My Home Town Takes Another Hit: The Parasites Strike Again

It gets discouraging sometimes. According to yet another report, Modesto is the worst place in the country, in this instance, the worst place to start a career. As usual, two California cities only a few miles apart, Modesto and Stockton, made the top five. Another town I have roots in is on the list as well, San Bernardino in Southern California.

I have some things to say in defense of my adopted home town, and I won't dispute the idea that it is a challenging place to live. But I have something to say about the assumptions and attitudes expressed in the article. It was written and is read by parasites. Seriously. Parasites, of course, are organisms that feed off of other organisms without providing any benefit in return. If they did, we would be talking about symbiosis. Think about what Wall Street investors, the bankers, and the hedge fund managers who read and write these articles do: they move papers back and forth, hoping to profit. They don't produce anything of value except more pieces of paper. They live off the labor of others, and the thought of being responsible for the well-being of those laborers isn't on their radar. Ask them what they think of minimum wage laws.

So these writers, including Jerry Kronenberg, assume that any college grad is looking for a career based on making money and visiting museums and art galleries in their leisure hours. Goody for them. Where is the idea that they might give something back to the society that allows them to get rich? Where is the idea that someone might be idealistic enough to come to a community in an effort to make it better? In their minds, if you can't make a ton of money off it, the place isn't worthwhile.

I guess it's ironic, but one of the main reasons that Stockton and Modesto are lousy places to live is because the housing market is still in the toilet. We were national ground zero for foreclosures for the last six years. The value of my house plummeted to less than a third of its highest valuation, and even lower in real dollars than it was when we bought it in 1990. So who was responsible for the recession that destroyed the economic futures of tens of thousands of people in our community and left our unemployment rate at nearly 14%? Those same investors, bankers and managers who see fit to judge the livability of our community. And none of them are in jail.

So let me tell you something about my hellhole of a community. Before the Great Recession, when we were for once feeling economically secure, we voted for Measure E, a bond issue that led to a renaissance on our community college campus at Modesto Junior College. We have the best agricultural program in the state, and as my longtime readers are no doubt aware, we also have the best science teaching facility of any community college in the state. It includes a state of the art planetarium, a fully operational observatory, and very soon the Great Valley Museum. Our own community had this built, not the state, not the federal government. Our community supports the Gallo Center of the Arts, and we have a  treasure of a 1930s art-deco movie house, the State Theatre. We gave the world George Lucas, Jeremy Renner, Timothy Olyphant, Mark Spitz, Suzy Powell-Roos, and Harve Presnell. We've got MoBand.

Here in Modesto I work with a great many good and decent people, and many of them work as teachers, social workers, and counselors. They don't worry about getting rich, which is okay because they won't. Others work hard in our few remaining factories making things, the ones the investing class haven't closed yet. But most importantly, our community grows and harvests food. Every time the economic parasites see fit to criticize our unemployment rate, they should realize the seasonal aspect of working in the fields. Whenever you eat in the United States, there is about a 25% chance that the food on your plate was grown in our valley, picked by our farmworkers and packed by our laborers that you so readily put down. You might try a little respect.

To top it off, our valley is an environmental mess and yet it still offers refuge to millions upon millions of migratory birds and other species. We have our own Serengeti Plains just a few miles out of town.

I imagine this post is a little out of character for Geotripper. Yeah, I got angry when I saw the article, and I admit my response my be a little bit of an overreaction. At a certain point it gets old being the butt of jokes made by filthy rich comfortable people who wouldn't last a minute here. We've been beaten down harder than just about any other community in the country, and we're still here. Modesto and Stockton have some good things going for them, and a lot of good people live and work here.

It says a lot about the character of those who continue to publish "worst places to live" lists as a source of humor, when they are in part responsible for what happened here.

A Chance to See the Most Advanced Planetarium Star Projector in the Country! Friday, April 4 at Modesto Junior College

For those of you who live in Central California within driving distance of Modesto: If you follow my blog at all, you know that I have been enthusiastically describing the new Science Community Center along with the Great Valley Museum and Planetarium at Modesto Junior College. Many of you have been wondering when you would have a chance to see the planetarium (with the most sophisticated star projector in the country) in action. That time has come! This Friday the Great Valley Museum holding a major fundraiser, and will be offering four planetarium shows as well as tours of the nearly completed Great Valley Museum, including demonstrations of the Science on a Sphere. This is worth a bit of a drive if you are anywhere near, and the proceeds will support the Great Valley Museum in this, their most important year ever as they open up the new facility in a few short months. Come and join us! I'll be there, and will gladly offer tours of the geology department upstairs as well.

Science Community Center at Modesto Junior College: Ribbon Cutting on May 21st! Come and have a look...

If I've been blogging less of late, it has something to do with the end of the semester, finals week, and the big move to the new building that is the end of a 10 year long journey from the original sketches on paper. The Science Community Center at Modesto Junior College, a facility built with funds from our own local community, is set to open for tours and observations on May 21st at 10 AM (ribbon cutting at 10 AM, tours to follow). The first classes are being taught this summer session.

