Beyond White

Published in slightly edited form Dec. 6th, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     A friend and I were laughing last week about the insidious antics of someone, and the words “Oh, that’s beyond white!” came out of his mouth.  I don’t remember who we were laughing at.  It could have been something from the current slough of national politics.  Maybe it had nothing to do with politics whatsoever.  It could have been anything, anybody.  Outrageous arrogance associated with whiteness is a contagious disease in our culture, and it takes conscious effort to resist.  No one is immune, not even people from other races.

           

     Last Friday night Nikiko Masumoto performed her one-woman play “What We Could Carry” for the Reedley Peace Center.  I’d been wanting to see this play since I first read about it in the Fresno Bee five years ago, when she returned to the Valley to farm with her family.  The play is a re-creation of the 1981 testimonies of Japanese-Americans who suffered the WWII internment, testimonies which led, eventually, to formal apologies and minimal monetary restitution from the federal government.  It was one of the dark chapters in U.S. history, but, as one of her characters says in the play, this chapter, in terms of how our country has dealt with other (i.e., non-white) races, is not the exception, but the rule.  From that point onward in the play, we listened to their testimonies differently.

           

     Mas Masumoto, Nikiko’s father, has been a friend to me since he performed in my first Humanities event in Parlier, early in 1991.  He was teamed with the poet Omar Salinas from Sanger, a town which is less than 5 miles away from the Masumoto’s farm in Del Rey, but the two writers had never met.  Race and social inequality associated with different occupations can create divides “below” white, as Mas testifies in a beautiful short piece called “In the Fourth Grade” published in his first book, Country Voices:  The Oral History of a Japanese American Family Farm Community (1987.)

           

     I have always loved watching Mas give presentations, but Nikiko’s performance was something else.  It was breathtaking.  With only a kitchen stool and battered suitcase as props, she created times and places of the evacuation; with just a music stand and microphone she transported us to the hearing rooms where the testimonies were first given token (and only later serious) attention.  The civic necessity of a whole community speaking up in their own defense was overwhelming, as the different people who did so showed up in Nikiko’s body, came out of her mouth.  Her passionate representation of those people, men and women, young and old, quietly respectful and righteously outraged, gave me new respect for the power of theater, of face-to-face communication, however ephemeral it might seem.  In the blink of an eye, that woman can change hearts.

           

     And changed hearts is what we’re going to need if we’re ever going to move beyond white, beyond the supposed superiority of that race of people and the privileges still associated with it.  Beyond white is where we need to go.  And as we move into the season where Joseph and Mary take their historic, arduous trip to Bethlehem, where they, as swarthy folks of Jerusalem, would be counted and taxed for the white folks in Rome, we have yet another opportunity to move in that direction.  Peace unearth.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rowdy mixture of European peasants who writes.  You can send her your beyond white experiences c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 03247 or leave a comment below.

Coming Back

Published Oct. 4, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     I was coming back from the Fresno airport last week when I ran into a pocket of despair.  Sometimes it takes a while to come back from hitting one of those.

     I took the long way home, the back roads angling through vineyards and orchards, alternating south, then east along the diagonal front of the Sierra foothills.  Section by section, mile after mile, there were signs of dissolution of the very web of our valley’s life.  Normally I am revived by this drive, encouraged by the sight of one fruit-farming family’s place after another.  But the families are disappearing, leaving trails of abandoned equipment and empty barns, houses removed leaving squares of bare ground behind.  The agricultural landscape of Fresno County’s Kings River fan is beginning to look like ours.

     I hadn’t realized how much the reshaping of our agricultural landscape has been depressing me until I saw the disease spreading north.  Some lines from a Tom Paxton song showed up: “Are you going away with no word of farewell?  Will there be not a trace left behind?”  Then the songwriter brings us home:  “Well, I could have loved you better, didn’t  mean to be unkind; that was the last thing on my mind.”

     My despair at the loss is amplified by knowing that my small attempts to prevent it have failed.  I don’t know what can be done to turn around the trends leading us to rural depopulation and cultural oblivion.  Here in the citrus belt the packinghouses are mechanizing right under our noses, eliminating 75% of the jobs that feed our towns, but nobody sees it coming.  The small farmers are being vanquished by Cuties and Halos.  The flow of incomes from the land have moved from trickling up to trickling down.  The costs of the so-called economies of scale will be borne more and more by our communities and countryside.  Lord.

