Going to the Polls

Published June 8, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Did you make it?  Did you go to the polls to vote?  I wish I’d been there to join you if you did, but that privilege has been taken away from me by the County.  Now I have to vote by mail, as many of you do.  For some people, this is a privilege they choose over taking time from Tuesday.  I miss going to the polls, however.

     Rita Woodard, our Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector/Registrar of Voters since 2007, says she’s only responding to State law when her office determines who votes by mail.  I’ll accept that.  During the 2012 election, the first one I discovered that I’d been relegated to this category (as did hundreds of other Lindsay voters, with much chaos ensuing,) she informed me that voting by mail increases voter turnout.  I think it’s possible that voluntary vote-by-mail balloting does increase voter turnout.  I think it’s also possible that the involuntary sort might actually be responsible for some of these low voter turnout numbers the media has been flashing in our faces this year.

     Did you notice when yours came in the mail last month?  Did you fill it out right away and send it in?  Or did you want to wait until you’d heard the last-minute appeals from candidates to make up your mind?  Because if you decided to wait and take your ballot to the polls (like it says you can in the instructions,) your ballot will not be counted until after the regular ballots are all tallied, weeks after the results have been announced.

     Did you sign it in the right spot on the envelope?  Did you use the same signature that you have on file at the Registrar of Voters office?  Have you checked the website to see whether or not your ballot was counted?  I hope that my signature still resembles the one I filed in 1993,but I haven’t yet checked to see whether the person who examined my envelope thought it does.  All of which is to say that I voted, but don’t yet know whether it counted or not.

     So let me just state outright that I think there’s a lot more room for uncertainty in this shift from going to the polls to voting by mail, and it makes me uncomfortable.  That’s one reason that I miss going to the polls.

     The other reason is the loss of sense of my membership in community, both locally and countrywide.  There’s just something about standing in line with my neighbors that dignifies the act of voting and solidifies my sense of residence here.  There’s something about standing at the little portable booths they set up in the Veterans Memorial Building that reminds me it’s a solemn duty of citizenship in the United States of America and that I have that important right.  That sense of participation is honored when I pass by the names on the building’s entrance of people who have died in multiple wars defending that right. At least I voted.

     And I voted early for a change, not wanting to risk my chance to be counted.  After dropping my ballot in the mail, I attended rallies for the two Democratic candidates for President, and might have changed my mind if it weren’t too late to do so.  That’s the third reason I miss going to the polls.

     Reform of the voting system is heavy on the hearts and minds of our national leaders at the moment.  I hope that won’t include not going to the polls.  I wish there were some way to address my concerns at the local level, however.  Anybody else miss going to the polls?

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Trudy Wischemann is an agrarian advocate who writes.  Thanks to Bob Welch in Exeter for his comments this week. You can send your nostalgic voting memories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

           

Eulogy Values

Published June 1, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times and a conservative commentator on PBS’s News Hour on Friday nights, gave a wonderful presentation in Fresno on May 10^th.  He was promoting his new book called “The Road to Character” which identifies two different value systems.  One he calls “resume” values (i.e., values that define professional success in this society,) and the other, “eulogy” values:  the things people say about you after you are dead and define you as a good person.

           

     “The argument in the book,” he told Fresno Bee reporter Tim Sheehan, “is that we spend a lot of time, especially in our educational system, on (developing) the resume virtues and not enough time on the eulogy (virtues) – are you a good person? – even though we know those are more important.”  He believes that “We’ve become a country that’s just really pleased with itself,” having become “a more narcissistic culture,” “over-politicized and under-moralized,” over the past half century.

           

     With the current level of political debate at the national level, it’s just a darned good time to be thinking about these distinctions.  The gap between these two values systems is where we find ourselves caught in this country.  When Donald Trump confided at the microphone that he was kinda hoping for the housing mortgage bubble to burst ‘way back in 2008, and then defended  himself when Democrats seized on that little revelation with “Hey, what am I supposed to do? I’m a businessman!” – he was trying to straddle that gap.  The fact that he normally stands with both feet on the businessman side apparently is still lost on his supporters.

