Hot Date

It’s not what you think – trust me. I’m referring to a visit about a month ago with my father and his wife to Shields Date Garden in Indio. Whenever they visit, Shield’s is one of the places we have to stop so that Alberta can restock her date stores.

Since I’ve lived in the area for six years, and have had visitors a few times, I’m no stranger to Shields Date Gardens, but last month was the first time that I actually took the time to check out the film presentation about the Romance and Sex Life of the Date that’s touted on a billboard on Highway 111.  Back in the day, that sign was pretty racey.

 The film, like the entire Shields facility, is vintage 1950s. The show is travelogue meets fifth grade science film, narrated by a male who sounds as though he does voice-overs for newsreels. Awkward attempts have been made to make the presentation more modern (new photographs spliced in, as well as updated community information) but the best parts are the obviously original pieces of film.

Many of us in California are migrants of some variety, and Shields was not an exception.  He was born in Iowa and schooled in Montana to be a mining engineer. His wife, Bess, was from Kansas. They met and married here. Neither of them had any farming or ranching experience when they arrived in Indio, population 500.

The Coachella Valley is similar to the Red River valley where I grew up, in that it’s the bottom of what was an ancient lake. Plant something in the sediment, it can’t help but grow. When the Southern Pacific Railroad came through here in 1904, people started exploring the area and discovered deep Artisian wells. Especially in the areas around Indio and Coachella, a farmer could poke a hole in the ground and watch a water geyser spew forth.

As the interest in area agriculture grew, the University of California, Riverside got involved and started investigating the viability of growing dates here. They found that yes, dates could flourish in the area, and by the 1920s, date groves lined California State Highway 111 from Palm Springs all the way to Indio, a distance of about 20 miles.

To set himself apart from the competition, Floyd developed a lecture about the romance and sex life of the date. (We all know that sex sells.) The lecture became a slide show and then a movie. 

Floyd Shields

 The east valley was booming by the 1940s. The Salton Sea – a massive body of water formed when the engorged Colorado River broke levees and flowed for two years into the Salton Sink region – was enjoying great popularity as a resort destination. Date farming had taken off, as well as citrus farming and other table crops. Shields constructed his Date Gardens building in 1950, put up the knight in 1953, and has been here ever since.

A couple notes about date farming that I found fascinating: Dates, although supposedly the oldest known cultivated tree crop, are difficult to grow. The trees take 15 years to mature, and 20 years to yield any return. Pollination has to be done manually, which makes the whole romance and sex life thing a lot less titillating. Male flowers are cut from the trees, then bound to females. Workers have to climb the palms and visit the pairings every day, shake out pollen on them with a sort of powder puff. The branches are full of thorns which have to be removed. As the fruit starts to ripen, it has to be bagged and tied to protect it. The groves require 10 acre feet of water per year, which is equal to about 120 inches of rainfall. If it wasn’t for the American Canal that brings water from the Colorado, it would be impossible to grow this crop here. In August, the fruit has to have water proof covers placed over it (different than the bags), and finally ripens about September 1. From then until the end of the year, dates are picked manually about once a week; they don’t all ripen at the same time.

The only date groves left on Hwy 111 now are the Shields’ groves. There are still farms farther east in the valley, but just about the only things growing on the fertile alluvial fan now are golf courses and finely manicured lawns. Parking lots, streets, strip malls, country clubs and massive resorts line the valley from end to end.

In 1921, the first Date Festival was held in Indio to celebrate the harvest. The fair continued annually for a few years, but interest waned. Sixteen years later, in 1937, the festival returned and has been an annual event ever since. Next time: Goin’ to the Fair.

The Stroke

Some of you know that I suffered a stroke years ago. I've just started doing some writing about that, and am sharing the first few words with you here. More about the environs of the Coachella Valley to come.

When I could not speak, I did not use the time wisely. I did not contemplate the limitations yet absolute necessity of language. I did not explore how people compensate for lack of verbal capability with gesture, facial expressions, body positions. I did not meditate in quietude, nor did I accept my muteness with a knowing that my aphasia would resolve and the use of my right hand would return, if a bit cumbersome still, years later. I did none of those things.

            I now understand that the state in which I existed for ten days and the months that followed was the low hum of panic; a foundation of fury buried under the mortar of anxiety. Resistance, alternating with acquiescence. But never acceptance. Like so much of my life until then and for years after, not acceptance.

