Published in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette, July 17, 2013
It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't smart, but at the July 9th council meeting, the City of Lindsay tried to sneak through its plan to plaster a Dollar General store on the corner of Hermosa and Elmwood, at the edge of the downtown, on the curve of the Roundabout. With no prior notice, the item appeared on the agenda posted July 5th, the Friday of a four-day holiday weekend while most people were celebrating our liberties and blowing off fireworks. Clearly they hoped no one was watching. Luckily someone gave me a heads-up.
This plan will demolish the old Shell station that became Ed's Auto, a much-loved business that served people of this community for forty years. When Ed (once known as "Fast Eddie") Schapansky retired, he turned his business over to his top mechanic, Miguel Chavez, who renamed it M & J Auto Repair. For six years Miguel has built his clientele around the City's "renewal" of that intersection which impaired access to his business. His business thrives anyway because he is a good mechanic and a fine person.
Miguel had no idea this was happening until he came through my line at the market Sunday afternoon with his beautiful son, both clearly refreshed from the holiday. I hated delivering the urgent bad news, but clearly Grace had guided him there at that moment, so I didn't hesitate. At my urging Miguel brought his entire family to the council meeting to testify to the impacts of this plan. Miguel spoke about the importance of that location to his business, the sole source of income for his entire family. "This is a family business," their son added "I help my dad, my mom does the books ..." Mrs. Chavez asked in clear Spanish why another of the many possible locations had not been chosen.
Another family business owner, Al Hussain of Quality Mart at the Valero station across the street, spoke on behalf of all the mini-mart owners in town. "There are 15 of us," he said. "If Dollar General sells beer and liquor, they will put us all out of business. Are not 15 businesses worth more than the 12 jobs this project will create?" The Dollar General in Porterville sells beer and liquor.
Other people spoke as well. Those who stand to gain financially (Leonor Serna, Job Denni) understandably spoke on behalf of the plan and the invisible vision behind it. But the questions I raised on behalf of the community the last time, when they wanted to demolish the Citrus Exchange building, still stand and have not been answered. They are the questions people raise whenever the topic comes up.
Do we need a Dollar General store? Some will say yes, some say no. The point is that the question has not been examined by the City staff, who tell the Council we don't have the right to ask it. But we do. Under CEQA, a community has the right to do an economic impact analysis. CEQA is a tool for protecting community environments from predatory development, but our city staff regularly circumvents that law to protect its own interests in developing projects without community input. On the first DG plan they filed a negative declaration to satisfy the CEQA regulations; this time they declared it exempt from CEQA to avoid having to publish a public notice in the newspapers. That's the dirty card trick that allows us to challenge the legality of the Council's approval.
Is that the right location? Community members are much more in agreement that it is not. Their reasons range from traffic congestion and dangers created by the Roundabout to potential impacts on downtown businesses which will leave more empty buildings there, as well as the lost opportunity to fill a currently empty building like the old Lindsay Foods site (so perfect, plenty of parking!) or the now-empty Sprouse-Reitz space in the SaveMart plaza. These are questions raised by some of the citizens in the standing-room-only crowd at the council meeting, some coming to the microphone for the first time. Unfortunately there has never been an answer.
Because of these comments the Council actually had to deliberate publicly on their reasons for voting. Councilman Mecum, voting no, said he couldn't sleep well knowing this plan would hurt existing businesses. Councilwoman Kimball, voting yes, said she couldn't sleep well knowing we'd be telling property owners who they could or couldn't sell to. Councilwoman Sanchez, voting no, said she didn't think it was a good project for the community. Councilman Salinas, voting yes, gave the property rights argument some new twists. Mayor Padilla voted yes for property rights over the community's interests: 3-2, motion passes.
It sounds like a defeat for my point of view, but it was not. In my mind the discussion was a beginning, not an ending. Perhaps this time their sneaky timing backfired, like a bad bottle rocket that blew up in their face. Perhaps this time, after revisiting our patriot dreams only days before, the remembered importance of our liberties moved us to the microphone, moved us to ask questions. And maybe that experience will lead to more questioning and the creation of a more open government in the not-so-distant future.
Wave the flag for real, good People. This is our town.
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Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes. You can send her your ideas for the City's reform % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Writing "A Good Snowstorm"
Published in edited form July 3, 2013 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette
Complaints from neighbors come in many forms. Sometimes they start with a compliment or a joke, a way of prefacing the real subject of the conversation with an assurance that you, the neighboree, are in good standing despite what's about to come. It's how we live side-by-side in a small town and keep the peace, keep our feathers as unruffled as possible.
My neighbors have lots to complain about my blatantly deviant lifestyle, but for the most part they keep it to themselves. I have been accused of bringing property values down with my Okiesque approach to yard maintenance, but that transgression was finally forgiven as I tried to mend my neglectful ways. Recently, one neighbor joked that I am their prime source of entertainment, meaning to laugh at their own boring lives. For a few days I looked at myself more ludicrously than usual, but then I realized that monitoring the neighborhood is something I also do for entertainment as well as safety.