     The only hope I find comes from the experience of some friends who worked in the Tulare Lake Basin restoring wetlands for migrating waterfowl.  Based in Alpaugh, where hope is a little hard to come by, they worked through BLM (where hope is also a little hard to come by) and built ponds on retired farmland with water purchased from Alpaugh I.D.  They had no way to know whether the provision of this habitat would help the declining numbers of birds, but they did it anyway.  In the first year there was a small increase, but each year thereafter, the increase was astounding.  “We had no idea the birds would come back so fast,” my friends said.

     You could call it an experience in loving better, in stopping being so unkind, even though the unkindness of eliminating bird habitat to plow soybean fields is totally accepted in this culture.  The acreage in new ponds was a tiny fraction of the habitat that once was there, but still, it helped beyond their wildest imaginings.  So it seems to me that we could love our lives here a little better, stop being so uncaring about the outcomes of these trends on our neighbors and our communities.  Perhaps they’ll come back faster than we can imagine - if we just try.

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

 

Come High Water

Published Feb. 22, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Storm warnings, high wind advisories, flood watches, evacuation orders pending – what a week.  For some, this week’s weather is foreboding and dreary, perhaps even a sign.  But for me there’s something holy, even righteous about it.  It’s been a long time since I felt this at-home in California. 

     At first, when it was just the prospect of full reservoirs for the first time this decade, the water watchdogs warned not to get too hopeful that our five-year drought is over.  “There’s still the groundwater table in overdraft,” they chided, reminding us that the big boys’ long straws have been oversucking from it so long there might be no replenishment possible.

     Then the reservoirs had to start releasing water just to keep the bounty from breaking the dams and to maintain some semblance of flood control.  Oroville, one of the newer dams in California’s massive water development system, reminded us that facilities age and that infrastructure must be maintained to be of true value.  Then levees broke in the Alpaugh Irrigation District as the flood flows of multiple creeks in the Tule and Kern River watersheds accumulated and ended up where they belong, in the old bed of Tulare Lake, which they do every once in a while, come hell or high water (literally.)

     To the north of us, levees along the length of the mighty San Joaquin are promising a similar replenishment.  Old valley communities like Vernalis, Stevinson and Tranquility are likely not so tranquil right now, as the attempt to keep flood flows off the farmland threatens to drown out the farmworker communities.  It’s a trade-off we still haven’t found a way to make correctly.

  "It’s too bad,” a friend who grows olives told me Sunday, “all this water going to waste.  LSID cut us off completely the last two years, and yet now, here’s all this water….”  His voice trailed off into the mystery of the moment.  “It’s not going to waste,” I wanted to cry, though I kept my protest to myself since I don’t farm.  In fact, when it spills out onto the land, it brings life to the soil as well as improving the groundwater supplies.  In fact, it’s doing what it’s supposed to do in God’s holy hydrologic cycle.  Here all this time we’ve been praying for rain, and now we’re going to complain about where He puts it?

     Down in Alpaugh, when the levees broke this time, the big boys hired helicopters to drop 3,000-pound sandbags on the break, stemming the flow for now.  But it’s kinda like working on old cars:  installing a new part often puts pressure somewhere else, causing another part to break.  The history of farming the Tulare Lake bed is full of stories about heroic flood prevention efforts by the large landowners causing storm water to take out some small guys’ operations.  At least that water’s not wasting to the ocean, right?

     This drought-flood pattern is part of California’s natural cycle, at least so far.  I’m comforted by the return of the wet half of our true nature, glad we haven’t yet reached the point where the rains are always meager, the snowfall non-existent, where the floods never come.  We would do well to plan for this pattern, to accommodate the extremes, not the averages, and then try everything in our power to keep from altering it.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who once wanted to be a hydrologist.  You can send her your favorite high water stories c/o P.O Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

 

Carving the Future

Published Nov. 23, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


This is the eighth report from the Reedley Peace Center, where we are holding a speakers series on people, land and water in the San Joaquin Valley.  Called “In the Struggle,” it features individuals who have contributed to the human ecology of this place in the face of its dehumanization from the industrialization of agriculture.

