July 2005

©Joe Medieros

Living Lightly

Rivers of Birds, Forests of Tules: Central Valley Nature & Culture in Season

By LILLIAN VALLEE

We live across the street from a junior high with a stunning monarch oak in the middle of the schoolyard.  The Valley Oak is one of several still left in the La Loma neighborhood, a remnant of the Valley Oak savanna that occupied this terrace between Dry Creek and the Tuolumne River before the savanna became walnut orchards and vineyards, and before they became a residential area in the late 1940s.  Once, when tree trimmers came to prune away deadwood, two small neighborhood boys ran out to the schoolyard screaming and shouting, “No-o-o-o!  What are you doing to our tree?” and put themselves between the men and the oak until they were convinced the men were not going to cut it down. 

Most of us who live here feel the way the boys do about the tree:  it registers the seasons and emanates a magnetic, benevolent presence, so it has been painful these last three years to watch junior high kids, and their parent accomplices, cover the tree with multiple Costco packages (24 rolls each!?) of toilet paper at the end of the school year in June and then leave the mess behind for others to clean up.  The scene the day after is disheartening:  not just toilet paper but wrapping from the packages, big black plastic bags, and other incidental trash litter the entire schoolyard.  This morning, almost two weeks after kids and parents engaged in this “tradition,” I picked up 217 individual pieces of litter, most of it toilet paper.  Each of our chagrined neighbors tells a similar story.  Because the kids do this right before school vacation, neither the school nor its employees, neither the kids nor their parents will take responsibility for the clean-up.   

I should make one thing clear.  I like living next to the school, I like kids, and I enjoy seeing them running, playing softball or soccer, or just having a good time.  I have broken up an occasional unfair fight, and I make it a habit to greet the kids I see with a few good words. I pick up, without complaint, their usual litter, which is moderate:  math exercises, Skittle wrappers, and even heartrending love notes that the unworthy objects of affection crumple and throw into the street.

We have lived here for over twenty years, and the toilet paper has never been much of a problem before because when kids wanted to be bad, they usually excluded their parents (and the school took responsibility for the clean-up).  A handful of kids would sneak out with a few toilet paper rolls in their backpacks and dress up the tree.  What has changed is the scale of the operation and the fact that apparently parents want to be bad, too:  they buy Costco jumbo packs; drive a carload of kids in their Mercury, Chevrolet, or Mercedes right up to the fence; and then sit there, looking sheepish.  They want badness to be safe.  They want badness without risk.

I try to talk calmly to each parent.  Will you be here tomorrow morning to help clean this up?  Will your kids clean this up?  Do you know that the custodians hate this intrusion because it creates so much more work for them and they have plenty?  Do you know that the wind blows a lot of the toilet paper into people’s yards and they are picking toilet paper out of their front and backyards all summer long?  Do you realize that this is a form of vandalism because it makes the school and neighborhood look trashed and so people driving by feel free to throw their own garbage out into the street, further exacerbating the problem?  Do you think a rite of passage, a “tradition” should model disrespect for someone’s neighborhood and a lack of responsibility for your actions?  Don’t you think the kids and teachers are smart enough and creative enough to come up with a better tradition to honor the passage from junior high to high school?  Isn’t this a tradition whose time has come and gone? 

Some parents become thoughtful and say, “I never realized how this actually looked and affected the neighborhood.”  Others promise to get the kids to clean it up the next day (but rarely come through).  Some jump in their cars, lock the doors, and speed off, embarrassed.  A few become aggressive:  “That’s not my problem,” one mother said.  And another:  “Why don’t they just hose it out of the tree?”  A self-identified teacher said, “Damn right, I want my kids to participate in this tradition.”     

When I talked to the current principal (who is doing a great job at the school) about two years ago, he said it was an “innocent” activity, which, if forbidden, will be more attractive (he came from an inner city school).  When I suggested that he get teachers and students together to create an alternate tradition (a concert or poetry reading under the oak (and stars); making bead necklaces or something beautiful or powerful to adorn the oak; planting saplings so that when this one goes there will be others; storytelling, plays, puppet shows, kite flying, anything!), there was little response.  He may just be overworked and, on one level, he is right: compared to assaults with deadly weapons, drug problems, or lack of preparedness for school, this is a minor problem. 

Yet I can’t help but think that the big problems begin with ignoring the little ones:  disrespect for the labor of others and someone else’s neighborhood disconnects actions from their consequences and teaches young people to emulate ignorant and arrogant nonchalance.  Spray-painted graffiti gets kids into Juvenile Hall.  Yet it is easier to paint over graffiti than to clean up an entire schoolyard and adjacent street when it is toilet-papered—it lasts much longer and makes the neighborhood look uncared for and neglected. The parents who expect them to clean up the mess, who cannot understand that people may love an old tree and see toilet papering as not only a wasteful but a meaningless activity, an empty ritual, are not the wisest guides for a rite of passage.  

Nature literacy and place-based learning are not strong suits in American education, but this is changing; Modesto is rich in resources and curricula nurturing a deeper understanding of, for example, an oak community.  Our children and young people have the sensitivity and intelligence to respond to knowledge about the natural world with attention, good will and creativity.  If only the adults would lead the way and leave the toilet paper in the bathroom stalls along with the lipstick hearts and adolescent doggerel.  Rachel Carson said it best:  in our day people must prove that they can master not nature, but themselves.

