Prospecting Peace

Published December 19, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

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

           

     How many of you have sat in an audience somewhere and been presented with the uncomfortable fact that we live in the region with the greatest agricultural productivity and the highest rates of hunger in the United States?  This terrible human contradiction is usually a starting point for some program hoping to shift that equation, most often an effort to reduce hunger, not lower food productivity.

     But if you believe, as I do, that equation is a reflection of the wide distance between the extravagant haves (particularly regarding large landownerships) and the landless, destitute have-nots they depend on, with the modest, hard-working sorta-haves caught dangerously but invisibly in the middle, you might be looking for a different solution than good feeding programs.  Friday night’s speaker, Dr. Jonathan London from UCD’s Center for Regional Change, might be offering one.

           

     He is a charming young man, uncharacteristically modest and good-humored for a full-fledged academic with tenure.  He described the process of creating the Center for Regional Change within the frame of the land grant universities’ historic purpose - to serve the nation’s public in both education and research – and his enjoyment reminding his colleagues of that role.  Moving from “rogue academic to institutional actor,” London’s story is similar to many others we have heard over the last 3 months.  Discovering a misfit between the conventional research approaches then being taught and one’s own moral core, the “rogue academic” who wants to be of use starts to carve a new and better path, eventually causing a shift in the institution.

     One of the Center’s main thrusts is to promote “community-based participatory action research” (with the unpronounceable acronym “CBPAR.”)  This form of research is centered in the community, grounded in respect for knowledge that comes from experience as well as education.  It engages community members in the act of defining what research is needed and teaches the community members how to conduct that research.  In the process, the academic researchers also learn valuable information they otherwise would not have had, and are better able to apply their educations to real-world problems.

     Another effort of the Center is to build and maintain a data base of social/environmental conditions in the San Joaquin Valley that is accessible by the public.  As an example, Dr. London showed a map of Reedley generated from that data base which clearly demarcated the areas of greatest social vulnerabilities and environmental problems.  He then asked members of the audience to ponder the possible reasons for the location of those problems.  Predictably, the older part of town had accumulated the problems of aging infrastructure and poverty over time.  But seeing the problems identified geographically had an emboldening effect.  If public resources were going to be spent trying to even-out the disparities of that community, one would know where they needed to be applied.           

  

     In showing us this example, Dr. London easily demonstrated the importance of blending the community’s stories with community science.  Such mapping not only provides important tools for community action, it also can engage residents with a sense of place and their importance in it.  The application of these tools to the planning process was obvious; what also intrigued me, however, was its usefulness in teaching new residents about the place they live and how to be part of it.  “It’s a way of putting youth on the map,” London said, showing photos of children engaged with adults as they lobbied for specific changes in their communities.           

 

     Community-based participatory action research is intended to overcome the limitations of what Dr. London called “helicopter science.”   This is university-based research in which the questions are developed within the ivory tower, which then sends its researchers out to the  community to gather data and then return to that academic bastion for analysis and interpretation.  Sometimes the results make it back to the community that provided the data; more often, they don’t.  Neither do the solutions to the problems being studied, which understandably leaves people in the communities feeling disaffected as well as leaving them unserved.

     But if the power of the university can be extended those on the short end of the economic stick in a way that brings them (us) into more equal relation to those who hold that stick, it could do a great deal to mend the enormous gap between rich and poor here, as well as the gap between rural and urban people.  Working at the community level, it is a small bridge to build over a small creek.  But once the bridge is built, many people can use it, not just the locals.           

     Visit the Center’s website at www.regionalchange.ucdavis.edu to view the four program areas:  Putting Youth on the Map, California Civic Engagement Project, Regional Opportunity Index (data base/mapping project) and Environmental Justice (CBPAR effort.)   We can work toward greater regional peace no matter who is in the White House.

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Trudy Wischemann is a land researcher and community builder who writes.  You can send her your community stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or visit www.trudysnotesfromhome.blogspot.com and leave a comment there.  Apologies to all for not covering Janaki Jaganath’s inspiring talk on Dec. 11^th (which I hope to do next year) and deep gratitude to the Reedley Peace Center for hosting this empowering speakers series.

Winter Instincts

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

     Winter’s coming.  At last the leaves are dropping from the trees’ branches, and what light there is now reaches the ground’s surface more easily.  The cats’ coats are thicker, as are the dogs’ and calves’, the rabbits’ and reindeers’ (wherever they are.)  We here in California relish the warmer rainy days while the rest of the country battens their hatches.  Our thick Tule fog constitutes our most dangerous weather.

