Aging in Place

Some friends my age are building a new house, their "Age in Place" house as they call it. It will be fitted out for whatever the future brings as far as mobility and other physical considerations go. Seems a wonderful, sensible idea for those of means, but I don't think building another house is in my personal future. Could be wrong. The shop needs a remodel, and I was standing in the yard yesterday picturing how to rebuild that back corner that is rotting from the rain.

Mostly I know now that I can't do it alone, because I don't have the fifteen years that I spent on this house. I know too much now about how things have to be done well to last...things I will be doing over in this house. Like wooden front porch steps. They just aren't going to last for decades.

Aging can come with lots of fears. I think I cracked a rib cleaning the other day. I got some new furniture thanks to the ever-generous Betsy and took the opportunity to rearrange and clean my living room and bedroom. It is lovely, even scrubbed the Jell-O out of the carpet. The new hutch hides the TV and a lot of the clutter is gone. