Illusion and Delusion

 I know I said in the last post that I would not link to the KLCC interview because I didn't want you to have to read it...but I've come to realize that everyone needs to hear what it is there. It's shocking in several ways. https://www.klcc.org/podcast/klccs-oregon-rainmakers/2025-12-30/klccs-oregon-rainmakers-eugenes-saturday-and-holiday-markets 

The confabulation about the Kareng Fund/Caring Fund is one thing. (We are in the process of transitioning the spelling to Caring Fund so people can find it more pronounceable.) What she wrote compromises our legality and operational confidentiality. She never got a grant. We never had an essay contest. She does not know our history and has in fact done several things to diminish us, which I have documented in a different location. No one connected with Saturday Market or living as an artisan in Oregon should find it acceptable to undermine the work of the Fund. We have given away $11,200 JUST in 2025. We did not bring in that much and much of our money comes from a few extremely generous donors who are dedicated to helping others. We are extremely careful to stick to the training we got from Center for Nonprofit Law and the highest ethics possible, and to be attacked in any form is just reprehensible. That our SM staff would support the FB page attack was beyond the pale, but for her to speak falsely about the Fund to KLCC was criminal. 

She also said in her Caring Fund story that the GM gave her confidential information about the process that no GM would have had access to, or given out, so it makes them look bad, as well as the market. That is not how the KF does business. She has told me questionable things about her own interactions with the KF, given out other confidential information, and does not respect any of what the Fund has done or is doing. There are rumors that donations intended for the KF have not reached the Fund. Her microagressions toward the Fund have been worked around but they remain part of the problem of trying to raise funds as a nonprofit at this difficult time. The KF is the safety net for the most fragile of market members, as the market is supposed to be the safety net for all of us. Don't you question why anyone would work against it? Have you met the members of the KF Board? Talked to anyone who has been helped? 

Next, she said that the city has not been supportive of the market through all the decades, and used a cartoon from 1971 to assert that. The staff person who got that as a "present," must have felt insulted, to start. She is dead wrong about the city and has no basis for her assertion. They have supported us in many ways over the decades and if she had even glanced at the archives or listened to me or any of the past managers about it, she would never say such a thing about our landlord, our municipality, and the good people who work for the city. To claim that she changed this relationship is so arrogant. I witnessed her manipulating city staff and surely some of them have given her a wide berth as her knowledge and abilities to manage us are so poor that they are no improvement over the times we have had to make staff transitions and our leadership reverted to members and everyone adjusted. She knows nothing about any of those times. 

She actually says two things about past managers that are ethically compromised, though we have no reason to believe they are true. A GM demanding that she run for the Board is fraught. The Board is the boss of the GM. One of the things she has done repeatedly is interfered with the elections, something widely observed, with the result that with over 300 members in the halls for this past election Dec. 13th and 14th, only 48 voted. So for her to assert that a past GM did so is likely projection, but if it is true, she didn't do them any favors. The bylaws clearly state that the Secretary is in charge of the elections, and the policy states that staff is not to be involved. 

Lastly, she downright admits that she walked into the office and took the job of GM. She took advantage of a power vaccuum, did not do her duties as a Board Chair to manage the issues, and set things up in a somewhat long game to get that salary and benefits. She engineered the salary increase, sat idle while the Board attempted to rehire, and manipulated the leaders to believe that she could do the job. I did not sit on the Personnel Committee, but to my knowledge she had no resume, no relevant experience, and was not qualified to fill the requirements of the job description. The Board at the time took what looked like the easy way out, and we have been paying for that ever since, while she strips out our assets, destroys our committees and drives away volunteers. I spoke up, believe me, but her campaign to undermine my voice was well underway and the other leaders did not listen to me. 