           

     I find myself torn at this time of year.  Part of me wants to hibernate, dig out my crochet hooks and make warm woolen mittens that won’t be needed, much less desired in a matter of weeks.  The other part of me wants to celebrate the freedom to be outside without worrying about dehydration:  skip the plastic snowflakes, the electric candles, the evergreens brought inside against the frost that rarely comes, much less the possibility of becoming snowed-in.  Go hiking.  Witness the buckeyes resting, the blue oaks breathing freely, the grass temporarily dead in places but ready to spring green with each watering from above.

    
     It’s a brief moment that we have to rest, this approach to the Solstice and Jesus’ birth.  Most of us spend it hustling, doubling our work with preparing for the holiday celebrations, the decorations, the presents, the meals, the good wishes and music.  Some of us spend it elsewhere, anywhere but home, hoping to avoid the hustle.  Some of us spend it diving into a deep depression, one we will pull out of and survive, hopefully, shortly after New Year’s.

           

     It hit me the other day that Christmas – the part of winter that seems like an antidote to the fear of dormancy -  is all about maintenance.  The maintenance of love between people who spend too much time away from our immediate spheres.  The maintenance of faith, a yearly renewal of the magical mystery in the story that guides our attempts to be forgiving the other 11 months of the year.  The maintenance of a sense of history through the practice of traditions handed to us through stockings hung on the fireplace mantle and the equally magical mystery of Santa Claus.  Christmas is a way of sweeping clean the garbage and burned-out coals from the year’s fires.

     So let’s give it a rest, if just for a couple of weeks – through the planetary wonder of Solstice, through Christmas Eve’s celestial communication.  Through the post-Christmas morning pandemonium, toward the somewhat trepidatious New Year.  Winter is a time of regeneration, not death.  Be strong as you choose your path through this season.  It’s all about keeping on keeping on.

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Trudy Wischemann is an ambivalent celebrator who writes.  You can share your trepidations c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or visit www.trudysnotesfromhome.blogspot.com and leave a message there.

Standing Tall

To be published Dec. 7, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “The Corps of Engineers just denied the permit half an hour ago” said my step-mother triumphantly in Sunday’s phone call.  She knew I’d welcome that news even though our conversations haven’t traversed the Standing Rock Sioux’s territory or the corporate pipeline that threatens it. 

           

     The bravery of those people camping out at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers in defense of their rights to their lands has had me standing taller lately.  However, to think that our government could respond appropriately at this moment of great need – in fact, the Corps of Engineers, which is not known for its interest in public input – has re-instated my belief in this system.  Suddenly I feel glad to be Uncle Sam’s daughter.

           

     It’s all about land, when it comes right down to it, how land matters ‘way more than we think.  The Standing Rock Sioux know how much land matters, as do most Native American tribes.  Despite treaties and lands reserved for their exclusive use, their history is peppered with losses of control over resources and their quality of life to the kind of thinking behind the Dakota Access Pipeline.  

           

    It’s watching others stand up for land that’s straightened my backbone, like Dave Archambault, the Standing Rock tribal chairman, who was interviewed Friday on the PBS News Hour.  Responding to the pipeline CEO’s statement that the tribe was worried about nothing, he said “If the safeguards are all there, why not put it (back to the original route) north of Bismark?”

           

     “He (the CEO) will say that it can’t go there because of the population of the community, the environmental impacts, the sacred sites that are there, the wetlands that it has to cross. These are all the same concerns that we have. It’s just that we’re a lot fewer (in population.)  And so, if there is no worry, if the safeguards are there, then relocate it to that location. That’s OK.”

               

     As he said this, his face showed nothing: no anger, no glee at beating that kind of logic at its own game, no snide-bordering-on-vindictive disgust like my face would have shown had I pulled that off.  He was remarkable, sitting there in the News Hour studio in his light blue, button-down collar shirt, no jacket, no tie, no eagle feathers in his hair or silver jewelry draped around his neck.  He was just a man speaking truth to power who had come to Washington to discuss his peoples’ concerns with the federal government, which Sunday’s news confirmed was worth the effort.

           

     The news earlier in the week that several thousand veterans would be joining the tribes at their encampment, intending to make a human wall between the land protectors and the proto-military police forces who had drenched the protestors with water cannons the week before, had confirmed the national importance of this seemingly tiny decision.  Have we not had enough of our culture’s and our government’s ignorant, arrogant demeaning treatment of native people?  The veterans’ actions say that we have.