Last week, however, my receiver picked up a couple of transmissions about what I write for the paper creating a negative environment for people who once enjoyed reading my more lyrical pieces about life in this place. "I know you mean well," my neighbor Trish Gutierrez began, after joking about sweeping her grandchildren out of her kitchen and into the pool. "And I know somebody's got to keep an eye on this city, but.... I just miss reading about looking out your kitchen window and loving what's out there." Another long-time friend cornered me at church a few days later and said "If you just hadn't taken sides, you'd still be a resource for us. Now nobody's listening to you."
I confessed to each person that I miss the old days, too. I didn't tell them I've been suspecting that folks are getting tired of hearing about it ("it" meaning the City of Lindsay's transgressions against democracy, working people, the small town environment, the earth,) or that I get sick of writing about it. I didn't tell them that I'd stop if I knew what else to do, how else to work for my version of community betterment. I didn't tell them that sometimes, just when I think about giving up, writing the column saves me. Then, a few days before the Fourth, the temperature hit 110 degrees.
It's funny sometimes how bad weather saves us from our lives in overdrive. The gears grind as we shift down to a necessarily slower speed and tend to the essentials. As my own gears gnashed downward, I realized Trish was right. So I wrote "A Good Snowstorm" for both of us. Here it is.
A Good Snowstorm
-- for Trish
We finally know summer is here as we move toward a sweltering, if not sizzling, Fourth. At the market where I work, the heat is all we talk about as I scan the customers' ice cream and beer, quick-to-fix frozen foods, fruits and salad makings. Each one has a different story about how they're coping, and those stories add up to a community at work.
"I feel sorry for the people without AC," a customer said as I scanned her groceries. She mentioned some friends who'd invited family members to come stay with them because they only have swamp. We didn't have swamp in western Washington when I grew up and wouldn't have know what you were talking about, but I remember some old folks sitting uncomfortably under one in Ephrata while we children ran in and out of the house letting the screen door bang and squirting each other with hoses.
"I feel sorry for the people who work outside," said another woman. Those who do were buying Suero Oral and Gatorade on sale, preparing to start early and end earlier yet. "It's not too bad," one man said, dreading Monday. "We'll get through it."
"Get up to the river," another man said, "it's the only thing to do in this heat." I thought of poor Slick Rock, a spot on the Kaweah River above the reservoir that was drowned when they raised the dam. I thought of all the people who used to find relief and recreation there. Just the memory of people enjoying that place made me cooler. I put my feet in the river there one last time before they filled the lake to its new level. A friend told me later that because of this drought the lake is so low now that Slick Rock is exposed once again. A lifelong resident of this county, he said now's the time to get up there before the river goes dry.
I myself have been working with fans to distribute a small flow of cool air from an ancient wall unit I pray every day will not die. I turn it off around 5:30 a.m., fling open every window in the house. listening to the birds wake, and wait for that draft of cool mountain air sucked down as the sun hits the valley floor. It gives me and the cats a few hours of quiet before the roar of the fans becomes music to our ears once again.
"Come jump in our pool," a neighbor invited, which I will take her up on the instant my heat discomfort overrides my desire to not be seen in my swimsuit. I remember my mother desiring the same thing, feel continuity over the generations, and keep my ice cube trays filled.
As I listened to my customers, I realized that a good hot spell does for summer what a good snowstorm does for winter. It breaks our normal daily patterns and preoccupations, forcing us to pay attention to the most necessary parts of our lives: eating, sleeping, staying hydrated and as close to 98.6 as possible It provides opportunities for inventiveness and cooperation, giving importance to our social life we don't often see as we are reminded that the natural elements can overwhelm us. And somehow the heat triggers memories of other people and other times, keeping us tuned to the cycles of life. A good hot spell, like a good snowstorm, is a blessing in disguise.
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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who used to work outside but now hides out under the air conditioner. You can send her your ice cube tray stories % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
Complaints from neighbors come in many forms. Sometimes they start with a compliment or a joke, a way of prefacing the real subject of the conversation with an assurance that you, the neighboree, are in good standing despite what's about to come. It's how we live side-by-side in a small town and keep the peace, keep our feathers as unruffled as possible.
My neighbors have lots to complain about my blatantly deviant lifestyle, but for the most part they keep it to themselves. I have been accused of bringing property values down with my Okiesque approach to yard maintenance, but that transgression was finally forgiven as I tried to mend my neglectful ways. Recently, one neighbor joked that I am their prime source of entertainment, meaning to laugh at their own boring lives. For a few days I looked at myself more ludicrously than usual, but then I realized that monitoring the neighborhood is something I also do for entertainment as well as safety.
Last week, however, my receiver picked up a couple of transmissions about what I write for the paper creating a negative environment for people who once enjoyed reading my more lyrical pieces about life in this place. "I know you mean well," my neighbor Trish Gutierrez began, after joking about sweeping her grandchildren out of her kitchen and into the pool. "And I know somebody's got to keep an eye on this city, but.... I just miss reading about looking out your kitchen window and loving what's out there." Another long-time friend cornered me at church a few days later and said "If you just hadn't taken sides, you'd still be a resource for us. Now nobody's listening to you."