           

     “My mother thought I should be the first American Pope,” Tom Willey confided to his large, warm audience Friday night.  He was explaining why she’d set foot on his farm only once during his entire career producing food from the soil, suggesting that she thought it was a waste of his fine Berkeley education.  Others might have thought the same, but it was clear to me that this thinking man and his brilliant wife Denesse of T & D Willey Farms have successfully applied themselves to one of the most intractable problems of California Agriculture:  saving the family farm.

     They’ve done it first-hand, by example and by experiment, by comprehending the difficulties and overcoming them.  They’ve also done it by understanding the culture and the sociology of small-scale farming:  the critical role family and neighbors play in making farms sustainable, as well as soils and water supplies.  They’ve done it by understanding the political forces undermining family farms, and the historical precedents of empires built on water shortage in semi-deserts dependent on irrigation.  They’ve done it by recognizing the needs of the eating public and filling them with good, nutritious food picked and packed by the hands of well-paid laborers.

    They started by leasing 20 acres east of Fresno, with Tom farming while Denesse kept the bills paid with her nursing jobs.  It was “profitless,” Tom said, until they went organic.  He was mentored by two neighbors, a Japanese farmer named George Yagi and a Black farmer named Leon Poe, who taught him the ropes.  In 1984, Denesse gave up nursing and dedicated herself to the marketing end through farmer’s markets.  In 1995 they purchased 80 acres in Madera County, gradually moving toward selling their vegetables directly to subscribers through their CSA.

     “We wanted to demonstrate that a couple could make a decent middle-class living growing people’s food,” Tom said, noting that their net income over the last 10 or 15 years varied from $60,000 to a whopping $300,000 one year.  “We’ve fed 800 families over the last 12 years,” Tom said, “which was the most rewarding, the most profitable, and the most exhausting” enterprise yet.

           

      And when this fall’s eggplant crop is done, they will be finished.  The Willey’s are retiring from farming, not failing.  “After 40 years, I’ve gotten producing mountains of vegetables out of my system,” he proclaimed.  They’re retiring with a decent income to continue their other vocational interests.  In Tom’s case, that’s writing, education and his radio work, primarily his program “Down on the Farm” on KFCF (FM 88.1).  Their CSA business has been transferred to Fresno’s Food Commons, where young people are being mentored by experienced hands like the Willey’s in developing the local food system this country needs.

     Despite their success, Tom Willey understands the forces working against sustainable, small-scale farms and food distribution systems.  The political power of agribusiness he describes as a “floodtide,” noting the current efforts by Westlands Water District to cinch their deal with the Feds as just one example. He believes that the sustainable, polycrop farm system that feeds and employs people well on the land is in deep jeopardy, as close to extinction as the Delta smelt if we do not act, become educated and politically engaged, particularly in decisions determining water distribution.

           

     His advice?  Those of you who know how to farm, find ways to mentor those young people who are trying to learn; help them find new ways for this alternative farming system to emerge and thrive.  Don’t let your knowledge die with you:  pass it on.

     For the rest of us, get involved in the political process.  Go to those “tedious, ding-dong meetings” regarding water transfers and groundwater regulation, land use planning and budgets.  Why?  “When things are really screwed up,” Tom stated, “I believe that equals great opportunity.”

     “There’s a way to do it,” he said, summing up the path they’ve carved, as well as his hope for the future.  We simply have to work together to make it happen.

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Trudy Wischemann is a fourth generation failed family farmer who writes.  You can send your carvings to her c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

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.

We Can Change

Published Oct. 12, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Friday I flew home from work, changed my socks, grabbed the potluck plates, and jumped in the truck to haul it to Reedley for the third presentation in the Peace Center’s speakers series, ”In the Struggle.”  Don Villarejo, who formed and directed the California Institute for Rural Studies in Davis where I was employed before moving to Lindsay, was scheduled to speak on the question “Can we achieve an ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially just agriculture?”  I didn’t want to miss one minute of it.

           

     The truth is, anyone living here in the San Joaquin Valley with even one eye open can see that the answer is “no.”  Too much would have to change, it seems.  Too many bolts holding the current system in place would have to be loosened and removed, and there’s no guarantee that chaos would not overtake us before that new, beautiful and right thing would take hold.  Housing developments gobbling up farmland, bullet trains delivering commuters to their concreted plots, mechanization replacing workers and farmers faster than we can count – these things are already pushing the margins of the old system toward extinction.