In her own words: "And it was such a wonderful community that I was like, I have to get involved. And then I became a vendor. So then when I was a vendor for a number of years, the general manager at the time just came up to me and said, Okay, so I'm gonna need your candidate statement by next Wednesday. And I go, What are you talking about? And she said, It's time for you to be on the board. Is that how this works? Like we take turns? And she said, Well, I just need your candidate statement. So, you know, I turned one in, and then I got elected. I was on the board for about three years, and as board chair, we had a staffing kind of complete turnaround, right? So after COVID, it's like everybody left, and that was really crazy. We had a brand new hire and a part time office assistant left in the office. And so I said, Well, I was Board Chair, I guess I have to go in. I have keys, right? So I just started running the thing. And then we tried to hire a couple different people. We did hire somebody, and it just didn't work out. It wasn't a good fit. And so the board got together and said, Well, you just do it, you know? I said, I'll do it temporary till we can find somebody. And then, you know, I just took it, but that meant I had to be off the board. I had to no longer sell. But it's a beautiful organization. It's a great community. And I am happy to do it." 

Her level of favoritism shows broadly in the interview. She guides the journalist around to her friends and feeds him false impressions of what is really going on at Holiday Market. Like her Annual Meeting presentation, this bears no resemblance to the reality of what most members are actually experiencing. 

It is galling to read. I'm embarrassed for KLCC that they sent a new reporter to interview someone who should have shown professionalism and skills to promote the community and market but just lied and referenced her non-accomplishments and rode on the work of past volunteers and staff. It is transparently a failure of leadership that she is still employed.  

If you have been reading back you can see that most of what she says that is positive about the market and community has been lifted from the writing I've been doing here. "Keeping everyone in the basket," is an attitude from one of our best managers that I brought forward when she attempted over two years to terminate the memberships of two of our most prominent and successful food booth owners. When she speaks about Pad Thai she conveniently doesn't mention that she has been harassing its owner for two years, treats him with contempt, and tries to neutralize his words and actions in several ways, from altering the minutes of the committee he serves on, to going around the guidelines to find ways to make his experience more difficult. Instead of setting those members up to thrive, which should be her primary duty, she is attempting to destroy their businesses and take their voices away. So yeah, she is not about keeping people in the basket. 

I'm sure tired of writing about this person, the narcissist. I'm tired of trying to get people to see these completely evident patterns of sociopathic and destructive behavior. I want the members who can to pick an issue, one that they think is important enough to their future to protect for all of us, and do their part. I cannot keep making the sacrifices for the org that people have been happy to watch me make. Was it enough to see me called an evil nasty woman right in the middle of Holiday Market as I was ignoring my potential customers to do the task of giving away the baskets in the raffle? Was it enough to see the staff "likes" on a bullying post for which I was told I deserved the bullying? 

Is it enough to hear KLCC being gaslighted and the city misrepresented in a post that will be on their website virtually forever? Can you really still say this is not about you? 

Don't just listen to me. Ask for her resume. Ask for an audit of even one part of her job performance. Using her job description, make an analysis of what parts she is actually doing, as one of her greatest skills is getting other people to do her job. What does she do to earn that prime salary? Ask about how our savings have dwindled to a third, and why. Ask yourself where your information is coming from, if you are even getting any. Finally it is clear to me why she is trying to derail the archives project...she does not want you to know the real history. She does not want you to know what is really happening with the market. 

The thing about narcissists is that their power is an illusion, but they know how to line people up to support them and protect them from accountability. Those people are enablers. I will admit to being misled in the past, but I am clear about it now. She's so confident in her illusory power, that she just admits it all in that interview. 

Just compare that to the interview you would have been proud to read. Compare the treatment you have received and seen others receive to what support to thrive would look like. Compare the outreach to what outreach would really look like. What partners do we really have? It is an illusion.   

More False Narratives

 For the record, the references to the Kareng Fund/Caring Fund in a recent interview with KLCC are completely a false narrative. The Fund does not hold contests for funds, with essays and winners. We grant funds to low-income artisans who apply, for emergency relief. Our mission is narrow. Plus the GM does not handle these grants, which are confidential and handled by the Kareng Fund Board. So just a story that is not true.

While it is possible the person telling the story got some type of grant from somewhere, it was not from the Kareng Fund/Caring Fund. We can give her the benefit of the doubt that she is just confused about the details.

I won't even get started about the self-serving monologue about the GM. The cartoon in question was from the very early days of the market when both the city and county did not want us selling on their properties. That was settled by 1972. History shows that since then the City of Eugene was quite supportive of the market, even giving us $1000 after the arson that burnt up all of our equipment. 