I confessed to each person that I miss the old days, too. I didn't tell them I've been suspecting that folks are getting tired of hearing about it ("it" meaning the City of Lindsay's transgressions against democracy, working people, the small town environment, the earth,) or that I get sick of writing about it. I didn't tell them that I'd stop if I knew what else to do, how else to work for my version of community betterment. I didn't tell them that sometimes, just when I think about giving up, writing the column saves me. Then, a few days before the Fourth, the temperature hit 110 degrees.
It's funny sometimes how bad weather saves us from our lives in overdrive. The gears grind as we shift down to a necessarily slower speed and tend to the essentials. As my own gears gnashed downward, I realized Trish was right. So I wrote "A Good Snowstorm" for both of us. Here it is.
A Good Snowstorm
-- for Trish
We finally know summer is here as we move toward a sweltering, if not sizzling, Fourth. At the market where I work, the heat is all we talk about as I scan the customers' ice cream and beer, quick-to-fix frozen foods, fruits and salad makings. Each one has a different story about how they're coping, and those stories add up to a community at work.
"I feel sorry for the people without AC," a customer said as I scanned her groceries. She mentioned some friends who'd invited family members to come stay with them because they only have swamp. We didn't have swamp in western Washington when I grew up and wouldn't have know what you were talking about, but I remember some old folks sitting uncomfortably under one in Ephrata while we children ran in and out of the house letting the screen door bang and squirting each other with hoses.
"I feel sorry for the people who work outside," said another woman. Those who do were buying Suero Oral and Gatorade on sale, preparing to start early and end earlier yet. "It's not too bad," one man said, dreading Monday. "We'll get through it."
"Get up to the river," another man said, "it's the only thing to do in this heat." I thought of poor Slick Rock, a spot on the Kaweah River above the reservoir that was drowned when they raised the dam. I thought of all the people who used to find relief and recreation there. Just the memory of people enjoying that place made me cooler. I put my feet in the river there one last time before they filled the lake to its new level. A friend told me later that because of this drought the lake is so low now that Slick Rock is exposed once again. A lifelong resident of this county, he said now's the time to get up there before the river goes dry.
I myself have been working with fans to distribute a small flow of cool air from an ancient wall unit I pray every day will not die. I turn it off around 5:30 a.m., fling open every window in the house. listening to the birds wake, and wait for that draft of cool mountain air sucked down as the sun hits the valley floor. It gives me and the cats a few hours of quiet before the roar of the fans becomes music to our ears once again.
"Come jump in our pool," a neighbor invited, which I will take her up on the instant my heat discomfort overrides my desire to not be seen in my swimsuit. I remember my mother desiring the same thing, feel continuity over the generations, and keep my ice cube trays filled.
As I listened to my customers, I realized that a good hot spell does for summer what a good snowstorm does for winter. It breaks our normal daily patterns and preoccupations, forcing us to pay attention to the most necessary parts of our lives: eating, sleeping, staying hydrated and as close to 98.6 as possible It provides opportunities for inventiveness and cooperation, giving importance to our social life we don't often see as we are reminded that the natural elements can overwhelm us. And somehow the heat triggers memories of other people and other times, keeping us tuned to the cycles of life. A good hot spell, like a good snowstorm, is a blessing in disguise.
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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who used to work outside but now hides out under the air conditioner. You can send her your ice cube tray stories % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Rough Roads Ahead
Published in edited form Wednesday, June 26, 2013 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette
The agenda that should have been considered by the Lindsay City Council last night will be considered this Friday instead. The agenda will include the approval of the budget for the coming fiscal year, a matter that concerns every taxpayer within the city limits.
Given the public importance of this meeting, it is unfortunate that it was not held at its regular time, and worse, scheduled for an evening few people would give up to attend. All the council members have known for at least two months that the budget vote would come on June 25th. But at the June 11th meeting it was suddenly discovered that the three senior members had schedule conflicts and would be absent: Mayor Ramona Padilla, Mayor Pro-Tem Danny Salinas, and Pam Kimball who, according to city clerk Carmen Wilson, would be up in the mountains on holiday and didn't want to come all the way down for this. So the meeting was rescheduled "for lack of a quorum" from 6 p.m. Tuesday the 25th to 6:00 p.m. Friday the 28th.
Forgive me, but this just feels like more shenanigans. If any one of the three were missing, that would give the two junior members the possibility of defeating the budget in a 2-2 tie vote, or using that power to negotiate for more residential streets to be repaired under the Capital Improvement Program. If two members were absent, there would still be a quorum and thus no legal reason to reschedule. It required the absence of all three, and that's what they got, leaving no room for negotiating the removal of pork barrel projects or staff positions that this money-strapped community could do without.
The most condemning project is what's called the Mirage Avenue Overlay. For the one block between Samoa and Hermosa, the price tag is $225,000. When compared to other street repaving projects during the pre-budget study session on May 14th, several council members noticed a large discrepancy. For instance, the Alameda St. Overlay from Orange to Bond, fixing four blocks of a street in far worse condition, is only $150,000. When asked for clarification, the city planner explained that the Mirage project isn't just an overlay, but also new curbs, gutters, and sidewalk treatment extending the downtown improvements one more block northward.
Several councilmembers, including Pam Kimball, seemed to think that wasn't a very good use of money and that it might better be spent elsewhere, such as overlaying Mirage from Hermosa to Tulare for $235,000. It probably was the most consensus expressed during the entire study session. When Finance Director Tamara Laken said she would take the Council's direction back to the drawing board, I thought we would see that project disappear, or at least moved to future years.
