindsay Olive, sustained locally by the Lindsay-Strathmore Irrigation District distributing the waters from the federal Friant-Kern Canal.

           

     Remnants of that system remain, but giant chunks have been replaced by urban investors and the fruits of industrial agriculture.  This does not bode well for the town, much less the remaining hardware store - or the newspaper, for that matter.  Yet these towns we live in – Lindsay, Exeter, Farmersville, Woodlake, even unincorporated Ivanhoe and Strathmore – are critical to the well-being of our region and nation.  They are the incubators of citizenship and the seedbeds of our humanity.

           

     There is much we can do to conserve this social resource.  We can protect the remnants, and use them to generate the new, sustainable agricultural system we need.  We can learn from them how to build churches and civic organizations, support the schools, and generate new businesses with the wisdom from their experience.  We can “buy local” and grow our own rather than put our money where the ravenous corporate mouth is.  We can rebuild sustainable towns by rebuilding sustainable farms that raise families who know where food comes from and communities connected to their source of livelihood.

           

     “Impossible,” you say? Not according to my Methodist songwriter-friend John Pitney, who has spent his entire ministry singing and preaching that reality back to life in rural places across the country.  John’s work has brought to life the theology of land in the Judeo-Christian tradition in places like Idaho, the Great Plains, Washington and Oregon.  He even planted a mustard seed of hope here in Fresno in 1992.   It’s not impossible, John says, because we’re being called to that work by our Creator.  In the last verse of one of his songs, “If You Want Your Neighbor’s Land,” he writes:

 

 “Now it may be beyond our dreaming

when we see the land divided

and re-familied by the neighbors

who can keep the world from fear. 

 

But you should know it’s not our cleverness

that keeps the land reforming,

but that Wisdom beyond dreaming

that returns our children here.”

 

           

     And all the people say “Amen.”

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Trudy Wischemann is a once-nomadic researcher who came home to write. You can send her your land & kitchen reform ideas c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Jessup's Tire

Published May 17, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “I’m really going to miss this place,” Sallie McDonald told me last week as we sat in what used to be Jessup’s Tire.

           

     I’d come to find out how I made the terrible mistake in my column two weeks ago, implying that the new owner of the building was being unreasonable about the date to vacate the premises. “Let’s just say he was understandably eager to begin work,” she corrected me.

           

     We looked around at the walls and floors, the windows letting in morning light, the beauty of the past preserved in the present use of the building by the Lindsay-Strathmore Coordinating Council in their modest, but critical offerings to the community.  I realized that I’m really going to miss this place, too.  It will be demolished by the new owner.

           

     The thrift store’s counter is in the same place where I first met John Jessup in the last years of the tire shop’s operation.  I went there with the excuse of wanting to know if I could still buy tires for the 1947 Dodge flatbed I’d acquired in August, 1994, hoping to use it as a parade vehicle for my rural advocacy work.  I looked around as he thumbed through the catalogs of tires, finally delivering a certain “yes” to my question.  The years of serving this community showed in the photos of Lindsay High football teams and class pictures displayed on the walls, the ads for cars and tire companies, the word “vulcanizing” prominent.  John Jessup held his place in this town with dignity and respect.  I felt privileged to be there to witness it.  On the shop’s last day of business, I photographed the interior, wall-to-wall.

           

     “Who knows the history of this building, how the City came to own it?” I asked Sallie.  She said “Joe.”

           

     Joe Mohnike sells insurance two doors down from Jessup’s Tire, so I passed by his open office door, saw him sitting at his desk, and went inside.  It turns out that Jessup’s Tire had once been his grandfather’s livery stable, one of two in town.  The stable had a place for dipping livestock in creosote to protect them from vermin, and Joe’s first sentences of concern were that the soil contamination there should prevent the demolition of the building.

           

     Another reason appeared.  “John Jessup gave that building to the school district for educational programs and some kind of museum,” he followed.  “They didn’t want it, so they sold it to the City for $2,” he said, correcting another mistake I’d made two weeks ago.

           

     But his concern about the building was trumped by his concern for LSCC’s efforts.   “It’s sickening,” he said, “the one thing this town really needs – the Coordinating Council - is being pushed aside.  No one’s getting rich from it, and it brings people downtown.  Nothing else does that but the hardware store – what does that tell you?”

