Real Progress

Published in edited form January 31, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “You can’t stop progress,” I’ve been warned my whole life as I worked against the predictable devastation I saw coming in progress’s wake.  Maybe that’s true, but the news this past week suggests that progress can be re-directed.

           

     Saturday’s front page article in the Fresno Bee showed fingerling Chinook salmon from the San Joaquin River.  Last fall, spring-run salmon made it to the foot of Friant Dam and reproduced for the first time in 60 years, re-starting the cycle many thought was lost forever.  Like the migrating birds returning to Tulare Lake’s man-made wetlands, the salmon run appears to be more resilient than most of our imaginations.  What we thought was lost to “progress,” Mother Nature resupplied once we committed ourselves to restoring the conditions we’d stripped from her plan.

           

     Even more pertinent for those of us in Tulare County who dream of a more sustainable future was the news that the Boswell Corp. withdrew its plan to build Yokohl Ranch.  “You’re kidding,” said one friend I called; “No way,” said another.  Ten years ago the dream of saving Yokohl Valley from this plan was ridiculed by many, made cynical by the King of California’s power - even those of us who were infected by the dream of preserving it.  One of my Tulare County heroes whose cinch straps had worn thin fighting for another, much smaller valley, said it wasn’t worth trying to fight it.  Whatever Boswell wants is inevitable.

           

     And I don’t kid myself about that power dynamic.  That company has decided that it doesn’t want to spend its resources this way, that’s all.  Whether that decision was affected (at least in part) by the costs of deflating opposition to their project, we may never know.  But there are some positive lessons I get from this news.

           

     The most important one is that sacrifices count.  Mine were small:  time spent writing, worrying, talking, more writing.  Others’ were larger: members of the Tulare County Citizens for Responsible Growth worked for years to document facts, then use them to lobby for and enlighten the general public and its governmental officials.   Some of the individuals involved in the group realized another component was missing, that there was a void in our public awareness of the true value of our beloved, human environment here.  One answer was the development of the group sponsoring the website www.tularecountytreasures.org (check it out!) which tells stories of the individuals who  have shaped our relationships to this place, sometimes sacrificing themselves for the greater good.

           

     There were larger sacrifices, too.  One long-time Yokohl family rancher, Tom Daly, who died in 2014 while working calves for a friend, refused to sell his land to Boswell although the offered price was 5 to 10 times higher than the going rate.  And all of these people made their sacrifices according to deep beliefs, which they held and acted upon despite the widely-held notion that Boswell’s proposed 10,000 unit development, described as self-contained, self-sufficient (i.e., “sustainable,”) would be good for this county.  Those sacrifices, large and small, were made because we believe Yokohl Ranch would be bad for this county, not just bad for Yokohl Valley.

           

     The real progress I see is that we appear to have an opening to have that discussion.  How should the water resources of this county be used?  What kind of development would be good for those of us who actually live here in the center of a small, fertile universe?  Let’s get talking.

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Trudy Wischemann is a land reformer who writes.  You can send her your ideas of progress c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

The Hope of Action

Published  in edited form Jan. 30, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette
 
     “How many names will it take to stop this thing?” a woman asked me after last week’s Lindsay City Council meeting.

           

     She was referring to the proposed roundabout at Hermosa and Westwood and the signature-gathering effort she’d participated in a few weeks before, heroic by this (or any other) community’s standards.  I don’t remember my answer, although I’m sure it wasn’t encouraging, clouded by my experiences here over the last 7+ years.

           

     Yet, before they’d gathered those 800+ names, there was no hope of stopping this thing.  Before individuals started asking questions about the safety of school children crossing there, the potential increase in traffic congestion, the high cost and possibly better (and cheaper) solutions, there was no hope.  Not one drop.