But there it is, a totally inessential project tying for second place (in terms of costliness) with overlaying Valencia Street from Mirage to Harvard, four blocks of badly cratered pavement. Some of our most heavily traveled neglected streets are not even on the repair list for the next five years, such as Hermosa from Mirage to Harvard, or Harvard from NDS to the south city limit. But there's a roundabout planned for Hermosa at Westwood for the following year, with a price tag of $375,000.
The roughest road ahead will be for the Council to reign in the staff's dreamy projects and trade them for some responsible maintenance. Since the installation of the two junior members in January, the Council has shifted from simply rubberstamping staff projects to actually questioning them. But to move from questioning to redirecting them is going to take some real public support.
We residents of Lindsay have become so accustomed to futile complaining that it's hard to imagine participating effectively. But if we want smoother streets and fewer frivolities, we have to let Mayor Padilla and other council members know.
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Trudy Wischemann is a believer in Jeffersonian Democracy who writes. Please feel free to leave a comment below.
The agenda that should have been considered by the Lindsay City Council last night will be considered this Friday instead. The agenda will include the approval of the budget for the coming fiscal year, a matter that concerns every taxpayer within the city limits.
Given the public importance of this meeting, it is unfortunate that it was not held at its regular time, and worse, scheduled for an evening few people would give up to attend. All the council members have known for at least two months that the budget vote would come on June 25th. But at the June 11th meeting it was suddenly discovered that the three senior members had schedule conflicts and would be absent: Mayor Ramona Padilla, Mayor Pro-Tem Danny Salinas, and Pam Kimball who, according to city clerk Carmen Wilson, would be up in the mountains on holiday and didn't want to come all the way down for this. So the meeting was rescheduled "for lack of a quorum" from 6 p.m. Tuesday the 25th to 6:00 p.m. Friday the 28th.
Forgive me, but this just feels like more shenanigans. If any one of the three were missing, that would give the two junior members the possibility of defeating the budget in a 2-2 tie vote, or using that power to negotiate for more residential streets to be repaired under the Capital Improvement Program. If two members were absent, there would still be a quorum and thus no legal reason to reschedule. It required the absence of all three, and that's what they got, leaving no room for negotiating the removal of pork barrel projects or staff positions that this money-strapped community could do without.
The most condemning project is what's called the Mirage Avenue Overlay. For the one block between Samoa and Hermosa, the price tag is $225,000. When compared to other street repaving projects during the pre-budget study session on May 14th, several council members noticed a large discrepancy. For instance, the Alameda St. Overlay from Orange to Bond, fixing four blocks of a street in far worse condition, is only $150,000. When asked for clarification, the city planner explained that the Mirage project isn't just an overlay, but also new curbs, gutters, and sidewalk treatment extending the downtown improvements one more block northward.
Several councilmembers, including Pam Kimball, seemed to think that wasn't a very good use of money and that it might better be spent elsewhere, such as overlaying Mirage from Hermosa to Tulare for $235,000. It probably was the most consensus expressed during the entire study session. When Finance Director Tamara Laken said she would take the Council's direction back to the drawing board, I thought we would see that project disappear, or at least moved to future years.
But there it is, a totally inessential project tying for second place (in terms of costliness) with overlaying Valencia Street from Mirage to Harvard, four blocks of badly cratered pavement. Some of our most heavily traveled neglected streets are not even on the repair list for the next five years, such as Hermosa from Mirage to Harvard, or Harvard from NDS to the south city limit. But there's a roundabout planned for Hermosa at Westwood for the following year, with a price tag of $375,000.
The roughest road ahead will be for the Council to reign in the staff's dreamy projects and trade them for some responsible maintenance. Since the installation of the two junior members in January, the Council has shifted from simply rubberstamping staff projects to actually questioning them. But to move from questioning to redirecting them is going to take some real public support.
We residents of Lindsay have become so accustomed to futile complaining that it's hard to imagine participating effectively. But if we want smoother streets and fewer frivolities, we have to let Mayor Padilla and other council members know.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy Wischemann is a believer in Jeffersonian Democracy who writes. Please feel free to leave a comment below.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Four Words
Published in edited form June 19, 2013 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette
They came to me when I most needed them: "Fight. Dream. Hope. Love." In that order. Fight. Dream. Hope. Love.
I found them inside the CD of the soundtrack from Les Miserables that I'd ordered from the library, spread evenly across the top of the insert's back cover. Below them on the left is a photo of Jean Valjean holding in his arms a girl of about ten.
She is Cosette, whose serious eyes, dirty face and straggly hair also grace the front cover, staring out through the label-encrusted clear plastic jewel case as if behind bars, silently telling you that you know she deserves better.
They came to me when I most needed them: "Fight. Dream. Hope. Love." In that order. Fight. Dream. Hope. Love.
I found them inside the CD of the soundtrack from Les Miserables that I'd ordered from the library, spread evenly across the top of the insert's back cover. Below them on the left is a photo of Jean Valjean holding in his arms a girl of about ten.