And we were closed for 10 weeks in the beginning of the 2020 season. So yes we were closed. 

You have to ask yourself why these false stories are being told. I have no idea. I'm not going to link to the interview, which is just full of favoritism and blather. I'm disappointed for KLCC. 

 

  

Living in Community

 I've been holding back my emotions and processing the bullying I received on Xmas Eve. There's a lot of background for me that you will know if you have been reading here a long time, which I will keep to myself for now. The one image I won't be able to forget is the entire office staff and some of the site crew watching while I demanded the bullying post be removed from the members' site. They were lined up not to hear me, but to reject me and side with the bully. Accusations flew at me: I "called her out" and "made her cry." I deserved the "natural consequences" of my words. It was pure DARVO: Deny, Accuse, Reverse Victim and Offender. 

They refused to take the post down, as I protested that she was taking out her anger on poor people...hurting the recipients and applicants to the Kareng Fund. She reposted my writing on social media without my permission, used it to vilify the most unselfish thing our market community does, the grants to people suffering. 

They shrugged and said it was the internet. She named me loudly and tried to turn the community against me. To be clear, in my post I named no one, and did not try to shape opinions. I observed some behavior that went against community norms, and I commented on it, the behavior, the actions, and the pattern recognition I had about the trend of violating the norm of the community. I did not call anyone out. I'm observing patterns and I can't stand silent and pretend I don't see them, but instead of blowing things up when I started seeing those patterns, I confined my voice to my little tiny opinion essays. I tried communicating with the powerful, but they did not respond, and were angry with me. I stopped trying to participate when it was only acceptable within some very narrow limits. 

A person has to go and search out my writing. I don't post it on social media, I don't push it on anyone, I just write essays about my life in a remote corner of the internet. Before the explosion of anger at me the post had 5 readers. Now it has almost 200. The internet works its ways, but it is not our community, and the internet does not make the rules. And while they might not be written down, our community does have rules.

She loudly called me an "Evil Nasty Woman" right there in the food court as I clipped the winning tickets to the baskets. Standing around were dozens of people who had just bought tickets, and had been disappointed to not win one of those five baskets. She loudly declared she and her family would no longer support the Kareng Fund, and I had to ask why. According to her in anger, it was because of me, hurting her feelings in a post someone had brought to her attention. She wanted her families' donations back. I gave her back the one item remaining and had to rummage through the baskets to see if there were more. This made me feel shameful. Donations are freely given...as far as I know, no one has ever taken them back. But she demanded and I went into fawn mode. I didn't fight back. I swallowed and tried to keep working. She escalated, in what I now feel was a proxy fight where she was used to express the outrage that some people have been holding for me for using my free speech rights. I think she was provoked to provide drama for people who feed on it. I keep being accused of creating drama, but that is not me. I write things. I don't even broadcast them. If you don't like what I write, don't read it. Make your own observations, please. Think for yourself. 

Not everyone knows what it is like to live with the same people week after week for years and decades. Some of the members have known me for all these fifty years. They've seen me make mistakes, learn to own them, learn to do better, have my feet held to the fire, try to make amends, try to not make the same mistakes again. We've seen each other do this, sometimes sitting in judgement, sometimes not speaking to each other for years or other times clearing the air and getting over it. Generally we have allowed each other the personal space to do that work without public scrutiny. I've been told we don't hold each other accountable and to a degree that is true. For instance, when someone works in group process, they are not necessarily responsible for the products of the group and the process. They may have tried to block it, they may have initiated it. We don't always know, and we certainly don't know all the discussion and thinking behind their positions or stances, so most of us do suspend judgement and fail to demand accountability. We shrug and say it is "not about me" and stick to our own business and keep working. Sometimes this is not the most healthy response, as we also generally fail to defend each other. 