            When I could not talk, it was not because I had contracted the common form of streptococcus in my respiratory system. Nor did I have laryngitis, the kind I suffered as a teenager after screaming at hockey games. When I couldn’t talk, it was because a blood vessel or capillary in my brain closed up, spasmed tight as an unsprung bud. That vessel – one of myriad vessels along the route from lung to heart and on –  cut off oxygen to the part of my brain that enabled me to not only think of language and choose words, but actually make my mouth form them. Since the left side of my brain experienced the trauma, my right arm and hand were paralyzed.

             The year was 1994. After six years of auditioning for regional theater and commercials, I had given up constantly have to choose between buying groceries and paying rent. If truth be told, acting was a lot of hard work with little reward for the schmoozing that passed as an audition. Young, immature, impatient – I did the next rational thing and decided to become a best-selling author. After a bad breakup I found a new man. And although I wasn’t in love with him (our relationship always felt paternal or familiar rather than passionate or romantic) he supported me in my quest to find a creative voice that worked. A therapist kept encouraging me to write. So off I went to the local community college for creative writing courses, the first of which I was completing when I had the stroke.

            “Stroke” is a word I have never understood as it is applied to that brain condition that kills people or steals much of their physical and mental capabilities. A stroke. With which swimmers propel themselves. Golfers keep score. The cam in an engine moves. Crew teams soar. Boxers win. Abusers instill fear. A clock tells time. Batters are out. The Universe bestows luck. A pen removes a word. A lovers caresses. In the 1590s, an apoplectic seizure was referred to as The Stroke of God’s Hand. The word implies mechanical movement, testament to language’s imprecision that a physical phenomenon that freezes activity is called a stroke.

            In retrospect, I should not be surprised by the irony that I lost the ability to speak at the time I was trying to find my voice. If a person wanted to get all metaphysical about it, it makes perfect sense. At the start of my Hundred Years of Therapy, I went to explore another creative outlet – and started a new job working for a woman whose management style was all about stifling me. Of course I lost the ability to speak and write. Of course I lost language.

            Not only did I not have the words then, I hardly have the words now. It is something that I share rarely. People look at me differently when I share that I’ve experienced a condition that generally afflicts old people. Only old people have strokes, and then they lose their minds, drool onto their housecoats in a ratty nursing facility, unable to move, speak, understand or care for themselves until they die. Old people have strokes and can’t talk, can’t feel their mouths, don’t know they’re spitting food on the personal they’re talking to. So I had no words. I still have no words. Until, much like the time in 1994, all of a sudden, I did. Some synapse, some impulse, some new pathway formed and language for this experience finally came.

            I asked my father recently what he remembered about that December and the following months. He paused – looking for the words? – finally admitting, “Not much. I had my hands full here.” He said it with both apology and defiance. What his hands were full of was unapologetic defiance in the form of my mother, who, ironically, had been suffering strokes, probably since her 40s. Often snappish and short tempered, my mother complained frequently of headaches. I can picture her brushing – rushing – past me on the way to the medicine cabinet for buffered aspirin (why buffered? did she take so many that the medication hurt her stomach?) her eyes looking straight through me. When she was finally diagnosed with hypertension, her blood pressure was so high it couldn’t be measured. She spent a lot of time on the couch, watching ball games, mostly the Minnesota Twins, shouting at Killebrew, mocking Pete Rose when they played the Red Sox. “Oh, he’s such a … You’d think that they wouldn’t get so big.” The judgment, “Oh, he’s such a…”  Such a what?  “Such a …” became the ultimate criticism. “Such a …” was a fabulous way to get us kids to fill in the blank. “Oh, don’t be such a …” What? Whiner? Baby? Loudmouth? Chatterbox? For me, being called a Such A usually had something to do with shutting up.

My First Protest

Sounds like it should be a thing sold by Mattel - Baby's First Protest. Or at least a T-shirt. But T-shirt or not, I just attended my first protest, which was against the Koch brothers and their financial plotting which, as I understand it, essentially stymies democracy and how it's supposed to work. Who says machine politics is dead? Its just diversified.