     But there he was, eating from his plate of homemade salads and hot dishes, preparing to speak to a mixed, mostly hopeful crowd of friends and strangers, bringing a message that no one could really imagine.  Almost 80, Don’s smile and laugh are as disarming and infectious as the first time I met him.  And his 60-year story of inviting people to join him in this struggle, that stretches well beyond one lifetime, delivered this message:  we can change.

           

     He himself went through several transformations in order to become the change agent he is.  Son of a single-mother labor organizer, his childhood was spent frequently living under other people’s roofs and sets of rules.  Don’t ask me how, but he went to college anyway and graduated with a Ph.D. in physics from Chicago, a big enough life change for most people.  Then, while teaching physics at UCLA, he found himself drawn into the student politics of change.  There, at one critical moment before 12 TV news station cameras, with the whole country watching and most of the university’s administration waiting to hear calming words of conventional reason,  he tossed that life aside and said “Strike!  Shut this place down!”  His mother must have known then that he was a chip off the old she-block.

     But what Don brought to the world of social change was a tremendous respect for facts and figures and the truths they represent.  In his talk he told stories of discovering the untruths told with shoddy facts and figures, and how he amassed data, over and over, to uncover the truths the old numbers belied:  the numbers and sizes of farm ownerships and operations in the state, the public subsidies and financial returns to farms in federally-supplied water districts and the family structure of most operations.  He documented the outcomes of various attempts to get laws changed governing farm labor, noting the victories within apparent defeats.  He named names of people who contributed their lives over the years, the tiny but critical roles they played at just the right moments.  By the end we could see that our view of the unchangability of our current agricultural system is obscured by fear – or, perhaps, by lack of faith.

           

     The questions people brought to the microphone afterward were mixed with awe and appreciation for what we had just learned, still sinking in.  One person thanked Don for including farmers and their unpaid family members as two categories of farm labor, his own hands showing the work of his life.  Another queried Don’s opinion on the recent state legislation increasing farm workers’ compensation, including overtime, to which he replied that it’s 70 years overdue, although he has no idea how it’s going to work out.

           
     But the last question took my breath away.  A man, a newcomer to the group, described the dilemma we face with the drought-driven explosion of deep-well pumping of groundwater, of the extraction for private purposes of a precious resource held in common, noting the lack of legal recourse.  Although Don had been standing for almost two hours, it was as if he jumped to his feet.   “We can change that,” he said firmly.  “We can change the laws.  People like us in this room, we can change that.”
           
     I give him the last word on that subject.
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Trudy Wischemann is a writer and remedial change agent who lives in Lindsay, once the Olive Capitol of the World.  You can send her your thoughts on change c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

Town and Field

Published Oct. 5, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


This is the second report from Reedley, where the Reedley Peace Center at First Mennonite Church is sponsoring a public speakers series called “In the Struggle.”  The speakers are presenting information about past and present attempts to promote a better agricultural system in this valley, and will conclude with prospects for the future.
 

     The second speaker in our series (Friday, Sept. 30,) was Dan O’Connell, whose doctoral dissertation forms the core of the series. His research covered the public contributions of 6 California scholars who examined the social, economic and political costs of our industrialized agricultural system.  Friday night he discussed three of those scholars, now deceased:  Paul S. Taylor, Walter R. Goldschmidt, and Ernesto Galarza.

           

     Paul Taylor, professor of economics at UC Berkeley, began his academic career researching farm labor, and ended it documenting the ways agribusiness giants prevented the enforcement of the acreage limitation and residency provisions of federal reclamation law.  He also advocated for enforcement of the law and worked politically to prevent its demise.  He supported research efforts demonstrating the importance of the acreage limitation, such as the studies documenting the community development impacts of large-scale farms and the positive contributions of small-scale farm cooperatives.  He also supported non-profit groups such as Fresno’s National Land for People, led by George Ballis and individuals like Ben Yellen, M.D. in Imperial Valley, who were working politically and through the courts to get the law enforced.