Many of us have agreed, tacitly or overtly, just to work beside each other and not address our disagreements. I'm certainly holding out some issues that I haven't settled with the people who worked to create them, and I've been the scapegoat many times and watched other people being held as scapegoat, something there is rarely any kind of justice for. Generally time just moves on and people get more chances to act to build their reputations in whatever way they choose. The community allows a wide latitude of behaviors, but it does have rules. No one likes being bullied, so bullies get isolated and people walk away. They are rarely confronted. We are a peace-loving community so we often overlook things, to keep that peace. I'm not saying it is the best way, but it is a longstanding way. 

But sometimes, like now, things become intolerable to a large portion of the membership. I registered that there were several members not at HM who had previously been there, and my guess is they couldn't afford it. Accessibility to those at the low-earning end is a big part of our values. We didn't have a "regular 5% increase" in HM fees as has been stated. There were many years there was no increase, or things were cut to prevent one when costs rose. I remember when it was scary to cross the threshold of $1000. We thought we would lose member participation, and of course we did. Lots of things cost us member participation, and we learned how to balance costs and fees carefully and increase slowly. We're not seeing that caution lately, though it may be there in the board discussions. I stopped attending board meetings a year and a half ago, so I can only hope that the discussions are well-rounded. I think they are. I don't agree with all of the decisions, certainly, but that is nothing new. While sitting there for 15 years without a vote, recording the actions and decisions, there was a lot I didn't agree with. Even when I seemed to be "on the inside" I was rarely if ever a loyal cheerleader. I cheered for the organization, for the community. 

Operating by seeking consensus is something I don't think is still being stressed. Maybe it is there in the quest for unity and the pushing out of different opinions, but it didn't used to be acceptable to banish people for their different opinions. We didn't banish people at all, actually. Membership is voluntary, and we didn't feel it could be taken away unless there was something illegal or unforgivable happening. We worked with everyone who wanted to participate, no matter how difficult it might be. It has never been easy. But when that last board insisted that they should have control over whom they served with, I knew we had lost something irreplaceable. Control had won out over allowing diversity. The wrong people had a majority to enact that control over the entirety of the membership. We are not a community that responds well to control tactics. We don't like to be manipulated and we really don't like to be lied to. We'll deny that those things are happening unless we are forced to see the patterns, but they are undeniable. My list of unprofessional behaviors is now 8 pages. When I said we were not hiring a professional manager it wasn't the first time, but this has been the worst time. 

Natural consequences are what unfolds in direct relation to what is done. It was not natural to target the KF to vilify one person by one person who felt hurt. So allowing the post to stand was unfortunate. I didn't read it closely, as I don't do social media at work, but I know my selling was interrupted and my holiday and the end of my fiftieth season was tarnished and tattered and I examined resignation over harming the Fund. I've thought about walking away from market a thousand times. I don't expect now to be supported as a member or even for my free speech rights as a human. I expect more retaliation and I expect it to feel irrational and angry like that episode did. I don't know how to process that the people whose salaries I earn for them, the organization I support with my labor and energy, will not be supporting me back for probably the rest of my increasingly short life remaining to me. That's an oppression I'm learning to live with, but haven't learned to accept.

But I do know how it is to live in community, as badly as I do that. I've learned it the hard way over the fifty years. I know I operate best in the middle distance, not too enmeshed, not all the way disconnected, but close to the neighbors and friends I have learned to trust, tolerant of the many I disagree with, and willing to lead from the middle. I want what the members want, but only those parts that build community, help us treasure each other and our equality, allow us all to thrive. If the members want mean people controlling our lives, I will gladly be a nasty woman. I thought that was a badge of honor in the macrocosm...I think it may be in the microcosm as well, despite the confusion of people who don't think those are related. 

This controlling group of people wants only their inner circle to matter, and the rest of us to get on board or go away. If we don't go willingly we will be forced out. We'll be distorted and vilified in the narratives promoted to the community as if they were truth. We're not only divided, we're supposed to use power to set that division into the policies and the future. Money matters, but not community. 

It's just not going to work. No one has the only key to the community treasurebox. Vi came to visit on Xmas Eve too, looking sweet and cared for, still Vi although she cannot see now and has to rely on her other senses and her family. She reminded me of what we lose when someone leaves, and why we don't let them leave all the way, if they will stay connected. I still quote her: All Will Be Well, and the Universe is unfolding as it will. Not sure she actually said that in those words, and she obviously didn't say it first. But it speaks to our need for patience and a kind of faith. 