           

     Both Joe and Sallie view the large number of empty run-down buildings in town as part of the problem we face in revitalizing our community.  These buildings are the town’s anchors, like the root of a tooth.  The historical knowledge and caring needed, which seem to be missing at City Hall, are here, waiting to be tapped.  May we find another path than the one we’re on.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rapt listener to Lindsay’s stories.  You can send her yours c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.  Thanks to my editorial board for keeping this story straight.

Mayday Mayday

Published May 3, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Circle the wagons, folks:  here comes another City of Lindsay sneak attack on our culture and history.

           

     I stopped at the Lindsay-Strathmore Coordinating Council’s thrift store last week hoping to find some kind of large saucer to put under a pot of wildflowers.  The shop was nearly empty of people and goods, much reduced from its normal stock.  I saw Sallie McDonald sitting at her desk in the next room, so I stopped to talk.

           

     “We have to be out by June 10^th and I can’t find another place to rent,” she told me.  I looked at this woman I first met during the Coordinating Council’s heroic efforts following the 1990 Freeze:  feeding people, helping them find clothes and work, keeping the children in school, keeping the lights on.  It was an emergency effort that grew into a sustaining effort:  making sure there was some place to go for help when employment flagged, when bills toppled family budgets, when eviction notices and red-inked shut-off letters arrived.  I went there myself one year when plans collapsed.

           

     When I first encountered LSCC in early 1992, they were located in two empty shops in the 200 block of West Honolulu, one across the street from the other.  It was difficult, but the spaces were donated, a temporary arrangement in tough times.  A few years later, when Jessup Tires closed their doors and the building was donated to the City in hope of preserving it, LSCC was offered the space.

           

     A tire shop is not necessarily the most hospitable environment for a food distribution effort, but it has one necessary feature:  no steps.  The food is delivered by Food Link on pallets with fork lifts.  Storing it until it the pallets can be broken down and redistributed into family sized bundles requires space for tables and refrigeration units, not to mention the volunteers who man that operation.  One year I dropped by with 100 bags of Fred Smeds’ Ruby Red raisins to donate for the Christmas food baskets, and it looked like Santa’s Workshop.  Elves everywhere.

           

     Sallie told me that the City has offered to “let” them use the gravel parking lot behind the current location for distributing food.  That would mean the whole operation would have to be done in one day, rain or shine, including clean-up.  That idea ignores the reality of what is needed by either LSCC or its clients and the entire community it serves.  It is offensive.

           

     When I called Sallie two days later, I learned that the new owner wants them out in ten days.  I don’t know whether he has legal grounds for that demand, but this entire episode needs more public airing and input, or we will be a community without caring before May ends.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer in Lindsay.  You can send your ideas for LSCC relocation c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

When One Cries

Published March 8, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


      One night last week while washing dishes, out of the corner of my ear I heard a man on public TV say “When one cries, we all cry.”  He was part Cherokee and he was discussing a problem of tribal membership blocked for those who also were part Negro.  Although some members of the tribe disagreed, to this man one drop of Cherokee blood was not negated by one drop of Black blood.  For him, one drop of Cherokee blood is enough to qualify anyone for membership in the tribe of Us.

           

     “When one cries, we all cry.”  When I heard those words, I wanted to cry myself.  I admired, even envied the understanding of community that says to its individuals “You are not alone, no matter what.”  Then later that week, in the PBS program on African history, I learned that Africa is the cradle not just of civilization but of humanity itself.  The first human beings evolved in Africa and then migrated to other parts of the globe, sometimes in response to drastic climate change and war.  What anthropologists, the scientists of humanity, now believe is that all of us have a drop of Black blood in us.  So, when one of us cries.…

           

     Community was called on this week in Lindsay.  At Tuesday night’s city council meeting, the minister from New Life Church, Pastor Roger Wright, asked the council to consider hosting some kind of seminar that would clarify the city’s role in managing the immigration questions before the country right now.  “In my small congregation of about 80 people I have four families who are undocumented.  These are really good people,” he said, then repeated “really good people.”  He let the meaning and the truth of that evaluation sink in.

