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.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

Stand Still

Published Oct. 15 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Friday night, in Porterville, I had one of those moments of a lifetime, the kind where you know you’re home no matter where you are.  Writing about it now, I also know I’m home.
    
     I was singing with the Standlees, Tommy and Diane, with my regular singing partner, Jesse McCuin, playing standup bass fiddle.  We were singing “Stand Still,” a song recorded by The Isaacs in 2001.  Diane, with her beautifully clear, strong voice, was on lead; Tommy was playing his wonderful guitar and carrying the first harmony part on the choruses.  My job was to find the middle harmony note, to fill in the triad of the chords on the chorus, and then accompany Diane on the second verse with a kind of ooo-ing descant.
    
      As I moved to the microphone to join in on the first chorus, all I could do was pray the right note would come out of my mouth.  When it did, there was a release of energy I can still feel these three days later.  It was like finding the right word in a sentence, the word that makes the sentence sing instead of puzzle or conflict with the meaning lodged in your heart trying to get out onto the page.
    
     But it wasn’t finding the right note that gave me the thrill.  It was getting to be part of the music, part of the medium carrying the message.  I’d never heard the song before Tommy and Diane asked us to join them for the gig they’d gotten at Porterville’s Main Street Friday night “Concerts in the Park.”  I’d never even heard them sing before, much less the music they perform, which could be called an eclectic mix of old and new Southern Country Gospel.  It’s wonderful music, and they bring it to our ears simply and beautifully with trueness of heart that just shines.
    
     But “Stand Still” hit me right where I’m living, and opened a large window I’d had covered with curtains.  “Stand still - and let God move,” the chorus opens.  I have had so many instances recently when I felt completely confused about what to do, and felt conflicted about my confusion, only to be relieved of both conflict and confusion by going still and waiting until I felt the nudge.  The song reminded me that when I do that, I’m being led.
    
     Quakers have a saying:  “Proceed as Way opens,” and sometimes that happens by doors being shut.  But other times it’s as if someone turned on a light in a hallway you didn’t see before.  That’s what singing with the Standlees was like.
    
     Like so many artists in rural regions, we all make our livings doing something else.  Tommy works for Lindsay-Strathmore Irrigation District; Diane has her own dog grooming shop on Valencia; Jesse manages the mini-storage here in town, and I scan groceries.  But we sing to have a life, and we make music to help others enjoy or appreciate or understand their own.  So if you see Tommy or Diane or Jesse around, let them know you’ve heard they’ve got music in them.  And if you can think of a place where that music would do some good, let one of us know.
    
     But most of all, if you’ve got confusion and confliction, don’t know where to turn, where to go, or what to do, here’s my suggestion:  stand still.  Let yourself utter the two-word “Oh, help” prayer, and then just let God move.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy Wischemann is a flute-playing low alto who writes.  You can send her your favorite lyrics c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

A Little Drought Music

Published in edited form October 1, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette.
    
     Sunday morning, when I woke to a sunrise dampened by orange-edged clouds and robins singing for rain, I felt blessed to have such beauty in my life.  Then the first drops sounded on the patio roof, and I ran outside to the clothesline where I’d hung my cotton quilt to dry the night before.  In my bedroom I unfolded the heavy wooden clothes rack my aunt had used many winters in Washington and spread the quilt on it to continue drying, proud that I’d tricked Coyote into releasing some moisture from those clouds.  I was making a pot of tea when the drops increased to a shower, and went back outside to drag a few more things under cover.  Then I poured a steaming cup and sat inside reveling in this music so familiar to my Pacific Northwestern ears.
    
     Saturday I’d spent time working on an answer to Mas Masumoto’s call for some “art of the drought” in last Sunday’s Fresno Bee (9/22/14.)  He used the example of Dorothea Lange’s photograph “Migrant Mother” and its impact on public opinion during the Okie/Arkie migration from the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s.  I know the photo well, and many of her others:  I worked with the photographer’s husband, Paul Taylor, near the end of his life during my early days at Berkeley.  He knew the power of her art, and when they combined it with his facts and knowledge, they created a document of that drought’s causes and effects - An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion - that was never surpassed. 
    
