Eagles in the Sky

Published in slightly edited form April 29, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     Thanks to the Orange Blossom Festival and several class reunions, many of Lindsay’s eagles returned to the nest this past weekend, a remarkable homecoming.

     I had one on my porch Friday afternoon in anticipation of Saturday’s events, Stan Rice.  Some of you may remember him from high school:  fundamentalist, nerdy, ‘way-too-bright kid who is now a Christian Environmentalist in a way that is not an oxymoron.  Stan writes, teaches and leads evolution field trips in his parents’ home state of Oklahoma. “I just flew in from Tulsa,” he said when he called to let me know he was here.  “My arms are really tired...”  Stan still tells cornball jokes, but his heart is true and his mind is sharp as ever.

     Bob Puls’ brother David was also in town for his 53rd.  David’s lived Down South most of his adult life, and is the only person I’ve heard so far who can offer one reason why the price of ag land around here is soaring through the stratosphere at a time when you can’t live on the income from oranges and there’s no guarantee of water in the foreseeable future.  Everyone around here just watches with their jaws hanging open.

      I myself was not here for Saturday’s festivities.  I was singing backup in Porterville with “The Standlees,” Diane and Tommy, with Jesse McCuin on standup bass and me on tambourine, conga shaker and autoharp.  We’d managed to get ourselves booked for the Iris Festival before we realized we’d be missing OBF as well as two nearby rodeos, but it was alright. 

     There we were, singing in the rain under two little tents that shed their collected stormwater every time the wind blew, while the generator running the PA equipment roared and the feedback squealed and groaned.  Diane was belting out a line from “Master of the Wind,” and it sent shivers through me.  “Sometimes I soar like an eagle to the sky.  Among the peaks my soul can be found.  An unexpected storm  may drive me from the high.  It can bring me low but it cannot bring me down.”  Day to day, life sometimes can be daunting to Diane, but not when she’s singing.  Then nothing stops her.

     Later that evening Jesse and I were up at the casino to hear the Oak Ridge Boys.  They said they were glad to be here, and even knew where “here” was:  first they were in Porterville, then they started driving up, up, up.  “Eagle Mountain,” said one, “I guess that’s still in Porterville,” and all the Portervillians clapped and hooted.  But we were really nestled among the peaks to the east, the ones that catch the rain and save us our drinking water.  When someone announced mid-way through the concert that it was raining again, everyone cheered, including the Boys and the Mighty Oaks Band.

            Some writers have noted the brain drain in rural areas, and it’s not hard to notice on a weekend such as the last.  What these Brains have done, however, is leave the fate of their hometowns in the hands of people who, perhaps, have a little more heart and a little more faith in harness with their minds, and willingness to put up with the every day consequences of being attached to a place.  May our all our souls soar among the peaks.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer committed to rural places in California’s Central Valley.  You can send her your eagle sightings c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Clean Jars

Published March 25, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     “You were spoiled,” a friend at church kindly chided me after reading last week’s column.  I was raised with running water and indoor plumbing; neither he nor his wife was.  I loved hearing their stories of different times and places.  I kindly did not ask if they would go back to living that way.

     But their generation’s lifeways are not the only ones being left behind in the sweep of industrial history.  Mine are, too, something I discovered in a long, luxurious evening phone call with a friend (which itself was impossible when my mother was raising her family.)

           

     We were talking about reducing the clutter in our lives.  She had spent Sunday going through her collection of magazines.  They had been sitting behind her couch in boxes and bags since she moved seven years ago.  Recently retired, she found herself with a new job:  what to do with her archive of New Yorkers and college alumni magazines?  I loved hearing the gentleness she applied to both her magazines and herself.  There was no condemnation for having kept these things, which I hear from so many of my other friends at this stage in our lives.

           

     But then she surprised me.  We moved on to her collection of empty jars, which I also have in abundance.  “You know, some of them are canning jars, which are good forever.  But there’s also the perfectly good jars from pickles and things, which I save.  I finally put them into the dishwasher for one last time, each one with its lid.  Then I bagged them up and took them down to Goodwill.”  My heart took a lurch for her gentle soul, knowing what was coming.           

     “I handed this man my bags, and he said ‘What’s this?’  ‘Clean jars with lids,’ I told him.  He just looked at me weird, then said ‘Recycle them.’”  We let the silence between us speak for itself a moment.