           

     His appeal was not political, but a call to compassion because “There’s a lot of fear out there.”  Noting that some of the fear has been triggered by misinformation, he felt that fear could be relieved by something that would educate the people about their real standing in the community.  It’s relief that only our city’s government can provide.

           

     Pastor Wright’s plea was seconded by an organizer for Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights, who noted that people all over our region are frightened.  He said that those who have no criminal record need to know that they can call the police if they are victims of crime without being deported themselves.  He was followed by a Lindsay resident who summed it up this way:   “They (the undocumented) need to know that Lindsay will protect its own.”  What all three men were saying is that these people need to know they are ours, that when one of them cries…

           

     Then, at the Wednesday evening Cultural Arts Forum, the audience heard about homeless people in Tulare County and within the Lindsay Unified School District.  Jason Britt and Angel Galvez from Tulare County Health and Human Services were joined by Linda Ledesma from Lindsay’s Healthy Start Family Resource Center.  Together they painted a portrait of our homeless population in terms of numbers, causes, and possible solutions, giving the problem a set of human faces I could recognize in my mind.  However, when one of the speakers mentioned that there are no shelters in Lindsay for homeless people, a voice rose from the audience asking “why?”

           

     Mr. Britt explained that most shelters are developed and maintained by non-profit organizations, including church groups, and that the county does not provide this service.  But when the woman repeated her question “Why are there no shelters in Lindsay?” he simply said “I don’t know.”  Then she said “I’m homeless,” and stood up to address the audience herself.

           

     She spoke about where she sleeps each night, how she maintains herself, where her money comes from.  She told us why most shelters are not an option for her because she has two small dogs who form her entire family, and most shelters don’t admit people with pets.  She turned what had been an incredibly informing presentation into an incredibly moving experience, her personal story reinforcing what we’d heard from the experts.

           

     The truth is, this brave woman made it easier to see that the people who bear the nametag “homeless” are also ours.  The potential solutions to homelessness, as well as those of undocumented immigrants, are many and will take multiple initiatives.  But perhaps where we start is with this basic principle of community:  when one cries, we all cry.

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Trudy Wischemann is a native of the Pacific Northwest who migrated south to Lindsay.  You can send her your thoughts on rights to a roof and land c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Standing Tall

To be published Dec. 7, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “The Corps of Engineers just denied the permit half an hour ago” said my step-mother triumphantly in Sunday’s phone call.  She knew I’d welcome that news even though our conversations haven’t traversed the Standing Rock Sioux’s territory or the corporate pipeline that threatens it. 

           

     The bravery of those people camping out at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers in defense of their rights to their lands has had me standing taller lately.  However, to think that our government could respond appropriately at this moment of great need – in fact, the Corps of Engineers, which is not known for its interest in public input – has re-instated my belief in this system.  Suddenly I feel glad to be Uncle Sam’s daughter.

           

     It’s all about land, when it comes right down to it, how land matters ‘way more than we think.  The Standing Rock Sioux know how much land matters, as do most Native American tribes.  Despite treaties and lands reserved for their exclusive use, their history is peppered with losses of control over resources and their quality of life to the kind of thinking behind the Dakota Access Pipeline.  

           

    It’s watching others stand up for land that’s straightened my backbone, like Dave Archambault, the Standing Rock tribal chairman, who was interviewed Friday on the PBS News Hour.  Responding to the pipeline CEO’s statement that the tribe was worried about nothing, he said “If the safeguards are all there, why not put it (back to the original route) north of Bismark?”

           

     “He (the CEO) will say that it can’t go there because of the population of the community, the environmental impacts, the sacred sites that are there, the wetlands that it has to cross. These are all the same concerns that we have. It’s just that we’re a lot fewer (in population.)  And so, if there is no worry, if the safeguards are there, then relocate it to that location. That’s OK.”

               

     As he said this, his face showed nothing: no anger, no glee at beating that kind of logic at its own game, no snide-bordering-on-vindictive disgust like my face would have shown had I pulled that off.  He was remarkable, sitting there in the News Hour studio in his light blue, button-down collar shirt, no jacket, no tie, no eagle feathers in his hair or silver jewelry draped around his neck.  He was just a man speaking truth to power who had come to Washington to discuss his peoples’ concerns with the federal government, which Sunday’s news confirmed was worth the effort.