     This drought is different, at least the one here in California that politicians are trying to fix with legislation and taxpayer monies.  There were no irrigation projects then in the midwestern half of the country when farmers (mostly small independent, tenant and sharecrop families) were dried up and blown off the land.  After awhile, politicians tried to fix things with legislation and taxpayer monies, but ended up benefiting mostly the larger farmers who turned their tenants and sharecroppers out, replacing them with tractors purchased with the government funds.  This, in turn, enabled them to buy out (for pennies on the dollar) their drought-stricken small-farm neighbors still plowing with mules.
    
     About two-thirds down in Mas’s column there’s an uncharacteristically political suggestion that voters should approve the water bond in the upcoming November election.  The point of the piece is that artists should find ways to the voters hearts to help make that happen, although he never comes right out and says so, or explains why they should.  That would be fine with me if I were sure the bond would be used to provide more water where it’s needed, which I think is on the smaller, independently owned farms the irrigation projects were built to support in the first place, but I’d have to be brain dead to be convinced of that.  In California water always flows uphill to the pinnacles of power, and we’re hardly even embarrassed anymore to admit that yes, the big boys and girls will get their share first, and we get to share what’s left.  I think the hope is simply that if there’s more supply, the shortage will have more acre-feet in it and go around a little further.  Maybe this drought’s not so different after all.
    
     Knowing Mas’s good heart, however, I think what he was really calling for was art that would call on us as a people to share the shortage, bond together and lean into the wind, to work on fixing the problems together that this drought has revealed.  Like “Come on, people now, Smile on your brother, Everybody get together, Try and love one another right now,”  that line from the Youngbloods’ song from our era, Mas’s and mine, our beautifully idealistic generation so crassly labeled “Boomers.”  To put our money, our water, our efforts and our faith where our mouths are.  That, of course, would require us to rise up united and take the power back from those who are using the drought to advance their family fortunes, like the Resnick’s and the Westlands’ Fortune 600’s.  Like John Vidovich’s Sandridge Partners, who Judge Harry N. Papadakis “just said no” to a couple of months back.  It would require us - even the educated “us” - to get educated about water in California, and from some entity other than the California Water Foundation, which serves as a mouthpiece for the big boys, teaching us the proper propaganda to make us good citizens of their empires.
    
     After Sunday morning’s blessed rainfall, when God let those raindrops blow where and when He willed, I have a song to suggest we learn to sing in these days of anxious anticipation of the coming water year.  It’s a song by John Pitney, that dairy kid turned Methodist minister from Oregon, titled “I Will Sing,” pure Judeo-Christian tradition straight out of the Book of Habakkuk.  It’s about being thankful for what we have and trusting God will provide, even in times of drought or other hardship.  Here’s the first verse:


When the fig tree’s barren in the field,
I will sing, I will sing.
And the produce of the olive fails,
I will sing, I will sing.
When the fields are yielding up no food,
And the flock be cut off from the fold,
And there be no cattle in the stalls,
I will sing, I will sing.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trudy Wischemann is a Pitney disciple who writes for Tulare County.  You can send her your drought music ideas c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Cherries Garcia

Published in slightly edited form August 27, 2014 in the Foothills Sun-Gazette


     This past Saturday we communally celebrated the life and mourned the loss of our friend Jim Chlebda in Springville, where he lived and worked during his days editing Southland Magazine and publishing South Valley Arts. His Springville “peeps” (as he called his friends) set up the memorial at River Ridge Ranch, a wonderful environmentally-run cattle ranch with full conservation easements lightly developed for open air events.  A cool morning breeze skittered cottonwood leaves around our feet and rustled them in the air.  The smells of dry grass and fall coming centered us in the moment.
    
