Buddhist Church property

The Buddhist Church  (main bldg that ctc will not be using)

 

 

 

this is the stage in the Social Hall but the photo is a bit out of order

Main Gate on 9th St (that's main bldg on rt)

MJG & George T with Social hall behind.

Left of Social Hall: BBQs and dirt lot.

Inside Social hall looking HR from stage

Add caption

Youth Hall

Youth Hall Again + memorial in front of it

Inside Youth Hall: our dining & class room

Inside Youth Hall: our kitchen

special wok stoves in the kitchen

Our Kitchen

Youth Hall on left, Breezeway, Dharma Classrooms Bldg

Valuable outdoor sink in breezeway

Breezeway

Camp Showers at Previous Institutes

These first two pictures are from 2005 ("I-2") at Grayson Elementary School in Wesley, CA.  Shower bags like beached seals sunning on a reflective blanket.

 These showers are from 2010 (I-7) in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Pacoima at Discovery Prep Charter High School.  The step ladder at the back was used to place the shower bag on the shelf of the desired stall.  When your shower ends, you can just pull the bag down from inside the stall.

Fowler Visit: April, pt 2 (Carole, Marie and 2 Story Circles)

Thursday night Julie Marie Myatt, Ashley Walden and I attended a history presentation at the Fowler library: Japanese in Fowler. This presentation was made by our friend George Teraoke. He originally presented it, as an Historical Society event at the Buddhist church back in January or so. Since then he updated it. This was a recorded, projected video accompanied by some cultural artifacts on display. George introduced the video and answered questions afterward.

Most of the attendance seemed to be Historical Society folks, many of whom we had met before. Mrs. Mukai, of the Buddhist Church, and Gary (one of her sons) were there.

Afterward Ashley, Julie and I all had conversations with various individuals. One of the new people we met there was Penny M. Currently she and her husband live in Fresno but she’s from a longtime Fowler family.

On Friday morning we drove out to meet Carole Yukino Masumoto at her house on farmland just outside of town. She is the mother of David Mas Masumoto who joined us to help facilitate the conversation. Carole has completely lost her hearing so Mas typed questions for her on a laptop and she’d answer them. Carole is really lively and laughs a lot. She was a freshman at Fowler High School when she and her family left to be in interred at the “Gila River War Relocation Center.” When she left the internment camp, she spent 3 years in Los Angeles with her sister before moving back to Fresno County to marry her husband. Like her parents, Carole and her husband farmed in the Sanger/Fowler/Del Rey area, eventually owning a farm whose property straddles the Fowler/Del Rey border.

After Carole’s house we went to visit with Marie and Vernon Gonsalves who live on Sixth Street—the house with an American flag in the front yard. Since Cornerstone is embarking on The Hunger Cycle for our next few years of Los Angeles productions, we’re interested in incorporating related themes in our Institute production as well. One story we’d been told earlier is that there’s a couple that run a food pantry for Fowler out of their home. And it turns out that Marie, who’d attended our first library story circle, is the person I’d heard about earlier.

Marie and Vernon have been living in this house for 25 years, since Vernon retired from the Fowler police dept. Vernon worked for the Salvation Army for a time in their food distribution program. Eventually though he was frustrated with the red-tape involved in serving people in need. He and Marie have been helping people from their home for at least 30 years. They purchase some of the food themselves. At least one church has a standing food donation system and in December the high school has a massive food drive and all that the students bring in goes to the Gonsalves’ project. They pack up boxes of non-perishables. And they answer the door any time of day or night to people who need food. They ask them how many people in their family and they ask them if they live in Fowler. That’s it. They track how many people they server on a calendar for their own knowledge. It’s pretty amazing, in my opinion.

We spent almost 2 hours with Marie and Vernon. They showed us their food pantry and answered our questions about that. They are completely humble about this and talk like it’s the most normal thing in the world, rather than a huge act of personal generosity.

