Snow Day

I posted this first image on FB, propagating the rumor that E.C. LeBlanc made this art in the 80's, but nobody caught it or thought it as clever as I did. Oh well. That is the good and bad side of FB scrolls, things move down and out of notice, rather quickly sometimes, which can be a relief. On to the next.

I'm loving the falling snow, we just don't get enough of that down here at sea level. Unfortunately it canceled the panel discussion about SM and OCF Then and Now that we were having tonight at the Lane County Historical Museum. It's rescheduled for March 10. I was looking forward to sorting out those memories from my early days at Market. Maybe this will give me some time to look around at old journals and photos and enhance what I remember.

It's strange to be doing somewhat the same thing but not the same thing at all. I started out in 1975 painting signs, (the new Humble Bagel was my first customer) and gradually changed into a t-shirt artist, covering a lot of area. I tried to make a list of all of the shirt designs I have done, and after several pages decided I would probably not be able to list all of them. I could sort through the boxes of old art; I probably still have it all.

Of course it has not been all about my craft. I've said before that Market made me who I am as I made the Market in return. When I got interested in the early 80's, I was quickly convinced to chair meetings for a few years, and learned all I could about the consensus process. We had a lot of contention at some meetings, which was not so much about real issues as about real personality clashes and lack of communication skills. People so easily get caught up in their fears and the imagined slights and threats and insults and doomed futures. Drama is juicy and hooks us and feeds our emotional needs. Like addictions.

Over the years I have become more adept at identifying bullying behavior and learning how to disengage, but it's sometimes really hard to walk away without righting the situation. I find that I have a great sense of justice that I think is generational.

It blurs the goals and drives passion, but thinking that justice will prevail is just naive. There's no authority figure watching and adding up points to award to a winner. Tactics and tricks may seem to push the situation but usually things get decided as a process, by doing whatever seems best at any point of change. Often those who are responsible for the decision defer, and take the path of least resistance. Justice isn't even discussed; doing what is right is so subjective that people don't always even think about it. They do what seems practical, or something entirely dysfunctional and misguided.

All we can do is keep working for what we think is right, stating our opinions as honestly and openly as possible. Sometimes people "see" us, sometimes not. Can't do a lot except look within and observe reactions. I see a great stubbornness in me when I feel bullied, so I try to retreat and not respond when I think someone is trying to dominate me. I don't respond to "power over."

I think back to my basic understanding of power, that it comes in three forms: Power over, power with, and power from within. I choose to look for and honor power from within, because that is what makes power with, possible. Power over is not an appropriate use of power, and will nearly always fail in the long run, because it seeks to dominate and not to allow the best expression of needs and practical solutions. Such a simple analysis, but not a mainstream one.

Strengthening my inner power is my priority, but that doesn't mean getting rigid and closed. It means seeing fears and what lies behind actions and words, rather than being caught up in feeling righteous or smug. I don't think my work in these areas is hard to see in me. You would think that sitting at a table with me for several years would allow you to see me as I am, not a strategist, not a dominator, but someone who works thoughtfully for what I see as the common good.

Alas, I am human and still have room to evolve further. I don't see what I can't see, just like everyone else. I still have that little people pleaser girl in there, trying to make the adults happier. I still have the freedom I tasted as an independent young person, changing the world and thinking big. I also have years of patience, and solid experience standing on my own two feet, working hard, solving thousands of problems step by step. I have a good solid foundation and can still dream and do ridiculous things like make Jell-O art, elaborate jokes, and be silly in the snowfall.

I also still have the A student, conscientious student government leader in me from high school. Our school was new and we had to write constitutions, guidelines and rules for all of our organizations, and I was in many of them. I began taking minutes back then and have done so for the last 45 years. I'm confident that I do a really thorough job, examining every phrase and word for embedded prejudice, underlying assumptions, and bias. I make sure to phrase everyone else's statements neutrally, trying not to make judgments myself, and trying for a positive light if appropriate. I go over them a few times, working at what vibrates and has tinges of that dramatic light of trickery.

