Liberally Speaking

Liberally Speaking: Why Liberalism is Right for America, Stephen J. Natoli, Branden Books, 2015 

           

     Two weeks ago, at the monthly meeting of the Visalia Democrats, I was privileged to hear Stephen Natoli speak about his new book.  Professor Natoli teaches at history at COS, so his comments were particularly meaningful for the liberals living in Tulare County’s rather conservative environment.           

     I found I had a great deal in common with him.  We were both raised Republican, inheriting that political stance from our parents, who inherited it from theirs.  Four years behind me, he took that stance with him to college like I did, where it began to unravel under the influence of Nixon’s Waterloo, Watergate, and the illegal war in Laos and Cambodia, the “foolishness of the Vietnam War.”  

   

     That war was more than foolish for me:  when my brother came home in a body bag, my entire way of thinking was destroyed.  It took years to re-assemble some comprehendible ideas about how the world worked.  Like Natoli, however, I found some grounding in stories from the Great Depression and the civil rights movement.

     What’s different in our stories, however, is that Stephen Natoli went on to learn about the actual history of liberalism in this country and to analyze its precepts and successes.  He presents these beautifully and succinctly in Liberally Speaking.  “What I have learned from studying history is that the liberal approach works.  It’s not only a theoretical ideal; the record shows its practicality.  Liberal ideas have been the ones that have made society more just, more prosperous and better for people to live in,” ends the introduction.  He spends the rest of the book documenting that claim.

           

     What caused Natoli to write the book is quite interesting.  Visiting a Barnes and Noble bookstore in southern California, he noticed there was a plethora of books on the conservative and ultra-conservative positions, but few if any on the liberal creed.  He thought how seldom he had heard fellow liberals claim their position, much less express and defend the principles behind it, and ascribed Barack Obama’s 2 elections to the Presidency to Obama’s ability to express them eloquently.  “It was the beliefs themselves that won those elections by galvanizing the people behind their visions for the future.  That belief system,” Natoli says quietly, “is called liberalism.”

           

     Natoli’s list of “what liberals believe” is helpful and clarifying.  There are 17 inter-related principles:  ethics as the bedrock, founded in truth, honesty and love for one another; equality of all people at all times; freedom to be, do, say and believe as we will, as well as freedom from preventable harm; community of others whose well-being we must consider as well as our own;  opportunity to pursue our dreams; meeting human needs with compassion, ingenuity and resolve; democracy as the foundation for a just political system; empathy for our fellows as the wellspring of the causes we champion; progress, or faith in the improvement of the human condition if we work for it in good will; science as a means to discover and employ fact and reason to better our world; justice under the law and as a framework for fairness in society; security of our persons, rights and dignity; practicality in the ways we pursue our goals and implement our policies; diversity of people celebrated within the unity of the human family; civil rights enshrined and protected; service as the means to realize these principles; and love as the source of all the good we do and are.

           

     Conservatives may find themselves agreeing with some of these principles.  What distinguishes liberals is the willingness, heroic at times, to hold all these principles together.  “The American people deserve to see that liberal values are American values, and to appreciate that much of what has made America free and prosperous is a result of great liberal leaders and great liberal ideas,” Natoli declares.

           

     You can read more about the book and Natoli’s endeavors to get us liberals to talk at www.braveqnuwhirled.blogspot.com, as well as order the book there.  The book is also available at the Book Garden in Exeter.  Stephen Natoli will be speaking in Lindsay on March 9^th at the third Cultural Arts Forum, along with his colleague in the COS History Dept., Stephen Tootle, a Republican.  That evening they will be talking (not yelling) about the differences between the two parties. The event is free and begins with refreshments at 6:30 pm in the Lindsay Gallery and Museum on Gale Hill Ave. adjacent to City Hall.

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Trudy Wischemann is a book-reading, rural-writing liberal who lives in Lindsay.  You can send her your political war stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Learning Curve

     Last week I wrote about the pending study session on goals, objectives and codes of conduct that the Lindsay City Council was preparing to undertake.  Despite my reservations, I attended that session and benefitted hugely, both personally and professionally.  Since I was the only member of the public or the press to attend, I’d like to tell you what I learned about leadership and our city council.