Their home is very well cared for—Vernon does carpentry and is handy with anything it seems—created a coy pond in the back yard, built unique birdhouses for awhile (which he mostly gave away), and he created a valentine of a garden for Marie—a trellis with flowers trained to grow in the shape of a heart. We sat in their dining room and they answered lots of questions about their lives, families, etc. Marie has a never-ending supply of neatly saved photographs and newspaper clippings about everything that interests her—particularly her hometown of Fowler, its people and history.

Friday night we were scheduled for a story circle with folks from the

Buddhist Church. George T was arranging it for us and he thought we’d have a pretty low turnout. He was right. We spent an hour talking with George and his wife Mary. One of the most helpful bits of conversation was this explanation from George: half (or more than half ?) of the members of the Buddhist Church of Fowler view it as a social organization, the other half view it as a spiritual organization. Those in the latter group, such as George, have a strong desire to open the church up to share this spiritual philosophy with the greater community whenever possible. Those in the former want the opposite.

George also expressed fears that those in the church who are not in favor of us living there might be dissuading others from participating by talking with us in a story circle. He also said he was worried that people might try to stir up trouble while we are living on the property. He also said no one is usually around the church during the time of year we are staying there. He also mentioned that he wished that we had planned to set up our housing units on the south side of the property, in the unpaved area rather than the north/paved area because of this: we’d be taking up parking for the Obon Festival and people don’t like to park on the street. I told him that I hadn’t known that, that I thought we were allowing for more parking by not setting them up in the bigger open area.

I thought about moving our temp buildings. But then I thought that having our housing in a dirt lot, while living with camp showers would lend to unhappiness. My general feeling and response to all of this stuff expressed here in this paragraph is that I cannot plan for excess negativity. We are acting in good faith and being clear and will bring a lot of positive energy while we are in residence. I am considering the delicate situation with regard to all our interactions and relations with this organization. Also, as Julie pointed out, George is anxious. He’s put himself out there in his community in supporting us and generating interest in what we are doing. He’s embarrassed by the ego that his fellow church members are operating from. He was mortified about the cost to us of engaging a lawyer. So some of his expressed fears are likely based in this unsteady place he has created within the Buddhist church.

We’ll be reaching out to some people who have told George that they’d be interested in talking with us, including Kerry Yo Nakagawa who among many talents and projects is the founder of the Nisei Baseball Research Project.

On Saturday morning, we headed to the library early. Our open/general story circle was schedule there for 12:30 to 2pm. Before that though, there was a presentation from a wildlife rescue organization. They brought and introduced about a dozen birds of prey as part of an educational program.

Afterward we set up for our Story Circle and were joined by three participants and eventually a fourth. This was a small and somewhat disappointing turn-out, though there were many good things too. Our participants were: Marie G (who we had spoken to for 2 hours the day before brought many clippings about Fowler), Mas (who we’d also spoken to in private interviews as well), and Shawna. We were joined by Clara B, who also had attended our first story circle.

Shawna grew up in Fowler and moved away for 15 years or so and has recently returned. Her son Zasou (?) was with her and her second child is due any minute. Her husband recently secured a fulltime job teaching at Reedley College. She mentioned a few times that she was an outsider and didn’t have much to contribute, but of course, she did. Clara and Marie represent a particular Fowler voice—retired women who are at least second generation Fowler who love their town very much but are not particularly adept at seeing experiences beyond their own. Their stories are similar and dominant in conversation. Mas’ presence was valuable in this conversation. Being a writer himself he asked good questions. He also balanced the energy in the room.

Afterward, Julie spent an hour meeting with the mayor Dave Cardenas, at his auto shop.

We grabbed lunch at Elaine’s and headed home.

[ Look at the street view of Elain's on the "Cornestone in Fowler" map linked on the right of this page! We learned from one of our conversations on this trip that Elaine’s was named for a woman who, along with a partner, took over the restaurant from the original owners. But Elaine was booted not long after because she turned out to be taking $ from the till. The owners now are Chinese. So we hear. ]

Due to our long delay in securing housing, we are behind in this story gathering process. A visit like this would have been fine a few months ago, but at this late date the lack of turnout is difficult. Even more, the lack of variety in people’s perspective on the town is challenging. We are not looking for a “dark underbelly” but rather story conflict, experiences and perspectives that create contrast.