     Paul’s early efforts documenting Mexican farm labor in Imperial Valley (1920’s) transitioned to documenting the in-migration of Dust Bowl refugees in the 1930’s.  Like their Mexican predecessors, the Okies were former farmers-turned-farm laborers when they were swept off the land.  With his wife, photographer Dorothea Lange, Taylor documented the terrible conditions of these refugees and then helped create government labor camps and resettlement programs to begin to alleviate these conditions.

     Paul’s work in the field of farm labor was followed by the heroic efforts of Ernesto Galarza, who documented the Bracero Program and worked to organize a union for farm laborers.  Through this work Galarza recognized first-hand that the Bracero Program, which was begun during WWII to provide Mexican farm laborers for California’s farms while Americans were away at war or occupied in the arms factories, was being use to prevent union organizing efforts from succeeding.  Galarza’s efforts to create a union failed, but he succeeded in bringing the Bracero Program to an end in 1964, almost twenty years after the end of WWII.  Shortly thereafter, the United Farm Workers under Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta began, as well as efforts to provide the legislation needed to make union protection of farm workers possible in this state.

 

     Paul Taylor’s research on farm laborers, Mexican and Okie alike, took him to his work on the acreage limitation provisions, which, if enforced, could have provided the doorway for those laborers to return to their real occupation as farmers.  During the battles in Congress to authorize and make appropriations for the Central Valley Project, which California’s large farmers claimed should be exempt from the acreage limitation provisions, he helped construct and then supervised the examination of the effect of farm size on rural communities, which became known as the Arvin-Dinuba Study.  The study was conducted by a young anthropologist, Walter Goldschmidt, who determined that small farms created communities that were much healthier economically, socially and politically than the towns surrounded by large-scale (and often absentee) farm operations.   Goldschmidt, whose career as an anthropologist included studies of multiple indigenous tribes and cultures on three continents, was called back to testify at Congressional hearings on the results of this study from the beginning of his career until a few years before his death at age 96.

     What we see, looking at the active, engaged scholarly careers of Taylor, Goldschmidt and Galarza, is that the hidden impacts of our industrialized agricultural system cover the entire range of concerns in this valley, from the development of the towns to the conditions in the fields and back into the towns again.  In the next two talks, we will see how other scholars have continued this work, from Don Villarejo’s research to document the increasing agricultural concentration of power and wealth and farmworker advocacy (Oct. 7^th) to Dean MacCannell’s extension of Goldschmidt’s community research at the macrosocial level, examining the influence of farm size on 70 San Joaquin Valley towns (Oct. 14^th.) 

     Come join us. For more information on the series, visit www.reedleypeacecenter.org and click on “calendar.”

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural community researcher and advocate who writes.  You can read last week’s column below.  Many thanks to Chris Brewer for his lifelong devotion to the history of our region.

Report from Reedley

Published Sept. 28, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


For the next few weeks I will be reporting on a speakers’ series called “In the Struggle” being held at the Reedley Peace Center, a program of the First Mennonite Church.  The idea for the series came from the Cornell dissertation of Dan O’Connell, who served as Sequoia Riverlands Trusts’ conservation easement officer in Visalia.  He transferred to a similar position with American Farmland Trust, working out of Fresno where he also helped start Food Commons, a non-profit linking small producers with local consumers.  Dan’s dissertation portrays the contributions of a handful of California college professors who, despite the resistance of their academic institutions, lack of research funds, and political opposition, documented the need for a more sustainable agricultural system in this state. The series goes beyond academic contributions and includes some of those workers in that field today.
 

     We drove to Reedley on the first cool Friday night of fall, through the clouds of dust from walnut harvesting, past vineyards with stacks of brown paper sheaves at the ends of the rows, ready to make raisins from grapes.  The evening light reflected lightly off water in furrows between rows of trees getting their last drink, through the fine mist of sprinklers running, the produce of our lands looking secure despite the drought.

           

     The peacefulness of the scenery contrasted with the subject of the presentation we were headed to hear: the struggle over the past 80 years to make sense out of the great contradiction we live with in this Valley, that we are the most agriculturally productive region of the world with the nation’s highest rates of poverty.  In many places, among many people in this precious valley of ours, just speaking that contradiction will either clear the room or provoke hostility. Yet we live with its consequences daily, whether we consciously recognize it or not.