   

     I think it would be fair to say that the only real goal we worked on that day was learning to work together.  Finding the blockages to that goal became the unstated objective of the meeting.  Barry Sommers, the educational psychologist who facilitated it, had his work cut out for him, but he’d come with a very full and useful toolbox and years of practice working with governmental bodies, particularly school districts.  His eleven years working with Lindsay Unified (not to mention 27 years in Pixley) had him well prepared for that day.

     Dr. Sommers’ stated goal at the meeting’s beginning was to see if we could find pathways to becoming “an effective, cohesive council.”  Some of us bristled appropriately, because the word “cohesive” (again, shall we check the dictionary?) can be used to refer to an urge for uniformity that is common in small towns but undesirable in democratic governance. 

     Fortunately, Sommers understood that distinction and provided a definition of the primary job of a city council:  to decide which services will be provided and how to pay for them.  “Cohesiveness” then became a common commitment to respecting the process by which those decisions are made, not thinking alike.  “If everybody is thinking alike, somebody’s not thinking,” Sommers told us, quoting Gen. George Patton, that great military strategist whose decisions helped us win WWII.

           

     One of the blocks to cohesiveness is unmanaged, destructive conflict.  Sommer carefully unfolded differences between constructive conflict and its black sheep brother.  He defined conflict itself as “when at least one person is being blocked or perceives that someone is blocking them from getting what they want.”  Constructive conflict helps clarify issues, increases involvement, makes communication authentic, releases pent-up emotions, helps build group cohesiveness, and perhaps most important, solves problems.  Destructive conflict, on the other hand, diverts energy from real work, destroys morale, deepens differences between us, and produces violence.

   

     The “codes of conduct” we were intended to develop that day were actually the rules of engagement for managing conflict.  We worked for well over an hour to develop a working agreement on these rules of engagement, and the discussions we had about our differences on those rules helped clarify where some of the blockages have been in finding solutions.  The Council may find it more difficult to stick to those rules than they thought, but at least they provide a base line for progress.

     “Trust,” of course, is the most important element for moving from destructive to constructive conflict.  For the purpose of developing trust, Sommers had the council members tell each other their personal stories in two-minute sound bites, a tremendously effective technique for lowering guards.  We did not delve into the reasons for mistrust on this council, which are real, valid, and high-pitched on both sides; that discussion was tabled for another time.

     For me, however, the discussion of the role of trust was clarifying and encouraging in terms of what must be said in this column.  My purpose in writing it is much the same as some of the Council members’ purpose for serving:  helping Lindsay become a community where all residents can have a sense of belonging and a desire for participation. Where all residents can find themselves at home in this place.  Toward that end, we are all higher on the learning curve this week than we were the week before.  Thank you, Barry Sommers, for that.

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Trudy Wischemann is a homebody who writes.  You can send her your goals and objectives for Lindsay c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

On Privacy

    
    At last Tuesday’s meeting, the Lindsay City Council agreed to hire a consultant to direct a public workshop on defining the Council’s goals, objectives, and code of conduct.  I’m told the fee for this work is $1,000, which will come from the public’s coffer.  The time chosen was 10 a.m. Tuesday morning the 19^th, following the long weekend celebrating Martin Luther King Day.
    
    Councilman Mecum questioned the move on several counts, but perhaps the most important was the day and time chosen.  It gave little opportunity for real advance notice to the public, and the morning hour prevents most people who work from attending.  Although he was told the consultant was available only during normal business hours (which is hard for me to believe, frankly, unless this consultant does not normally work with governmental and NGO groups,) Councilwoman Pam Kimball also noted that the hour would allow for more privacy in their deliberations.
    
     It seems to me that a better use for a consultant’s fee would be a workshop on governmental transparency and the techniques available to increase public participation in this city’s affairs.  Despite years of writing on Lindsay’s crying need for improvement in this area, I see no recognition of that need from either Pam Kimball or Danny Salinas. Instead, from them we get only obscurement.  They like to keep their cards close to their chests.
    
     Perhaps a little trip to the dictionary will help.  Let’s look up “privacy” and see what it says:
            “1.  the quality or condition of being private; withdrawal from public view or company; seclusion.  

            2.  secrecy [told in strict privacy]

            3.  one’s private life or personal affairs [an invasion of one’s privacy].” 