           

     The news earlier in the week that several thousand veterans would be joining the tribes at their encampment, intending to make a human wall between the land protectors and the proto-military police forces who had drenched the protestors with water cannons the week before, had confirmed the national importance of this seemingly tiny decision.  Have we not had enough of our culture’s and our government’s ignorant, arrogant demeaning treatment of native people?  The veterans’ actions say that we have.

           

     I feel that the efforts of the Standing Rock tribe and other Americans, Native and natural-born citizens both, have been a great gift to those of us who feel compelled to question the erosive aspects of “development.”  “We have every right to protest this pipeline,” Archambault said.  “We have indigenous lands, we have ancestral lands, we have treaty lands. The pipeline is 500 feet from our reservation border.… (I)t’s unfortunate that this nation continues to treat our tribe and tribal nations around this country in this manner.”

           

     Monday morning I logged on to the PBS News Hour website to follow up the Corps’ announcement.  There, in an article by Jenni Monet, was a photo of a 97-year-old woman standing in a gymnasium on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation Saturday, waiting to greet the veterans arriving in support.  First Lt. Marcela LeBeau of the Lakota tribe had served in the U.S. Army as a nurse between 1944 and 1947.  Dressed in a plum-colored, dress-length Ultrasuede raincoat, her powder-blue snow parka lying on a folding table behind her, her silver hair piled high on her head, Lt. LeBeau stood tall as she waited for the volunteer troops with a placid, peaceful smile on her face, a smile only slightly wider than the Mona Lisa’s.  Did she know then that this effort was going to work?  Or did she only know that it was the right thing to do, regardless?

    When governments and corporations do not respect the laws of the land or the people who live there, we all have every right to protest.  In fact, I believe we have an obligation.  Standing tall at Standing Rock, the veterans of wars both foreign and domestic have shown us how to reclaim our democracy. May we stand tall with them in support and spirit.

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Trudy Wischemann researches issues of land ethics, land use and land tenure from her home in Lindsay.  For more information on the Standing Rock efforts, go to www.pbsnewshour.org.  To contribute funds to these efforts, visit http://www.rop.org/rural-oregon-stands-standing-rock/. Thanks to rural minister/songwriter John Pitney for this recommendation.  See also Waddie Mitchell's lyrics to Juni Fisher's song "Still Here," described in this blog Feb. 11, 2015.

 

 

 

 

The Big Picture

Published October 19, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


This is the fourth report from the Reedley Peace Center’s Speakers Series “In the Struggle.”  Interested readers can learn more about the series by visiting www.reedleypeacecenter.org.

            In a piece I wrote for the Bee last month, I started with the fire at the Suntreat packinghouse in Lindsay, describing the loss of jobs and income for the community.  I speculated on the problems for rebuilding that plant due to the changes in crops and land ownership occurring on the land surrounding our town.  And I lamented the problems I’ve had since I came here getting city leaders to realize there’s a connection between the problems our farmers face and the economic difficulties inside the city limits.  

            Dean MacCannell was the fourth speaker featured at the Reedley Peace Center’s forum. Dean was full professor of Applied Behavioral Sciences at UCD when I moved to Davis to work with him in 1985.  For almost 10 years he had been conducting statistical studies on the relationship between farm structure and rural community development using techniques called “macrosocial accounting” developed at Cornell.  I hoped his knowledge and support would help me finish the more qualitative study I had begun at UCB under Paul Taylor’s influence.

            In different ways we both were updating Walter Goldschmidt’s seminal study of farmland ownership and community development in his comparison of two towns, Arvin in Kern County and Dinuba, here in Tulare.  That study documented the positive socio-economic contributions of smaller, owner-operated farms to the quality of rural communities, as well as the negative impacts of large-scale, absentee farm operations.  Goldschmidt published his study in late 1946, followed in 1947 by the publication of his book As You Sow, which described his first study in Wasco as well as two brief chapters on Arvin and Dinuba (although the towns were not identified by name.)  