A friend who is also a professional minutes-taker said that she knows she is doing a good job if she gets criticized from both sides. That's a bit of a grim view, but it made me work even harder. Since my interests are wide, I usually do have some involvement with the subjects discussed at the meetings, so it's really important to me to frame things positively without favoring any position. I know I do good work, and it is service, because even when I do get paid, it's not much, and spending several hours at my laptop gives me a pain in my right shoulder. It's service.

And not many people are willing to do it as thoroughly as I do. So I don't expect to quit any time soon.

In other news, I gelatined some ribbons to the wings to see how they might be worn, and it looks like it will work, with some adjustments. And it's snowing.

From Hope

I never married her son, though we created a grandson for her together, and she always treated me with love, respect, and support. She died this winter at 94, and in fact this week would have been her 95th birthday.

Hope Burlingame Martin was a wonderful painter and decorator, specializing in tromp l'oeil painting, which is using perspective to paint ultra-realistic scenes and objects on flat surfaces. She decorated lots of furniture and one of her last projects was to paint some tiny chests, like the one shown here. It is about 8 inches high, twelve wide. I swear she painted a little me on there.

Anyway, this week I met with her son, who gifted me some of her collection of fabric scraps, laces, and fine textiles. She had boxes and boxes of silk, linen, and other decorator fabrics used to make drapes and upholstery, a business she started with her late husband. She collected dishes, too, and gave me her set of some Stangl Terra Rose, because she knew how much I love my little Fiestaware collection.

In the mix were a few vintage beaded dresses and two kimonos, heavily embroidered but not in museum-quality shape. One dress is perfect, and fits me right down to the tiny, buttoned sleeves that fit my thin wrists. I think if she wore these dresses, she was probably in her late forties or fifties, and they are so elegant and beautifully made. I doubt I'll find a place to wear them, though you never know. Maybe I'll win a Pulitzer or something.

The hours I have spent admiring, sorting, and taking care of these lovely fabrics make me wish I were doing it with her. I tried at one point to go through her sewing room with her but she was never warm to the idea of getting rid of anything, and I felt grasping and inappropriate trying to force her to. She loved all of those items, the way I do, not necessarily to use them for anything, but just to preserve them and keep them alive for a few more decades. Lace collars, the embroidered borders from the bottom hems of quite a few slips or nightgowns from the Victorian era, and Chinese silk panels that are faded and falling apart, are now my treasures. I'll have to designate someone to receive them, as she did, writing my name on the box of newspaper-wrapped plates and cups.

It's so poignant to own things when you know some of their history, or can sense the presence of others who owned them. I know some of the seldom-used linens, napkins and monogrammed items belonged to her own mother-in-law, and to her mother. I've mixed them now with things I received from my own mother, who recently celebrated her 85th birthday. I have quilts, table covers, and embroideries, and a few things from my own grandmother, braided rugs and afghans.

Hope used a few of her valuable things for everyday, which is my tendency even though it ruins their lives as collectibles. I hung a few things in my bedroom just for awhile before I pack them away. There's nothing I would sell, though the brothers will be selling some of her sets of silverware and the dishes that are really valuable. I told Mike to steal me a setting of silverware, but I doubt he will. Inheritances are often sold, and their identities lost, or they are collected and loved by people like me. Collections are fascinating. Hope had exquisite taste, as well as a sensual appetite for bright colors and any kind of fine work. I remember how carefully she had one of her houses painted, an exact shade of blue she loved. She was very particular about exact colors, but not at all intimidating in her perfectionism. As far as I know she never criticized the art of any of her "daughters", and in fact I found a perfectly ugly silk scarf I had painted and given to her, which she had never worn, but still stored away in her drawer with care.

There are curtains with her needle still run precisely at temporary rest in an unfinished hem. This particular piece may or may not have been hers. At one point the green vines change color slightly, which I imagine to be the work of a child or teen who thought it wouldn't matter, but then lost momentum when faced with the prospect of removing the precise embroidery to replace it with the matching green. I can still see the faint blue pattern of the scallops and floral cartouches, and although I do know how to make French knots and tiny flowers in colored silks, I doubt I will finish it. I'll just love it in its imperfection.

