When you stop to think about it, Oracle residents’ passionate defense of Way of Bean Coffee Club at the Pinal County Board of Supervisors on August 16 makes a lot of sense.  On the one hand, Oracle has a long history of tensions with county oversight of local matters; on the other, Way of Bean Coffee Club fills a gap in the menu of spaces available to residents and visitors alike that is widely appreciated.
  Several of these spaces are interesting and successful hybrids:  Part business, part community gathering places.  I’m thinking of Sue and Jerry’s Farmers Market; the Patio Cafe; Triangle L; Rancho Robles among others,  Together with the Oracle Community Center, the Oracle Historical Society, the Oracle Community Learning Garden, the Oracle Center for the Arts, Rancho Linda Vista along of course with our faith communities, prospects open up for gatherings diverse in focus, appeal and size.  Way of Bean fits so neatly in because it’s right sized for conversation, small concerts, readings, meetings, openings and the like.  In other words it fulfills a need largely unmet by other venues.  
  That’s how free enterprise is supposed to work, right?
  The key to all this seems to be entrepreneurial talent, energy and inspiration.  Most of us know that to survive and thrive as an enterprise of whatever sort in a small town is really hard.  It’s way more than being in the right place at the right time,  It’s carving out relationships over the long term with mind bogglingly hard work.  No exceptions here.
  Which brings me to the role of local government.  Given that the disposition of local government is mostly rule making and punitive in nature, small business is up against it.  Every election cycle there’s a lot of talk about the importance of small business; you know - about jobs, community services and the like.  But when push comes to shove it’s the big players that get most of the positive outcomes.  Right?  The reason is obvious.    
  Is there a small business in Pinal County that can afford to hire arguably the most powerful lawyer/lobbyist/flak catcher in our county, Jordan Rose and her Scottsdale based firm?  If so, I’m not aware.  Is there a small business in Pinal County with the resources to flood the coffers of politicos up and down the ladders of power?  If so, I"m unaware.  I rest my case.
  Which is why it’s so important for ordinary citizens to weigh in as we did on August 16.
  (Come to think of it, surprise, surprise, that’s the whole point of my book - Sometimes David Wins; Organizing to Overcome Fated Outcomes.)

  I’ve never witnessed a more eloquent defense of community values (as in neighbors caring for neighbors) than at the Pinal County Board of Supervisors on August 16. (See for yourself: https://pinalcountyaz.new.swagit.com/videos/269374, starting about 1:3.)
  When County officials threatened to bring the “Cease and Desist”  hammer down on the Way of Bean Coffee Club and us, members of the club, my blood started to boil.  To be honest, it felt like a gut punch. And  it’s happened before to our town as Justin Palmer, lifelong Oracle resident testified.  Justin tried to educate the supervisors and county staff about our recent history in which the Board of Supervisors fought two of Oracle’s most successful businesses - the Zip Line and the Patio Cafe.  He went on to state “I can’t believe this is even on the agenda - this is not an issue;  so I would hope you would let it go and let it be because we seem to be able to run our town ourselves just fine without a whole lot of help from the county.”  Sadly they didn’t seize on his history lesson or his generously offered face saving escape hatch.
  Strangers to Oracle in the crowd were genuinely moved by what they heard.  Their comments included praise along the lines of “this is what our country needs”, “people who disagree with each other are talking over coffee at Way of Bean”, “look at the left, right and center come together for the community”, and finally, “I want to join the Way of Bean Coffee Club.” Amen, brothers and sisters, amen.
  Courageous and gratifying to all was the refusal of Way of Bean owner Kristina Olivarez to cow tow to the insulting posturing of county officials who admitted they don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to private membership clubs.  In the face of their ignorance of constitutional law and the enterprise concept Kristina has chosen to advance, she stayed cool.  Wow!  God bless her for that.   That’s way more restraint than I or likely many of the rest of the 60 or so citizens present could have exercised.  Kristina didn’t explode even after the officious deputy county attorney strutted out his gobbledegook and the five supervisors split for an executive session.  
  After all this came the final word of the day from the  supervisors:  Come back in three months, they said, and BTW the “Cease and Desist" order will hang like the sword of Damocles over Way of Bean Coffee Club and us, its members.
  For myself I take it personally as I suspect do a lot of others around here.   I think the supervisors are in for a rude awakening as the stupidity of their rigidity becomes ever more clear.

  Dang!  We missed a photo op in the hood when a small Javelina got caught in a neighbors gate trying to escape her back yard.  The gate pictured here features iron bars 3 1/2 inches apart. A confab ensued as several walkers including Kaz and myself joined the discussion.  A family with two youngsters in a stroller happened by ... to good effect it turned out because the dad helped another handy guy who also lived nearby succeed in prying the steel bars apart just enough to release the freaked out, now exhausted wild pig. 
  The javelina’s predicament resulted from jamming its head through two of the gate's bars but finding itself unable go forward.  Nor would its hind end slip through despite a desperate scramble that exhausted the poor creature.  The alternative of last resort was to shoot the critter.  Anyway, all’s well that ends well with neighbors helping neighbors help a javelina in distress.