     Patti Torrey, Springville’s remarkable, warm-hearted singer, emceed and sang; Kathy Everett and a host of friends spread tables of food and drink.  Jim’s favorite Grateful Dead recordings accompanied our conversations while we ate.  His beautiful sister Karen and brother Rob came up from Down South, as did his best friends Adam and CindyLou with their two incredible children.  The only thing that could have made the day better would have been to have him there.
    
     I had my first encounter with Karen and Rob, as well as many other members of Jim’s family, at his funeral the Monday before, held at Mission San Fernando del Rey.  The clear love and dedication of this family to each other and the world helped me understand where Jim came from, that it’s possible to live on earth as it is in heaven (or at least worth trying.)  The mass in that ancient church, given by a Franciscan priest, ended with the singing of the hymn “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace” from the prayer of St. Francis.  The burial of his ashes in the cemetery there, in the same grave as his father, whose birthday he shared, and his sister who died at 20 of cystic fibrosis and who would have turned 50 that day - all of it brought the Divine Presence into the very air we breathed.
    
     The air had a different quality there at River’s Ridge: more natural, less personal, freer and to me, at least, more frighteningly real. By celebrating what we had when he lived among us here, I think we sensed our loss more acutely, the days past truly gone. As the mid-day temps rose, we began to pack up and disperse early.  A few of us re-grouped where Karen and Kathy were staying to say goodbye.
    
     That’s where we got to hear the Cherries Garcia story.  Karen’s husband Bob had told part of it to me at the cemetery, so I asked Karen to repeat it for the others.  On Jim’s last night, Bob had to pick up his son Dan at the airport. Before he left, he asked Jim if he’d like something, and Cherries Garcia ice cream was the answer.  So Bob and Dan scoured late-night stores until they found some.  When Jim heard their voices in the hospital hallway, he came awake.  They put on some Grateful Dead and danced while Jim woofed down his ice cream.  Late, they finally turned out the lights.
    
     Sometime in the early morning hours, Jim took off his oxygen mask, his lifeline.  Karen said they protested, but then she saw that the mask was not going back on.  A couple of hours later, he was gone.
    
     I have written that he was heroic in the way he lived.  Now I’m adding that he was just as heroic in the way he died.  He had lots of help and support for both, which is an important part of the story.  But I have been surprised to find that heroism has brought me to tears over and over.  Though it’s been a month since his death, I’m surprised to find that I’m still crying.
    
     The Quaker poet Ellen Sophia Bosanquet, wrote this beautiful poem about the work of grief: 

 “Since you have vanished from my eyes,

Since I have lost your blessed touch,
I own continual surprise
To find, in spite of loss, how much
Of all I cherished still remains:
Your thoughts that set my mind on fire,
And ever flowing in my veins
The urge to do what you require.          
Is it that death has more to give
Than love-companioned life can show?
And only as we learn to grieve we learn to know?”

     With 20/20 hindsight, what I’ve learned firsthand from Jim’s life, and now second-hand from the story of his death, is that he was a conscious channel of the Spirit.  He knew the Light within and made use of it.  What I’m learning from my grief, however, is that I want to grow in that direction.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trudy Wischemann is a writer who lives just one watershed west of Jim’s.  You can send her your channeling stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.  The Bosanquet poem is quoted in Catherine Whitmire’s Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity, Sorin Books, 2001. Visit www.river-ridge.net to view their offerings and see a video of Patti Torrey singing “He Don’t Like Love Songs,” which she wrote for her husband Jared, another one of Jim’s closest friends.

Oh Captain, My Captain

To be published August 20, 2014 in the Foothills Sun-Gazette


     She came into the market Monday looking troubled.  A tough-looking woman whose appearance is meant to assure you she could kick your ass with one hand tied behind her back was on the verge of tears.  “Robin Williams died today around noon. Suicide.  He’d been depressed...” she said as she picked up her bag of groceries and wheeled to go through the door before she broke down.  