She is Cosette, whose serious eyes, dirty face and straggly hair also grace the front cover, staring out through the label-encrusted clear plastic jewel case as if behind bars, silently telling you that you know she deserves better.
Jean Valjean is the main character of this now beloved musical/opera, but Cosette is the teacher who moves Jean through the four words from fight to love.
That "fight" led the list struck me hard, though at first glance it shouldn't have. Les Mis is, after all, about the terrible poverty, injustices and corruption that led to the 1832 June Uprising in Paris in post-revolutionary France, where fighting led to more fighting and bloodshed than we like to remember. It's like the parts of the Old Testament we like to forget, too. I personally like to separate fighting from dreaming, hoping and loving, as if they don't belong together or are found on different sides of the brain. But there they were, all in a chain that began with fighting that leads to dreaming and hoping, and perhaps produces or at least is healed by loving. Linked.
I fight. I have the gene for it. I also have the genes for dreaming, hoping and loving (I hope, although my loving is put to the test daily.) I get tired of fighting, as does everyone who has the other genes. If we didn't, there could be no peace. But that fighting sometimes might be necessary for dreaming, hoping and loving was something to reconsider, and I've been working it over in my mind.
Most people are reluctant to fight, at least in public, so some do an awfully lot of it at home behind closed doors. I think the reason most people don't want to come to Lindsay City Council meetings is that they don't want to fight and are sure if they really spoke their minds, they'd find themselves doing exactly that. "They don't care what I think," is what I hear every time I invite someone to join me there who has mentioned a problem or brought me a complaint as if I could speak their mind for them. I appreciate knowing I'm not the only one unhappy with how things have happened here, but more people speaking their own minds would give my words more weight. You know the saying: many hands make work light.
As I listened to the CD, the heroic music and the terrible sounds of human clashings, I recognized the civility of our situation. What's required in Lindsay is simply work, not a fight. Work is what's required in California regarding land and water. But I fear for us sometimes that if we don't do the work, at some point in the future there may be nothing left but that undesirable alternative.
Paul Taylor, whom I wrote about last week and many times before, had a wonderful quote he loved to use from Teddy Roosevelt advocating for the excess land law, that portion of the 1902 Reclamation Act which limited landholdings to 160 acres for receivers of irrigation water from federal dam projects. In an address before the Commonwealth Club in 1912, Teddy, once a fighter himself, said:
"I wish to save the very wealthy men of this country and their advocates and upholders from the ruin they would bring upon themselves if they were permitted to have their way. It is because I am against revolution; it is because I am against the doctrines of the Extremists, of the Socialists; it is because I wish to see this country of ours continued as a genuine democracy; it is because I distrust violence and disbelieve in it; it is because I wish to secure this country against ever seeing a time when the 'have-nots' shall rise against the 'haves;' it is because I wish to secure for our children the same freedom of opportunity, the same peace and order and justice that we have had in the past."
There's the diagnosis: Inequal distribution of the country's resources leads to poverty, injustice and corruption. The prescription? Four words: Work. Dream. Hope. Love.
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Trudy Wischemann is a dreamer who sometimes has a hard time getting down to work. She lives in Tulare County, California, where the idea of saying "no" to the Big Boys still makes most people go blank.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Me 'n Paul
Published in edited form June 12, 2013 in the Foothills Sun-Gazette
"Well it's been rough and rocky travelin'
but I'm finally standing' upright on the ground
And after takin' several readings
I'm surprised to find my mind's still fairly sound
I guess Nashville was the roughest
but I know I've said the same about them all
We received our education
in the cities of the nation, me and Paul."
-- Willie Nelson
"I'd have lost my mind if I did what you did, moving to a small town like Lindsay," said my treasured friend Bill Preston in a phone call last week. Bill is the author of Vanishing Landscapes (1979), still the book on Tulare County's history that best describes the processes that shaped it.
"I'm not sure that hasn't happened," I replied, making him laugh the laugh of truth. We both know how I've struggled against despair, against lack of income, against lack of response to the message I brought with me when I leapt off the cliff of Davis to move to what was once a nice town and the home of a great olive.
Sunday at the market a customer who thinks she has no ingles, a former neighbor who was glad I inquired about her casa nueva, struggled heroically to tell me about seeing me with Willie Nelson. She loves his music, has one of his albums even though it's not in Spanish, and so when she saw my picture with Willie on the wall of the mini-storage office where my singing partner Jesse and I keep a poster from our last concert taped up just so people will know we do more than collect rent on metal rooms, she was thrilled. I didn't realize what she thought until after she'd left, but Jesse was glad to know he'd been mistaken for that other musician. And so it was no surprise I woke up the next morning with "Me and Paul" going through my head.
Some of you who follow this column may have wondered about the last two weeks, where it seems I've shifted subjects from the City of Lindsay to the bad Big Boys of agriculture. I've been examining the fear some people have about addressing the terrible power that comes when landownership and water rights are concentrated in their hands because I'm writing proposals to create the Center for Agricultural Communities where that very relationship will be studied and the results promulgated along with other issues facing our small towns in this valley.
If I had not run into that fear before, I'd be blindly making propositions to people who don't know they have that fear until push comes to shove and then finding myself dangling from a limb like those old posters of a kitten whose front claws are all that's saving itself, with the words "Hang In There" heroically plastered below. Been there, done that.