As we plan our next visit we’ll be arranging some one-on-one interviews to help create an environment where people might share more personal experiences that illustrate some contrast. We’ll be attending the community cleanup event that meets in the park. Of course, we will continue to do outreach for project awareness and inviting people into the process as we can. We’ll be looking for auditioners soon!

Fowler Visit: April, pt 1 (Mobile Mini & Friends of the Library)

Yesterday Ashley Walden and I went to Fowler & Fresno. It was Ashley’s first time north of Valencia in California!

We first went to meet John Searcy at Mini-Mobile in Fresno. This is the company we will be renting our portable housing from. John is a very helpful resource for our needs there. We got to see the kind of units that we will be using. The ones they had in and available for us to look at were kind of trashed- just returned and not yet cleaned & repaired. They are much more solid than we had imagined—not raised up like a trailer but they sit directly on the ground.

Concerns:

1. How many generators will we need for our current plan which is for 7- 20’ units and 1- 40’ unit? The same company we plan to use for our porta-loo rental also does this sort of thing—arranging temp power and/or renting generators.

2. Damaging /marring the asphalt that the units will be placed on. We chose the location for the housing units based on the need for level surface, to not be living in the dirt patch and to be least obtrusive to the Obon Festival events (by our best guess) and the neighbors. The levelness is not an issue, according to John Searcy. I’d like to reconsider the idea of arranging our housing on the other side of the property to prevent damage to the cement parking area. Another means of reducing the chance of marring the cement is to use wooden blocks on the bottom edges of the units because the units do have to be dragged to get off and maybe on the delivery truck. I do not want to mar or break the asphalt at the property—the cost and hassle of repairing that is too much to think about it.

3. Availability to meet all we request. These things are rented for indefinite periods, mostly by construction companies. They generally need a lot of clean up before they can be sent out again. John knows our needs and has calendared checking in and planning for availability 45 days in advance and working to track down all that we require. This may include substituting 2- 10’ units for some of the 20’ units.

Ashley and I also spent some time looking into some company management resources—locations of stores, laundromats, etc.

At 6pm we attended the monthly Friends of the Library meeting. Apparently it was the largest turn-out ever for one of these meetings. This is due to the fact that their amazing librarian, Sara Brown, has been laid off and will no longer be working at the Fowler Branch library. Sara does exemplary work for this community, but due to being one of the 6 newest, youngest librarians employed by the county she is on the list of people to be let-go first. Sara has secured work for the county in another department and is on some kind of stand-by to be rehired, depending on how some things shake down with budgets in the next couple months. However it’s unclear if she is rehired as a librarian if she’d be re-assigned to Fowler. There were many people present specifically to commend Sara’s work, show her their appreciation and to let the head of county libraries know that Fowler is not happy about this change. The head of county libraries spoke for a long time (somewhat repetitiously) about the budget situation, how the firing of Sara was out of her control and how difficult things will be for the librarian who has to come and replace Sara.

There were some familiar folks in attendance at this meeting including Arpie Deitz, Clara Bedrosian Bousian and Sandie Monis. Also Council member Rico Aguayo is on the board of the Friends of the Library. And I finally met Britta Hammer, head of the Historical Society. Also present were 2 or 3 other folks from the main office of Fresno County libraries, and another 10 or 12 people.

The Fowler Branch library is unique in that this community, led by the Friends of the Library, collected donations to fund and build this library themselves. The old one was a storefront space on the main street, like a tiny bookstore. When it looked like the county was going to take a long, bureaucratic time to build a much-needed new library the community made it happen on their own, a fact they are very proud of. They did an excellent job, too, in terms of design and meeting the needs of Fowler’s residents. The library serves as a community center in many ways for this small town. And Sara’s work has reinforced that – she manages and devises lots of programs offered for adults and youth at the library, as well as regular outreach to most of Fowler’s schools.

