(Scott Meyer’s website)
A brief break from politics, or at least yelling at clouds. “Seeking Serenity in a Patch of Land”:
FRESNO, Calif. — Like Scotch broom and dandelions, despair can be invasive. This is why, every Monday, Lee Lee, a Hmong refugee, puts on her sun hat and flip-flops, grabs the hoe handmade by her father and brother in Laos and heads to the Hmong Village Community Garden here, where she tends rows of purple lemon grass, bitter melon and medicinal herbs along with other Hmong women.
“It lightens the load,” said Lee, whose depression has led her to think about suicide. “It brings peace, so I do not forget who I am.”
The garden, on the scraggly outskirts of town, is one of seven in Fresno created for immigrants, refugees and residents of impoverished neighborhoods with mental health money from the state. At the Slavic Community Garden, Ukrainian refugees persecuted for their religious beliefs in the Soviet Union now grow black currants for jam, dill for pickles and soups, and medicinal calendula flowers from Ukrainian seeds.
The thinking of community leaders and health professionals is that gardens can help foster resiliency and a sense of purpose for refugees, especially older ones, who are often isolated by language and poverty and experiencing depression and post-traumatic stress. Immigrant families often struggle to meet insurance co-payments, and culturally attuned therapists are in short supply.
The budget, about $171,000 a year for construction and maintenance of the community gardens and adjoining meeting spaces here, is made possible by the California Mental Health Services Act of 2004, which put a 1 percent tax on personal income of $1 million a year or more…
Many immigrant and refugee cultures do not have a tradition of formal mental health treatment, said Rocco Cheng, a psychologist and a director of the California Reducing Disparities Project, a statewide policy study. “Therapy is a Western concept,” he said. “The Hmong do not have a word for mental illness.” But, he said, they are well able to grasp the idea of mental, physical, spiritual and emotional wellness.
On a recent morning, Yer Vang, 53, sang a plaintive song about loneliness as she worked her rows of “zab zi liab,” a medicinal plant used to treat high blood pressure. Across the way, Mee Yang, a 65-year-old shaman, weeded long beans beside makeshift scarecrows made of rows of T-shirts slung over a wire. She said she suffered from diabetes and depression and worried about making ends meet (about 45 percent of Hmong children in Fresno County live in poverty, according to a recent report by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center and the Asian Law Caucus).
“This is my happiness,” Yang said of the garden. “You feel the world in this place, and it brings you back home.”…
“Only two things that money can’t buy/That’s true love and home-grown tomatoes… “
What’s on the agenda today?
raven
Oh good! Our meeting with the city went well and it looks like they are going to replace the sewer line at their cost. Great, right? It also means that the line will have to go right through the yard and garden that the princess has worked so hard on for 14 years. We are resigned to it but it is a bummer.
don’t get me started on fucking chiro’s!
Linda Featheringill
In praise of gardens. Love it!
I enjoyed the cartoon. Several of the characteristics in my mom that I found uncool and embarrassing and altogether very negative: They are cropping up in me!
Unfortunately, they are still uncool, embarrassing, and negative.
Sigh. Only one alternative to growing old. Bah!
NotMax
@raven
Every black lining has a silver cloud.
Seriously though, nice to hear it isn’t going to cost you megabucks out of pocket.
Linda Featheringill
@raven:
Congratulations on coming to terms with the Mighty Dragons of Bureaucracy.
Anne Laurie
@raven: Well, with a little luck, she’ll be able to use this opportunity to make changes she’d never have contemplated otherwise, maybe?
Not that I blame her if she’s truly unhappy, but there is also joy for gardeners in drawing up plans & revising plots. (Just make sure you move the plants you want to keep well in advance of the city bulldozers, because in my limited experience all hardscapers seriously hate vegetation… the only plants that survived the Spousal Unit’s hardscaping adventures were the ugly alien-looking hostas that I’d been surreptitiously trying to kill for fifteen years, which they carefully set aside before driving right over the forsythias & roses I’d transplanted to what should have been a place of safety.)
BillinGlendaleCA
Note to Harold Ford, not all americans own houses.
raven
@Anne Laurie: We are totally cool. We know how much worse it could be.
eta I just woke her up and the first thing she said was ” I know we have to do it but I was just thinking about how I’ve gotten it where I want it! Like oh well.”
FridayNext
In honor of Gilbert Shelton’s Birthday permit me to remind everyone that Balloon Juice will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no Balloon Juice.
Elizabelle
@raven:
Great news. You have some resolution.
PS: typing this to cicada song accompaniment. Who else has them?
WereBear
@raven: Sounds like the best possible outcome without hiring Gandalf.
Hope she starts to see it the way Anne Laurie is pointing out; a gardener has to believe in rebirth!
Elizabelle
Before coffee, it’s nicer not to click on today’s Google doodle.
Schlemizel
@raven:
Well that news is not as bad as it could have been. Hopefully there is nothing in the garden that can’t be moved. Maybe this will be a chance to redesign it a bit, that the only positive I can think of.