           

     The first speaker in this series was from Cornell University, Dr. Scott Peters who served on Dan’s dissertation committee.  His field is history, with expertise in the public mandates of the land grant colleges, which range from Ithaca, NY where he teaches to the west coast locations of UC Berkeley and Davis.  We learned a great deal about the development of these institutions and the men (largely) who shaped them.  His understanding about the evolution of education in this country was mind-opening.

           

     But it was his understanding of the different types of history that helped me most.  Historical narratives, he called them, the storylines that lead our thinking, the storylines that shape our lives as individuals and communities.  He began with his own story, a son of two people who grew up on small farms.  That’s a critical thread we hear in many lives: how many generations you have to go back to get to the ancestors who farmed.  Many in this valley don’t have to go back.  I have friends who farm on small portions of land.  Our best Valley writers can still taste the peaches they raise or feel the handle of the hoe their grandfather used to run furrows and chop weeds.

           

     According to Dr. Peters, the first kind of history we write is the heroic one, the one where only good comes from human efforts.  We came, we ploughed, we dug, we built.  See what we accomplished.

           

     The second kind (he called the counter narrative) responds to the omissions in the first.  Yes, we came, and we took, we trampled, we depleted, we abused, and then we reinforced the pattern so that it takes an act of Congress (or God)  to change.  See what damages we have wrought in our fervor to build.

           

     The third kind Dr. Peters named as “prophetic,” and it is the one I identify as my own part of this history-making.  What could it have been like if we’d done it differently, and what can that imagination tell us about how to proceed? 

           

     In my own history in this struggle, following Paul Taylor’s indomitable lead, carrying his baton, the question is this.  What if we had enforced the acreage limitation of federal reclamation law on the Central Valley Project, not to mention the Kings-Kern Army Corp dams and the State Water Project?  What if we could now find some way to revoke the power we’ve given those large landowners far too long by delivering them water courtesy of the pubic treasury and the rightful, common claim we all hold to that resource?

           

     Join us for these discussions at the Reedley Peace Center.  Visit www.reedleypeacecenter.org and click on “Calendar” for the speakers schedule and descriptions or call (559) 994-4297.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes.  You can contact her 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.

 

We Drill for Will

Farmers Saving Farmers, Redeeming Us All


     Will Scott, Jr., Fresno organic grower of soul food, community farm activist and president of the African-American Farmers of California, is about to go out of business for lack of water.  (For an overview of his efforts, visit www.scottfamilyfarms.net.)  Featured in the Fresno Bee's "Faces of the Drought," Will was quoted as saying  "We're on the verge of losing a lot."  (See also this blog's entries "Drill for Will" and "Approaching Rain" in October.)


     Paul Buxman, Dinuba organic tree fruit grower, small farm organizer and Valley farmscape painter extraordinaire, heard the news and said "The community can't afford to lose this man."  So he's launched a fund drive to deepen Will's well to keep Will where the community needs him:  on his farm. (For two beautiful television reports on this project, visit http://abc30.com/news/drought-hasnt-dried-up-dinuba-farmers-generous-spirit/1010605 and http://abc30.com/news/generous-response-to-valley-farmers-well-fund/1020474/.)  See and hear also Alice Daniel's fantastic piece of radio journalism for KQED's "California Report" at http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/11/07/drill-for-will-get-this-farmer-some-water/. 

    
     For a $50 contribution (roughly equal to one foot of well deepened,) Paul is offering a 16x20 lithograph of either "Approaching Rain" or "After the Rain."  For a $75 contribution, a person can choose one of three 18x24 lithographs:  "Swedish Homestead," "Autumn Afternoon," and "Approach to Reedley."  The lithographs are signed and numbered, wrapped in acetate and backed with museum-quality board, ready for framing.  (For a large view of Paul's paintings, visit www.shinnphoto.com/Paul-Buxman; unfortunately, this blogsite isn't allowing me to insert photos today!)


               We  Can  Help ! ! !  Even us non-farmers ! ! !
    
     Any contribution will be gratefully accepted.  Make your check payable to Will Scott, Jr.  with "Drill for Will" or well fund written in the memo.  Send it to Paul Buxman, Sweet Home Ranch, 4399 Avenue 400, Dinuba CA 93618, and include your name, address and phone number to arrange for pick-up of the lithographs. 