           

     Or not. There are those who still believe that whatever is good for business is good for the country, that whatever trickles down is better than nothing, I guess.

           

     I believe in trickle up, which is always harder to defend, especially when resume values hold sway or are touted as the only ones that matter.  If we didn’t have to keep writing eulogies, we might forget the other system entirely.  But thankfully we do.  

           

     David Brooks may have been caught in that values gap recently when he wrote a story for the New York Times (republished May 19^th in the Bee) on the philanthropic contributions to the small Westside community of Lost Hills by land and water tycoons Lynda and Stewart Resnick of Paramount fame.  The Resnicks, both noticeably aging in the 2013 photo of them attending a community forum in that town, may be developing their own set of eulogy values for their bucket list.  (It should be noted that what they’re giving is just a drop in the bucket, so to speak: an infinitesimal percentage of their net worth.)  Brooks’ literary portrait of those contributions was sweet.  I hope it encourages the Resnicks to double or even triple their efforts.  

           

     But there is no way to offset the damage done to Lost Hills and myriad other Central Valley towns by the structure of political power and economic control created when one entity owns too much land.  You cannot offset the jobs lost in packinghouses from the plant closures and mechanization by Paramount (oops, sorry: Wonderful, Inc.)  You cannot offset the farming opportunities lost in citrus or nuts like pistachios and almonds; you can’t bring back the small pomegranate farmers they decimated several years ago when they thawed the frozen juice they’d been hoarding.  You can’t bring back the downtowns they destroyed when they sold off those communities’ water to southern California or pumped down the aquifers.  No amount of financial aid can offset the socio-political and economic damages inflicted by giant landholdings on communities. 

           

     The Resnics do not now, and probably never will wear Haloes, no matter how many dollars they drop on Lost Hills or how many other communities they attempt to rescue.  Like Donald Trump, they have one foot on each side of the resume/eulogy values gap, and when push comes to shove or some opportunity raises its snaky head, we’ll find them with both feet on the resume values side, not even blinking.

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Trudy Wischemann is editing a book of writings on Agriculture and the Common Good with Tulare Lake Basin geographer Bill Preston.  Thanks to Michele Hester and Mark Arax for their comments this week.  You can send your thoughts on rural philanthropy c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

The Incontinent Divide

Published May 25, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     In Saturday’s Fresno Bee, Andrew Fiala, Director of the Ethics Center at Fresno State, wrote a whole-hearted column defending the place of enlightenment in our nation’s constitution and educational system.  Although I have worked hard to become a reputable and responsible product of that system, his column left me feeling torn, like someone standing with the Great Continental Divide running between each foot.  

           

     I admire and like Dr. Fiala:  he came to speak at Lindsay’s Cultural Arts Center last fall about the cultural roots of violence, and his research appeared to me to be useful and important.  In writing a regular column for the Bee, Fiala is spreading that usefulness beyond the university’s bounds, much like what I try to do with my column in this paper.  I see him as an ally. 

           

     But Saturday’s piece traced a fault line that runs through this country’s mentality between the so-called enlightened and the so-called unenlightened, a strike-slip fault like the San Andreas where each side inexorably moves in the opposite direction of the other, tearing up the zone between them.  In defining and defending “enlightenment,” Fiala was trying to describe the sometimes invisible place of liberal values in this otherwise conservative region.  But knowledge, that hoped-for product of enlightenment thinking, does not always lead down a liberal path, or even a progressive one.

           

     Over the last 100 years some of the world’s greatest political tyrants have been highly educated (Cambodia’s Pol Pot, for example.)  Universities have produced some of the hardest-line conservatives the world has known, and not just in the area of national defense.  Decades of promulgation of the Green Revolution and the structure of agribusiness around the world have destroyed native cultures and ecologies whose knowledge bases and ways of living were sustainable.  They were replaced by what is not sustainable at great cost to people, places and the future of the world.  The hope I once had for enlightenment thinking has been replaced by a giant suspicion of academics not unlike that of the Trump followers.