What makes that fear hard for me to understand is that I came of age, so to speak, on the other side of that line: in 380 Barrows Hall on the Berkeley campus, the office of Paul Schuster Taylor, professor emeritus of economics, whose work on farm labor led him to his work on reclamation law and the 160-acre limitation, intended to develop and protect small farms with irrigation projects in the arid west, where water is key to land.
Sitting in that office, Paul had no fear of the Big Boys and wrote law journal articles and letters to politicians and journalists advocating the law's enforcement. I know, because I helped type them. But it wasn't just that he was insulated from pressure by his tenured status in the ivory tower: he truly was not a fearful person. In the recent Cornell dissertation on activist academics by Dan O'Connell, Paul's success in World War I leading his troops through minefields that few squadrons survived is detailed to show the mettle of the man. After being gassed in France, he returned, recovered, and simply put his survival to good use.
When I first met him, it looked to me like he was working alone. I started hanging around, thinking I was keeping him company, not realizing I needed his company more than he needed mine. But as I got to know him, I learned that the company of people who'd come before him were there in his office with him every day: his beloved wife, Dorothea Lange, who died a decade before I arrived; his respected teachers at the University of Wisconsin; Robert Lafollette Jr., who had run special Senate hearings on farm labor between 1936-1940 in which Paul had repeatedly testified.
From my wall: me 'n Paul in 380 Barrows, 1978
He had contemporaries there, too, works of people still breathing: Elias Tuma, then at Davis, who wrote Twenty-Six Centuries of Agrarian Reform (1965); Ernesto Galarza, whose Merchants of Labor (1964) about the Bracero Program is as important today as when it was published; and of course, Carey McWilliams, whose Factories in the Field (1971) became the watchwords for farm labor advocates and agribusiness antagonists from then on.
They weren't all academics, either. They included George Ballis and Ben Yellen, who organized people in Fresno and Imperial Counties respectively and who took large landowners and the Bureau of Reclamation to court for non-enforcement of the law. There were many elected officials, photographers and journalists as well. And what I now see that he did in that office was to build evidence of the eternal community of which he was an active member, and they kept him company until he died.
For this concept of the eternal community I owe Parker J. Palmer, a Quaker author quoted in Catherine Whitmire's Plain Living (2001). He writes "A culture of isolated individualism produces mass conformity because people who think they must bear life all alone are too fearful to take the risks of self-hood. But people who know that they are embedded in an eternal community are both freed and empowered to become who they were born to be." (from Let Your Life Speak, 1990.)
And that's what I want to create in the old Exchange Building: a Center where the works of that eternal community concerned with the fates of small towns, small farms and farm workers can be seen and felt. I want to create a place where Lindsay can learn about the processes that shaped it in the past, the real causes of its decline, and the prospects for its future. I want that also for the other small towns and places surrounding us, hoping we can work together to change direction, away from growth as the only means for survival, toward a revived rural economy sustaining the qualities of life we enjoy here.
And I want it to be a place where we can educate the cities of the nation about our real worth - you, me, and Paul.
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Trudy Wischemann is a rural revivalist who writes and sometimes sings in Lindsay. You can write to her % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay, CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Our Wonderful Lives
Published June 5, 2013 in the Foothills Sun-Gazette
Last week I wrote about a conversation I had with a good friend, whose comment "We're not going to give up our good lives," had laid a bombshell in my lap. Sunday I told him I'd written a column trying to dig myself out of the crater it made.
Never wanting to harm anyone, he was chagrined and apologetic. A scholarly man, as we talked looking for a better answer, he said "Remember the myth of Sisyphus."
Philosophy's not my strong suit, so I confessed my memory problem. He sketched out the story of a man trying to push a giant boulder up a mountain, clearly impossible. He noted, however, that Sisyphus was at his finest when he was trying. I saw the similarities but found the metaphor of futility discouraging.
At some point the conversation shifted from Us ("We're not going to give up our good lives,") to Them: "They're not going to give up their power until they're forced to," he said, meaning the Big Boys of California agriculture. The implication was that working to wrest power back is so huge that it isn't worth giving up a portion of our good lives to do it.
Then it hit me. "Christianity turns the Greeks on their heads," I said, knowing my brain had taken a leap. He blinked and asked me to explain. "If you try to save your life, you'll lose it. But if you lose your life, you'll have life everlasting." We let the dust settle and promised to think more about it.
Thinking about it this morning, I stumbled into George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life." We see it as a Christmas movie, but it's about a guy who puts himself between greed and the interests of ordinary people who would be hurt if greed was allowed to have its way. Where George entered my thoughts was the moment when it looks like he's lost the battle. He suddenly sees his life as a failure, feels his sacrifices have been for nothing. He gave up the good life in order to serve the people of his community, and now it's all gone. In a swirling Christmas snowstorm, he prepares to jump off a bridge.
Clarence the Angel shows him what his community would have been if he had not stood between greed and his people, if he had not witnessed to goodness with his life. Greed, which has a seed in all of us, had had intercourse with the folks in his town and the people were sour, the town was in ruins. It's what would have happened if George had left to become an architect and have a good life. That bad vision shows George that his life as a member of the eternal Community is really quite wonderful after all.