For those of you who missed my last post, the Koch (pronounced like Coke) brothers are billionaires who own oil refineries, Brawny paper towels, Stainmaster carpet, Lycra and other lucrative properties. They have an annual, invitation-only, secretive meeting to strategize how best to affect the political process in this country and influence elections accordingly. See Jane Mayer's fab New Yorker article for details. Koch Industries is headquartered outside of Wichita, Kansas which further begs the question: just what is wrong with Kansas, anyway?

Protest groups, operating under the assumption that the brothers and their invitees are planning how to best influence current national policy as well as the 2012 election assembled from 1:30 - 4 p.m. today practically just outside my front door. The ironic truth here is that both factions - the billionaires at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort in Rancho Mirage, California and the assortment of organizations against them - believe that they are acting in the best interests of Americans. The Koch crew, though, is acting in the interest of rich Americans. All the other organizations protesting are demonstrating for the rest of us. Really, the two groups have a basic mission in common: to keep more of what they have.

Check out BiologicalDiversity.org.

Phyllis Burgess, 72, of Palm Springs.

Interesting about this demonstration: just about everybody with an ax to grind shows up. Even a polar bear was in attendance, no doubt motivated by the Koch brothers' efforts to convince Americans that climate change is not real, but a fabrication of scientists. (Could someone please tell me why scientists would make that up? Someone?) Even a 72-year-old Palm Springs resident named Phyllis Burgess showed up with her cross to bear. Phyllis survived a Prop 8 demonstration at which she was one of few demonstrators supporting marriage for straight people only. Of course, the 9-11 conspiracy theorists were there as well.
Not to sound like Pollyana, but what I'm grateful for in all of this is that I live in a place where we can protest peacefully and not get dragged in to police custody, shot, or worry about someone looting my home while I'm at the protest. If you've been conscious for the past few days, you'll note that Egyptians have not been so fortunate in trying to oust Mubarak. And when this crowd of about 1,000 people walked across Bob Hope drive and effectively shut down traffic for the better part of an hour, the police did nothing besides continue to stand watch with their helmets and batons at the gates of the resort (oh, and on the roof, too) and, further down the road, direct traffic away from the site.

Local press was present, and here's an early posting on KPSP local news.

Greenpeace in the House - Rancho Mirage

On my morning walks, I generally see the same things and people. The old BMW with the broken window. The two old guys that grunt their way through a couple morning sets of tennis. The really overweight guy with his German shepherd dog. The lady with her half dozen little pushed-in-face dogs that look like string mops minus the handle. The Greenpeace airship across from the Rancho Mirage Library.

Uh - yeah. The Greenpeace airship. Being inflated in an empty lot (which is posted No Trespassing, by the way) across Hwy 111 from the Rancho Mirage Library, just down a couple blocks from the Bentley and Land Rover dealerships. The dirigible is emblazoned with STOP GLOBAL WARMING on one side, and KOCH BROTHERS DIRTY MONEY on the other.

According to Connor, a young man wearing a Greenpeace t-shirt and watching the proceedings, the Koch brothers are visiting the a desert resort to plot political strategies which, for the most part, directly oppose anything that the Obama administration has done or wants to do. For more info on the Koch brothers, check out this fabulous New Yorker article from August. Chilling. But we all know about the liberal press and its agenda. So these two guys who own the second largest privately held company in America (behind Cargill, that humble Minnesota gang) are just being persecuted.

A quick break-down on the bros David and Charles: They own Koch Industries, just outside of Wichita, Kan., which has holdings such as oil refineries, Dixie cups, Brawny paper towels, and Lycra, for cryin' out loud. (Someone actually OWNS Lycra? Of course they do.) They have ingratiated themselves into the NYC philanthropic scene with, well, lots of money. For a lot of different organizations. LOTS of money. And they've also sunk LOTS of money into their political agenda, largely opposing things like health care and environmental regulation and social programs. Bad for profits.

By the way, the photographs of the Greenpeace airship were taken from my patio. The thing literally cast a shadow on me as I was trotting home to grab my camera. They'll be buzzing the valley for the weekend during this meeting of the big money minds. Common Cause will be here, too, staging a rally at The River parking lot (right out my front door!) on Sunday, January 30 from 1:30 - 3:30 p.m. to "uncloak the Kochs" and the huge money that they've pumped into the system so far. Hey ... you think these are the guys behind the whole 2010 election thing? (Gee, ya think?)