Community is what people are attracted to in the market, and speaking about when they say they come to the market to see me, or for a demonstration, or for a band or performer they love. We do it right in the middle of our town and we do it every week, so although we keep moving, our collective memory and history is always with us. There will always be people who don't understand it, don't value it, or don't feel part of it. It has lost its charm for many and the feelings of belonging come and go. But nothing an individual thinks about it or tries to do can substantially change the reality of it.

We all have the power to hurt each other, but we choose not to. We choose to elevate others when they do well, but not to reward them. We volunteer to give, not to get. We serve, and take responsibility. We serve each other, and the organization, the market community, and the greater community. We serve in gratitude for the opportunity and to protect the absolute jewel we created, built and nurture. 

We try to do better. I can not face a future of being bullied, so I hope that is over. I do not want an apology, but I want the person to change, if they will, if they can. I don't want to carry or pursue a grievance. I want to let it gently go into the past, and do what I can to make it through this challenging offseason with joy and creativity. 

But that may not be the choice I get to make. I'm easy to bully. I make myself vulnerable at every turn, and I am always surprised when someone turns that to their advantage. I got hugged by someone who has bullied me for over a decade, and told by several "We have not always agreed with each other, but I have always respected you..." We don't have to agree. We can have 667 different opinions. We do have to preserve the opportunity to have that diversity. 

We have to live together. Yes, all of us.

  

For New Readers

 Free Speech. I will fight for that and for peace and justice as long as I live.

 Please do not share my posts on social media. I avoid it for good reasons and it is disrespectful  to treat my writing as your own property. Feel free to read back all 15 years if you like, with the many repetitions and joys and sorrows of a life on intimate display. But if you are malevolent, it will just backfire on you. That is also the way the internet works. 

I also do not name names for good reason. If you out yourself, that is your problem. 

I value safety and I always tell the truth as I see it. I do not mind if you share my words with your friends with safety in mind, but I created this so I could write essays and process my life. I didn't know I needed safety until I had a child at age 39. Then as I looked around at the safe place I had created, I knew I could go within and bring up what blocked me in life.

I hope you are also safe on your journey into your own self. It is never easy but it is always worth doing. You do matter. 

Peace on Earth and in the Universe on this glorious morning. Watch some birds and fly. Or do that lego your friend knew you would love.

 

Nightmares

Had quite a nightmare last night that woke me up, which was tangentially about how I am being bullied by the narcissist, but was much deeper in content and meaning. I am extremely proud of my brain which fully processed my reflections before gently waking me up so I could write them down. I was able to take a big leap forward. 

The confusion and dissonance members are feeling is part of the intention. You are not supposed to have clear emotions and reactions to the subtle and manipulative words and behaviors. That takes strength and a lot of experience which I am glad for you if you don't have, complete with a list of narcissistic tactics you have undergone. 

But a lot of us do have that list. Mine is now four pages long. Some keep repeating. Being publicly trolled by someone who is supposed to be a professional, using the public record archival publications of your organization is just beyond the pale. It has happened so many times now that it will not be able to be hidden by tactics like not providing enough copies for everyone to see or not providing it electronically. . History does not lie, and truth is always waiting in the wings.

And as an additional fun experience, we got to see another narcissist throw a fit when she was outbid on an auction item. She called it mean, whined a lot, and said she was leaving, though sadly she did not. This is the first time in maybe 20 years that we have seen such childish behavior at a fundraiser. Wow. Not her first fit, but the first one I had to sit through. 

Fortunately everything else that happened in two big hard days of retail was warming, fulfilling, and restored any faith I had lost in our community. We are strong, thoughtful and smart, and we are well loved. I had so many people tell me they came especially to see me. Two more days until the end of my 50th season of Saturday Market, a lifetime of learning, serving, working hard for the common good, learning about group process, and keeping myself sustained and joyous through thick and thin. So many wonderful people, and so few people from hell. I will be so glad to restore this offseason. 