           

    “Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppression will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day,” Fiala quoted Thomas Jefferson.  I love to quote Jefferson and often do, despite being chastised by the politically-correct foes of racism who apparently remind Fiala as well as myself of Jefferson’s ownership of slaves.  But enlightenment of people does not eliminate the source of tyranny and oppression, which as often comes from someone who considers himself (or herself) more enlightened than the people referred to above.  It might prepare them better to resist or eventually conquer tyrants and oppressors, but it certainly does not erase those evil spirits from our days.

           

     Four decades ago, when I was a 26-year-old student new to UC Berkeley (notably a land grant college,) I was escorted by an elderly, retired economics professor to the north side of the campus to read the inscription on the ag building, Hilgard Hall.  His name was Paul Taylor, and he’d devoted his life and his career to defending both the family farm and the rights of farm laborers, protecting the acreage limitation and residency provisions of federal reclamation law until they were decimated by enlightenment thinking and politics in 1992.  

           

     The inscription reads “To rescue for human society the native values of rural life,” a sentiment which bridges the leaking divide between two ways of knowing.  It is academic acknowledgement of the value of those who might not be seen as ‘enlightened.”  It is an intention, a statement of purpose and responsibility, not just a declaration of virtue.  

           

     It also expresses understanding of a potential danger – that human society might become torn from its sustaining roots – as well as indicating the tonic needed.  Forty years after reading the inscription, I still think it shows the way to become continent again.

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Trudy Wischemann is an agrarian advocate who is editing a book of writings on Agriculture and the Common Good with Tulare Lake Basin geographer Bill Preston.  Thanks to Jim Likins and Ronald Abee for their comments this week.  You can send your stories of rural life c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

The Party of Lincoln

Published in edited form May 11, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     It’s been an unquiet week in my adopted home town, and anywhere else the television or radio has been on, thanks to the Donald and his band of happy followers.  Pundits, blue and red alike, have been swarming the microphones like bees whose hive has been hauled down the freeway in the middle of the afternoon, leaving them behind:  lost, and making lots of unhappy buzzing sounds.

     I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard very much that makes sense to me.  I’m sure it’s my lack of political acumen, whatever that is.  But whatever the Republicans or the Democrats are going to do as a result of the unspeakable prospect of the current presumptive Republican nominee winning the Presidency, it seems unlikely to make more sense.  The Republicans have been out-Republicaned; the Tea Party’s stash of tea has been dumped over the side of their ship.  The bullies in Washington have been out-bullied, and if the show must go on, it’s going to take some anti-bullying expertise, plain and simple, not a review of conservative values or party unification (except perhaps in performing a “bullying” intervention.)

           

     Speaking of conservative values, over the last few months I have noticed several Republican speakers referring to their party as “the party of Lincoln.”  I associate Lincoln and his presidency with far more liberal values, not to mention sensibilities of the common folk, than we see expressed regularly in either party today.  I found substance for that belief in Stephen Natoli’s book, Liberally Speaking (2015.)  After noting that the Republican Party “was founded in direct response to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which threatened to allow the extension of slavery into new Northern territories,” Natoli wrote:

“The Republican Party of those days was the more liberal party.  It stood for human rights over property rights, standing as it did for the restriction of slavery.  It stood for the precedence of nationally guaranteed human rights over the idea that ‘state’s rights’ permitted localities to nullify national laws or void human freedoms when and where they wished.  It stood for nationally-encouraged economic modernization and development that helped the people.”

