Lindsay's Finest

Published Oct. 29, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “Lindsay’s Finest” is the name of a car club in town with some avid members.  I’ve always thought the name charmingly bold, if perhaps slightly incomplete.  But Friday, at Lindsay Strathmore Public Cemetery, I caught a glimpse of a widely-expanded group of people who fall into that category, and a simple force that makes this place Home.
 

     We were gathered to celebrate the life and bury the remains of Robert Lindsay Hart, 58.  His body had been overwhelmed by cancer Oct. 16th, his spirit released.  His family and friends, at least those who were aware that he had died, assembled there on the grass to recognize the passing of someone they cared about.  And there were many.

     Lindsay was a character.  I didn’t know him well, but I recognized the free spirit in him the first time we met.  He was out for a stroll through the neighborhood one night when I was out working in my yard under the cover of darkness.  We stood and talked for over an hour.  We were friends from that time on.

     And judging by the number of people who came to pay their respects, he had many friends.  Most have known him all their lives and have stories to tell, some of which we heard that morning.  They were stories of befriending, of intense “discussions” over important aspects of car maintenance and anything else, of parties on the canal that could have gone south but for his presence.  And there were tears from some of the young men who looked up to him and were helped by him.

     I didn’t know how much he loved cars, and what a good mechanic and machinist he was.  But when people started arriving in hotrods and vintage sedans from the 1950’s, one good ’n loud motorcycle, that part of his life became evident.  As one particularly souped-up coupe pulled in, I realized that Lindsay’s finest had arrived - this huge cadre of people who called him Friend.

     Some people knew he could be irascible.  I never experienced anything from him but respect.  After I heard that he’d passed, I realized that the one thing I knew about Robert Lindsay Hart was that if I were standing naked and he stood next to me with only a shirt on, he would take it off and wrap it around me.  I know that as certainly as my own name.

     So we gathered, old and young, friends and family, friends and enemies, some women, mostly men, to say goodbye reluctantly.  Pastor Karen Stoffers-Pugh came up from Bakersfield to guide us, grateful to be back in this community where she started her ministry.  I sang an old A.P. Carter song, “Diamonds in the Rough,” because the music Lindsay loved (in the words of a mutual friend) was “too wild” for me.  Karen chose a song from his favorite group, Boston, called “Don’t Look Back,” their #2 hit, and played all 5 minutes of it at the service’s end.

     And as the guests gave the family their condolences, and the sun kept moving across the sky, men of all ages began peeling out and laying down rubber in Lindsay’s honor.  In my mine, that was as good as a 21-gun salute or jets streaking across the sky.  It was some of Lindsay Hart’s finest friends paying tribute to one of the town’s finest free spirits.  Thank you, everyone, for this sweet glimpse of our real community.

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Trudy Wischemann is a 21-year-long newcomer to Lindsay.  You can send your funeral sightings of bliss to her c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

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Vote Lindsay OPEN

Published October 22, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     For the second time in two years, candidates' lawn signs decorate Lindsay’s streets and neighborhoods, telling us it’s time to make up our minds.  I see it as a sign of improvement, though not everyone feels that way.  Perla Soria, who was elected to the school board two years ago, mentioned that she received an anonymous letter during her campaign saying the signs had ruined the town.

     There were no lawn signs before the 2012 election.  No one ran against the sitting city councilmembers; they simply re-appointed themselves to those positions and saved the taxpayers thousands of dollars in election costs.  Of course, that carte blanche situation cost the community millions in wasted grants and loans that have strapped and will continue to strap Lindsay for the next 40 years.

     It also cost us in community participation, a dearth from which we are still trying to recover.  The words “openness” and “transparency” were not uttered before the Townsend dynasty collapsed - there was no point.  It wasn’t until the recall effort was launched, triggered by the appointment of Rich Wilkinson as permanent city manager under the leadership of Mayor Murray, that what was wrong with Lindsay was identified.  It was closed to citizen participation, and opaque to public scrutiny.  Even the press couldn’t find a way in.

