Seyed the Improbable
Whenever I sense a freshening breeze in the evening here in the San Joaquin Valley after a beige day of sunlight and smog, my heart leaps with anticipation and the next morning I can hardly wait to open my newspaper. Why? Because I know that Seyed the Improbable will be there to reassure me that air pollution in the Valley is largely imaginary and that growth can continue and that we will all grow more prosperous without damaging our environment.Last night, I could hardly sleep at all, anticipating what the Improbable One would have to say on Earth Day.
I was not disappointed to find that, along with the California Transportation Commission, Seyed the Improbable is reported by the Modesto Bee to support West Park. West Park is the latest scheme in a long line of them -- from United Technology's rocket plant to Filbin's Famous Tire Pile and Fire and the municipal tumor formerly known as Los Banos -- to "develop" the west side of the Valley. West Park is as "4,800-acre business and industrial park project southeast of Patterson has drawn support from regional transportation and air quality officials, and heated opposition from residents and government agencies in the towns near the massive development." (Modesto Bee, April 20, 2008). The transportation commission has pledged more than $20 million it does not have to build a short-haul railroad through a canyon in the Coast Range that is one of the last refuges for wildlife in the region. Since diesel locomotive exhaust will produce a
great deal more air pollution than flatulent San Joaquin kit foxes and rattlesnakes, given prevailing breezes, from a public health standpoint, the canyon is better left to add less rather than more to Valley air pollution. Adding a regional trucking hub to the west side, where the pollution is worse, is another bad idea.
Seyed the Improbable has announced air-board support for the project before the two-year environmental review process has even begun. In fact, the Stanislaus County supervisors must vote to begin that review process on Tuesday. Supervisor Jim DeMartini, who represents the district in which the project will be built, opposes it, saying, ""There is a lot of resentment for the project on the West Side ... There needs to be community buy-in for large projects like this..." Jim's getting some heat from opponents, including: "WS-PAC...a group of West Side residents formed to fight the project; the cities of Patterson and Newman, the Patterson Unified School District, West Stanislaus Fire District; Del Puerto Health Care District; the Crows Landing Community Service District; West Side Resource Conservation District; and the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau."
In addition to Seyed the Improbable and the transportation empty-pork-barrellers, the Californai Citrus Mutual and the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Association support the project. Among the majority of three supervisors announcing their support in advance of the hearing on Tuesday, is former state Sen. Dick Monteith, Halfback-Modesto, who, in the great contest in 1998 for the crown of "Mr. UC Merced," brayed louder than any that UC Merced was a "done deal," in full knowledge that it wasn't and that he was reelected to convince state Senate Republicans that it ought to be.
Yet it is Seyed the Improbable that, breezy day after breezy day, wins the crown in a crowded field for Valleywide Flak Stooge, forever peddling the latest "science" to build the railroad over our public health for the special interests that jerk his whistle chain.
Even on Earth Day, Seyed the Improbable casts the shadow of his doubt over the empirical evidence discovered daily by Valley residents that growth is the destroyer. Truck stops should sell his likeness for a hood ornament. He ought to be done in bronze on top of a manure pile, his nose tilted upward, a beatific smile on his face as if he were in a wholesale flower mart. Surely, McClatchy Co., our local media conglomerate, who enthusiastically reports every utterance of Seyed the Improbable as if it were God's Own
Truth, should begin planning how to honor him in retirement (oh, that happy, happy day!). Perhaps he should be done in brass on the roofs of local McClatchy outlets -- 20-30 feet tall, the logo reading: "Seyed the Improbable, Our Hero. The Enemy of Reason."
Seyed the Improbable, Colossal Apostle of the Inevitability of Growth Regardless of the Health and Safety Consequences, your bogus sophistries, backed staunchly by the best, most ephermeral "science" special interests can buy, have convinced us on breezy days like Earth Day 2008 that air pollution is just a figment of our over-anxious imaginations, stimulated by errant variables like the wheezing of the neighbor's kid. You
have helped us enormously to overcome our simple misconception that truth was our friend. Since UC Merced has arrived, we have all been carefully instructed that there is no truth beyond the desires of UC administrators and the developers who scored so very much so fast building in the state's newest "college town." Since you've been on the scene, we've learned there is no truth about air pollution beyond your playful improbabilities.
But, like all true comic heroes, Seyed the Improbable has his pathetic side, with which we can all identify. What would you do if you were directed by a board composed of an overwhelming majority of San Joaquin Valley county supervisors and city council members?
Why our elected officials do not help protect our health is not exactly a new science either. When Alexander the Great was conquering the Middle East and northern India, his teacher was writing about how the Spartan constitution corrupted its ephors and elders and sent citizens too poor to pay for communal dining in bonded servitude on a slow boat to Sicilian colonies. Today, yesterday, tomorrow -- it's all about money.
Hence, the war against human memory here, there and everywhere in the nation. One must forget the sweet fresh air the Valley once had and the normal view of both mountain ranges, as he must forget riverbank bonfires in Knights Ferry illuminating the sleek, black backs of salmon being pitchforked on their runs up the Stanislaus, on nights in the distant past long before we heard the first babble-byte from Seyed the Improbable, casting doubt on our memory of a world that included fresh, cold autumn nights and the
sights of salmon wriggling on pitchfork tines and of not-entirely-sober townsmen stabbing their own or their neighbors' feet, and laughing as they limped up the lawn to the bar to pour vodka on the wound.
Bill Hatch