And I will be ready for my 51st, if the creek don't rise.  

The Annual Meeting

I made myself laugh yesterday when I realized that the State of the Market address had to be written by Chat GPT. It bears little resemblance to our collective reality. The whole meeting was a glossy and fluffy overlay on what actually has happened in the last year and where we are now. If you know, you knew...if you don't, everything is fine. Glossy and fluffy shiny fine. 

About 50 people attended, but no attendance sheet went around, and no minutes were kept as far as I know. There wasn't an electronic version of the packet, or anyway I didn't get one. The Board Chair rewrote his report to add taking responsibility and apologizing again for the "dark chaos" as they are spinning the attempted legal corrections suggested at the beginning of last year for the things they were doing or not doing like not posting the meeting dates, gatekeeping the info members were getting, and the technical errors that pointed out the inability of the organization to keep track of itself. They drove out their scapegoats and congratulated themselves for how hard they worked. They do seem to be uniting into a real Board, working together, which is hopeful, but that glosses over the fact that no one who disagrees with things is welcome in the room. There is only "One Right Way," which incidentally is a feature of WSC. Check those fifteen characteristics lists and you will see a few things that tell you we are not being a progressive, open organization. Maybe we'll get back there someday. 

There was a blank page in place of a financial report. One exists, but even the 50 dedicated and interested members at the legally required Annual Meeting were not to be trusted with a financial report. My memory tells me that although the Chair's written report mentions last year's deficit, his oral report didn't, but I don't have a copy of the revisions. The Budget Committee Chair would have been happy to give a full report, but he was not permitted to prepare one. He gave a few veiled bullet points but as they were not written down I can't tell you what they were. The one I remember was a repeat of the concept that we need someone in the paid staff who can do the financial management, currently being done by volunteers, or not being done at all. We need an audit. We are being blocked from knowing how we are doing, which is the biggest, loudest Red Flag possible. 

And anecdotally, we members are struggling. I have not talked to one person who is doing better at HM than last year. I'm at about 2/3 of last year's sales, though there are lots of factors no doubt. I'm cutting my own spending in response, of course, and I usually try to spread a lot of cash around the market. It's not easy to manage 3 months of no sales over the winter. Selling in March at the Farmers is not possible for me and I don't sell online. Promises of riches from the new website are ludicrous. 

 I'm not going to bother going through the misleading reports. I still hold that volunteers are doing their best to participate in responsible group process and I am hesitant to fault any of them. I know exactly how hard it is to steer the big ship of Market. I know more than I want to know about it. I wish I could never think about it again.

But we have challenges that must be addressed. The farmers will be closing at 2:00 next season, so we have two hours of irrelevance if we don't program it well to keep the event going. Just having good bands won't help either. We need a lot of changes to our presentation and a huge shift in how we spend our money. All indications are that we are in a decline of income, headed straight to another loss year, and a pattern of doing little or nothing to change. 

This is not the fault of the membership. Another fee increase (no one seems to know what it will be, exactly, which suggests that there could be more than one) on top of our struggles to stay afloat will jettison some of us and harassment and distrust will drive away some others. 

Community building is hard...community destruction is easy. Just lie, manipulate, award your friends and kick out your "enemies." If someone questions things, love bomb them back into the cult, grant them some special favors, and take them out for "the three hour lunch" indoctrination. If that fails, destroy their credibility, keep them from getting real information, and sail around them using their suggestions as if you thought of them yourself. 

Call them a complainer spewing negativity. Works great.  

 

After the third weekend

In many ways, Holiday Market brings out the best of our members. In general, we are not competitive, each of us wishing for the success of all of us, the positive experiences of our visitors, the warmth of whatever season each of us is experiencing. We are mostly a beautiful group of generous, creative artisans and people who embrace the joy and ease we all want in life. We delight in each other. We truly work for a mutual benefit as our legal status describes us. I'm not just being ridiculously positive...I am in my 50th season of being a market member and I have known this week after week, in all of the random conversations and friendships developed over the years.  