     The two incumbents running for city council are the last two non-elected appointees from Mayor Murray’s reign.  At least they were forced to run - we can thank the other candidates for making that happen.  Danny Salinas was appointed somewhere around 2001 to fill the vacancy left by John Stava, who was the only councilmember to cast an occasional “no” vote until Steven Mecum and Roseana Sanchez were elected in 2012.  From Danny’s appointment onward, Scot Townsend and crew got whatever they wanted from the council.

     Under Mayor Padilla, with leadership from Mecum and Sanchez, things are beginning to change.  When citizens do attend city council meetings, they are treated with more respect, although the rules for engagement are still preventing real participation.  The staff can no longer rest assured that their desires will be met with Council’s automatic approval.  But what Council truly needs is one more pair of eyes examining the staff’s proposals for flaws and half-truths, one more good mind open to solutions appropriate for our community, one more good heart willing to take on the task of opposing the insider machine.

     Lorena Vazquez, in her candidate’s statement printed in the Sun-Gazette’s Oct. 8th issue, said “transparency is the number one issue.”  She also listed the need to create an environment, both at council meetings and city hall, where the citizens will be treated with courtesy and respect and their concerns addressed, as well as much-improved street and sidewalk maintenance, water quality, and police protection, which she believes is hampered by poor morale. 

     I agree with her on all these points, and know that Lorena has the chutzpah to work to make things better.  She stood up against the wall erected to protect Scot Townsend’s departure and was one of the avid workers on the recall campaign.  She has invested in herself through her education and positions of employment, and these things would make her a real asset to the Council.  I think we would begin to experience Lindsay in a new way if she were elected.

     So use your ballot wisely:  vote to make Lindsay OPEN to its residents and responsive to our needs.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who misses going to the polls in November.  You can write to her with your concerns 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.


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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.

Sacramento Politicians

Published October 8, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette (slightly edited.)


     Sunday after church I picked up Saturday’s mail and found a flyer from the California Democratic Party (yes, I’m registered D, not R.)  It charged Andy Vidak with broken promises to working people and condemned him for being “Just another SACRAMENTO POLITICIAN.” 

     Considering the flyer’s source (an organization dedicated to getting politicians elected) and the Sacramento postmark, the irony was almost comic.  But then my eye lit on a small light green box near my name and address recommending yes votes on Propositions 1 (the California Water Bond) and 2 (The Rainy Day Fund,) and my sense of humor disappeared.

     Last week I intimated that I don’t think the Water Bond deserves automatic approval just because we here in Tulare County live in a semi-desert dependent on water imported from two watersheds north and are experiencing a drought that is drying up our main source of livelihood.  I still have water coming out of the tap, so perhaps I’m not appropriately panicked.  But these two propositions were crafted by Sacramento politicians to take advantage of the public’s uncertainties about the future, given this drought’s potentially long life, doling out enough goodies to the most powerful stakeholders so they’ll keep quiet.  (Prop 2 has nothing to do with rain, by the way.)  I think both parties should be ashamed.

    

     Governor Brown might be the biggest Sacramento politician with muck on his shoes from this.  Rumor has it he’d like to take one last shot at the Presidency.  I’m sure his good friends Lynda and Stuart Resnick would be glad to help out on that one.  Are there any provisions in the California Water Bond for buying back the Kern Water Bank from them, which they silently wrestled away from the public's ownership?  I didn’t see any - let me know if you find one, OK?

     While you’re looking, you might want to check out the website for “Vote NO on Proposition 1.”   It is a coalition of organizations concerned about the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta and San Francisco Bay, plus organizations like the Factory Farm Awareness Coalition and Food and Water Watch.  I find their arguments compelling, which range from what the bond undermines in terms of public trust doctrine and the principle of “beneficiary pays,” to the blunter facts that it provides “little cost-effective near-term drought relief” and that the proposed dams previously “had been abandoned because of low water yield and financial infeasibility.”