           

     I feel that the efforts of the Standing Rock tribe and other Americans, Native and natural-born citizens both, have been a great gift to those of us who feel compelled to question the erosive aspects of “development.”  “We have every right to protest this pipeline,” Archambault said.  “We have indigenous lands, we have ancestral lands, we have treaty lands. The pipeline is 500 feet from our reservation border.… (I)t’s unfortunate that this nation continues to treat our tribe and tribal nations around this country in this manner.”

           

     Monday morning I logged on to the PBS News Hour website to follow up the Corps’ announcement.  There, in an article by Jenni Monet, was a photo of a 97-year-old woman standing in a gymnasium on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation Saturday, waiting to greet the veterans arriving in support.  First Lt. Marcela LeBeau of the Lakota tribe had served in the U.S. Army as a nurse between 1944 and 1947.  Dressed in a plum-colored, dress-length Ultrasuede raincoat, her powder-blue snow parka lying on a folding table behind her, her silver hair piled high on her head, Lt. LeBeau stood tall as she waited for the volunteer troops with a placid, peaceful smile on her face, a smile only slightly wider than the Mona Lisa’s.  Did she know then that this effort was going to work?  Or did she only know that it was the right thing to do, regardless?

    When governments and corporations do not respect the laws of the land or the people who live there, we all have every right to protest.  In fact, I believe we have an obligation.  Standing tall at Standing Rock, the veterans of wars both foreign and domestic have shown us how to reclaim our democracy. May we stand tall with them in support and spirit.

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Trudy Wischemann researches issues of land ethics, land use and land tenure from her home in Lindsay.  For more information on the Standing Rock efforts, go to www.pbsnewshour.org.  To contribute funds to these efforts, visit http://www.rop.org/rural-oregon-stands-standing-rock/. Thanks to rural minister/songwriter John Pitney for this recommendation.  See also Waddie Mitchell's lyrics to Juni Fisher's song "Still Here," described in this blog Feb. 11, 2015.

 

 

 

 

Seeing No One

Published Nov. 30, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


    “Seeing no one,” said our new mayor, Pam Kimball, last Tuesday night, “we’ll skip the rebuttal and move to the vote,” which came out 5:0, predictably approving the item. 

     It was a public hearing on a tax-exempt bond issue that was barely discussed and which I did not understand.  No one spoke in favor of, or against the idea, which caused Pam to lower her gavel.  In fact, no one came to the meeting even to ask a question about it.  It was just like old times.

           

     There are other familiarities. It was the last meeting of Rosaena Sanchez, who chose not to serve another term.  Despite being the elected Councilmember to receive the highest number of popular votes in at least two decades (745 to Pam’s 549, which made her third-place in 2012,) Ms. Sanchez had to acknowledge herself, thanking the citizens for what she’d learned serving on the dais.  Her sentiments were barely acknowledged by the other council members, who appeared not sad to see her go.           

     With Rosaena’s departure, starting Dec. 13^th  the Lindsay City Council will be majority appointees:  people chosen by the Council itself to fill vacancies made by those who left.  In fact, the only two elected Council members, Pam Kimball and Danny Salinas (who received only 385 votes in 2014), served multiple terms as appointees before actually facing an election.  We are back to having a hand-picked Council, insiders all.

           

     Another similarity with the past:  changing rules for public participation.  When Ed Murray was mayor, you never knew whether you’d be able to speak, even during the public comment period, or whether he’d decide that what you had to say was not pertinent to the Council’s business and cut you off with the pound of his gavel.  Asking a question during the meeting was almost impossible.  But when Ramona Padilla became mayor, I began the long process of establishing rules for public participation so that people could know what they could say when, and begin to take their rightful place in these public meetings.             

     With Ramona’s departure and Pam’s elevation to mayor, I knew we would have trouble keeping those rules in place.  Having served as mayor-pro-tem under Ed’s mayorship several times, Pam has no problem filling his shoes.  In both November meetings she quickly dispatched what little public participation could have occurred by me and my attorney regarding the third attempt to build a Dollar General store on Art and Leonor Serna’s lots near the Roundabout.           

    

     At the November 8^th meeting, Mayor Kimball tabled the agenda item rather than discuss it, without even exploring what our concerns might have been.  In the two weeks between that meeting and last Tuesday’s, we received more of the supporting documents from the Dollar General project, which only increased our concerns. We submitted these greater concerns in writing before the Nov. 22^nd meeting and prepared to discuss them with Council and Staff.