At Holiday Market, the greater ease of not being impacted minute by minute by the weather allows us to visit more with our booth neighbors and share more of who we are in our larger lives. We talk about our families, our health, our discoveries of what has worked to solve our problems, our hopes, dreams and what we like to eat. We are having fairly intimate relationships all day every day, and sharing those with our customers too, who respond with their own amazing stories and reflections. I used to write about this a lot when things were better internally with the market. It's about life, loss, building and taking apart the lovely silk of our tapestry. 

But now the false narratives being spread by those in power who don't love us are causing rifts and damage that will take a long time to repair. We are told our members are "mean" and all of our staff who have left have gone because of that. We are told to praise staff and support them but nothing is said about our support for our fellow members, our mutual appreciation network that is so important. The latest false narrative I heard this weekend was that our financial troubles are caused by members who abuse the honor system by not paying their fair fees. So anyone who reports low earnings is dishonest and a liar and cheat. Confidential information is being shared about some who are suspected of this. Well, honor is personal and everyone does get a choice about how honorable and honest they are, but we have definitely seen in that area and in all areas, people support the market in direct relation to how they feel they are being supported.

I'm a goody-goody and I can afford to pay honest fees, and always have. If I sell after I pay, I make it up the following week. However, I have pulled all of my extra support, such as the donations I have regularly made, my at-cost deals for printing services, my secretarial duties which at times amounted to doing the work of staff as a volunteer. Sometimes it was an insane amount of time invested, like during the last two staffing crises when I was essentially the unpaid assistant manager and my job of overseeing the organization became the hands-on doing of the tasks. When I felt supportive of what was being done, I made those sacrifices of my time (which amounted to not working on my own business and life) because my skills were needed and I enjoyed being part of things, making my contributions. 

At times I was trapped into it, but set aside my reluctance and did my duty. My real Duty of Loyalty and Care is to the organization, regardless of my official title or lack of one, as I have the real need to make a living and the emotional need to make sure the legacy of what has come before is protected and shepherded into the future. So many thousands of people need the market, not just the artisans and musicians, but the greater community and the city itself. We are an important tourist destination and gathering place for every kind of human activity that happens in a society. We are each an essential part of the fabric.

So to have the message go out that we don't care about honor and honesty is rough. What I see is that people have to go home with something for their long day and if they have to make a choice about life costs and fair fees, they sometimes rationalize. Maybe they'll make it up in better times. Maybe they'll do some labor instead of giving money. Maybe they are in survival mode or are staving off suicidal ideation and just have to pay that electric bill, and are out of options. We have always said that is why we are open on days that are not necessarily profitable for the market. We know there are people who need that $30 they make or that encouragement to keep going. We have always been as compassionate as possible about keeping people in the community and helping them survive, even if they might not be as nice and loving about it in return as we want them to be. It's a lot of humans, and not everyone is at their best every Saturday or Sunday. Things are going on we know nothing about for them.

So to have a narcissist in charge is super challenging. Narcissists always put themselves first. Their needs transcend your needs and they must have control to an excessive degree, so they have no problem making things all about them. Every week in the newsletter you can feel the slant, and the absence of all of us. At the committee and other meetings the agendas are driven, sometimes secretly, by the needs and desires of the narcissist. Gaslighting and outright lies are common to frame things in the way the narcissist has strategized to get their short and long-term goals met. You might get what you need, but you will likely have to jump through some at times humiliating hoops. You can ask, but it is clearly the whim of the person in power whether or not your requests will have importance. We've seen that over and over and I hear many reports firsthand about these hoops, many of which I have experienced until I started acting like a grey rock when they came my way. I had to work hard to separate and refuse to engage with the narcissistic demands. I have to avoid a lot of subtle things that are supposed to drag me back into supplying emotional gratification for a person who enjoys running control trips on others and delights in seeing people struggle.

If you haven't interacted with a narcissist you maybe won't recognize the clear habits and tactics of this personality disorder. It seems sadly true that it takes personal experience with manipulation for someone to recognize it, to develop that spidey sense in their bodies when they feel humiliated or lied to or managed in those ways. More and more people are feeling it, but it is hard to admit when you are a victim, and much easier to believe the charm offensives, the pretension and to believe the lies in the  house of cards built by someone acting in their own self-interest. Do some research.