            The book was republished in 1978 under the title As You Sow:  Three Studies in the Social Consequences of Agribusiness.  It contains the full Arvin-Dinuba study as well as a chapter describing the political history of the studies, which was marked by suppression in the early years, repudiation in later years.  That story included the success of the large growers in killing the plan for a follow-up study of many communities in the San Joaquin Valley, which would have removed all doubt about the negative consequences of large-scale, absentee-owned farming operations on the development of rural towns.

            MacCannell began that study shortly after he arrived at UCD in 1975.  Telling that story in Reedley, he described the academic hindrances to that research, as well as some of the miracles that helped him avoid being stopped.  He described some of the difficulties building a data base that incorporated farm size and structure variables with social, economic and political data, and his efforts to ensure the scientific validity of the research.  

            The stories people appreciated most were about his encounters with Westlands growers.  His UC superiors had advised MacCannell that these folks had intense interest in suppressing the evidence he’d uncovered, and went to some length to shut him up.  He also mentioned the “one bad thing” he did in his entire career, which was to release a study he conducted on Westlands to the National Farmers Union, which helped preserve the acreage limitation provisions in a battle to eliminate them in 1982.   But in one of my favorite anecdotes, he told of his first field trip into the Valley when he realized that anyone could see the differences between small-farm and large-farm towns with their own eyes.

            MacCannell’s conclusions from an academic career spent swimming upstream and sharing his results with audiences mostly unfriendly to the notion of public policy supporting the small farm were these:  The science is done.  Goldschmidt’s Hypothesis has been proven correct, and those who contend otherwise are simply waging war on the truth to keep their own interests intact.  “It’s time to organize,” he said, even knowing the limitations of previous efforts to organize when we had many more small family farms than we have now.

            This Friday we’ll hear about organizing from one of the premier academic practitioners of that art:  Isao Fujimoto, also retired from UCD’s Applied Behavioral Sciences, beloved friend and advocate for the power of diversity.  Please join us at 6:30 for the potluck in the First Mennonite Church’s fellowship hall, followed at 7 pm by Isao’s empowering presentation.

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Trudy Wischemann is a researcher-in-residence who writes from her outpost in Lindsay.  You can send her your reflections on small town life c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Sticks and Stones

Published Sept. 21, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     I walked into the post office the other day to pick up my mail and received a new bile aperture in the process, which some of you doubtless think I deserve.

           

     “I’ve been reading your articles,” the younger woman started carefully, realizing she’d just been handed the opportunity she’d been dreaming of:  telling me face to face what she thought.  It turns out she’s a Trump supporter and was offended by my anti-Trump sentiments being expressed in print.  "I don’t think you should say those things in the paper.” she continued.  “Everyone knows you're a liberal already.  You don’t have the right.”

           

     She grew angry as she developed her argument, and shaky as a result.  I could empathize, since the same thing happens to me when I suddenly have the opportunity to express my discontent to the person I think is causing it.  As we left the post office, she ended her testimony with a string of expletives about the presidential candidate she assumes I am supporting, all unprintable even as a quotation.  As we parted, she told me her name, which I think was Patricia, although, to be honest, her name disappeared as I digested what she had spoken.

           

     People are entitled to their opinions.  People are entitled to express their opinions in print, so long as they are identified as opinions and not a news article or a factual report.  There are other limiting criteria as well, like profanity and libel, for instance.  But as long as the speaker/writer claims his/her words as their opinion, the hearer/reader can keep opinion separate from fact.  The airwaves are kept free, and it maintains equality in a way:  each of us is entitled.

           

     Equality can be damaged by the presentation of opinion as fact:  it sets up a kind of authority that is unearned.  Reporters and even researchers sometimes slip their opinions into so-called factual writings, and detecting those becomes the art of critical thinking.  It is a painful art to practice because it leaves a person at odds with the promoters of these “facts,” as well as those who have bought into them as truth.  But without critical thinking we are simply sheep on the way to being shorn.