           

     Pam chose, however, to limit our participation in person to either the public comment period or during the agenda item.  She then asked Assistant City Planner Brian Spaunhurst to make the staff’s presentation of the project, and she and the other council members smilingly followed along as he painstakingly read each document from the Nov. 8^th meeting, which took at least half an hour.  Staff presentations normally take 5 minutes at most.  When it came our turn to speak, she limited each presentation to five minutes and asked that we present only new information.  These changes in the rules were clearly devised to inhibit discussion of the issues, not to flush them out.

           

     We were there to discuss the apparent problems with traffic safety and congestion thanks to the Roundabout, which appear not to have been adequately considered in the project evaluation.  Yet not one council member took the opportunity to investigate our concerns either during the meeting or afterward.  They instantly and easily rubberstamped the Dollar General project, which elated the Sernas and their realtor.  No one was embarrassed.

           

      “Nobody comes to the Lindsay City Council meetings,” editor Reggie Ellis once shouted at me when I complained about our town.  Those of us who can comprehend the business of city councils should be embarrassed about that fact, especially after the economic antics of the Townsend administration were discovered by a handful of concerned citizens who stuck their necks out and started going to those meetings.  

           

     But the real culprits are the so-called elected officials of this town, who have the responsibility of seeing that the administration operates for the benefit of its residents, not for the benefit of special interests, including individual property owners.  Seeing no one, they think they know what this community needs.  But if they do not operate the public meetings in such a way that public participation is respected and encouraged, no one is exactly who they’re going to see.  It’s on their heads.

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Trudy Wischemann is a neophyte public participant who writes.  You can send her your traffic concerns c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247.  Thanks to one of my favorite RN Market customers for reading this column and asking what I think about our new mayor.

 

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 Pair from Pixley

Published Nov. 16, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


This is the seventh 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.

               

     Sarah Ramirez was scheduled to speak to us Friday night about good food and its role in eradicating poverty.  Sarah is a relatively new face in this old lineup of dedicated academics we’ve heard about, and we looked forward to hearing from a current practitioner in the broad field of agriculture and the common good.           

     Although she was raised in Pixley, Sarah has a Ph.D. from Stanford and an impressive array of academic experience leading up to that degree.  But what impresses us most is that she and her husband David, who also grew up in Pixley and now teaches grade school, returned to live in, and work for the betterment of their hometown and its people.

           

     As she stepped to the microphone, however, her normally sweet manner began to dissolve as her voice started to tremble and her face contort.  She wasn’t even a paragraph into her beginning before she was crying visibly.  As the director of Tulare County’s FoodLink, she said “I wanted to talk about my hope.”  But only three days after the election, the prospects of a Trump presidency and what it could mean for the people she serves had shoved those hopes down a deep hole.  Instead, she spoke a little about the despair she was feeling, then sat down on the stage and opened the mic to everyone in the room, needing to hear how others were dealing with their dashed hopes.

           

     It was a radical act for an academic, but not for a community builder.  Caught offguard, people in the audience began to open up what they thought they had packed away in order to enjoy the evening.  Most of the comments circled fear and hope, recognizing one and then choosing the other.  Sarah’s husband David read a text from a fellow teacher describing how the white children of Trump supporters were harassing the brown children of immigrant farm workers, waving and saying “Bye bye,” as if they would be deported tomorrow, and of that teacher’s heroic efforts to quash that behavior, quell the fears.

           

     “I choose to be hopeful,” he concluded carefully, noting the need for leadership right now.  “I am hopeful the new president will become the leader we need, not the man who we voted for.”   That statement, essentially a statement of faith, took the breath away of even the most faithful Mennonites in the room.           

     Eventually Sarah reclaimed her place as the evening’s speaker.  She told stories from family life that sent her dedicatedly out to get an education that might mend the social wounds she grew up with.  She spoke a little about the community garden she started on land right downtown, on the main drag in Pixley.  And she spoke a lot about food banks, their needs and limitations.  She talked about the process of obtaining the new FoodLink facility in Exeter (formerly Pinkham’s packinghouse,) about designing the teaching kitchen and developing the educational community garden there.  And she described her vivid intent to convert the entire food bank industry into one that enables healthy communities.