           

     The creation of the Party of Lincoln was preceded by the creation of a third party called the Free Soil Party after the Wilmot Proviso, which would have prohibited slavery in the southwestern territories acquired from Mexico (including California,) was defeated in Congress:

           

“Disappointed by the ambivalent position of the Whig Party toward slavery, ‘Conscience’ Whigs held a convention in August 1848 at Buffalo, N.Y.  There they were joined by delegates from 17 states drawn from the Liberty Party and the antislavery faction of the New York Democrats, known as ‘Barnburners.’  The Free-Soilers’ historic slogan calling for ‘free soil, free speech, free labor and free men’ attracted small farmers, debtors, village merchants, and household and mill workers....  In 1854 the disorganized remnants of the party were absorbed into the newly formed Republican Party, which carrie54 the disorganized remnants of the party were absorbed into the newly formed Republican Party, which carrigh several party memd the Free-Soil idea of opposing the expansion of slavery one step further by condemning slavery as a moral evil as well.”  (“Free Soil Party,”Encyclopedia Britannica, online.)

     We might ask “Are we at a similar moment now, where dissatisfaction with the status quo in Washington could lead to the creation of a new party?”  I don’t think so, but maybe it’s just my lack of political acumen again.

     I watched the supporters behind the Donald on tv this morning, one holding a sign that read “The silent majority stands with Donald Trump.”  I think about them often, that silent majority.  I think they’ve fallen in love with someone who can speak his mind, even if that mind is like a sailboat with no rudder.  They stand with him because they cannot stand up for themselves.  And I worry for them because, from years past I know how it feels to discover that the one you fell so hard for, hoping to be redeemed, doesn’t really see you and has been using you all along to bolster his fragile (if bombastic) ego, that his words were lightly filled balloons barely tied.  It always feels bad, but the result can be good.  I just hope that therapeutic and truly redemptive moment happens before November.

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Trudy Wischemann is an apolitical pundit who writes in Lindsay.  You can send her your opinions on this election c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

 

The Letter

Published May 4, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     I received some interesting correspondence this week.  Some of it was solicited, comments from colleagues responding to my request for help.  I am finally crafting the foreword to our collection of writings on agriculture and the common good, and I wanted their input to make this small piece of writing represent the large effort of the book.  Although I don’t always like being corrected, their comments helped strengthen my sentences as well as my position.  Every drop was helpful.

           

     Another piece of correspondence, however, was less than helpful.  It was a letter elicited by my April 20^th column, “Disappointing News” from a reader in Strathmore.  Let me say that such letters are always welcome, no matter the content, because they tell me the column is serving my main purpose in writing it: to get people expressing themselves about, and on behalf of our communities. This letter, however, triggered doubts about my ability to communicate.

           

     The writer of the letter was kind in his criticism if also seemingly confused in his facts (i.e., his facts do not match mine.)  His subject was what has happened in the City of Lindsay over the last couple of years; his purpose in writing the letter appeared to be to correct my version of those events.  He also expressed what he thinks should be done, solutions which run contrary to my prescriptions. 

           

     I don’t know where he got his facts.  Perhaps it was from reading the newspapers.  The point of my column that week was that the reporters had chosen narrowly from the facts available, and that this selectivity had skewed the truthfulness of their reports.  Perhaps I was too subtle.

           

     I suspect, however, that the letter’s writer had his facts delivered to him from another source, someplace nearer and dearer than the printed page.  That’s fine.  That’s where most of us get our facts, after all.

           

     The writer of the letter recommended that I (and my fellow discontents) educate ourselves and get a copy of the city charter, then hold our councilmembers accountable to that lovely legal document.  I wish that would help.  But I’ve had a copy on my shelf since 2010 when the citizenry began expressing their discontent and dismay, first at the exorbitant salaries Lindsay city officials were paying themselves, then at the debacle over the stacked low-income housing loans made to 13 city employees.  This effort to “hold accountable” the council culminated in the resignation of former city manager Scot Townsend, who departed with a $35,000 severance package despite the fact that he quit (i.e., he was not fired or asked to resign,) and the exit of several other higher-ups, including finance director Kenny Walker.  The scramble that followed wasn’t pretty, and the perpetrators got away scot-free, so to speak.

           

     The writer of the letter also suggested we initiate a recall if our efforts are not taken seriously. He apparently is unaware of 2011-2012 recall effort of all 5 city council members, which did not culminate in a recall election but which (I feel pretty sure) resulted in the non-re-election of 2 of those members in 2012.  The effort took us one step in the right direction, no doubt, but it also burned out a great deal of the community’s available energy.