     The most compelling argument to me, however, is that it “sabotages efforts to meaningfully resolve California’s continuing water crisis.”  I agree with their problem statement:  “The water crisis is the result of the over-appropriation, waste and inequitable distribution of limited water supplies and the failure to balance the public trust.”  Let me bring your attention back to one key term:  “inequitable distribution.”  I wonder how Lynda and Stuart’s almond, pistachio and pomegranate crops are doing this year.  I bet their citrus groves aren’t hurting, either.  Somebody want to check?

     Governor Brown, in this term and his first, hasn’t touched inequitable distribution or the big boys’ grip on water.  He learned well from his father, under whose leadership we got a water bond creating the high-cost State Water Project that made farming feasible on those Westside lands the Resnicks farm now.  Now the Sacramento Politicians are asking the public to throw good money after bad, and have corralled most of the activists and media to co-operate. 

     When we find elected officials who can and will address the inequitable distribution of the public’s water supply, we can call them by another name: statesmen.  Until then, the only question left is “Will we ever just say ‘No’?”

     Visit www.ballotpedia.org for good information on the propositions.  See www.noonprop1.org to view the arguments mentioned above.  Note:  On Oct. 8 I received another Vidak flyer, this one from the Republicans claiming Vidak helped author the Water Bond - another reason not to vote for him in my mind.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who is used to being in the minority.  You can send her your reasons for voting yes or no 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.

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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.

How long, Lord?

Published Sept. 24, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     Friday, when I looked at the agenda for Tuesday night’s city council meeting and saw the continuing blockages to open government, the words “How long, Lord, how long we gonna have to ...” seeped into my head. 

           

     What was interesting was that it was Wilma McDaniel’s voice I heard, reading one of her poems on a tape I have somewhere, mimicking a black woman’s Biblical complaint as she stood in around waiting to be picked up after a long day picking grapes, with blisters on her feet and a baby in wet diapers.  I can only find scraps of the other words she used in the poem, but the picture it painted is as clear in my mind as a Paul Buxman farmscape.

           

     Writing this column before the meeting, which you will be reading after it occurs, is always an interesting project.  What they (meaning whoever put the agenda together) have planned to occur at the meeting (in this case, the approval of two items in the consent calendar that I think, in the interest of open government, should be discussed in public before being approved or rejected,) could actually change if enough people showed up at the meeting and requested discussion.  It’s even possible they might do it if I’m the only one asking.  It’s also possible they’ll go right on an approve the entire consent calendar as they have so many times before, no matter what I say.

           

     Two and a half years ago, one member of the public could request the removal of items from the consent calendar for discussion.  No one had done that in so long it didn’t matter, until residents began raising questions about the home loan program.  Then, under Mayor Murray’s leadership, they eliminated that right along with two others, seriously constraining citizen participation in city council meetings.  Since Mayor Padilla took the center chair I have been asking for the restoration of those rights, without real response.

           

     The two items “they” want approved without discussion that I think need to be aired are 1) the resolution “requesting action by Congress on Drought Legislation,” and 2) the approval of the contract for the new city attorney.  

           

     The first is a list of eight “WHEREAS”s, including one which states “just as the City and its residents have been forced to adopt progressively aggressive conservation measures to adapt to the current period of drought.”  Come on. There’s maybe 10 more dry lawns besides mine in the whole town.  They just passed mandatory conservation measures last month under pressure from the governor, after months of not promoting voluntary measures.  Nobody in Lindsay is suffering.  Our farmers are, but not us in town. 

           

     My complaint about the second item, the contract for our new city attorney, is simply technical.  During closed session at the last meeting, the Council apparently made a decision about two things:  not renewing the contract with Julia Lew’s firm, and who to choose instead, yet they reported at the end of that session there was nothing to report.  They chose Mario Zamora, a Lindsay boy, without even interviewing any of the other candidates, and while I can assure you from first-hand experience that Mr. Zamora is a pretty spiffy lawyer, I’d hoped we’d take a break from insider recruitments.

           

     How long, Lord?  Maybe only until November.

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Trudy Wischemann is a prayer advocate who votes.  You can send her your prayers c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or visit www.trudysnotesfromhome.blogspot.com and leave a comment there.

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.

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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.