Lillian Vallee is a Professor of Literature and Language Arts at Modesto Junior College.

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes

By INDIRA CLARK

The tomato is a ubiquitous food. Even in the dead of winter, this semi-tropical fruit, no matter how anemic, daily graces hundreds of millions of plates - and styrofoam containers.

In March, following a four-year boycott of Taco Bell, farmworkers in Florida persuaded the fast food chain to agree to pay one penny a pound more for the tomatoes it serves. Currently farmworkers there earn as little as 40 cents for every 32 pound bucket they pick, according to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group of mostly Mexican and Guatemalan workers who staged the boycott. The boycott agreement resulted in raising farmworkers' pay $100,000 per year for the 10 million pounds of Floridan tomatoes that Taco Bell buys annually. The corporation also agreed help persuade other fast-food chains, and eventually supermarket retailers to join them, and to monitor suppliers for farmworker abuse by labor contractors. Some farmworkers are skeptical whether this raise will trickle down to them,

A University of California study from the time of the Bracero Program, which allowed Mexican nationals to work in U.S. agriculture from the late 19540s into the 1960s, maintained that if consumers would pay just more one penny per can of tomato sauce, farmers could pay their workers a living wage, was a finding of the study. “Not so simple,” my late husband, Samuel R. Tyson, used to argue. “The farmer won't get that penny to pass on his/her workers, what with the retailer and middlemen taking their chunks out first.

Here in the Central Valley it's possible to eat fresh, locally grown tomatoes for several months of the year. The abundance of roadside stands and farmers' markets offer locally grown tomatoes seven months a year, aided by greenhouses to stretch the season.

Tomatoes can be rewarding to grow yourself, if you have a sunny spot. Taste, texture, and color vary by tomato variety and farmers' growing philosophies, so ask questions, look  and taste  around to find what appeals to you.

Some people like sweet tomatoes, others want a bit of acid bite. Deep red is still the preferred color, but many have been seduced by the range of pink, golden, purple, striped, and even green-when-ripe of "heirloom" tomatoes that have come out of gardeners' backyards and into the mainstream in recent years.

I was delighted last November to find a plate of organic heirloom tomatoes offered in the food court in Yosemite Valley. While seated at the same table with the director of Yosemite food services during  the 25th annual Ecological Farming (Eco-Farm) Conference at Asilomar. I was please to discover that plate of tomatoes had been grown by the Willeys in Madera.

An heirloom vegetable and fruit is defined as a variety which is more than 50 years old and has self-replicating, stable characteristics from generation to generation. The different varieties were developed naturally by cross pollination, whether by nature, insects, birds, wind, or people tickling the flowers from one plant with another to see if an improved product could be developed with the good qualities of both of the parents.

After growing dozens of heirloom varieties, some of the most luscious tasting are very shy producers and/or have otherwise less than sterling growth habits. Hybrids were developed for a reason - production.

Scientists have taken development to another level by genetically engineered crops with genes from other species, whether they be plant, animal, or even human. Who would have imagined adding fish genes to tomatoes or splicing human breast milk spliced into corn DNA?

Tomatoes are one of the most highly genetically modified crops grown today, along with corn, soybeans, and canola (rapeseed oil If you're dubious of the level of knowledge and skill of the gene splicers, you might want to consider the benefits of making your own tomato sauce from fresh, local, non-genetically modified tomatoes,

Genetic engineering was hotly debated at the Eco-Farm Conference in January. Scientists are confident they currently possess the knowledge, skill, and instruments to read DNA accurately enough to splice together sequences that increase food production, providing resistance to weather, insect, herbicide, and disease, etc. Critics remain skeptical about human error (and egos) and wonder what kind of unfathomable consequences to health and environment are being laid down like landmines in the food we eat.

Several farmers at the conference questioned who owns life, who profits from these developments? Are the hungry of the world going to be fed, or will their crops be disrupted?

Biotechology companies are attempting to patent every bit of life, obtaining exclusive rights for research and profit. Biotech manufacturers have convinced lawmakers in the North America to prosecute farmers whose crops have been contaminated by genetic modified organisms (GMOs). Monsanto has sued over 200 canola oil growing families in Canada and the northern U.S. who had had a few of these altered plants pop up in their fields of canola from unaltered farm-saved seed (the birds, insects, and wind are still on the job).

Last year's Monsanto won the (in)famous case, Canada Monsanto vs. Piercy Schmeiser, and corn farmers in Mexico are now being prosecuted, again because pollen infiltrated from nearby GMO plantings polluting their fields.

A bill before the California Legislature which would protect farmers against contamination from genetically altered crops and against lawsuits filed against farmers by biotech companies that manufacture the contaminating material, according to Community Alliance with Family Farmers, one a key supporter. AB 984 also makes a GMO manufacturer liable for economic losses incurred by a farmer or food processor if they can show the loss resulted from contamination by the company's GMO.

ACTION: You are what you eat. Know your food, and delight in it! Contact the Community Alliance with Family Farmers at www.caff.org and Ecological Farming Association at www.ecofarm.org

The author, a farmer in Waterford, is a founding member, along with her late husband Sam Tyson and family, of the Modesto Certified Farmers' Market, and is an editor of Stanislaus Connections.