           

    Reflecting on that time took me back to my battle to save the Central California Citrus Exchange building from demolition in 2013, which our current city manager, Bill Zigler (then holding the position of city planner) wanted so badly he could taste it.  That building was eventually saved, thank God, by the new owner who has a passion for buildings with historical value and design integrity.  But this effort to bring Lindsay into the 1980’s regarding historic preservation was followed quickly by the loss of several other historic buildings, including its first hotel and Stamper Motors.  We still do not have even an inventory of our historic resources much less an update of our badly-outdated general plan.

           

     Looking back on the last six years wasn’t particularly pleasant for me, but perhaps it was useful after all.  I’ve learned the hard way that people are inclined to hear what they want to hear, to believe what seems to best serve their purposes.  Changing those beliefs takes something more than crafty little sentences on a page of newsprint.  

           

     It takes speaking truth in love, a Quaker concept I have not yet mastered but admire when I hear it.  The next six months, as we approach the big election, will give us all lots of opportunities to hone our skills in this spiritual art.  Let us begin.

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Trudy Wischemann is a remedial student of plain speech who writes despite her lack of education.  You can send her your appropriate phrases c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

The Last Word

 Published April 27, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette  

    

     Last Wednesday a large number of people gathered at the Exeter Memorial Building to listen to 7 of the current candidates for Tulare County Supervisor in District #1.  It was generously moderated by KTIP Radio’s PK the Redhead and sponsored by the Tulare Co. League of Women Voters.  The candidates introduced themselves, answered 6 prepared questions, plus 6 more chosen from the audience’s suggestions.     

    

     The prepared questions ranged from “What do you see as the role of county government?” and methods for constituency outreach, to issues like water and economic development.  Audience questions were more specific, seeking answers on things like homelessness and mental health, parks and recreation, land use planning, job training, water rights and leveraging money from the state’s water bond.  By the end of the program, when each candidate summarized his interest in and qualifications for being our next supervisor, most people had an impression of each man’s potential performance in that job, as well as how we might feel about that.

   

     Some candidates were greater politicians than others, which didn’t necessarily work in their favor in the current political climate.  Others were more well-versed and experienced in county and city government.  Yet others had cultural experiences that qualified them for being closer to certain constituent groups.  All claimed to understand the needs of the county as a whole.     

    

     As I scribbled my notes furiously, trying to keep up with both what was said and what was not, trying to record the nuances of body gestures and facial expressions, I couldn’t tell what I was missing in the dialog.  Yet when I found this quote by Aldo Leopold (reprinted in the April 2016 issue of The Sun magazine,) I knew I’d stumbled on a defining characteristic, a way of dividing the pack of candidates into those I might want as supervisor, and those I would not want.  Simply, I want to choose someone who understands how important it is to maintain the organic, ecological health of this land we call home. 

     “The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism.  Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little we know about it.  The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant:  “What good is it?”  If the . . . whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.”           

     

     The issue of water supply (from both underground aquifers and surface storage facilities) has a way of revealing who understands, and who only thinks they do.  Forgive me, but those who think Tulare County will stand to benefit anything from the construction and operation of Temperance Flat Dam, or from increased Delta diversions of all that water “wasting” to the ocean (at the cost of extinction of the anadromous fish species of smelt, cutthroat, and salmon) are either lying or wallowing in the last word in ignorance.  

     Several of the current candidates are adamant about fighting the federal and state governments to preserve our existing water supplies and water rights systems, without recognizing the existing inequities to poor communities, small farms, and the remaining fish and wildlife species with whom we are legally and morally required to share that water.  Only three candidates considered other solutions; only two of those saw a future in conservation and locally-arranged agreements for recharging aquifers and re-using wastewater.  The rest are still locked in that pie-in-the-sky belief that California agriculture feeds the world and thus justifies satisfying the unending thirst of agribusiness, regardless of cost. 