           

     According to Sarah, Tulare County has the highest childhood poverty in the state:  41%.  Amidst the highest food production nationally, this county has multiple opportunities to lower that number, from gleaning the waste to redistributing the wealth.  Many, many volunteer opportunities exist, and locating the new facility in Exeter, where the volunteer spirit breathes freely, may have been the smartest move Sarah, a natural community builder, has yet made.

           

     Except for marrying her childhood sweetheart.  As the evening wound down, it became even more clear how this pair from Pixley, teamed up as they are to work for the betterment of the home they hold in common, flourish from the support they give each other.  It’s an old model, but one we’ve seen the need for in the disintegrating condition of our rural towns.  May we take this story as a spark of light – of hope.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural writer who spends a lot of time looking for hope.  You can send your hope sightings to her c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.  Thanks to Mark Smith for his thoughtful conversation this week.

Love and War

Published Nov. 9, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     For the past week I’ve been able to think about little else except Tuesday’s election.  This is not because I’ve been actively involved so much as that my mind has been entrained by the news coverage, as most other people’s minds have been.           

     I’ve found myself annoyed at the newscasters’ characterizations of this election as particularly ridiculous or bizarre, since I can’t remember one pleasant, non-anxiety-producing election in my whole life.  I’ve been grateful to the historians popping up at the last minute who remind us of past elections that had equally-unexpected rancor and divisiveness.

           

     The quote “All’s fair in love and war” has run through my mind all week, and I thought about adding “politics” to the list of what’s not limited by rules of fairness.  For instance, if I wrote about Bill Zigler the way Valadao’s campaign has portrayed Emilio Huerta, I’d be in court for libel right now.  We tolerate behavior in electoral campaigns – for the purpose of avoiding civil war – that we wouldn’t, or don’t tolerate otherwise.

           

     In fact, politics is both love and war.  The adoring fans of all candidates have something in common with all people in love, primarily the hopefulness that this person’s actions in their elected positions will make our lives better or at least protect something we love from the erosive actions of others.  On the other side of the coin, many people in this country correctly feel that their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have been taken away or eroded by the actions or inactions of those in government.  Elections allow us to voice those feelings and draw lines in the sand, a precursor to war that we hopefully can resolve before committing bloodshed.

           

     But Sunday night while making dinner, waiting for the news to come on, I caught part of a program on veterans that brought me to a halt.  They were describing what it’s like to come home from our current wars (“military engagements” is probably a more precise term,) compared to WWII veterans’ experiences.  Then, the whole country was involved in that war.  Those at home suffered small inconveniences and delayed gratification compared to those abroad, but they were awaiting the end of the conflict with as much hopefulness as the soldiers themselves.  Homecoming meant something.

           

     Now, those veterans returning (whole and healthy or in part, damaged emotionally as well as physically) find their friends and neighbors entirely ignorant of what they’ve been through, unimpaired by the conflict their tax dollars have invisibly supported, and unengaged.  Nobody’s waiting for the end of the conflict these people have just survived; half of us don’t know where Iraq or Afghanistan is, much less Syria.  The other side of the world is just as far from us here in California as Flint, Michigan or West Virginia.  The growing insularity of our culture is mind boggling, a plague more frightening than the Zika virus or the thought of either candidate in the White House.           

    

     A statistic flashed through the tv’s speakers, almost like static:  twenty-three veterans commit suicide each day.  The voice speaking that fact re-iterated its meaning:  almost one per hour.  My brain tried to do the math:  that’s almost 700 veterans per month.  Can we even be killing that many on the battlefields?  Surely we would have heard about it if we were….

           

     Numbers are notoriously malleable, and these, which were reported in 2014 from a Department of Veterans Affairs study conducted in 2012, have been refuted (predictably.)  But the study was triggered by the sense that this country was experiencing a “suicide epidemic” among veterans new and old.  After the study’s release, the government that sent these people to war then responded legislatively, taking some of the country’s resources to address the needs of these people who had served us by putting their lives on the line, working to create programs that might blunt the knife-sharp edges of re-entry and keep a few more souls alive.

           

     That’s politics, and that’s government, folks, and that’s why it matters so much who we elect.  That’s why we suffer these assaults to our senses every election season.

     It is love and war.  Let’s be kind to each other as we proceed.

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Trudy Wischemann is an apolitical-type who has to admit it matters once in awhile.  You can send your attempts to eradicate your election miseries to her at P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.  Thanks to all our veterans for coming home as well as leaving in the first place.