     “Not Robin Williams,” I heard myself say.  “My Robin Williams?”  Then a silent “Oh, no.”  Then my heart wailed “Couldn’t somebody have just held his hand or something until he got through it?” as my own tears began to build.


     As the facts trickled in over the next few days, and the commentators worked to define his life, explain his death, I worked to understand why this loss is so painful to me.  The heroism of his characters in three specific movies kept rising to the surface:  Good Morning Viet Nam, What Dreams May Come, and Dead Poets Society, the one I know best.  In each one, he’s in an impossible situation but throws himself into bringing light, joy, truth, beauty into some very dark spaces.  In each one he contributes these to the lives of his fellow human beings for awhile - and changes a few - before the darkness takes back its throne. But even as the light withdraws, we see the darkness for what it is.


     His loss is painful because he’s one of the humans I have identified with.  His characters have befriended me on my own journey.  I have quoted one segment of his lines in Dead Poets Society many times, not the “Carpe Diem” segment that took on a life of its own for years, but one just before or after that scene.  After noting that engineering, law, medicine are all very noble careers and worthy of investment, he says “But poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we stay alive for.”  And I believe Robin Williams knew that in his core, not just his character.  I believe depression was robbing him of his access to those things.


     Depression can do that.  The Quaker writer Parker J. Palmer chronicled three major bouts of depression in his book Let Your Life Speak (2000).  One moment I remember best from his story was that a friend would come several times a week and wash his feet, not talking, simply caring.  He wrote that was the only time he could feel anything.


     I have thought for a long time that those who struggle with addiction are simply struggling to stay alive against the death of depression. That addictions strike artists in particularly high percentages isn’t really a surprise:  the job of keeping truth, beauty, romance and love alive in this world, despite and even because of the darkness, can seem so futile, so unrewarded.  So dangerous, even.  Robin Williams lost his job, after all,  for doing just that in both Good Morning and Dead Poets.  In What Dreams May Come, loving his clinically depressed wife almost takes him to hell.


     But then there’s the final scene in Dead Poets, which I’ve just remembered, which has just driven me to write this all down.  He’s in his classroom, gathering up his things to leave after the suicide of one of his students, for which he is silently being blamed.  And despite the overlord standing there, commandeering Robin Williams’ departure, the youngest, most timid student, the roommate of the boy who died - this beautiful young soul gets up and stands on his desk, quoting the opening line of a poem his teacher taught them.  “Oh, Captain, my Captain,” he says, the tears and snot running down his face.  And then the rest of the boys follow suit, despite the presence of darkness.


     Think of me as up there with them, saying good bye to a great fellow traveler.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trudy Wischemann is a writer who lives in Lindsay.  You can send her your thoughts on Robin Williams c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Fire & Rain

Published Aug. 9, 2014 in my Fresno Bee column "Letters from Lewis Creek"

Mr. James Chlebda, Heaven

July 29, 2014

Dear Jim,

        There’s a pink tinge to this morning’s sunrise in the remnant of yesterday’s clouds hanging onto your mountains.  Maybe some of that’s smoke – I haven’t checked the news for fires, preoccupied with getting these things into words.

        It’s been a week since you took your last breath.  The news triggered James Taylor’s "Fire and Rain" in my head, that devastating first line “Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone.”  It was only hours in my case - your sister Karen texted Betty Blanks, who found the message on her phone during a break from court in Kings County.  She was crying when she called me.  I didn’t cry until we hung up.  Even though we knew it was coming, your death hit hard.  I’ll love her forever for getting up to Stanford to see you the weekend before.  Her reports from that trip have consoled me over and over.