           

     Since the first definition refers to the word “private,” let’s check there, too:  “belonging to oneself, not to the state.”  By number, the additional definitions expand on that:

            “1.  of, belonging to, or concerning a particular person or group; not common or general [private property, a private joke];

            2.  not open to, intended for, or controlled by the public [a private school];

            3.  for an individual person [a private room in a hospital];

            4.  not holding public office [a private citizen];

            5.  away from public view; secluded [a private dining room];

            6.  not publicly or generally known; secret; confidential;

            7.  carried out or done on an individual basis [a private medical practice];

            8.  engaged in work independent of institutions, organizations, agencies, etc. [private detective, private tutor].”  The dictionary had an additional entry on “private” relating to body parts, but I’ll leave that to the privacy of your imagination. 

           

     My dictionary’s old (it does not have an entry for “obscurement,” for instance, a brand new word I just made up,) but I think these definitions serve us quite well here in our small towns and rural countryside, where the word “postmodern” has very few users (thank God.) 

           

     Reading through these definitions, I think almost anyone could see that Mrs. Kimball’s hope for privacy in this public meeting would not have met with approval from Daniel Webster.  Nor would it have from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, or Martin Luther King Jr., and a host of other national leaders with democracy on their minds. 

           

     It’s time for the private citizens of this town to stand up and tell our so-called public leaders that we are tired of their private meetings, their anti-public attitudes and exclusionary tactics.  The President of the United States is not the only person we will be electing in November.  Think about your selection criteria for three Lindsay city councilmembers to be elected this fall, then start paying attention to who cares about them. 

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Trudy Wischemann is a Populist agrarian advocate who writes.  You can send her your thoughts on promoting public participation c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Moving Forward

    Last Wednesday I was working on my first column of the New Year, full of the kind of hope and optimism that comes from being rested, when I got a call from Lindsay’s mayor, Ramona Padilla.  “Have you seen the paper?” she asked.  Her voice urgent, she read the headline of the story of the year.  “City searches for lost leadership,” she said, noting a photo of former city manager/police chief Rich Wilkinson sat right below it.

    

     To have the year’s news of Lindsay characterized in this way, after 12 months of struggle to make progress in teaching the albatross to fly – the albatross around Lindsay’s neck left by years of leadership still lost in Townsend’s pink cloud – was almost devastating to me, if not to her.  If you want to know what the insiders are thinking (and feeling,) just read one of Sheyenne Romero’s articles.  Her carefully reconstructed versions of Lindsay’s history match theirs to a T. 

     I could spend my 500 words deconstructing that version, or I can tell you in a couple of sentences why that “loss” is really good news.  Wilkinson was a bully, a different kind of bully than Townsend was – less savvy, more abrasive – but a bully nonetheless.  The keepers of the citadel put him there like a gun to replace a diplomat.  It cost us a lot, both financially and socially, to have him there and it cost us a lot to let him move on, but his departure was an improvement in community quality.  It brought hope for the future. 

    
     The “conflict” between the city council and staff that Ms. Romero reports with such dismay was actually a long-overdue and hard-won change:  the council actually began doing their job overseeing the staff on behalf of the public.  I see it as a tremendously healthy sign of democracy returning to this small town. “Returning” might be a hopelessly romantic word to use, since small towns are known for their propensity to serve only the handful of small fish whose self-esteem is magnified by the size of the pond.  But this romantic believes that at some tiny moment in Lindsay’s history, democracy did have a day.  And more important, this advocate for the four freedoms believes we can have it again. 

    It will take people working together to figure out how we make the democratic process accessible to people who’ve never seen it in action (English speakers included.)  It will take people who want that, which means replacing some of this city’s “leadership” that still remains with people who can see the beauty of inclusiveness.  It will take people who give more than lip service to the need for governmental transparency.  And it will take hope. 

     I take hope from Lindsay’s real story of 2015.  It was the story of the year, largely unreported by this or any other paper.  And I believe we can move forward to a more democratic society, with a more transparent and responsible government and an engaged citizenry becoming members of this place for the first time in their lives.  It is not too much to hope for.  Happy 2016. 

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

peace unearth

Published December 23, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     I was a very young woman when I found this phrase, “peace unearth.”  I think it might have been in the book Notes to Myself, whose author I no longer remember though his impact on me was great.  I made last-minute Christmas cards with it, the words floating under turquoise decoupaged tissue paper, and even sent a few out.

     "Last minute” has come to characterize my Christmas preparations.  It’s not just that I’m lazy or tardy, though I am both of those.  I am also one of those who is aggrieved by the appearance of Christmas decorations in Target and Walmart the day after Halloween, the sound of Christmas music in the grocery stores before Thanksgiving.  These “jump the gun” people seem futuristic to me, and set my brakes screeching, sometimes against my will.  The sound inside my head is illness-making.