     Which brings me to the subject of name-calling.  I don’t know if kids these days still hurl this little saying around the playground, but when I was young we truly believed the rhyme “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”  On the east coast or in previous generations, they might have said “harm me,” but we used the word “hurt.”  The truth is, that was a lie.  Being called a name over and over again, especially a name that demeans, can cause long-lasting harm which can take decades to mend, far longer than it takes bones.

     And that’s what I’ve got against your candidate, Patricia.  He name-calls.  He name-calls over and over again until people start to believe it because nobody’s made him stop.  It’s libelous, what he’s done with “Crooked Hillary” and all the other disparaging names he made up for his Republican rivals.  It’s also juvenile.  It reflects an unwillingness to debate the facts, which he also avoids by spouting “facts” that he’s made up just for the fun of watching otherwise serious people scramble to identify the false portions of his half-truths, the most serious one being the promise that he’s on your side.

     It’s a con job, friend.  If you-all elect him, it’s going to be a rude awakening and a serious disappointment when his policies take you to the cleaners along with the rest of the country, while his rich friends (and himself) get richer.

           

     In my never-very-humble opinion (and that I admit,) Donald Trump is a name-caller.  And in order not to get hurt in this election, we’ve got to remember what we learned on the playground:  how to avoid being hurt by name-callers.  The lesson is simple in principle, but difficult in practice:  don’t listen. 

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural resident writer who still has to practice what she preaches.  Thanks to Patricia for speaking to me directly.  You can send your anti-name-caller experiences c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

little luxuries

Published September 14, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Last week I stopped in at one of my favorite cheap chain stores, the kind where nothing is over one dollar.  I try to keep my purchases there to a minimum, but when I need a little freehanded spending, the kind that makes me feel like I really do belong in American society, it’s the place to go.  That’s where I find the little luxuries that add spice to my life without making it impossible to pay my water bill.

           

     One of the things I brought home from that little splurge was a jar of raspberry jam.  It was a squared-off jar like some of the classy imported jams arrive in, holding 12 oz. of deep ruby red fruit, with the words “world class” and “premium product” on the label.  The label, when I finally got around to reading its backside over my first cup of coffee the next morning, also informed me that it was a product of Egypt, imported indeed.

    

     And that’s when the shame moved in.  One dollar American paid for a glass jar with a metal lid, raspberries, sugar, and pectin; it paid for the energy and labor for processing, and even more for shipping half-way around the world.  What could the Egyptian berry farmers have received for their fruit in this product, or the sugar producers?  The jar manufacturers, the jam makers, the longshoremen loading cases of jam aboard ships?

           

     And what American product did my purchase displace?  The fine jam makers in Fresno County may get $2.50 or $3.00 for their jars of jam produced only an hour away.  Why would I not pay $2.00 more for this little luxury to keep my neighbors in business, reduce (or at least not contribute to increased) greenhouse gases, global warming, pollution of the oceans?  I didn’t even need a new jar of jam:  I found two in the cupboard when I got home.

            And this is the issue I tripped over as I girded up once again to protest the proposed location of a new Dollar General store in Lindsay:  I’m up against the wall of my own buying behaviors.  I know what it could mean to Lindsay’s buying public to have something like a general store back in town, especially one with discount prices where you can snag little luxuries for yourself with the justification of getting a real bargain.  How many of us in our now-not-so-prosperous town can afford to pay full price for things, at least in our minds?  And if it eventually drives stores out of town with higher prices for the same goods made in China or Thailand or even Egypt, like Rite Aid or Art Serna’s hardware store, can we ourselves be blamed?  We only bought one little jar of raspberry jam for ourselves.  Each one of us cannot bear the responsibility for a marketing system gone mad through global trading.  Heck, at least the raspberry growers in Egypt made something instead of nothing in this transaction.

      In many ways the race is already lost, at least for the moment.  Those of us who would, if we could, vote anti-trade in November’s election in honor of the jobs lost to foreign countries in years past, will be standing in line on Dollar General’s opening day, waiting to dive in for the bargains from this globalized fact of life.  I will have eaten all my raspberry jam and begun to save thumb tacks or paper clips in the convenient little squared-off jar, hoping to remember all that little luxury has cost us.

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Trudy Wischemann is a native-born bargain hunter who writes.  You can send her your stories of little luxury hunting c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

Napa No More?