The Fowler Community Hospital Foundation has made significant donations to the library so there was some discussion of what’s happened in the past with regard to that. There is a new donation, too, of $5000 toward the History Room. There was some discussion about how to best utilize these funds.

The meeting also included a summary review of the organizations finances and a report on how many people have been served in the community, particularly in relation to other county numbers. There was a short discussion about how to best manage book sales for fundraising.

Sara had invited me to attend because I’d inquired with her to learn if there was some way that Cornerstone could help with collecting oral histories while we are in residence. I spoke briefly to introduce our project, invite people to our upcoming story circle, and to tell the group what I’d told Sara—that there seems to be a strong need and energy toward collecting personal stories and oral histories of this community and that we as outsiders wouldn’t want to take over such an important task but that we are interested and available to assist with that during our 4 weeks in town.

People seemed interested and excited about our project. Sara and Rico were both immediately talking with us about helping to get the word out. I talked briefly with Rico too, about our need for rehearsal space and he said of course that the elementary school would be perfect. I let him know that the school district had been uninterested when we’d approached them in the past. However I am going to reach out to them again regarding this new, somewhat smaller request for rehearsal space.

Julie, Ashley and I will be returning to Fowler on Thursday of this week and staying through Saturday afternoon. Thursday night we’ll be attending a history event at the library—George Taraoke will be doing a presentation on the history of Japanese people in Fowler and the county. Friday we’ll do some interviews in the day and have a story circle with Buddhist church and non-Buddhist Japanese community members. On Saturday we’ll have an open story circle at the library.

Fowler Visit: March, pt2

My last update ended with learning that our scheduled 3/15 story circle was now being replaced with a community meeting to discuss objections to the proposed partnership (including housing) between the Buddhist church and Cornerstone. We let George and Karen, our main connections at the Buddhist Church, know that we would be in town anyway on March 15 and we’d be happy to attend their meeting or to be on hand in case questions came up that we could answer.

Meaning, we would drive to Fowler just in case we could attend the meeting. (It worked last week!) But George wrote us back to let us know he’d talked with the church president and they agreed we should attend the meeting and my idea of sharing a slideshow introducing ourselves was a good idea.

Michael, Peter and I left early Tuesday afternoon for Fowler. When we arrived in town we went to look at the two most likely venues: the park and the Honda Auto Service building. While we were at the Honda building Fowler’s Public Works Director, David W, stopped to talk with us. He was very friendly and helpful. He let us know that the building was not a viable performance venue. He had strong hopes that the building would be demolished in the next couple months to start moving toward the replacement building that will serve as a new firehouse for the VFD. He also said the building is structurally unsafe.

Dave did suggest a couple of other ideas—the Simonian Fruit packing house has a covered outdoor area at the north end of their property on 7^th Street. The reception/event for the start of Fresno County’s Blossom Trail was held there recently. He also mentioned that the old boarded up brick building on the corner of 7^th and Main is NOT yellow-tagged (unsafe for occupancy) as I’ve been told by many people in town. It’s owned by the DeSantos family. Dave thought that the inside would likely be too small for our purposes.

It’s looking more likely that the park will be our performance venue. We will need to also find an indoor rehearsal space and indoor spaces for production work building sets etc.

We did a tiny bit more touring around Fowler neighborhoods- mostly in the Buddhist Church neighborhood between Hwy 99 and Golden State Blvd. When we arrived at the church for the meeting there were quite a few people already there. George greeted us warmly. As usual there were small plates of snacks shared with everyone and a freshly made berry tart thingy.

There were close to 30 people at the meeting. Many were friendly faces we’d seen last week and at the Food Bazaar. Many were new faces for us.

Craig explained that we should do our presentation and have some Q&A, then we would go away and they could continue the discussion without us.

We set up the projector and computer with a powerpoint slideshow.