           

     When she asked that important question, we were standing in the dark in front of city hall, the meeting still going on.  The agenda item to approve the roundabout’s environmental document (called “Initial Study/ Mitigated Negative Declaration,”) had been put off for the second time, this time without explanation.  Perhaps it was because two of the five council members, including Mayor Kimball, were absent.  Perhaps they expected challenges from outside experts called to testify by the San Joaquin Valley Environmental Defense Center, a non-profit in which I participate.  Perhaps they expected a large turnout of community people and wanted to discourage the effort.  Or perhaps they actually knew the document wasn’t ready and wanted to give staff more time to improve it.  Who knows?

           

     What I know is that those 800+ names gathered in the first four days of 2018, when most people were just recovering from the holidays, are what kept the Council from approving the roundabout on Jan. 9^th, and again on Jan. 23^rd.  Those community members’ questions, requiring answers in the document, have delayed the normal rubber stamp approval of yet another one of Lindsay’s Follies. And the persistence of community voices wanting to be part of the solution is the only thing that’s going keep yet another community design disaster from happening.

           

     Last week’s Sun-Gazette carried a fiery editorial about Lindsay’s bad attitude toward repaying TCAG for misused Measure R funds.  It made a very important point that should be remembered now, as the City once again contemplates spending public funds they consider “free” (meaning they come from some coffers other than the city’s tax base.)  That point is that these “free” funds are still taxpayer dollars.  We all have contributed, one way or another.  They’re our monies, and in our behalf, conditions have been placed on their use to ensure they go toward real public improvements, not boondoggles.

           

     The City of Lindsay has not demonstrated an awareness of that fact, much less respect for it.  When one resident questioned the high price tag of this roundabout, the city’s response was, essentially, “it’s not our money, don’t worry about that.”  We do worry.  We’re offended by extravagant, wasteful projects in our town (which unfortunately we have in abundance) while we jounce uncomfortably down our un-mended streets.  And it is our money.

           

     So, friends, look at what we’ve done so far with our actions, large and small.  There is hope of solving some of the traffic issues at that intersection if we don’t let up.  We must require the City of Lindsay to respond to the concerns and voices of its residents, now and in the future.  That’s where Hope lives.

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Trudy Wischemann is a community researcher who writes.  You can send her your active hopes c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

On Residence

Published Jan. 24, 2018 in Tulare County's  Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “No one wants to live here anymore,” said the same friend in the same conversation I wrote about last week.  The explanation she gave for that purported trend, that many current residents now park their cars on their lawns (which is a violation of Lindsay’s municipal code, enforceable by law) was merely one indicator of the overall decline of this community’s once glorious existence.  It’s shorthand for an unnamed and unanalyzed problem facing towns throughout the Valley and rural communities across the nation.

           

     If no one wanted to live here anymore, I would expect to find a large number of empty houses.  Instead, we find a lack of “for rent” signs, construction of new (albeit subsidized) housing, and street-side parking spaces filled with cars every evening in many neighborhoods.  Some people obviously want to live here.  I happen to be one of them.

           

     Perhaps my friend was referring to the perceived desirability of the town, particularly to people of greater means.  Attracting more “middle-class” people to Lindsay has been a stated goal of several councilmembers, as well as the staff, for years.  The assumption is that we’d see economic benefits from that class of people which would be reflected in the town’s downtown environment, perhaps even greater social commitment to schools, parks and cultural events.  I understand the correlation they’re making – in the past, that’s how it was - but I don’t think it pertains to the present, much less the future. 

           

     I think most of the City’s projects have been simply attempts to “modernize” the town, regardless of whether it is an improvement.  From the project to renovate the downtown and the city park, to the construction of the new library, McDermont Field House, the Wellness Center and the existing and proposed roundabouts, this “modernization” has come with real impacts to the town’s financial stability and the living qualities that made some of us want to live here, not to mention participate in its future.

           

     I think that choosing maintenance instead – maintenance of the park, the city streets, the traffic circulation, the street trees that once existed and now have been replaced with palms and overgrown shrubs – would have been a better strategy, one that would have served the town’s current residents better and increased our desirability by showing a devotion to the qualities that make this small town a great place to live.