     Each year around this time I remember that I moved to small-town Lindsay in search of a more meaningful Christmas.  At that time my family seemed destined to cash in the year’s income in order to mound presents under the tree, and I needed to disconnect from that compulsion.  But more important was the need to grasp the true meaning of the Bethlehem story for my entire life, not just for the month of December.


     The streets of our small towns this past weekend were strikingly empty.  The merchants’ doors were open, but the customers filtered through in thin wisps.  I was out looking for a few treasures and found them, but the spirit of Christmas was vaporous.  My small-town antennae picked up warning bells.

 
     The pews in my church were almost as vacant.  We listened to a gaggle of beautiful children sing, heard Mary’s part of the Christmas story once again.  The organ piped out “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Away in a Manger” and “Silent Night” while we sang along, anticipating the birth just a few days away.  But the future of the church matches that of the small towns, both being eroded by the centralizing forces of the consumer empire.  Until people learn to tend these critical components of small town existence, our future is on the auction block.


     The Christmas cards are fewer this year, too, as more of us increase our reliance on sending e-wishes.  The shift from paper to light and electricity has its benefits, but leaves some of us wondering what will become of the word, spoken or written.
     “As healthy and active as ever, I became old in this, my 79^th year,” wrote my friend Jann Maguire by email, “perhaps because of living in the same house for half my life.  Everywhere I looked, I saw the past peeking through: open school campuses, now with high locked gates; houses, including my own, where the dear departed used to live; almost empty churches where I once worked and worshiped.”  Catching herself in easy melancholy, she got out her verbal shovel and started to dig.

     "I’m grateful for study with wise teachers in vast virtual classrooms and for community service promoting art, feeding my spirit,” she declared, unearthing some peace.  “I pray we keep our hearts open and light in spite of the daily news,” she added, digging a little deeper.  “I revere the babe in the manger, the carpenter who healed, the Cosmic Christ and the Mother and Father of All,” she ended, at rest.  “Amen” I say to that.    
    
     Another friend wrote his hope that I would enjoy this season walking around town like we did my first Christmas in Lindsay, enjoying the sights of lighted houses and yards, the fires stoked, the neighbors outside taking in the stars and the night air.  We’re still safe enough here to do that, by and large.  What a gift.    


     May you unearth some small-town peace this Christmas, courtesy of the Bethlehem story.

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Trudy Wischemann is a neophyte elf in Grinch clothing.  You can send her your peace digging stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

Dos Libros

Published December 16, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


Dear Readers,

            There’s something I want you to add to your Christmas lists: some new light from Sylvia Ross.

            Sylvia is a local treasure whose books I have reviewed before in this column.  She was featured by the Book Garden in Exeter Dec. 3^rd, where she signed copies of her two newest children’s books, Fables In An Old Style (Bentley Avenue Books, 2015.) 

            I wouldn’t know Sylvia if I hadn’t been blessed with a job at the Book Garden eight years ago.  We kept and ordered copies of her first two children’s books published by Berkeley’s Heyday Press, The Lion Singer and Blue Jay Girl, and she would come to the store when she needed one.  The realities of the publishing world at that time meant that we could order copies of her books cheaper than she, the author, could.

            In the interim, the small miracle of self-publishing occurred, unlocking the doors of print media and unleashing writers from the stranglehold of the publishing world.  In the case of Sylvia Ross, the result has been the betterment of our culture and our communities.

            Fables In An Old Style / Fabulas En Un Estilo Antiguo, Books One and Two, are billed as “Comparative Literature for Children.”  Ostensibly they are children’s stories, but I found them more an immersion in real life through stories about children, through children’s eyes, for adults.  It’s just who she is, this Sylvia Ross who lives up the road, around the bend in Lemon Cove with her wonderful husband Bob and children and grandchildren.  She doesn’t discriminate according to age cohort or gender, much less race or ethnicity.  She paints them – us – altogether, just like in real life, and reminds us of that reality in the process.