Over the next two years the county is lowering the road out front of our place and widening the boulevard and side walk to take a foot off the front of our place. We have worked hard on that area, because it is a hill, to get it covered with various perennials. I have no idea how we are going to deal with that mess yet. The upside is they are replacing my driveway which is 70 years old & badly in need of replacement.
Schlemizel
@Elizabelle:
I am waiting for the howls of dog owners who will be upset at what google is suggesting about tounge kissing your pooch!
Schlemizel
@FridayNext:
I had a copy of “Freak Bros” and didn’t know about Gilbert Shelton, I enjoyed his work but didn’t know who had done it.
Thanks for the note – I googled him & learned.
Betty Cracker
I’m focusing on true love instead of homegrown tomatoes today; it is my 16th wedding anniversary.
Karmus
@Linda Featheringill:
I feel ya, and not in the inappropriate Beyonce way.
raven
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers!
Karmus
@Betty Cracker: Happy anniversary!
raven
@Betty Cracker: Cool, we were 14 yesterday. Any fish yet?
JPL
@Schlemizel: Howl! Just because they kiss their buddies butts, doesn’t mean they have to be highlighted. It’s a bias against dogs. The cat dish is missing, also, too.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: Congrats — a great idea to celebrate it on vacation, too.
We’re coming up on our 12th this summer. But it doesn’t matter if that one is tin or paper or what-have-ya; we always celebrate with computer/music equipment.
Elizabelle
@Schlemizel:
My little sister came home from school one day and announced that “a dog’s mouth is the cleanest place on earth.”
I am guessing she was actually told that a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker:
Happy anniversary!
I say you steal whatever it was from the porch to commemorate.
The Vietnamese made a great perch for the alpha chicken.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Congrats!
aimai
There is a gorgeous community garden in “Chinatown” in South Boston and there is a wonderful cookbook from a restaurant named “Moro” in the UK (or else its australia) about cooking in and from your allotment. This is a beautiful story to read this morning. Thanks for posting it.
aimai
@Betty Cracker: Oh betty! We are going to be 18 in July–and we’ve been together 22 years. Unbelievable!
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Lucky guy!
Betty Cracker
Thanks, everyone!
@raven: Nothing worth keeping yet.
Baud
I’m starting to like the Newsmax “headlines” ad
WereBear
@Baud: I’m the same way. It’s an unconscious satire site, isn’t it?
Schlemizel
@JPL:
I’d hate to see the cat dish on that but then I don’t know anyone who french kisses their cat but way too many who do their dog.
lojasmo
@Betty Cracker: @raven:
Happy anniversaries. We just passed eighteen.
Rex Everything
Anne, you & Kay are without a doubt the best bloggers here (I intend “best” in both its evaluative and ethical senses), but you will never be chaotic good until you have the guts to be as big a firebagger in public as you obviously are at heart.
ET
Looks like “activist” Adam Kokesh called off his protest for the 4th. He is quoted “We sholdn’t be begging the government to change .We should be hoping they respect our rignts.”
Face. saving.
mai naem
Somebody needs to send this to Phil Mickelson. Maybe it’ll make him feel better about him paying such high taxes in California and then he won’t threaten to move to a non-income tax state.
WereBear
I see this constantly. I live in a very blue state and I’m surrounded by business owners who made all their money because we actually have a working economy instead of one where the governor tells the populace to pray for rain when there’s a drought.
And their dream is to sell out, retire, and move to one of those states with no income tax. Just when they are getting older and more brittle and will actually NEED those services… the red states don’t have.
Good luck with that one!
burnspbesq
An anon/lulzsec guy pleads to Federal felonies and is looking at major jail time.
If you still think these guys are selfless, principled heroes of cyberspace, that $2.5 million is restitution is a damned inconvenient fact, isn’t it?
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/lulzsec-hacker-pleads-guilty/?ref=technology
Yatsuno
Tomorrow I shall be screaming at AT & T for charging me a full phone bill after I cancelled my service with them on the 18th. Some supervisor is gonna be earning their paycheck I tell you what.
mai naem
@WereBear: I have a friend whose brother made very very good money as a stock broker, lives in NJ during his working life, moved to Boca Raton, has two homes in Boca Raton(because Boca Raton is so freaking huge you need two homes) so that he doesn’t have to pay income taxes and still maintains the home in NJ, and BTW, went to the NY Presbyterian for treatment of bladder cancer. This is what I think of when think about when they talk about no higher taxes for rich folks.
mai naem
@burnspbesq: Well, $2.5 million is way more than the pittance that the banks paid for illegally kicking out people out of their homes. People who weren’t even delinquent on their house payments kicked out and they get a measly $500. Last time I checked just regular moving costs(what movers charge) for a regular household is going to cost you more than $500 and that isn’t even taking into account finding a new place, putting down a deposit, switching utilities and the hit to your credit. But thats okay because its big banks.
burnspbesq
@mai naem:
That’s one hell of a non sequitur. And completely irrelevant, to boot. But I don’t wish to get in the way of your rant, so do carry on.