Coronavirus in rural America (Part CIX): New Yorker magazine reports from California's San Joaquin Valley

James Ross Gardner reports under the headline, "As the Vaccine Arrives, Death and Denial Rage in a California Coronavirus Epicenter."  There's nothing new here--nothing we Californians don't already know.   But I was very taken with Gardner's description of California's Central Valley so I'm featuring it here: 

The San Joaquin Valley is an emerald gash shaped like a fist in the middle of the state. It abuts the Sierra Nevada mountains and drinks in the rivers that zag from the foothills. Looked upon from an airplane cabin window at thirty thousand feet, the valley appears as a medley of pixels in every shade of green; irrigated fields collide at improbable angles. On the ground, viewed from a speeding car on Highway 99, it’s a blur of corduroy—rows of garlic, tomatoes, and fruit trees sprouting from the rich, dark loam. The San Joaquin Valley is California’s bread basket, the source of the state’s bounty, the source of much of the country’s bounty.  [emphasis original] Even the names of towns that dot this verdant blanket sound fecund: Chowchilla, Planada, Ripon.

These townships orbit midsize cities with populations exceeding three hundred thousand—Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton—but the region is mostly rural and agricultural. Its demographics reflect that. Of the more than four million people in the valley, many are migrant workers. A hundred and twelve thousand are believed to be undocumented.

Full disclosure:  I live in the Valley, also known as California's Great Valley, toward it's northern end, in greater Sacramento, 45 minutes north of the Lodi-Stockton area, which is where Gardner begins his tale.