            There are two terribly delicious distinctions between Sylvia’s Fables and most children’s books you’ll find on bookstore shelves.  The first is that they are bilingual, written in English and Spanish (translated by Rosalinda Villareal Teller.)  As you open the books, you find that the story progresses page by page with English on the left and Spanish on the right.  For families hoping to maintain some semblance of both languages, these books offer evidence of the importance of that effort as well as a tool for assisting in it.  For those of us hoping to expand into one or the other of our two major language systems in this valley, it’s a breath of fresh air.  Hope.

            The other distinction is that they are meant to be colored in.  Once an illustrator for Disney, Sylvia has drawn lovely pictures reminiscent of coloring books interleaved in the stories, and suggests in the table of contents that we buy a set of colored pencils to accompany the gift of these books.  “Some books seek a little desecration,” she noted in Book Two.

            But it’s the stories themselves that are the gifts in these books.  We meet children both naughty and good-hearted, fathers with tempers and women who forget the importance of common things, good kings and bad neighbors, and even one dragon.  We learn the relation between good and bad, about growth of character, the development of morals, the loss of goodwill and blessing, and the critical role of love in the world.  Billed as “fables,” the stories are parables about real life, and reading them, whether aloud to a little one or silently, letting the storyline work its magic inside our heads and hearts, we are reminded what life is all about.

            I encourage you to meet the village gardeners, wizards, witches and woodworkers who Sylvia has gathered together for us to learn from, and take them home for Christmas.  You’ll see the holidays through sweeter eyes and watch otherwise invisible miracles occur if you do.

             Blessings as you go through these next short days.  Yours, Trudy

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Trudy Wischemann is an avid reader who would be dead without books.  You can send her your favorite fables c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

 

Bethlehem

Published Dec. 9, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     Slouching, walking, riding a donkey, we’re moving toward Bethlehem in these last weeks of lengthening nights.  We deck the halls with garlands of evergreens and strings of lights, maybe even a little mistletoe to celebrate that first Coming, the immense journey from Nazareth to the City of David, from peasant child to newborn King.  But we also do it to ward off the dark until we can see the days lengthening once again.

     Bethlehem.  All I have to do is hear the word or see that sacred place name to feel the roots of my belief, my faith.  It marks the time as well as the geography of that turning point from old testament to new, the moment when some of God’s children added the word “forgiveness” to their vocabulary.

     How far is Bethlehem from Damascus, I wonder, or from Jerusalem, for that matter?  From Beirut?  Cairo, Baghdad, Istanbul?  In the Bethlehem of our hearts and minds, it is much further than miles.  It is the place where “fear not” was spoken and heard by shepherds and wise men, a plain carpenter and his child bride.  Fear not, because a new way of living together has just been born in this stable, a new, upside-down order where the poor will not be hungry and the rich will slink off into oblivion if they don’t learn to share.  Where the kings of countries will not slaughter their own people, where little children will be suffered instead of die in suffering.

     Some of us are innocent bystanders in this long, wide story.  Others are soldiers in God’s army, at least in their own eyes.  Then there are the nurses and chaplains, the generals with their strategies and the presidents with their real job, to make peace where there is no peace, and none desired.  There are the arms makers, arms sellers, arms negotiators, arms detonators.  There are arms in the hands of innocents and sinners alike in this long, wide story, this historic sweep.  Back and forth we go, corner to corner, dust pans in hand, removing the debris until the next government bombing, the next terrorist attack.  Back and forth, over and over.  The sound of broomstraws is everywhere.

     Bethlehem.  I could not call myself a Christian if it weren’t for the Christmas story.  It entered my heart as a child, long before I would learn about the faith, decades before I discovered God, the Great Spirit, the Light.  Images of Mary astride the unshod donkey in the cold night, finding shelter with the animals instead of humans, the cattle lowing in approval and welcome – those images tell me who I am in ways the cross does not, at least not yet.  The cross is a harder lesson to learn.

     But now is the season of Bethlehem, and making that journey could be the best therapy of all.  When our cities and small towns appear to have been infiltrated by citizens of Damascus and Beirut set on keeping the old, cold war going into eternity, let us mentally follow Joseph and Mary into the unholy world of Herod and Caesar.  Then, following instructions, let us slip away with them unscathed, the infant safe in our arms.  Let us dig in with them for the long haul, keeping watch over our flocks and discerning God’s direction in the constellations, taking heart from the angels and preparing for the cross.

     Bethlehem:  you couldn’t have come at a better time.

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Trudy Wischemann is a neophyte shepherdess who writes.  You can send her your star and angel sightings c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.