She lost a lot of her abilities over the last decades, gradually and heartbreakingly. There are many little painted chests that were started, have the background coat of paint, sitting on shelves in her home. I may paint some of those, though I will never be able to approach her expertise. I'll try little flowers and vines, and see how far I can get. Her plan was always to sell them down at the Market. The one I have has a set of cardboard pieces in each drawer, cut as patterns for the fabric linings. I remember her showing me the fabrics she picked out for the linings, but I don't have them in my piles, so I'll have to go back and search through the tubs and boxes again.

Though she had to stop making things, she never stopped the beginnings of the creative process, the levels of desire and imagination that drive us to begin the projects. She was always buying brushes, books, supplies and findings and hinges and simpler versions of the projects she wanted to do. One of her last paintings was in a Salon de Refuse show, sometime around 2005 or so, when we entered the Mayor's Art show together. We were both thrilled to be hanging our art in a real gallery, for different reasons. She was, of course, quite used to feeling professional by then, but like most artists, was never finished learning and improving her skills. She loved to mentor others and the artists in her family, of which there are many, all treasure her memory.

Thank you so much, Hope. You gave so much more than you knew to all of us, for so long. I hope heaven is what you expected, a place where you can paint all day and never get tired, and never have to give up a thing you love.

More and better Jell-O Art

I finished making the box for my 6x6 inch (actually mine is 6x6x6) piece for the show at Oregon Arts Alliance. It hangs on the wall and everything, it's pretty light, and the wooden box I tried to make would have been too heavy. I hope the Jell-O stays in it, but it is balanced okay if no one messes with it. All of the pieces cost $30 and they are anonymous, with names only on the back. I'm guessing there won't be much other Jell-O.

Why Jell-O Art? It's just fun. I like how it is low-tech, very accessible, and kind of a kitchen art to start with. It takes all the pressure off, and there is no structure for criticism or monetary value, or any of the things that get imposed on art by the marketing. I have lots of essays I've written about how doing Jell-O sculptures and exhibiting them in a gallery made me realize I was indeed an artist, and take myself seriously.

Plus it is somewhat like glass in the seductive colors and transparency and the magical things it can do if you know how to work with it. As I was telling someone today, if you get it to the right stage of dryness before it gets fully dried, you can bend it and roll it and make it do lots of interesting things. I have more pictures in my facebook albums, on Photobucket at mcwho_photos, and down in previous blogs from last year mostly. I've been doing it for 22 years, so there are all kinds of Jell-O Art projects. Last year the show was also on Opening Day of the Market, so I exhibited my Jell-O Art down there, which had to be history in the making. I will maybe do that again this year.

Here are a couple more of the giant flowers (about the size of a pie plate) that I made on Sunday, and I glued up the wings too. The photos don't really show the complexity, and at the size to fit a human, (these are about 30 inches tall) they're a bit heavy. Should be quite a trick to mount them to fit her.

The idea is that she will be sort of coming out of a chrysalis, which is actually a shirt Celeste made. She made the figure, too. It fits quite nicely on my pedestal legs that I almost always use. Usually I put an apron on her, but not this time.

Having so much fun I might have to really open that Jell-O Art Museum.

Those Who Don't Know History

When the original Lane County Farmers Market started in 1915, the Pomona Grange founders had to fight off a company named Harbor-Sound Investment Company, who wanted to swoop in and establish one, charging farmers $10 a month, instead of the 25 cents a day the Grange was proposing. The grange representatives spoke to the Guard newspaper: "Our object is to bring together the consumer and producer for their mutual benefit. It is not to be a commercial project." They made it clear that this was to be a civic project owned by the community. Harbor-Sound faded away.

It was September, the height of the season, and tomatoes were one cent per pound, peaches ten cents per basket. The market caught on, thrived, and grew, on Park Street and all year round, too. More customers meant more producers, until in 1928 the 80 stalls were overcrowded by 90 to 115 producers. Still, anyone who was selling items they did not produce themselves, was ousted. In 1929 the public market became a pawn in a chess game as businessmen fought over where the center of town ought to be located. It was moving east, and businessmen with properties on Charnelton wanted it to move west. Groups of businessmen formed and schemed, and a new public market building was built at Charnelton and Broadway. It was glorious, but they had forgotten some of the essentials.