     If you'd like to taste the Buxmans' fruit of their labors, literally, plan on attending their annual Art Show and Holiday Gift Sale, November 27 and 28, featuring Paul's original oil paintings (many new ones this year!), lithographs and art cards, plus farm-crafted foods and gifts from Sweet Home Ranch and neighboring farms.  Enjoy the beauty of the farm, the tastes of home, and visits with neighbors and friends.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes from her adopted home town of Lindsay.  You can send her your ideas to raise money and lower Will's well c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Approaching Rain

For the Oct. 14, 2015 issue of the Foothills Sun-Gazette
    
     Thin blades of bright green grass have come up through the bent-over dry stalks in my backyard this past week, responding to last Sunday’s rain.  It’s amazing how the sight of baby wild oats can produce hope, but it has.
    
    Those thin green blades are an antidote to despair in a way, like taking aspirin for a headache.  We’ve submerged much of our despair about the drought, I think, have tried to hold its head underwater while we wait for good news that it was just a mirage.  Maybe the despair will drown, we think, while continuing on with our lives as if we weren’t under environmental siege.
       
     Drought despair is what Paul Buxman’s project “Drill for Will” washed downriver for me two weeks ago (see last week’s column below.)  Paul has been an antidote to my despair before:  in 2003, after yet another freeze made our small-scale citrus growers want to throw in the towel, he came to our Lindsay Lighthouse Breakfast meeting to embolden the members.  “Just try and do something for 2 hours a day that could bring in some money,” he advised, speaking from first-hand experience as a plum grower too subject to hail.
    
     Paul’s paintings are an antidote to another kind of despair that many of us feel:  that our landscape, our precious, verdant agricultural bread-basket-of-the-world, hands-on-the-plow landscape is vanishing.  It is vanishing:  Bill Preston, the author of Vanishing Landscapes: Land and Life in the Tulare Lake Basin (1981,) can barely stand to visit this place for the pain these losses inflict on his heart.  But Paul, in painting them, has made a testimony to their importance.  Several of his paintings bear this witness in the offices of senators and other government officials in Sacramento and Washington.  “This is a reminder of how you need to vote,” he’s told several elected representatives as he handed over the paintings to their new owners.
    
     “Approaching Rain” is the title of one of the paintings reproduced as lithographs that Paul is giving in exchange for financial contributions to deepen the wells of Will Scott, Jr., the black organic grower and small-farm activist near Raisin City who is in danger of being driven out of business next year for lack of water.  This painting shows a small farm against a darkened horizon that could bring disaster as well as blessing, which we might see differently now after four years of little rain.  “After the Rain,” “Autumn Afternoon,” and “Homestead” (which portrays raisins drying in the sun,) are the titles of the other three.
    
     These four paintings are from the 1980’s and were chosen for reproduction because Paul felt they best represented both his style and his subject.  Normally these lithographs sell for several hundred dollars each.  As a quartet, they represent the passion and skill of this artist/tree fruit grower who knows the lay of our land like no other.
    
     “Man, you’re making history,” an old gentleman told Paul last week while he was out painting over on the Kings River delta.  “No,” Paul said, “but I am recording it.”
    
     Actually, I think the gentleman had it right.  It’s radical, what Paul’s doing by painting landscapes we’re all afraid to acknowledge that we love, and then putting them up for people to see and buy.  It’s radical, handing out the fruit of his labors for free to help save another farmer and small-farm activist who tells people that black farmers’ lives matter, and black peoples’ diets do, too.  It’s even radical to hope that deepening a well will drive off the wolf at that farmer’s door, to hope that there is enough rain approaching to satisfy the wants of many and keep the big boys from sucking everyone’s wells dry.
    
     If making that kind of history appeals to you, send your checks to Paul Buxman, Sweet Home Ranch, 4399 Ave. 400, Dinuba CA 93618.  Make the checks payable to “Will Scott, Jr.,” with “well fund” written in the memo space.  Include your name, address and phone number to arrange for pick-up of the lithographs, one for each foot of well to be drilled (currently estimated at $50/foot.)  Make history and drown despair:  collect all four!

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Trudy Wischemann is a small-farm/rural advocate who writes and sings.  You can send her your ideas for turning drought despair into hope c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.