           

     Clean jars with lids.  I know that phrase from my childhood.  We save them to hold collections of screws and nails (short, medium, long;) thumbtacks, hooks and eyes, still-good zippers ripped out of old dresses or the last half of the batch of tartar sauce we made but didn’t eat.  We save them because they’re still good for a lot of things, and because it took energy to manufacture them that will be wasted if they get smashed up in the recycling process.  We save them to hold small batches of jam we might make this summer or olives we might cure this fall.  We save them because they still have value, even if no one would buy them, not even at a thrift store.

           

     My sewing machine jammed when I tried to fix a dog collar last week.  One look at the yellow pages told me sewing machine repairmen are almost extinct.  When I asked the women at church if they knew of a good one, they said “Who sews?”  I thought of my shelves of fabric, the boxes of patterns and notions I have saved, and realized I have neglected some of the most basic living skills I learned to survive. 

           

     I think I’ll call my friend and tell her what our golden years are for:  reviving those survival skills, not casting them off for greater dependence on what the corporations want to provide.  As a society, we might need those skills someday.

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Trudy Wischemann is a crocheter who writes.  You can send her your list of almost dead survival skills c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

 

 

           

Remains

Published in edited form January 21, 2015 in the Foothills Sun-Gazette


     My pile-sorting project at home was interrupted last week by three blessed days of work.  Those three days away, however, helped me see my piles in a new way.


     I’m the relief person for a mini-storage in Exeter, where I’m appreciated for my attention to detail despite the fact that I’m frequently late.  I keep track of my tardy minutes and try to compensate for them, including staying past quitting time if a customer needs me.  Saturday one did.


     It was twenty minutes before closing.  I was ready to go home and start facing my piles again when a woman flew through the door asking was I closed?  "No,” I said, hoping she only wanted to make a payment.  No, she wanted to rent a unit.  “No,” involuntarily erupted from my mouth, then I asked what size she needed.  “Do you have pictures of them, can I see one?” she asked back, semi-frantic as the story of her need began to pour out.  “We can go look at some,” I told her, knowing this was going to take longer than twenty minutes.  I silently said goodbye to my going home plans, silently acknowledged that I recognized her confusion, her state of disrepair, that I’d been there before myself.  Determinedly I said “I can help you.”


     Her story is not mine to tell, but it’s one we hear often in the mini-storage business.  A person feels their life beginning to unravel, relationships turning to melted wax.  Sometimes it’s divorce or the loss of a home; sometimes it’s death itself.  The stuff of our existence, the things we’ve collected to make life good or bearable or creative are suddenly at risk.  We need a safe place to put what remains of that life until this storm blows over.  We rent a unit, buy a lock, and begin to sort what needs saving from what can go.  Renting a unit can feel like finding a little eddy in a tidal wave of despair.


     Sometimes taking a rental feels just right.  A young couple came through the door Saturday morning wanting a place to store things they were collecting for their new house in Exeter.  Our buy-one, get-one-free special served them perfectly, since escrow is supposed to close this week.  They plan to paint walls and install new flooring, making the house theirs before they move in.  I rejoiced in their stable lives and organization, their partnership in the decision-making.


     A lot of the time, however, renting a unit to someone feels like triage.  I can’t keep the bank from taking the house, can’t cure the cancer, can’t mend the marriage, can’t even promise their stuff will be totally safe while they work on the problem, however long that takes.  All I can do is find the right-sized unit to fit their needs, walk them through the paperwork and obligations entailed, say a prayer, and say goodbye, good luck moving in.  It leaves me feeling pretty helpless sometimes.


     Mid-day a couple about my age came into the office looking tired.  They had just finished cleaning out her mother’s unit, a 10x30, after her death in November.  They had been working on it six weekends, had three yard sales, and paid someone to come take what was left.  I congratulated them, knowing how painful it was, as well as exhausting.  We’re just glad it’s done, they said.


     After they left, I finished the paperwork and discovered that I had rented the unit to her mother a year before.  I tried to remember the occasion, her face or story, what the weather was like, but it was all a blank.  I went to clean the unit and found a few shards of her life left on the floor amidst the dust.


     The scraps said she was a craftswoman, a person who loved to make things, uniting her spirit with the materials of this world.  It’s a love I share, although I don’t give myself that pleasure much anymore.  In a plastic bag I bundled up a few ceramic tiles, a window-shade pull, a piece of nylon webbing and a funeral program she’d saved since 1998, and tucked them in the back seat of my car, a salute to our shared humanity.  Then I swept away the last of her mini-storage remains, making room for the next customer.