The producers revolted, and said they had not been consulted, resented being sold out, and would not move from the Park Blocks. The people who had built it up for the last 15 years felt that they owned it. After a bitter fight, the producers finally agreed to move to the building on Charnelton, where they rented space shared with a lunch counter, a grocery store which sold products not carried by the producers, and a commercial meat market. This was the summer of 1929.

When the 1929 crash resulted in the Depression, prices dropped but the public still came to buy what they could. A devastating blow occurred when the owner of the adjacent parking lot sold it to a gas station, eliminating customer parking. The market struggled through the 30's and the war years of the 40's, but declining numbers of small farms and the high costs of the building pinched. Producers were merely renters of stalls, and when the market decided to add more commercial enterprises to the site to pay expenses, rates were raised, and more farmers dropped away.Without the personal exchange from farmer to citizen, there was nothing to differentiate the market from a supermarket, and customers were drawn to the greater convenience and variety in the big stores. In 1955, what was once the Producers Public Market was sold to a Realty company from San Francisco, who resold it to a buyer from Portland. It closed in May of 1959.

In 1978, Lane County officials wondered if a producers' market might thrive in the vicinity of the decade-old Saturday Market. Our founder, Lotte Streisinger, had always held that fresh produce was an essential component of an open-air market. For the next ten years the adjacent Farmers market was managed as a wing of Saturday Market, and struggled and thrived according to where it was located. Next to each other, the two markets thrived.

One of the holders of this history is Shari Reyna, owner of the Fern's Edge Goat Dairy. She remembers the relationships built by trading lemonade for goat's milk, wool for clothing, and indeed, all of us who are longterm members of either market have interwoven our lives for decades. Shari managed the farmers for several years, as a volunteer. When the LCFM decided in 1988 to manage itself independent of Saturday Market, the two organizations still shared an office for many years, and shared expenses for permits, garbage disposal, and other services until recently.

Clearly, we are a community. We have a long history and have cooperated for 30 years and more, identifying ourselves as a unique, producer-to-customer market where you can meet the actual person who imagined, crafted, grew, or cooked up the purchase you just paid for. Your money keeps the producer alive and well and in return you get a lively, personal experience that tourists come from all over the world to experience.

History shows that restricting parking and adding large commercial businesses will kill the small producers and the unique, personal experience. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.

You can read all about the early producers' market in the book Market Days, written by Stan Bettis and published by the Lane Pomona Grange Fraternal Society in 1969. For the history of the market we love now, you can look on wikipedia for some fairly accurate details, but mostly, you have to ask us, those of us who are there and have been there.

The founding mothers and fathers of our venerable, 41-year-old Saturday Market are still around. Lotte shops every week, and many of us continue to sell. Shari, Paul, Jan, Toby, Colleen and Dana, Ritta, Saman, Teresa, Gary, Gil, me, Beth, Kim, Vi, Ayala, Sue, Phil and Jan, and many others carry the history and know what our community needs and what works well. There are other farmers who have been working all this time as well. We are the community, we are the producers. Customers will tell you how long they have shopped at the markets, and everyone who does feels like part of a family, part of something extremely special.

The LCFM's appointed Community members and the developers who are trying to impose a vision on something that is already working need to not only consult us, but they need to listen to us. What they are trying to do, putting commercial booths out in the street and displacing traffic flow, parking and customer access, will not solve the problems of LCFM, will create huge problems, and is not what we, the community, want.

Crafting the Elegant Solution

There sure is a lot on the city's plate these days: Envision Eugene, the West Eugene EmX siting decision, the city income tax to fund schools, the school closures. All of these issues have really invested people saying wild and speculative things about what might happen if certain proposals are sent forward and others aren't. Lots of things are still simmering in the background, UO sports issues, big world issues like the plastic bag ban, polar bears, stuff happening at the federal level in government. It certainly adds up to an overload for most people.