           

     Modernization may be an effective technique in cities, but in small towns it puts at risk two essential aspects of our real desirability as alternatives to the urbanizing world:  a connection to the history of this place, and authenticity – the “authorship” of the space, if you will, by individual human beings exerting their creativity and rights to exist through businesses, offering goods and services to their neighbors and contributing to the common good. 

           

     Exeter has been more careful to preserve those two aspects while modernizing, an example we should examine for help maintaining our own.  They also have been better at listening to their residents, who rejected the roundabout constructed at a 5-street intersection and demanded that it be taken out and made it a 5-way stop instead.  I hope Lindsay will learn from Exeter’s example.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural researcher who writes.  You can send her your modernization ideas c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

Come On Home

Published in edited form Jan. 17, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


“You’ve got to exert your ownership over the place you live in,
        or you won’t have that place.”
               
                Bruce Springsteen, saying what the song “This Land is Your Land” means
                in the PBS documentary on Woody Guthrie, "I Ain't Got No Home."


     “Do you have to fight about everything?” a friend asked in an unfriendly voice.  We were talking about Lindsay’s proposed roundabout at Hermosa and Westwood, adjacent to Jefferson School and half a block from the entrances to the Olive Tree Plaza.  “I wish I didn’t,” is what I wish I had answered her.           

    
    I’ve got a thing against fighting.  Most of us do.  I got mine from my small-town mother, who abhors fighting in general and understands the underside of the silent class wars that go on in small towns.  Better to go along and be friendly or at least not noticed, because standing out can make you an outsider fast.

           

     But a small handful of Lindsay residents, most of them lifetime members, got up the gumption to gather signatures on a petition against this project.  They gathered over 800 names in four days, 300 more people than voted in the last election.  They overcame their fears about fighting city hall, motivated by concerns about the negative impacts of this project.  I think more of us need to join them.

           

     At the next City Council meeting, Jan. 23^rd (which begins at 6 p.m.), the staff will address some of the questions raised at the public hearing on Jan. 9^th as well as some raised at the public information meeting Jan. 4^th.  The Council then will decide whether to approve the environmental document prepared by the city planning department, a requirement of CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act.)  This is the only point where citizen input has to be considered.  After that, the Council is free to approve the plan regardless what the public thinks or feels about it.

           

     There are genuine defects in the environmental document.  With the aid of experts in the fields of traffic engineering and design, the San Joaquin Valley Environmental Defense Center will address technical flaws in the report.  What is really absent, however, is public participation and a public vision of the town’s future.

           

     There’s a song by the Milk Carton Kids called “The Ash and Clay” which pertains to our situation.  I first heard it at the end of a movie about a rural community that nearly fell prey to a corporation seeking to drill natural gas wells through their aquifer, potentially contaminating their only source of water.  Many in the community wanted the leases as a way to survive financially in an area whose economic base was waning.  A few fighters struggled against both the corporation and the general community’s fears of repercussions, and I thought the film represented well the struggle of public resources and community well-being.  Some lines from the song, however, capture this moment perfectly:

“I know we want what’s best for us – I know it has to come at a price;
I also know the trouble that you find when you stop being nice.
You look around you one day; what you once knew didn’t stay….
Come on home before the girls are grown, come on home to fight.” 

           

     Come be part of the solution Tuesday night, Lindsay City Council chambers, 6 p.m.

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Trudy Wischemann is a small-town researcher who always has a song in her head.  You can send her your thoughts about our roundabouts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247

People Care

Published Jan. 10, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     There was a meeting at Lindsay’s Wellness Center last Thursday about the proposed roundabout at Hermosa and Westwood.  It was sponsored by the City of Lindsay and attended by 30-50 townspeople.  Though not a city council meeting, the two newest council members attended: Laura Cortes and Brian Watson, supporting staff members Bill Zigler, Mike Camarena and Neyva Amescua.