        When I emailed John Dofflemyer, he wrote back and called you “a force in many people’s lives.”  That cowboy poet and fellow publisher who knows his ropes also said now you can operate with a freer hand.  I’ve been gratified to find that’s true.  I don’t know what you’ve been doing with the others, but your presence here with me has been a blessing.

        When I emailed Jeremy Hogan, he began sending YouTube clips of the Grateful Dead and Creedence, John Lennon’s "Mind Games."  I didn’t know 'til later that when he got my email, he left his office, went out to his car and cried for 45 minutes.  Then he began an outpouring of words about how you saved his life, how you were the pivot point between being lost and becoming a photojournalist.  I hope you’re enjoying the force of his flood of love and gratitude.

        Other people have said now you’re with Wilma.  I don’t know about that, but give her a hug for me if you see her.  I think you’re back at Back 40, communing with your brother floras and sister faunas, the granite and gneiss, unconstrained by property lines and deeds, not worried about the drought.  That’s where I feel your heart beating, anyway. 

        Sunday morning I found a crow’s feather on the ground on my way out to the car.  I stuck it in my hair and took you to church with me, where I read the Scriptures aloud, five parables from Matthew about the Kingdom of Heaven – what it is, what it’ll be like.  I still don’t know about all that, but I know better now than I’ve ever known before that when you walked this planet, the kingdom of heaven was near.  You brought it with you, sowed seeds of kindness and appreciation, love and respect everywhere you went.  Some of those seeds are on their way to being trees, nest sites for all those birds you love. The pearls of great price you found on every nature walk, in every poet’s corner, every encounter with the unconformed and wandering souls who became your friends – those pearls are shining now, right here on earth.

        It was hard, imagining what you were facing up there at Stanford: the antibiotics no longer keeping the pseudomonas at bay, the prospect of surgery to swap out those lungs you did your damndest to protect these past fifty-seven years, the need to take on a whole new and unknown medical regime to fool your body into keeping the replacement breathing apparatus someone else didn’t need anymore.  It was hard, but I imagined you daily.  When the Bee carried that great story about the young Clovis woman climbing Half Dome with her new lungs, we sent it right off, hoping the vision of being back in your mountains would help you cross that high desert of fear.  But that afternoon the doctors took you off the lung transplant list.

        I still don’t know all the reasons – do you?  Betty said… Kay said… Karen said… but I don’t know.  Last time we got to talk, you said “I guess now I have to go through this other window.”  I got to wail “We’re all grieving that you have to do that,” probably the most real thing I’ve said in a long time.  And you said, with your characteristic love, “And I’ve been grieving that I haven’t been able to talk with you when you’ve called, Trudy-bud.”  You took my breath away.  You get the last word on this.

        So, yes.  My heart’s still singing “Oh, I’ve seen fire, and I’ve seen rain.  I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end.  I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend.  But I always thought that I’d see you again.”  Despite my initial fear of that dead loss, that, in my life, you would go blank, here you are.  Thanks for sticking around all these years, and these last few days especially. Thanks for leading the way now.

Love,

Trudy

 

Editor’s Note:  Jim Chlebda was editor of Southland Magazine, then publisher when it became South Valley Arts serving Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Kern Counties between 1990 and 2000.  He published Valley poets with his Back 40 Publishing, most notably the Okie poet Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel and Modesto poet Lillian Vallee (see www.back40publishing.com.)  He was a grateful recipient of excellent health care at Valley Children’s Hospital until he moved to Sonoma County and shifted medical service to Stanford.  He will be missed by many.

Big Jim

Published August 6, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     My friend Jim Chlebda took his last breath a couple of weeks ago.  Once he was taken off the list for a double lung transplant at Stanford, there was little time.  He got his papers in order, gathered up his family and friends for one last good day, and three days later he was gone.

     At least from this form of existence.  After  I heard the news of his passing, I was surprised how my days filled with the sight of him and the sound of his voice, how his normal way of saying goodbye – “hey, now,” became a greeting.  How his motivations and purposes suddenly seemed completely coherent, an integrity that was not only admirable but something to follow in my own life.  So I might say that Jim’s transformation from living to eternal is having a transformative effect in me.