Published in shorter form August 31, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     I have a short-handled hammer sitting on my desk, with the receipt from Lindsay’s Napa Auto Parts underneath it.  It’s holding down more than the receipt:  it’s holding the memory of all the community life I have experienced in that place of business which, unfortunately, is about to disappear.  

     I bought it last week when I went to ask Jose Godoy if the rumor the store is closing was really true.  Jose has been ordering auto parts for me for 12 years, and I could tell from his face, even before he finished helping the customers in front of me, that it was.

     “So what can I help you with, Trudy?” he asked for the hundredth and maybe last time.  I had come wishing I could help him, though I felt helpless enough to cry.  For all the times they have befriended me, he and Joe Lopez (aka “Little Joe”), and their former boss, Bob Kisling, I am clearly in their debt.  “August 31^st is our last day,” he said.

     That part of town has become pretty lifeless in a retail sense, ever since the thrift store, Keys Upholstery and the body shop moved that once inhabited the brick buildings across the street.  Then the discount goods store to the south folded up its tent, and the Stamper Motors building burned, leaving a garish scene of charred devastation for months and months.  It’s not hard to see how business on that block could take a hit.  I sadly paid for my hammer, which will remind me of them every time I see it, and went home.

           

     The next night I found myself at the Lindsay City Council meeting doing battle with the plan to develop a Dollar General store on the southeast corner of the roundabout.  When they first proposed building it on Hermosa, it was a block east, on the southwest corner of Hermosa and Mirage.  They intended to demolish the former Central California Citrus Exchange Building, and they’d hired a residential building appraiser to write a report saying the building was in such horrible condition it couldn’t be saved, hoping to ward off any protest over the loss of this historic architectural resource.  By the grace of God we were able to make the folly of that plan clear, and eventually the building was purchased and restored in four short months.  Let us just say that the City staff was engaged in serious misrepresentation of the building’s true condition in the effort to get Dollar General located on that street.

           

     The plan then shifted then to the west side of that block, proposing to demolish the former Flying A station that had been Ed’s Auto for 3 decades until he sold the business to Miguel Chavez, who operated it as M & J’s Auto Repair.  We opposed that plan in defense of Miguel’s business and also for the inadequate planning assessment, including the obvious traffic problems of cars backed up into the already hard-to-navigate roundabout and 70-foot delivery trucks blocking traffic on Hermosa.  Just as we prepared to go to court on the matter, Dollar General pulled out.  But last week, just two+ years later, after driving Miguel to move, then dismantling the historic Flying A station and demolishing the old Pepper’s Market building, they brought the same plan back.

           

     Everyone I tell about this plan says “That’s not the right place for it.” Instinctively people know what it will do to traffic, but I think they also are responding to the decentering of downtown.  This plan is an effort to make Hermosa the new main street, which has the distinct potential to cause the former downtown brick buildings to be abandoned by businesses trying to survive, hoping to catch the new wave before they drown.  It’s a perfect example of 1960’s strip mall development that emptied downtowns across the country, a planning mistake we’ve been trying to overcome for at least 3, if not 5 decades.

           

     Tuesday night at the council meeting I proposed modifications to the new/old site plan that would make the parking lot entrance a little further from the roundabout, and other changes that could make the roundabout intersection more public-friendly.  But I also reminded them of another site that supposedly was considered when Dollar General first proposed building in our town.

           

     It’s that now-empty parcel of land across from Napa’s building, the old Stamper Motors site.   The fire that demolished that building occurred Thanksgiving weekend 2014, about 6 months after Dollar General pulled out of Lindsay, avoiding our lawsuit.  Although it took many months for the site to be cleared of rubble, it has been waiting patiently for redevelopment.  And after Tuesday’s council meeting, in the middle of a good night’s sleep, I realized that’s where the placement of a Dollar General store would do the most good for reviving the downtown.

           

     I took this fresh-born idea to Jose a day later and asked “Do you think having that store across the street would help your business here?”  You should have seen his face.  Hope filled the room.  It not only would bring new customers to an old part of town that could use them, it would also eliminate the roundabout traffic jams and delivery truck issues we identified Tuesday night because the site is near the oldest, easiest truck route in town.