     My piles look a little different now.  I see that what’s in most of them are the remains of former lives, mine and others’:  spirit-infused material goods whose time in our lives has expired.  I can’t bring back my field work days any more than I can my once-sharp eyesight, though in remembering who I was back then I might find a compass for restoring my path.  In that hope, I’m digging back in.  See you later.

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Trudy Wischemann is a fiber craftswoman who writes.  You can send her your thoughts about stuff c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Data Crunching

Published Jan. 14, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Last week’s warm, spring-like weather had me crunching some raw data I mentioned in my previous column.  “Data crunching” is just academic slang for processing facts in some way that shows relationships between categories of things.


     My processing began in the form of laundry.  I washed piles of clothes from my past, looking for clues to my true identity as a child of God despite the clear evidence of massive strokes of sin.  A flannel shirt from my field work days, for instance, helped offset some guilty-looking underwear.  A pair of jeans I’ll never squeeze back into reminded me I once thought size 12 was large.  Examining one’s conscience through the lens of previous wardrobes can be a growth experience in humility, one trait of the saintly.  But hanging wet stuff on the clothesline, letting it dry in full view, preparing for its new life as a rag or thrift shop donation - man, that’s cathartic.


     I keep wondering how Val is doing with his data crunching.  His job is a little different from mine:  he’s got to organize his raw data well enough to contradict the data provided by his clerk.  His data need to provide a different picture of relationships than the one her data paints.  His data have to convince a panel of people not from his home town or county that he’s a child of God qualified enough to keep serving up justice here at home despite the clouds on his apparent character.  All I have to do is convince my internal judge and jury that I qualify to keep breathing.


     When I crunch the data in the judicial committee’s report, the relationship I see is one of invidious paternalism.  He was trying to take over her life.  With the anonymous letter accusing her of having an affair with another court employee, supposedly sent to her husband’s workplace and cc’d to Judge Val, he was inserting himself between her and her husband as well as the other employee with whom she was still on a friendly basis.  By instructing her to tell no one about the letter, he was also inserting himself between her and her other friends.  He then began depositing cash into her bank accounts and providing other luxuries, from AAA coverage to a BMW.  As benign as he tried to make these look, they are steps toward a predatory relationship, how paternalism goes ugly.  Ask any daughter of incest.


     I probably wouldn’t mention this again except for the possibility that Judge Val has been using his power in other inappropriate ways, particularly within our community.  The most blatant example I know was his signing the LPD’s search and arrest warrants over a 3-day weekend in the unwarranted arrest of Councilman Mecum last year.  The Saucedo’s home is three doors down from Lindsay’s police station, which made it convenient, I’m sure.  But his past history on the city council and multiple terms as mayor leave too strong a connection to City Hall to guarantee impartiality in evaluating the validity of those warrants.  Most judges refuse to sign warrants in the communities in which they live simply to avoid the appearance of potential conflict of interest.


     The other was his attendance at Lindsay City Council meetings during the LARGo lawsuit on CEQA violations and neglect of historic preservation provisions in Lindsay’s outdated general plan.  I didn’t know it at the time, but that may have been a violation of the judicial ethics code.  At the time, however, I felt it was some kind of betrayal of the community, his appearance and comments meant to sway the Council back toward the staff’s direction at a time when they were beginning to move away.


     I hope the community will come to understand that the loss of this “local hero” may in fact be a gain for our efforts to build real democratic process.  Maybe it’s time Val did some laundry.
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Trudy Wischemann is writer who loves to get her hands into soapy water and make things clean.  You can send her your data crunching stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

           

 

 

 

           

Raw Data

Published Jan. 7, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     A friend visited me from the coast over New Year’s, a dear friend.  For the most part our time together was a blessing, a re-visitation of our shared interests and beliefs after many years apart.  When he saw the way I live now, however, he interpreted the state of disrepair and chaos in my home as major moral backsliding, a dangerous degree of failure on the brink of collapse.  His solution would be to bring in the biggest dumpster available and wipe it all away, give me a fresh start.  He left without implementing his plan, thank God.


     Afterward I wondered why I wouldn’t appreciate his help.  I came to the conclusion that it’s because I see these piles of stuff and badly mingled projects as raw data, possibly containing important information about my state of being and how I got here.  It’s because I have hope that I’ll learn more about myself as I unmingle and sort, then deliberately remove that which does not belong here anymore, keeping what does.  I have hope that would be the real fresh start.


     Raw data is all we have at the moment about Judge Valeriano Saucedo, our local Lindsay boy known familiarly as “Val” by classmates and teachers, family and friends.  His list of successes and contributions, including mayor of this town, is a source of pride to many in the community, Anglos and Latinos alike.  The story that hit the front pages of several papers last week about the investigation and pending hearing before the Committee on Judicial Ethics was a blow not only to his reputation, but also to us.