     The Okie poet Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, who Jim loved and supported with his publishing efforts as well as bringing bursts of new life into that old woman’s days, called him “Little Jim.”  He was no taller than I am and weighed significantly less, all muscle and bone with a beautiful skin covering topped by curly hair the ladies had trouble keeping their hands off of.  But there was nothing little about him.  It always rankled me that she could so casually mark him with what most men would receive as a slight.  I mean, even the Pygmy Bushmen of Africa greet each other with a sentence that goes something like “Hey, now, you’re so tall I saw you coming from a long way!”  But Jim just laughed it off.

     As he did most people’s foibles.  What was really big about him is that he did not let others’ faults impinge on his character.  He accepted people for who they were, but (for the most part) he did not let that subtract – or add – to who he was.  It has been easy for me to think that living his entire 57 years with a terminal disease – cystic fibrosis, which took his sister at 21 - was what shaped him into the purposeful, life-embracing, life-giving human I knew him to be.  But as his breathing days came to an end I saw there was more.

     Jim lived with the spirit of Christ, the heart of God, in him.  He wore no external sign of that affiliation, spoke few words of devotion out loud (at least with me).  His ceremonies celebrated the beauty and wonder of the world, particularly the natural world; his publishing efforts supported artists of all kinds.  The gifts he shared were natural shards from the land, like hawk feathers and sprigs of native plants, his photographs of those wonders, or music and books, the works of artists.  His publications were art, from the covers and insides of Southland Magazine and South Valley Arts, to the chapbooks of poets up and down the valley.  On one of Wilma’s little books of prose, Cooking with Eli, he even used spiral binding, like a church cookbook of recipes.  You know, you might want to lay it flat to read while whipping up a batch of pancakes.

     John Dofflemyer, the cowboy poet and fellow publisher who lives along Dry Creek, wrote that Jim was “a force in many people’s lives.”  He was, but not forcibly: it was the force of love.  John also added that “now he can operate with a freer hand.”  I loved that recognition of another realm from this other man of the land, this rancher who copes with the mysteries of life and death on a daily basis.

     But what I finally saw about Jim’s life after his death was that he walked softly and carried no stick at all.  To me, that’s an enormous life accomplishment.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trudy Wischemann is a writer who lives in the Lewis Creek watershed, just west of Jim’s beloved home Back 40 in North Fork Tule River country.  Visit www.back40publishing.com to view Jim’s publishing accomplishments; visit www.drycrikjournal.com to see John & Robbin Dofflemyers'.

 

Death and Life Revisited

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Goodbye, Stranger

Published May 7, 2014 in slightly edited form in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     "Hello, Stranger," he'd say to me as he wheeled his cart through the market door, coming for groceries.  But I didn't know how much that meant until Sunday when I heard the news that Henry Servin left us early that morning.  Whether he went voluntarily (and by that I mean that he was in some way ready,) or the Lord just came and took him, I don't know.  All I know is that his beaming spirit will be missed among those of us he befriended regularly, constantly.


     "He was my only hope," one checker commented as we closed that night.  When I asked what she meant, she said something about decent customers.  We have many decent customers, so I contemplated what he brought that was so special, and it was that he reached out to each of us as unique, equal individuals.


     He had different names for each of us.  I thought he called everyone "Stranger," but discovered that may have been saved for me.  One of the newer checkers he simply called "Mija," while he used the real names of those who'd worked there longer. I may have been the lone Stranger.  I felt somehow properly identified.


     Elise Boulding, one of the great Quaker peace activists from the last century, wrote a beautiful passage about the word.  "I would like to suggest a new word to replace enemy.  It is "stranger."  It's a very old word, and a good one.  We have no more enemies, but we have strangers.  Sometimes we are estranged from ourselves and God.  When we meet a person we call a stranger, that person has to be listened to... There is no tribal group to my knowledge that does not have a tradition for dealing with the stranger."