People get way far into their imaginary scenarios of the disasters that are in the making, the wrong directions we are going in, what I see as a going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket view of the world. It is almost never as bad (or as good) as people will have you believe. People are expressing their fear of loss and feelings of helplessness.

It all causes a lot of emotional shutting down and I am not immune to that. I am often pretty sure my opinion on most of these issues will make no difference whatsoever in their outcome, and I'm not inclined to put out a lot of effort to help solve them. I do appreciate the committed citizens who take their opinions into the public forum and work hard to find solutions that will solve the most problems possible with human effort. Some things aren't as fixable as others. I imagine most of those people are practical about what is achievable and work to do as much in as positive a fashion as they can. Without people willing to make the effort, we would certainly have more chaos. So I try to encourage myself to at least stand up and be counted on as many things as I can, addressing my fears but keeping them under control.

I have found that most "public servants" (odd term) and politicians have pretty good intentions that are limited by their world view, and seem reasonable according to the viewer's world view. Part of the job is determining what false impressions are out there and putting them to rest so the real questions can be raised and the real answers worked out. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of repeating of ground rules. It also takes a resistance to stereotypes and labels, and an ability to see everyone else as the same rather complicated human we feel we are. I'm not simple, so I can't expect you to be. Turn anxiety into curiosity.

Some ground rules seem simple but people forget. No yelling or shaming or blaming or name-calling or other rude behavior. That one is increasingly forgotten when people feel fearful or threatened in some way. There's a lot of paranoia. The media likes juicy quotes, too, and we are trained now to look for drama, build it and use it as a weapon. It builds to catastrophe and pretty soon people are traumatized by things that aren't even happening.

There is plenty of trauma and catastrophe available without manufacturing it. Let's all calm down, for starters.

We are seldom really enemies trying to defeat each other, so drop that posture. At a meeting recently, my group was told that if we were allowed to go to a public forum, there would be a zoo. Another unfortunate term: did you just call me an animal? I am actually a very reasonable, intelligent human, and I presume you also see yourself to be that. So why would you expect that any other small business owner, artist, food producer, musician, or worker would not also be a reasonable, thoughtful person with enough training to know how to be polite to others?

Let's expect the best from others, and we may get it. If we project and gear up for unreasonable behavior, we may just create that with our defensiveness. It may require some skill to keep the tenor of a meeting calm and keep a group focused on doing the work and not projecting their fears on each other. Many people are skilled at meeting and group decision-making behavior, and many meetings are productive and uplifting, even when hard decisions must be made.

So bring some skilled people to the meeting if you know any. If people are easily angered and can't let go of their hurt feelings and the agenda of revenge, maybe there is another job they can do rather than be at the meeting. Take care of your hurt feelings and resentments before you go. Those are personal, and the business of a group is to try to represent others in making a way forward that will best serve the needs of the greater group, as large a one as it is possible to serve.

Once I was standing at a peace demonstration and an argument started when someone said something hateful. Many were called to respond, but one young man said clearly "that's bullying; don't respond to bullying." We can create peace by calling behaviors what they are, and by our reaction to them. Don't escalate. When someone starts to go off, make sure they feel heard, but don't engage in the escalation and magnification of their fears. Try to identify the fear, and dispel it if you can. If not, simply acknowledge it.

In the case of the LCFM/SM difference of opinion, we bring fear for our livelihood to the table. Many of our small business people and farmers are on a financial edge, and disaster is always close. Those who aren't there, don't see that. Some of us feel we have a lot to lose, and if it happens quickly, we feel we may not be able to recover. This fear starts to color our actions.

Some of us older folks fear the loss of everything we have, our physical ability to do the work, our subsequent ability to support ourselves and live. We don't have much of a safety net. Personally, that's where I am. I'm not making much headway on my debts, my income doesn't have many options for increase, and my body is failing in small but progressive ways. I can't afford my health insurance, but am afraid to drop it. I'm on the path of trying to manage risk, maintain what I do have, and convince myself to feel secure when I am not. I really need every penny I make at the market. If my sales decreased even 10 percent, I'd be in serious trouble.