           

     A small handful of women, however, brought evidence that more people here really care about the future of our town:  815 names had been gathered on a petition against the roundabout over a span of four days.  That is spectacular evidence of both the commitment of the signature gatherers and the concerns of the public at large.

           

     I find it hard to imagine a roundabout there, much less that it will improve traffic congestion at the times when students are coming or going.  The roundabout will reduce the number of on-street parking places which are highly sought at certain hours and normally overtaxed.  It will reduce the four lanes of Hermosa to two, funneling a high-energy stream of traffic coming into our town right at the point where the entrances/exits of the shopping center add some excitement already.  And if it’s anything like the roundabout we already have (God forbid), attempts to avoid that intersection will further confound drivers trying to get into or out of town.

           

     The meeting, however, demonstrated another real circulation problem chronic in Lindsay, which I will lay directly at the feet of the city manager.  Information flows only one direction here, from his desk down.  Despite his attempts to look civic-minded, information coming up from “below,” from the residents of this community, is unwelcome and rebuffed the moment it appears to be in conflict with what he “knows.”

           

     He went to a great deal of effort Thursday night to establish that what he “knows” (i.e., that a roundabout is the best solution to the traffic congestion at that intersection) is supported by outside experts, in particular two community development geniuses who came in 2006 and gave their on-the-spot advice that a roundabout is what we need.  Reading their 2-page resumes in English, which councilwoman Cortes translated into Spanish, consumed 15 minutes of the meeting.

           

     Yet when questioned by one of the residents who came, a man who asked simply for a cost comparison between the roundabout and a four-way traffic signal, our expert city manager shut down.  Although that information was easily at hand, he replied “I’m not going to answer that question now.  This meeting is for information only.  We’re writing down your questions and we’ll answer them individually after the meeting.”

           

     The difference in costs of alternative solutions sounds to me like pretty simple information to offer at such a meeting.  Yet he stonewalled, and I believe it’s because he really does not want to, or cannot handle the ideas of other people.  At one point folks became so aggravated by this response, one of the women who had gathered signatures asked “Is this thing set in stone?  Are you wasting our time here?”  Then she added “How many names will it take to stop this thing?”  Her question went unanswered.

           

     People in Lindsay really do care about our town.  That caring is a resource that should be nurtured and incorporated into the development of our future.  There are planning methodologies that recognize this powerful component of community design, and I think we should bring some of those experts to town.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate with an all-but-thesis Masters degree in environmental planning from Berkeley.  You can send her your thoughts on roundabouts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below

Afterbirth

Published Jan. 3, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     I woke up Christmas morning with thoughts of the manger.  Mary and Joseph have made it through this tough night; mother and child are doing fine.  The animals in attendance are probably hungry, waiting for their keeper to bring them breakfast.  It’s a new day.

           

     For some reason, these images took my waking mind to another birth, the birth of my mare’s foal when I was about 14.  It was my first real exposure to birth, as had been my witnessing of his conception.  Both were rude awakenings to the realities of life, of how we come into this world.

           

     My mother had seen his coming in a dream, and told my father, who, believing her, woke me up to go check.  We were keeping Misty in the back pasture for some reason, out of sight of the house.  But when we arrived at the fence, there was the foal on the ground, a small chestnut cinnamon roll just unfurling, long stick legs trying to find footing.  He lurched to his feet, as surprised to be there as we were.  The miracle had occurred.  Misty made it through that tough night, and mother and child were fine.

           

      Before he dashed off to work, Dad turned to me and said “You go get the shovel and bury the afterbirth.  If you don’t, Misty will eat it.”  I’m sure he meant well in assigning me this responsibility; she was my horse, after all.  But I didn’t know what an afterbirth was, and when I finally found it, I was grossed out.  I was also alone, as I was so often in those years.  Burying the afterbirth felt like some kind of punishment for being female.