           

     So add your prayer to God’s good grace if you feel the same.  It will take something like an act of Congress to get this project to relocate – but that’s what I thought when we were trying to keep them from demolishing the Citrus Exchange Building.  That gleaming little building reminds me to not lose hope.  Maybe we can keep Napa Auto Parts after all.

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Trudy Wischemann is a community researcher and rural advocate who writes.  Thanks to new councilman Brian Watson for his interest in building standards and revamping truck routes in town.  Send your community redesign ideas to P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

True Community

Published August 24, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     “What is your vision for Lindsay?” asked the new editor of this paper, Paul Myers, last week when I met with him and former editor Reggie Ellis, now publisher.  It was a fair question, and one that made me think, especially as I prepared to make objections to the new (same old) Dollar General site plan review that was presented to the City Council for approval at the August 23rd meeting. 

       My first words in reply were, in fact, objections to the vision of Lindsay’s past and present administrations and the forces of urbanization.  Call me crazy, but I wish we could retain something of what it means to be rural:  a local economy generated by and serving those who live here, with authentic social and political structures that encourage and teach the newcomers to this country how to be members of this place while embracing and serving those who entered long ago.  I wish we could re-envision the value of the lives of those who make their livings growing and harvesting the fruits of this land, and celebrate those things in our cultural events.   I wish we could respect the limitations of this semi-desert land we inhabit and not just mine its groundwater and the government programs offered in the spirit of equality. 

       Despite the odds, what I wish we could become is true community, with an emphasis on the “true.”  Falsehood is one of the things we have been fighting since the triple-stacked loans were discovered around 2009, those loans intended to get 50 or more low-income buyers into homes of their own that went instead to 13 city employees.  What stunned us most were the lies the city staff had told themselves justifying the stacking, staff who still hold paid positions there now.  I can’t even remember the term they used for this “creative” packaging, the self-deception was that appalling.  

       Lest you think something’s changed, let me dump a few dates on you.  On July 12, Councilman Mecum resigned.  On July 18, the application for the Dollar General site plan review was signed by property owners Serna and Llewallyn, complete with unsigned engineered drawings and maps and a categorical exemption from the CEQA process which addresses none of the concerns we raised in our lawsuit two years ago.  This past Friday, when I walked into the city clerk’s office to find out the status of the new Dollar General plan, Brian Spaunhurst, the planning assistant working under Bill Zigler, was preparing the document for this week’s council agenda.  Two years ago, after the developer pulled out of that project, we had requested that we be informed if that project was resumed, a request which obviously had been ignored. 

       Let me say that I’m not opposed to having Dollar General in town, except for the fact that the profits will be siphoned off to DG headquarters, there will be few employees with non-existent benefits, and their building designs are straight out of the 1960’s, complete with no windows.  I’m also a little concerned that it will drive its main competitor out of town, which in my mind would be Rite Aid, and that would leave us with no pharmacy. 

       I am opposed to having Dollar General at this site.  Located on the southeast corner of the roundabout, the blank backside of the building will be turned toward Hermosa, a major thoroughfare.  Located there, the increased traffic is a potential threat to foot traffic and other drivers, including the Dollar General delivery trucks, which will be making left-hand turns across Hermosa where cars are just exiting the roundabout.  I am also opposed to the way the CEQA process, which in a true community would allow us to consider these factors publicly, is being violated.  But Bill Zigler wants it there.  He’s worked hard to make this happen, and that’s what he’s going to get come hell or high water. 

       “In true community,” wrote Parker J. Palmer, that Quaker sage on community and education, “we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives….Community will teach us that our grip on truth is fragile and incomplete, that we need many ears to hear the fullness of God’s word for our lives.”   

       In true community, it matters what other people think, especially those who live there.  Someone hired to manage the interests of that community should work to reconcile the conflicting interests of its members, not override them – especially someone who does not live there and thus does not personally bear the consequences of his actions.  So call me crazy, but I’ll keep working for true community, thank you, despite the odds.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural community researcher who writes.    You can send your stories of community bravery and betrayal to her c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.  Thanks to Nancy and David Vega for their friendship and feedback.