I'm guessing a majority of my fellow vendors are feeling that. We're working to capacity already, and it isn't a matter of laying off a worker, or saving or investing less. I don't have savings or investments or workers or options. I'm my sole support. So I bring that kind of fear to the table, that closing off the entrance to my market will cut my income by restricting my customer base. Taking away the parking spaces close to me might make it impossible for me to get my stuff to my space to sell. A good portion of our vendors are getting old, acquiring or managing disabilities, and we can't, in good conscience, agree to make things harder for them.

But I can't let that kind of fear overwhelm my ability to see the larger picture and remember that things are not the same for all of us. All I can do is speak up calmly about the issues I feel will arise, and try to prevent or plan to accommodate them. If we frame them as problems to be addressed, instead of disasters that will befall us that are beyond our control, we can find the elegant solutions.

It looks like the farmers and the craftspeople may soon meet, and it will be on all of us to bring our good behavior to the meeting. We will be reasonable, we will listen thoroughly, and we will remember that we are not there to "win the day" or defeat each other. We will be there to hear each other, to put facts in the place of rumors, and to get to work together as equals to work out our differences and find places of agreement.

I hope we will all come ready to learn and get to know each other, and to bring forward the best intentions and ideas to bring our cooperative efforts to more productive fruition. I hope we will have a skilled facilitator present, and I know we will have many skilled group decision-makers present. I'm feeling hopeful. That, in a week of darkness, is a very good feeling.

Surrounding myself with beauty

Jell-O Art Radar Angel. Making a face will be a challenge, but I still have 10 lbs of Jell-O left.

It's Not Just Business

I was planning to write today about consensus, but the Market lost one of our family, and that tiger of grief has been unleashed in me. It's no wonder we avoid these feelings, the paralysis and the way the light changes around us, rendering us not sure how to move and in which direction. Trying to imagine even a tiny part of what Jack's parents and his brother are going through just makes me dissolve in tears.

And this is true for any of us, since we have all lost someone and will lose more. With such a large and caring family, we lose people frequently. Somehow it seems more cruel in the winter, more devastating, and one of the kids we raised together, feeding them rice and eggs, hot cocoa with whipped cream, well, it's too much.

Yet this is what we are here doing, living and working together, and making it past these challenges. They remain fresh, even when the names fade some, the stories, seldom told, stay in us. The bike trailer on the rainy night, the bleachers that collapsed, and now the sea we all come from. It seems too heavy to get through sometimes, but remember, there will also be light.

And it puts this recent situation with the farmers in perspective. We can't be fighting. We can't let our emotions get caught up in things as trivial as booth placement and traffic patterns. We must learn to make our way in cooperation from the beginning, through the process to the end. Because we are all fragile and human and we will all trip and fall at some point. Let's not be responsible for tripping others if we can possibly help it.

This week I had a dream in which I had to jump into a bus and drive it. I didn't know how to drive a bus, hate to drive anyway, but somehow managed to get it around the block and back to its parking spot. Mainly I was thinking, "It's not my job to drive this bus!"

It's not my job to be the driver of this situation regarding the 8th St. closure, but there is an important role I have chosen and I will see it through. This job is to remind us how to stay down in our hearts and shine a light on what is important.

I went to a wonderful little panel discussion this week at the Lane County Historical Museum. My well-spoken friend Connie was on the panel, with Skeeter, and Caroline Estes, who is one of the founders of Alpha Farm and probably the person responsible for the health and growth of the consensus process in our area. In every organization where we have used consensus and consensus-seeking, her name is mentioned. She has trained thousands of people, and told us a story about how she once had 600 people show up for a training. They dove in and learned it.

When I was Board Chair of SM in the 80's, we used consensus quite thoroughly. When my son was in Family School and Patterson and Spencer Butte, and South, even our Site Councils used consensus- seeking. It comes from the Quaker tradition, and is quite basic. Every participant has a piece of the truth, and through patient honesty, the truth emerges and elegant decisions are made. There is no real voting, no majority domination, and things like blocking and going away mad are extremely rare. Even though we do vote and use a modified Robert's Rules of Order system at our meetings today, we generally reach consensus before voting. I can't remember a time at a market meeting where we had a split vote, though I remember several painful ones at the LCFM table.