After the Rains

I live in the desert. Specifically, the Mojave Desert, which is one of the hottest and driest placed in North America. Here in the Coachella Valley (think Death Valley – with golf courses) we can count on anywhere from two to four inches of rain a year. Considering that a desert is classified as any place that gets less than 10 inches per year, we are over achievers in the dry department.

When I moved to Palm Desert in January 2005, just about every resident here bemoaned the weather. It rained. On and off for most of January and part of February, it rained. It was beautiful – 50 to 60 degrees, soft, warm, soaking rain. I loved it. Coming from Kansas City where they were reveling in ice storms and random snow dumps, I was in heaven. Clouds hung low over the San Bernadino’s. Snow crowned San Gorgonio Pass. No matter where I went, mountains shifted with the shadows. Driving down Hwy 111 in Rancho Mirage, I watched the mountains become fuzzy green.

Then, of course, I encountered summer. Algae blooms and fish die-offs at the Salton Sea. Wildfires up by Pioneer Town. Temperatures topping out around 120 degrees. Like I said, Death Valley.

Somewhere around that time, the honeymoon was over with the desert and me. I came to dislike it. Hot. Relentless sun. No shade. No good running routes because every development was gated. And arrogant Californians. I can’t recall how many times I had this conversation:

“Kimbel is a recent transplant to the desert,” said by my former best friend who introduced me to my now ex-husband.

“Ooh – where are you from, Kimbel?” I would be asked by a friend of said former best friend, usually someone who had retired here. There is, after all, a preponderance of those over 55.

“The Midwest.” I had learned to generalize after the first couple times.

“Where in the Midwest?” Still polite. Sort of.

“Kansas City, Missouri.”

Whether instant or preceded by a beat of silence, the reply was essentially always the same.

“Thank God you’re out of there.”

Once, a partner in my ex-husband’s firm ’fessed up to being from Kansas City.

“Oh, so you grew up there.” I felt surge of hope and possible camaraderie.

“God no. My dad got out of there when I was two. Best thing he ever did for us.” He smirked.

“Oh. So you don’t remember it.”

“No.”

“And you’ve never visited?”

“God no.”

I paused a millisecond.

‘Then you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

It seemed that these Californians were rude, egotistical, blinded by their Mojave surroundings and the lifestyle everyone out here seems to have. I began to truly dislike the desert. Add to that the fact that my then-husband detested traveling at any time let alone the summer, and seemed ecstatic in one-hundred-teen temps, I began to feel as though I had been taken hostage. When I left the marriage about a year and a half ago, freedom was like a Coke and a smile. Thank God I could get out of here.

And get out I did. This summer I traveled for a few months (as many of you read on this blog) and loved it. Driving, doing cheap-yet-clean motels, sometimes doing nice hotels, kamping at KOA, all that. I was essentially scouting for a new home. Along the way, I fell in love with Montana, especially Missoula.

When I returned this September (I won’t say “autumn,” because I still don’t discern actual seasons here) it was still more than 100 degrees, miserably humid, and stayed that way into October. (Note to self …) Depression set in. After a few weeks of feeling resentful about not living in Montana with a well-read yet studly cowboy on his ranch complete with Quarter Horses, it occurred to me that I had better get on with it. I am here, and here I am.

So the next few entries will be all about the Coachella Valley and its environs – the natural environment, attractions, good food, favorite things. They say that you can’t really write about a place until you leave it. I’m going to try it the other way first.

All that said, I’m posting a few photographs of the recent rains that closed highways in the L.A. area, flooded portions of the UC, Riverside main campus (caused power outages here and there, too) and made the Whitewater wash behind the condos where I live look sort of like the river it used to be. Next, hiking with Lucy.

The Single Girl's Complaint

Tonight's dinner. Actually tasted better than it looks.

Cooking has become torturous. It hate cooking. I detest cooking. If I could live on Ghirardhelli chocolate chips and Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby with no consequences to my arteries or my thighs, I would. If I could consume sticky buns and snickerdoodles with impunity, I'd be a happy girl. Oreos. Trader Joe's Ripple Cut Sweet Potato Chips.

It wasn't always this way. About 13 years ago when I was freshly divorced, I made an effort. Good food. Veggies. Salads. Every Friday after work, I shopped for the ingredients that would become either Saturday night or Sunday dinner. Then I (cheerfully) ate the leftovers all week, bringing them for lunch like the thrifty bachlorette I was. Recipes cut from the newspaper or old Food & Wine magazines were photocopied and snapped into 3-ring binders.