Before we even knew what was happening, Karen M was at the front of the room, announcing that she wanted to share her thoughts quickly before she had to go teach a class. Karen introduced us and spoke about Cornerstone, explaining our history, professionalism, etc, and how we work. She spoke about how she thinks our project will be a good one for Fowler and for the Buddhist Church community. She spoke about our proposal and how we’d work with and around the church’s needs. Karen was our champion and it was a heartening way to start the meeting.

Michael introduced the company adding to what Karen said. I presented a slide show that included images from each of our summer residencies. The slides were chosen to demonstrate some relevant factors or things we wanted to feature, such as Central Valley towns, unique performance venues, adapted living situations including outdoor showers, community events, group cast photos, some production photos and before and after shots of the Blue Ox Mill performance space.

There were many questions for us. Some people in the room were really worked up and resistant. Most of them seemed to appreciate the work we do but their concerns were about the space, liability, legalities, etc. We let them know that we’d be happy to create a contract with them and give them a security deposit. We assured them that our insurance was substantial & standard. Concerns were expressed about interference with the Obon Festival, though other people confirmed that it is really a one day event (7/16) with maybe some preparation the day before. One gentleman reiterated that the buildings are old and fragile. Others folks in the group answered some of the questions that were asked. One man who clearly was not interested in us working with them asked, “Why us? Why don’t you go to the Chamber of Commerce?” And another man responded, “Why NOT us?” It seemed clear that some people were partly put off by how quickly everything was happening, that they only learned about this a few days before.

As tempers and voices began to rise, we said our thanks and got out. Shouts were heard from beyond the closed door (“That’s why we have a board!”) as we packed up in the lobby.

The next day we heard from George:

I want to thank you for your nice presentation. Everyone was in agreement as to the wonderful work you people were doing.

The bone of contention seems to have been the presence of people living on the church ground tor a month. All kinds of possibilities issues that were conjured came forth. Most of the issues, ultimately, became a liability issue.

Among those in attendance last night were former City Council member, retired Judge, a former Mayor of the city. An attorney for the church suggested a look at a draft of contract that will absolve the church from any liability that may arise with the presence of so many people living on the church grounds for an extended period. Paperwork that indicates the church will not be in violations of any city ordinance, etc.

I am embarrassed to be sending you this mail. The meeting last night became a shouting match at times and I felt a sense of insanity had taken over.

Egos being what they are flourished and I thought, 'what a scene for a comedy play.'

With high hopes,

George

It’s worth noting that the consideration we are getting on this matter is unprecedented. Mas had said to us in January, “Oh the Buddhists will never let you live there.” Also, the Buddhists tend to be an insular group. They like to keep to themselves partly because they value a balance of hospitality and individual responsibility for community space. George mentioned to me in conversation that many other groups have an attitude of “Someone else will clean up after me” -and that is the opposite of what the Buddhist philosophy values.

Karen (who works at the city office) has already secured a letter from the city saying that there is no violation of permits or code for us to live at the church for a month. Our insurance rider request is being processed. We await word about what the Buddhists would like us to include in a contract and if they want a security deposit.

I believe that George and Karen are working to get the details we need regarding these elements. It seems very likely that we are going to be living at the Buddhist Church.

(tentative) YAY!

Our living at the campus will be the least comfortable yet in some ways—though I said that last year and it worked out to be pretty good. But we will have less “extra” space, less space for people to be alone or to have an extra meeting, etc. I think I mentioned this before, but all staff will have to live on campus which means shared rooms, outdoor showers and limited restrooms supplemented by port-a-potties.

It’s also very likely that we will adjust the schedule so it is exactly 4 weeks- July 17 to August 14. The first few years of the Institute we did this schedule but later added 2.5 days at the beginning for getting oriented and settled. Starting the residency after the Obon Festival is going to make many things simpler for us and for the Buddhists, so we’ll go back to this earlier schedule for I-8. We’ll likely make other schedule adjustments, too.

In addition to settling details with the Buddhist Church, we need to make arrangements with the city for use of park as performance venue and to find an indoor rehearsal space and a indoor production/construction space.