Carolyn, in her seventies now, glows with an inner power, since she has seen these agreements grow so many, many times. It inspired me just to see her and think about how much this kind of thinking has influenced and eased my life. The coolest part was a young person who was there for advice for the many groups of young activists she was part of.

Amazingly, there was a big piece of consensus that I had forgotten, but if you read my last post you can see that it was there, just not consciously. This piece is called Principles of Unity.

This is where consensus begins. The group must first establish the common ground, the principles of unity that brought them together in the first place, and the ones that must be kept in mind in order to make a decision that will best serve everyone. I stated in my last entry that at SM we share equality and the desire to thrive. I've been trying to think about what else we could start with. My imaginary meeting of the two organizations would start with a group exercise where we write up on the board the small number of principles that would guide our discussion and round out our decision.

It's not my place to make these up. They belong to the two groups. But the bus is being driven by the wrong people, people who are not even in either group, so I am taking the wheel here and will try to at least establish some ground for my own group, the Saturday Market.

We kind of know this already: we are all in this together, and we want to be good neighbors, friends, and to support each other. We want the best for each other. Can we agree on that? Then the discussion will soon be over, because the street closure will not be the best for each other. Five thousand cars use that street in a typical day. It makes no sense to divert those 5000 people away from the market and replace them with a few select booths. That is just not going to be an improvement, and it seems easy enough to see.

We value hard work. There are so many dedicated, tireless people on both sides of our street. None of us has time or the bodily strength to waste our efforts. We have invested our whole lives in these mutual strivings to make our lives better and share ourselves with others. Let us honor ourselves, our people.

Communication is the only way we are going to get along. I spent the last two years slowly making connections, person by person, while I sat at the farmers' table taking minutes, sold at their Tuesday Market, and shopped on Saturdays for my food while running my own booth by the fountain. I've always been there at some level, but in recent years I really committed to it. I tried to get to know each farmer, bringing all my roles and experiences as a Market elder with me, tried to increase mutual respect, and tried to listen carefully to their concerns and convey ours. It was an unofficial liason role that I took on with trepidation and in which I felt actual fear several times. It scares me what people are willing to do to destroy the commonality and drive wedges between us.

We sing a little song, it's stupid, but "The farmers and the hippies should be friends". I mean, organic food, locally grown beans and corn, edamame? We are the market for the farmers market. We so need each other. Over the years I made signs, tote bags, and t-shirts for the farmers. We always have been able to fill our mutual needs by crossing the street. We have 30 years of mutual history, more in some cases. There is no way we can let that be destroyed by what amount to outside agitators, people who are not stakeholders trying to impose their grand, misguided plans on us. Their intentions may be good, but we are the ones who will live the reality, and they will remain spectators. They can't be at the wheel.

We cannot allow our distress to get in the way of the big picture, what we are doing down there, have been doing, and will be doing, if we don't mess it up. We can't afford the resentment that causes us to boycott each other. It's petty, it's coming from the wrong spirit, it's coming from hurt feelings, and leaving more hurt feelings in its wake.

Let us sit down together, soon, and find our common ground. Let's rest on the several feet of topsoil under our concrete and remember our roots and cooling shade and tender, unfolding flowers and make this thing work better. It has to. We have to.

Life is short, so damn cruel, we are so fragile. I will not always be here to drive this bus, nor will you. Let's remember the rules and keep within the lines. It's so much more than commerce, so much more than the money.

I trust that this will be the week when this problem is solved. We don't have time to fight. We are in the business of living, and we need healing, and growth. Spring is about to burst! Let's be the nurturing forces that we are, and bloom together in all our glory.

I'm sending all my strength to my family to see us through this hard time. I see you here with me, and I know we will find our consensus, stand together, and live through this stormy weather. It's not stupid to reach down into our hippie tradition, which comes from deep in our human experience, and bring forth our strengths.

We are the same. Let's work together.