     Thanks to a link in the first Fresno Bee article, I found the Committee’s report and printed it off to read carefully.  The picture that emerged on first reading was raw, a story of smooth but persistent entrapment like a spider’s web.  The words in the text messages quoted made me queasy, not just for the woman, his courtroom clerk, but also for Val.  I began wondering if he was having a bout of temporary insanity, the kind that comes with falling in love.


     On second reading I realized this story is partial.  Although the report does not state where the information came from, it must be supposed that it is the clerk’s story and that the documents (including electronic messages) were delivered to the Committee by her.  Until Val’s story is told, we will have only her half of the raw data to process.   And even then, we will never know the ephemeral raw data:  things spoken between them, and all the forms of non-verbal communication exchanged between humans like glances and touch, postures and movements.


     As I read her story, however, I couldn’t help but wonder what possesses men to make such power plays on women.  I could identify with the situation entirely, unfortunately from the woman’s place.  It took me far too many years to understand men’s power plays for what they are, and not real advances of affection.  From the picture presented in the report, I could imagine that even the man may not have realized his motivation for making such improper moves until he was called on it by her.  Maybe not even then.


     This is why we have rules about ethical behavior and laws about sexual harassment.   It’s all too common for this kind of thing to destroy families, make work environments intolerable, erode people’s mental health.  If the clerk’s allegations are true, where Val made his real mistake is in not following the rules, abusing his power.

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Trudy Wischemann is a non-native Lindsayite who writes.  You can send her your thoughts and stories c/o P.O. Box 1374 or leave a comment below.

Pilgrimage

Published Nov. 26, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Here we are, Thanksgiving time, entering the holidays.  Holy days.  And the two darkest months of the year:  November 21 through January 21.


     My father turned 89 as we walked through that door.  He said it was a hard birthday for him when we talked on the phone.  Then he said goodbye and went out to his shop where he makes things to give away.  Been doing it all his life.  Right now he’s making scoops -- you know, implements to scoop stuff up with.  I have one I treasure that he made early in his scoop-making career maybe 10 years ago, beautifully varnished.  He sent me another from his most recent batch, this one from the heart of a redwood tree with only a light coating of mineral oil, “nothing toxic” he scrawled on the note that came with it.


     He’s the kind of person you would want to have along if you set sail in the Mayflower headed for who knows what, just wilderness.  No homes with running water and electricity waiting to shelter you when you arrived.  No stores to go buy pots and pans and scoops to scoop oats out of a barrel.  No oats. No barrels.  No schools for the children, no constables to keep the peace, no armies to keep the enemies at bay.  No enemies, at least not until you arrive and show what you intend to do with land somebody else already occupies.


     I’ve been with him, more or less, for two-thirds of his journey.  I don’t think he knows yet how much of his life plays out in mine, how his deliberate, daily passages to the shop are replicated in my daily moves to the computer, or how his projects find their way into my columns.  I think 89 is hard for him because he senses the end of his pilgrimage approaching, the clock ticking as relentlessly as he is, making scoops.  One of the hardest things for me to imagine when that time comes is how lonely his shop is going to be.  It struck me yesterday that I’m quite sure his table saw will never run again, like the grandfather clock in the song, when that time comes.


     Yesterday I finished typing a manuscript for the book I’m editing, written 22 years ago by Father Bill Wood, a Jesuit.  I called him earlier this year at the retirement center where he’d gone to live and finish the book he’d started more than 22 years ago, which the manuscript briefly summarizes.  This piece is brilliant, full of light, a fusion of theology and ecology applied to the relation of agriculture and the common good.  In it, he takes a stand on where the church should be in the discussion.  But when I sent the freshly typed file to his email address, it came back undeliverable.  The prospect that Bill Wood has completed his pilgrimage on this earth and gone to join the eternal community gives me pause.


     But not too long a pause, because I don’t know that I’ll see 89, or even 69.  None of us knows, do we?  All we know is that, at the moment, we’re on this pilgrimage, heading off for who knows what, pure wilderness in some ways, frightening and beautiful all at the same time.  Every day, give thanks for another shot at an idea, another morning in the shop, another chance to make something to give away.  Give thanks for those people who have gone before, clearing the brush and paving the way, and for those still here, helping carry the load.  And give thanks for this Wholeness that holds it all together, us included.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer in reading mode who lives gratefully in Lindsay.  You can send her your pilgrimage stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.