I feel that this may be the finest facility for teaching science at any community college in the state (yes, I am biased). It includes a planetarium with the most advanced star projector in North America, a state-of-the-art observatory, and a vastly expanded Great Valley Museum including Science on a Sphere. We expect in the next year to install an adjacent outdoor nature laboratory as well. The facility includes laboratories and smart classrooms for Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Earth Science, and of course, Geology.

If you are anywhere near Modesto (easy freeway access), I encourage you to stop by. I'll be giving tours on the third floor with our new geology displays all day. It has been a long hard road reaching this day, with thousands of hours logged by our staff people making sure that we have the finest facility possible (and we did it within budget!). I deeply appreciate the efforts of the staff and faculty members of our division who put their heart and soul into this incredible project.

Six Weeks to go...I think this Science Community Center just might happen!

If you've been following Geotripper for awhile, you may realize that we have been watching the construction of our Science Community Center on the campus of Modesto Junior College. It is a complex that will include the instructional areas for Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Earth Science, Geology and Astronomy, as well as housing the Great Valley Museum, an observatory, and a planetarium. The building represents the commitment of the people of Modesto and the surrounding communities to the advancement of science in our region, a region that experienced the worst of the recent depression and then some. We have the highest unemployment and the highest foreclosure rate in the country, but we came together to create what will be one of the finest centers for science education in Central California.

It felt for a long time like it wouldn't happen, and when construction started, it looked like it would be cut back and huge compromises made. But events conspired to allow an even better facility than originally planned (in short, the recession cut down on construction costs).

 For the longest time the only thing we had to visualize the center was a foundation and a styrofoam model...

 But then, the framework started rising and one could almost imagine a building...

 And now we come to this afternoon. We toured the building, coming to the realization that it will be completed in less than two months! We will be moving in for the spring semester (barring all the myriad things that could go wrong).

 But it is getting close. There is carpeting and cabinetry in many of the offices and labs.

 There's no telescope in the observatory, nor a projector in the planetarium, but there are foundations ready for them.

 We're almost there...

Oh jeesh...I've got two months to plan on moving 20 years worth of geological accumulations...

...and somehow fit it into the new geology lab and preparation area...

I expect the next report on the Science Community Center will be the building dedication!

My God, It's Full of Stars (or will be eventually; and children too)

No, this is not really a post about the last line from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's about the planetarium that is beginning to emerge in the center of the photograph. It will be full of stars in a manner of speaking very soon, and there will be lots of children inside who will be learning about the wonders of the Universe.

This is exciting news for those of us who live in the Modesto area. For all the time I spend on this blog talking about the wonders of California, well, sometimes Modesto and the surrounding area comes up a bit short. We have been declared 99th out of 100 on the best places to live in the US by some compilers, and that is because we have some of the worst air quality of any place in the nation, and are kind of famous for having the highest, or near highest rate of stolen cars. Our economy is in a shambles. You think that the national unemployment rate of 9% is bad? Ours is around 18%, and many of the rest are underemployed, working part-time. Benefits? Hardly. I'm not sure I can recall any time in the last twenty years that the unemployment rate has fallen below 10%. It is truly a depression here. Part of our problem is that we have one of the most uneducated populations anywhere.

It's actually so bad that a local pundit suggested that instead of trying to educate our children for a better future, that we concentrate on bringing in more employers who specialize in unskilled laborers, because that's the only "short-term" solution that he can think of. The problem has always been that those kind of short term ideas become permanent. I can't accept this. It's a hopeless attitude, and it is poisonous. Education has to be the ticket to a better community. That's the reason I've been in the trenches here for twenty years, along with many primary and secondary school teachers who work without resources and with poor institutional support. They're good people trying to make a difference for their kids.

That's what makes the picture above so exciting. Several years ago, the community decided to invest in a better future, and voted for a huge bond act to finance the renovation of our college, almost from the ground up. One of the centerpiece projects is the Science Community Center.

Our center may very well open for classes in the fall of 2012. For the first time, our college students and children from area schools will finally have access to a state-of-the-art planetarium, an observatory, and a natural history museum that until now has been housed, well, in an old house. There will (probably) be an outdoor learning environment with a large pond and native vegetation.There will be a modern facility for the chemistry, physics, biology, and astronomy laboratories, and more to the point: new classrooms and labs for earth science and geology!

Our local community decided to fight for a better future. 99th? We've got our problems and we'll probably never be a swanky chic city that vies for number 1. But we'll make sure our kids have a decent chance to learn about the fascinating world that exists out there, and the cosmos beyond. They deserve that much from us. They certainly don't deserve the kind of thinking that says build another sweatshop, and pay them minimum wage. 

That's my office on the third floor. It actually has a floor, sort of, but still lacks walls.