           

      Christmas morning, my mind went back to the manger, then, and to Mary.  Was she left alone to do something with the afterbirth?  As a teenager, with no midwife or mother there beside her for guidance, did she have any idea what to do?  Would Joseph have relieved her of that responsibility, or did he simply motion in the direction of the shovel?

           

     That reverie took me to Quaker Oaks Farm, and the blessing of meeting Darlene Franco, who sits on the board of directors.  Darlene is a member of the Wukchumni tribe, who have been meeting regularly on the grounds of the farm many years, long before it became a non-profit.  Early in our acquaintance, Darlene told us of burying the afterbirth of each of her three children as the bases of three individual trees.  “My kids know which tree is theirs,” she said, invisibly converting afterbirth from the category of “profane” to the category of “sacred” in my mind.

           

      Afterbirth:  that protective sac the mother’s body makes to carry the growing baby inside her until that baby is ready to breathe the atmosphere directly and eat through its mouth rather than through a cord to its navel.  The sac that breaks, releasing the mother’s waters, when the time has come to squeeze through that dark tunnel into the light, and make home on this planet outside the womb.  Miracle.

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Trudy Wischemann is a squeamish teenager all grown up who writes.  You can send her your stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

O Little Town

Published Dec. 20, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     The gingerbread woman reappeared when I opened some boxes of ornaments this weekend.  I wanted to do a little light-handed decorating, at least in my kitchen window, my hearth. I pulled back the tissue paper wrapped around her plump little body, saw who it was, and tenderly wrapped her back up, deciding against that trip down memory lane.  Then I found the little wreath I’d hung to frame her years before, and my hands decided to go back after all, back to the time when she meant something real to me.

           

     I’d written about this cheerful kitchen angel in this column, so I dug up the piece from the notebooks where I’d once kept them organized. What I discovered when I re-read it surprised me.  In the first week of Jan., 2011, I was still in love with my community, tender toward its complexities, not yet tortured by them.  It felt good to remember.

           

     The gingerbread woman reverie was triggered by community pain I was just coming to know thanks to my new job at RN Market.  A much loved woman, Inglatina Huerta, had been killed on her way to work around 5 a.m. on New Year’s Eve Day.  She had a head-on collision with the son of one of Lindsay’s first families, who was coming home from a party. The story I heard is that he was not tested for alcohol.  An Hispanic woman on her way to work, killed by a white boy on his way home from a party and not made to bear any consequences: it was an old story that could have happened anywhere.  People suffered in silence.  That’s how we do it here.

           

     People had just begun to not suffer in silence two months before, when the revelations about high salaries Lindsay’s top employees were being paid splattered against the reality that a high percentage of the town’s residents have trouble paying their water bills.  In mid-October 2010 about a thousand people met in the high school gymnasium for a highly-guarded city council meeting, purportedly to hear their complaints.  At first I was reluctant to get involved, so I simply wrote about it.  The first families fought back.  In the columns before the gingerbread woman, I was just beginning to feel the effect of moving socially from one side of the community to the other, and still holding some middle ground.

           

     That was before the housing fiascos were revealed, and before the effects of Rich Wilkinson’s appointment to city manager could be accumulated.  It was before coming to the podium during public comment period at city council meetings and discovering we had to fight for the right to speak, before the plan to demolish the Citrus Exchange building, and before the lawsuits we filed to try to keep that from happening.  Back then I was afraid of losing my sense of home in this town through the act of protesting. I didn’t know that loss would occur inside of me.

           

     “It’s just love,” the gingerbread woman had told me about Inglatina’s accident and all the pain and silent discord that followed.  “Grief is the price we pay for love,” I’d quoted a fellow Quaker then.  It’s hard to remember.  But as we, against the dark, deck our homes with the lights of life and share our wonder about a birth on the wrong side of the tracks in Bethlehem 2017+ years ago, maybe perspective will come.  All this fighting is just about love for a little town.

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