Rituals

(clap) (beep) (ominous music) - Okay, we're recording.

- Well, my son and I moved here in 1997, and I started the Holistic Learning Center in 2000, after Jeb lost his job.

So, I've been running it now for 15 years.

We do weekly meditation classes, crystal reflexology, I also teach a Holistic Reflexology Certification course.

It's a spiritual thing, but it's also.

But, when you say that, it's like you have to understand that the people are, you know, exhausted, marginalized, poverty-stricken, discouraged, and there's no help for them.

And they can come here, and we can all work together to solve on problems together.

And then we have these certain tools, I know certain tools.

I'm, you know, they of course are suspicious.

As well, they should be.

But, this is yoga, and just stress reduction things.

But also to not just get discouraged and feel beaten down because all the chips are pretty much stacked against you if you're a migrant worker, or even anybody who has no water.

- [Interviewer] How many families would you say don't have running water right now in Tulare County?

- [Guest] Ask around, though.

Go talk to anyone.

Go stand out the Wal Mart, of course.

- [Interviewer] You seem pretty knowledgeable about this.

- [Guest] I don't know if you've ever been without water, or been in that situation, but it's not like their lives aren't already hard enough.

And I'm not rich, but Jeb and I do what we can do is we deliver pallets of water bottles to about 20 families every weekend.

The town doesn't provide water rations on the weekends, so we drive up on Saturdays and Sundays to try to help them out.

Jeb learned Spanish in school, and he's fluent, and I know a little bit.

- [Interviewer] So more than that realistically?

- [Guest] Here, in Tulare, it's probably 300 families that the local government has registered.

Nobody really knows what to do, supposedly.

Yeah, cause they're just local doofuses who bought their way into the thing.

It's not that there aren't procedures because there have been droughts before and this crystal stuff sounds like woo-woo and people laugh, but the science is real.

It's also fun and crystals are cool.

And stress destroys your body, and they're working with beautiful things.

They're not out, you know, the orchards are beautiful, too, but they're taking all the water and them.

And here, you've got something that is cleansing, that pulls toxins out of the bodies, and just even if didn't, like, really do that, in real life, it would have that effect because it's reducing their stress, and they're working with these beautiful things.

Magic things, the way crystals grow themselves, but then there are the-- - Would you shut up?

- [Guest] Doofuses (mumbling) you New Age people are a-holes.

- Shh, Shh.

For KUMD Los Angeles, this is Sue Moyberg.

I spent a week without running water earlier this year.

I wasn't abroad, though, or lazy.

Actually, I was still in California.

I drove three hours North... (ominous music)