Some might dispute my interpretation, but I think that's all Jesus meant. When called, we stand against greed for goodness' sake, giving up opportunities for the good life in order that the common good might thrive. In the process, we receive a wonderful life. It doesn't get any better than that.
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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who tries to live the wonderful life in Lindsay. You can send her your wonderful life stories to P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
Last week I wrote about a conversation I had with a good friend, whose comment "We're not going to give up our good lives," had laid a bombshell in my lap. Sunday I told him I'd written a column trying to dig myself out of the crater it made.
Never wanting to harm anyone, he was chagrined and apologetic. A scholarly man, as we talked looking for a better answer, he said "Remember the myth of Sisyphus."
Philosophy's not my strong suit, so I confessed my memory problem. He sketched out the story of a man trying to push a giant boulder up a mountain, clearly impossible. He noted, however, that Sisyphus was at his finest when he was trying. I saw the similarities but found the metaphor of futility discouraging.
At some point the conversation shifted from Us ("We're not going to give up our good lives,") to Them: "They're not going to give up their power until they're forced to," he said, meaning the Big Boys of California agriculture. The implication was that working to wrest power back is so huge that it isn't worth giving up a portion of our good lives to do it.
Then it hit me. "Christianity turns the Greeks on their heads," I said, knowing my brain had taken a leap. He blinked and asked me to explain. "If you try to save your life, you'll lose it. But if you lose your life, you'll have life everlasting." We let the dust settle and promised to think more about it.
Thinking about it this morning, I stumbled into George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life." We see it as a Christmas movie, but it's about a guy who puts himself between greed and the interests of ordinary people who would be hurt if greed was allowed to have its way. Where George entered my thoughts was the moment when it looks like he's lost the battle. He suddenly sees his life as a failure, feels his sacrifices have been for nothing. He gave up the good life in order to serve the people of his community, and now it's all gone. In a swirling Christmas snowstorm, he prepares to jump off a bridge.
Clarence the Angel shows him what his community would have been if he had not stood between greed and his people, if he had not witnessed to goodness with his life. Greed, which has a seed in all of us, had had intercourse with the folks in his town and the people were sour, the town was in ruins. It's what would have happened if George had left to become an architect and have a good life. That bad vision shows George that his life as a member of the eternal Community is really quite wonderful after all.
Some might dispute my interpretation, but I think that's all Jesus meant. When called, we stand against greed for goodness' sake, giving up opportunities for the good life in order that the common good might thrive. In the process, we receive a wonderful life. It doesn't get any better than that.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy Wischemann is a writer who tries to live the wonderful life in Lindsay. You can send her your wonderful life stories to P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Our Good Lives
Published in edited form May 29, 2013 in the Foothills Sun-Gazette
"We're not going to give up our good lives," a close friend advised me some months ago as we discussed the problems of rural California. I'd laid them at the feet of our industrialized food system skewed toward big producers who are now becoming big developers, with escalating costs to small farmers, farmworkers and small towns. I was proposing possible solutions, including more people growing their own food and eating locally, boycotting products like PomWonderful and Cuties, garlic grown in China, pastries baked in Mexico, and anything Dole has ever touched. Before I went any further, he put a cautionary hand on my arm and lovingly delivered those nine words.
"We're not?" I said, surprised. Boycotting the Big Boys' products is something I've been doing, for my stomach's and my soul's sake, for almost 30 years. I haven't given up bananas, except when there's none without the Dole label, and I still drink coffee that's probably not traded fairly. In other words, I haven't given up all of my "good" life, but I'm aware that these parts are not all that good. What was it someone once said about the unexamined life?
I've had the privilege of reading some of Mark Arax's fine writing this weekend. He's offered to include a piece he wrote in 2006 on his grandfather's hoe in the book of writings we're publishing on Agriculture and the Common Good, A Little Piece of Land. On his website (www.mark-arax.com) under the tab "The Place" he has several fine essays, including one on Stewart Resnick, who owns Paramount Farms, home of PomWonderful and a host of Wonderful-ly packaged nuts. Resnick also owns the Shafter Industrial Park and must now be considered a major player in this region's development. But what disturbed me most in Mark's piece was the story of Resnick's decimation of the California Pistachio Commission, which had supported small-scale pistachio producers until its demise. That, and the fact that he has a temper problem.
I have a temper problem. Ask anybody who's worked at RN Market more than a month. When I tell them, some of my customers can't believe it, but that's because they're chronically nice. Ask some others who come in at the dinner hour tired, hungry, and dreading going home to cook dinner after an already-long day, with children pulling on their elbows begging for quarters, and you might hear another story. I try to be understanding, but when the mind-numbed parents push their carts into my elbow or fail to respond to my questions about bagging their groceries, sometimes I break.
What broke Stewart's hold on his temper at the Pistachio Commission meetings, according to one of the pistachio commissioners, was not getting his way. He said Resnick would start with "No one appreciates what I've done for agriculture," and end in a rage with "Do you know who I am? Do you know what I am? I'm a billionaire!" Resnick thought there was something wrong with his large share of the fees supporting the marketing efforts that also benefited the independent, small growers, his "competitors." Forget that that's the purpose of such commissions; he just couldn't make business sense out of it, so he did it in.