     All the other issues – poor communities, development of tourism or other industry, unemployment, providing parks and recreation, even protecting property values -  all hinge on our recognition of the critical importance of protecting the ecological health of this land.  If we allow it to be destroyed, either deliberately or through the last word in ignorance, someday we will find ourselves fighting over straws like they do in the Middle East, where once the Tigris and Euphrates ran through fertile farmland and fed the world. 

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer based in Lindsay.  You can send her your candidate observations c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Disappointing News

Published in the April 20th, 2016 issue of the Foothills Sun-Gazette.

    The recent report from the Tulare County Grand Jury, “Nightmare in Lindsay,” was disappointing to almost everyone.   Unfortunately, the reporting about the report by our two major newspapers (the Porterville Recorder and the Foothills Sun-Gazette) was even more disappointing.           

     True to policy, the Grand Jury report did not reveal the complaint that triggered the investigation or the events that led up to the complaint being filed, much less the identities of those making the complaint.  A reader unfamiliar with Lindsay’s recent history would have no way to unravel the Grand Jury’s findings, whose roots stem back into the Townsend administration.  Good journalists would have provided that background.           

     During several Lindsay City Council meetings last year, some citizens who claimed to have signed the complaint spoke openly about it, including Brian Watkins, Ellen Blumer, and Kirk Ingoldsby (Councilwoman Kimball’s brother.)  The general tone of their testimony was threatening, and the goal appeared to be to get the three council members who had been named in the complaint (Mayor Padilla, Rosaena Sanchez and Steven Mecum) to either step down from their elected positions or tow the party line these citizens wanted.  These citizens are largely insiders in this community, as well as supporters of the previous administrations of Townsend and Wilkinson, support which extends to the current one under Bill Zigler’s management, i.e., the old guard of Lindsay.           

     Findings #3 and #4 related to this complaint: an allegation by these citizens that the Brown Act had been violated when 2 or 3 of the named councilmembers met privately with city employees over personnel matters.  Finding #3 was that no evidence was found of Brown Act violations; Finding #4 stated that some council members were involved in discussion of union issues “outside the parameters of established procedures,” without citing which procedures were stepped on.           

     The other three findings, however, which are a much bigger part of Lindsay’s nightmare, were caused by the Council prior to Sanchez and Mecum’s election and Padilla’s appointment as mayor: #1, the detrimental effects of combining the position of city manager with the director of public safety; #2, the costly employee settlements we suffered as a result of this decision; and #5, the cost of these settlements to the city’s already difficult financial situation.             

     Current councilmembers Danny Salinas and Pam Kimball, who were not named in the complaint but who sat on the previous council, bear a great deal of responsibility for these facts of our city life, as do former council members Steve Velasquez and Mayor Ed Murray.  Ramona Padilla was a newly appointed council member at that time, and also shoulders a portion of that responsibility. 

           

     Padilla was not on the Council, however, the last time it was investigated for violations of the Brown Act in 2010.  That time the Grand Jury found that violations HAD occurred when they met in San Jose and approved the merger of the police and fire departments into the department of public safety without proper public notice.  That was the beginning of Rich Wilkinson’s eventual rise to the joint position of City Manager/Director of Public Safety.  Pam Kimball negotiated that contract, which contained the extraordinary provisions requiring 4/5 majority approval for Wilkinson’s termination and 18 months’ severance pay, a factor that led to the extraordinary employee severance settlements that caused Lindsay’s budget to somersault.           

     The real news about Lindsay’s “nightmare” is that it is longstanding and ongoing, not likely to end until those insiders in power are curbed and made accountable.  Journalists have an important role to play in helping to keep public officials accountable.  Unfortunately the journalists covering Lindsay either do not understand that role or are ignorant of our history.  I hope both lackings can be corrected in the future.

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Trudy Wischemann is a Populist who writes.  You can send her your observations of insider “trading” c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or visit www.trudysnotesfromhome.blogspot.com and leave a comment there.