     And maybe that was Henry's gift:  listening.  He was always full of words, and they came out fast, like a man on a mission.  But when he asked how we were, he was looking us in the eyes and really wondering.  He noticed.  And he brought life into the store every time he came.


     I was missing in action the night before he died, at least from the market.  We held our concert celebrating Lindsay's recovery community at the Methodist Church, and I took the night off from work in order to hand out programs, emcee, sing a couple of songs and clean up.  It was a glorious night.  Spirit Driven, the band that performed, knocked the socks off of everyone who came to sit in the pews.  The people who run the two 12-Step programs that meet in the church were there to speak of their hopes for the community.  One longstanding participant in 12-Step programs bore witness to the spiritual training inherent in those Steps.  Most important, we built a sense of community: that those who suffer from addiction and those who help them are not alone.  Anonymous, yes.  Alone, no.


     The truth is we are members of each other, to borrow from Wendell Berry's Wild Birds:  "All of us.  Everything. The difference ain't in who's a member and who's not, but in who knows it and who don't."  Henry knew himself to be a member of this community and recognized the rest of us as members also.  As we feel his loss, may we keep that spirit alive.


     Goodbye, Stranger.  See you later.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy Wischemann is a cashier at RN Market who writes.  You can send your stories of Henry and other strangers to her c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

The Driving Spirit

Published as "In Recovery" in significantly different form Wed. April 30 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     On Saturday, May 3rd, the Lindsay United Methodist Church will be hosting a concert to "Celebrate Lindsay's Recovery Community."  The concert will feature Spirit Driven Band, a duo of Jesse McCuin of Lindsay and Dennis Harrison of Tulare.  The concert will run from 7:00-8:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.


     To some, the idea of a "recovery community" will seem odd; to others, improbable that one exists in Lindsay.  But from the moment I arrived here two decades ago, I encountered people who were or had been in recovery.  Many told me how Lindsay's AA meeting, which has been located in the Methodist Church for more than 40 years, had helped restore them and/or their family members to life.  Some became life-long participants, helping others.


     What struck me in these people was their quiet honesty about themselves and their commitment to life.  And they were people from every level of society.  One town leader who often grieved me had earned their respect for the way he cared for his addicted brother.  One of my favorite mechanics had reclaimed his life through another AA meeting.  What struck me about all of them, however, was they seemed to have real spiritual depth and they actively, purposefully cared for others, including me.


     The benefits of recovery programs have been felt throughout the community, most often invisibly:  families and friends, employers and organizations, schools and churches all have been helped by those who have participated in recovery programs, even people who've never been afflicted by addictions themselves.  The driving spirit in most recovery programs, particularly AA, is the critical need to re-size one's self to our real place in the universe, to re-place one's body and mind run amok under the guidance of heart and soul, reconnecting with whatever "higher power" a person has experienced.


     Saturday night's concert will be specifically Christian, however.  Most of the songs are rock songs spanning the decades from the 1960's to the mid-1990's, with creatively re-written lyrics.  The music of Spirit Driven is Christ's message of redemption to people who suffer from various addictions, and they take this message to Teen Challenges, rescue missions and prisons across the state.


     The program for Saturday night includes music from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge" and Green Day's "When I Come Around."  It also includes a few original songs written by the pair, and will open with Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Comin' Down."


     So that's what we'll be celebrating Saturday night, May 3rd.  If you've ever been able to thank God for the restoration of a friend or relative - or yourself - we hope you'll join us in this joyous event.  The Methodist Church is located on the corner of Honolulu and Gale Hill, due east of City Hall.  To find out more about AA meetings, call the Tulare Co. Central office at 592-6999 or visit www.aa-tulareco.org.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy Wischemann is a writer who loves music.  You can send her your recovery stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.