The Resnicks

In Garance Burke’s article in the Washington Post, we find the following from Lynda Resnick’s response to a journalist’s questions about a lawsuit alleging her families’ company has violated utilities law by making money from a vast, taxpayer-funded underground reservoir:

“We’ve done more for the pistachio than anyone ever since it was planted in the Garden of Eden,” she said in the phone interview. “My husband should be canonized for all the work he’s done.”

Let’s think about that with a musical accompaniment, My Rights Versus Yours, by the New Pornographers:

Besides all of that work with pistachios, the Resnicks also managed to convince Dianne Feinstein to convince the National Academy of Sciences to commission a multi-million dollar review of Delta management policies and practices.

The DNP foresees that the commission’s as of yet incomplete work ultimately find nothing not already known. Its likely only product will be ambiguous findings that contribute new fodder to the dissonance to debate about what must be done.

But back to pistachios. What does doing lots for them and the Garden of Eden have to do with anything, anyway? For background, from the Garden of Eaden blog, we find that:

Pistachios - Pistacia vera. Native to Iran and adjacent areas, pistachios have been carbon-dated to 6760 BC. This nut of antiquity is one of two mentioned in the Old Testament. In fact its believed that pistachio trees were featured in the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon. These gardens were built in around 700 BC by King Nebuchadnezzar as a way to cheer up his wife, Amytis, who found the flat Babylonian landscape dreary. These nuts are also mentioned in Genesis 43:11.

The DNP prefers another metaphorical reference to the Old Testament. Here is another close-knit couple, Adam and Eve, leaving after having too much forbidden fruit.

Did the Resnicks plant pistachios to make the San Joaquin Valley less dreary? Probably not. Follow the money.