They always have to be right, and if you challenge them, they have ways to reframe, outright lie, or give excuses to what you have questioned. They don't admit mistakes, but cover them up with some effort to fix what they broke and take credit for the triumph. They will extend their self-interest to seem to include others, but it depends on the loyalty and gullibility of those people whether or not they get the benefits of the insiders. There is an inner circle and you feel special when you are invited into it. There are rewards and gifts and what seems like generosity and self-sacrifice, but there is always a motive to it. It took me a long while to identify some of the physical "tells" of the interactions. They will appear to listen as they delve into your personal history and vulnerabilities, and appear to share stories that elevate your compassion for them. They count on your empathy and will cry, appear to suffer, and plead for your help. The thing is, you have to comply. If you refuse, they get demanding, mean, and will retaliate. To be safe with a predator, you either have to get up close and help them attack their prey, protect them from accountability, or disengage completely, at which point they will spread false information about you to undermine whatever personal power you have.

After I withdrew my support and starting working against this power structure, there has been a lot of gossip and effort to portray me and this writing as just complaining, negativity, and the ranting of a disaffected old person who is slipping. I've been warned to stop writing here, something I have been doing for over 15 years and something I have every right to do. The one rule I have with my personal nonfiction writing is to tell the truth. This is what a writer does. This is a sacred activity that the world depends on, a form of communication that takes an important role in uncovering deception and bad will and holds people feet to the fire. 

At the same time, as it is personal, it is my truth. I don't feel compelled to make anyone believe it, though I tried a few times to educate people in the power structure about the ways they were being pushed to do things that were not ethical and were destroying what we have built with the market. They have mostly chosen to kill the messenger and bully me in some cases, so there are a few people I won't engage with now about their roles, or in some cases, at all. But many of them are still friends, and we interact on those levels with our longterm relationships in mind. The narcissist won't be in power forever. I've worked with maybe 20 managers over the five decades. We've had a range. The poor ones drove people to leave in frustration, and some come back when they see the changes of better ones. 

In 1989 when Bill was hired, we had about 350 members as some, like me, had stepped back from participating with the team that ended up unintentionally losing $4500 of our dollars to some really terrible financial procedures. By 1994, with Bill in charge, we had 800 members. There was a time we discovered we were $25,000 in the red and the managers threw up their hands and said they just weren't good with the money. We liked them, but we fired them. We fired people for playing favorites, for just not being skilled enough to do the job, and for stealing from us. It happens. We have some weak systems a good manager fixes and a bad manager takes advantage of. We're pretty easy to manipulate. We operate with a lot of trust.

Our city has seen some shocking mismanagement, like the embezzlements from the Weekly, Homes for Good, and OUR credit union in the past. It happens all the time. Every time there are people who are shocked, who trusted those people, who thought they were nice, good and caring people with the common good at heart. This is the modus operandi. This is how it works. You don't have evidence until you look for it. You have to convince a lot of people, and yourself, that what you are sensing is valid.

People ask me why I don't take what I am saying to The Weekly or somewhere that can help us. I chose when I resigned not to blow things up completely, but I may have made the wrong choice. I didn't think it would take this long for the truth to come out of what we are most likely experiencing, and some of us are absolutely experiencing. Anecdotal evidence is mounting of people whose money has been mishandled, or have not gotten the services they are paying for. One person I know has not been listed as selling for three weeks now, despite repeated efforts to make that happen. The database rebuild is not working as promised, hasn't fixed what was broken, and will not address some of the biggest issues we have in our structure. Our savings are soon going to be more than halved after decades of not touching them. I feel our very mutual benefit nonprofit structure is a target, to take away the power of the members. Membership organizations are messy, sometimes chaotic, and hard to control. This is intolerable to the narcissitic personality. I am chilled by something she said to me when she was taking over: "I can't wait to get my hands on this organization and start making changes." 

I sure wish I had known what that would look like. I've always said one person could not kill the market, and I still believe that, but I failed to realize how one person could convince a lot of people to help them do it. I've always believed in us with my whole heart. I guess I was just too generous in my definition of "us."