It started changing when I went to work as the editor of three city magazines for a division of The Kansas City Star. One of the magazines (which was my creation) was an arts publication that required me to be out and about most nights of the week. Receptions and schmoozefests were commonplace. I started living on granola and yogurt for breakfast, whatever for lunch, and for dinner, the best canapes and little bites that Costco and various arty parties could offer. At work, I kept a jar of peanut butter in my cabinet and change for the vending machine in my drawer. I took high quality vitamins. I ran or walked daily. Did Pilates.

Not thinking about food was just so much easier than planning meals for one person.

I'm quite certain that this is not an unfamiliar or uncommon phenomenon. But it hit me like a frying pan upside the head tonight when I wandered into the kitchen, hungry, yet completely uninspired by anything in the cupboard or the frige. But not only was I indifferent to what I found, I was angry about it. What the hell am I supposed to do with this odd combination of ingredients on hand? What can I make from broccoli, apples and milk? Do I just eat peanut butter - again? I glared at the graying celery as though it was at fault for not planning a menu.

My friends would be surprised to read this. I bring goodies to gatherings and make homemade cookies for bake sales. In fact, many people I know talk to me about food and I participate in those conversations with enthusiasm.Eating is a pleasure and I have a fundamental understanding of how food goes together, but my real talent is baking. Friends would protest, oh, you're such a good cook! I am no such thing. I know how to follow a recipe, much like I know how to read music. Learning to play piano and learning to bake were similar in that each depends upon combining separate components into a whole according to proscribed rules. Key signature, time signature, whole notes, half notes. Mixing bowl, cookie sheet, cup, half cup.

Cooking is like improvising. Certain flavors compliment each other; particular scales and phrasings create an original solo. When my former husband would corner me into playing the Hammond organ with him while he played guitar, he would look at me and say, "take it!" meaning that I should solo. I would freeze on whatever chord I had been playing. At times I actually ended up in tears, not know what to do with the notes in front of me without a sheet of paper to organize them.

I feel a similar frustration lately in the kitchen. Fresh food is a commitment for a single person. How does one cook for one? The conundrum is complicated by the fact that I find frozen LeanCuisine or Healthy Choice-type meals repulsive. (Yes, I've tried them.)  (Yes, I've tried them recently.) And it's not that I don't like healthy food - I do. When I have the money, I will eat at Luscious Lorraine's or Native Foods every day, or employ a chef to create dishes for me. I will empty my cupboards of ingredients and spices, let someone else drive.

Dinner tonight was a lo-carb tortilla with a piece of Colby-jack cheese and a slice of turkey Canadian bacon topped with a scrambled egg. Not bad, but not particularly exciting, either. Good thing the chocolate chips are in the cupboard and the vitamins are in the medicine cabinet.

None of these fifty chocolate chips were harmed in the making of this message. However, many were taken into digestive custody soon after.

The Boys Can Play

Chris Robinson

Since last Friday, I have been involved with the low residency MFA creative writing program of the University of California, Riverside-Palm Desert at the Riviera in Palm Springs. As the managing editor of The Coachella Review, I've had the pleasure of speaking with graduate students about literary journals, editing, reading, soliciting work - even being in conversation with Caitlin Roper, the former editor of The Paris Review, now on her way to San Francisco to work for Wired magazine. Tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. I'll be in conversation with Will Grofic, who is an editor for Potomac Review, a publication of Montgomery College in Washington, D.C.

A girlfriend called me last night. Asked if I was out of town since she hadn't seen me for a bit. I told her that I wasn't exactly out of town, just sort of out of town.

She:  Ooohh. That's too bad. I have a last minute thing...

I: What's up? How can I help?

She: Oh, no, I don't need help. I just have some extra tickets for the Black Crowes tonight...

I: What time do you want to meet?

So off I went to the Black Crowes at Spotlight 29 casino in Coachella. And have the illegal photos to prove it.

I confess that I didn't recognize anything from the first half of the concert because the boys just jammed. They eventually worked their way into Thorn in My Pride, She Talks to Angels, Hard to Handle and Shake Your Money Maker. Fun was had by all.

Luther Dickinson

More about the low residency to come. Big fun. And long-ass days.