Noting Resnick's control over the Kern County Water Bank, once a public agency, Mark asked if he's truly a farmer or just a developer in disguise. "You've already begun selling farm water to other big agricultural concerns - Newhall Ranch, Castle & Cooke (Dole) - so they can turn their fields into suburbs."
He answered like a billionaire. "If there's some big opportunity for us to take a couple thousand acres and build a nice industrial park, we're going to do it. I don't see it as 'Oh my God we're paving over farmland.' That's just life. But on balance, unless there's a really big opportunity, there's a continuity to farming that I like."
There's a continuity to farming that I like, too, but people like Resnick threaten that continuity. There's a continuity to living in small towns that I like, too, but without the small farmers that built them and keep the profits moving through, small towns have only two futures: to become bedroom communities or farmworker enclaves. Lindsay has worked for and fought against both ineffectively and at great expense. The tragedy is they have been ignorant of the problem's source.
Our good lives are at stake in both the small towns and the cities. Those city dwellers who will not voluntarily give up their good lives to defend this rural reality will find themselves giving it up involuntarily in the near future as growth, predicted and wished-for by those for whom it is a really big opportunity, subsumes them. It might be time to re-examine our good lives and decide what we really want to save.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy Wischemann is a writer and researcher on land tenure implications. You can send her your good life concerns % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
"We're not going to give up our good lives," a close friend advised me some months ago as we discussed the problems of rural California. I'd laid them at the feet of our industrialized food system skewed toward big producers who are now becoming big developers, with escalating costs to small farmers, farmworkers and small towns. I was proposing possible solutions, including more people growing their own food and eating locally, boycotting products like PomWonderful and Cuties, garlic grown in China, pastries baked in Mexico, and anything Dole has ever touched. Before I went any further, he put a cautionary hand on my arm and lovingly delivered those nine words.
"We're not?" I said, surprised. Boycotting the Big Boys' products is something I've been doing, for my stomach's and my soul's sake, for almost 30 years. I haven't given up bananas, except when there's none without the Dole label, and I still drink coffee that's probably not traded fairly. In other words, I haven't given up all of my "good" life, but I'm aware that these parts are not all that good. What was it someone once said about the unexamined life?
I've had the privilege of reading some of Mark Arax's fine writing this weekend. He's offered to include a piece he wrote in 2006 on his grandfather's hoe in the book of writings we're publishing on Agriculture and the Common Good, A Little Piece of Land. On his website (www.mark-arax.com) under the tab "The Place" he has several fine essays, including one on Stewart Resnick, who owns Paramount Farms, home of PomWonderful and a host of Wonderful-ly packaged nuts. Resnick also owns the Shafter Industrial Park and must now be considered a major player in this region's development. But what disturbed me most in Mark's piece was the story of Resnick's decimation of the California Pistachio Commission, which had supported small-scale pistachio producers until its demise. That, and the fact that he has a temper problem.
I have a temper problem. Ask anybody who's worked at RN Market more than a month. When I tell them, some of my customers can't believe it, but that's because they're chronically nice. Ask some others who come in at the dinner hour tired, hungry, and dreading going home to cook dinner after an already-long day, with children pulling on their elbows begging for quarters, and you might hear another story. I try to be understanding, but when the mind-numbed parents push their carts into my elbow or fail to respond to my questions about bagging their groceries, sometimes I break.
What broke Stewart's hold on his temper at the Pistachio Commission meetings, according to one of the pistachio commissioners, was not getting his way. He said Resnick would start with "No one appreciates what I've done for agriculture," and end in a rage with "Do you know who I am? Do you know what I am? I'm a billionaire!" Resnick thought there was something wrong with his large share of the fees supporting the marketing efforts that also benefited the independent, small growers, his "competitors." Forget that that's the purpose of such commissions; he just couldn't make business sense out of it, so he did it in.
Noting Resnick's control over the Kern County Water Bank, once a public agency, Mark asked if he's truly a farmer or just a developer in disguise. "You've already begun selling farm water to other big agricultural concerns - Newhall Ranch, Castle & Cooke (Dole) - so they can turn their fields into suburbs."
He answered like a billionaire. "If there's some big opportunity for us to take a couple thousand acres and build a nice industrial park, we're going to do it. I don't see it as 'Oh my God we're paving over farmland.' That's just life. But on balance, unless there's a really big opportunity, there's a continuity to farming that I like."
There's a continuity to farming that I like, too, but people like Resnick threaten that continuity. There's a continuity to living in small towns that I like, too, but without the small farmers that built them and keep the profits moving through, small towns have only two futures: to become bedroom communities or farmworker enclaves. Lindsay has worked for and fought against both ineffectively and at great expense. The tragedy is they have been ignorant of the problem's source.
Our good lives are at stake in both the small towns and the cities. Those city dwellers who will not voluntarily give up their good lives to defend this rural reality will find themselves giving it up involuntarily in the near future as growth, predicted and wished-for by those for whom it is a really big opportunity, subsumes them. It might be time to re-examine our good lives and decide what we really want to save.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy Wischemann is a writer and researcher on land tenure implications. You can send her your good life concerns % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
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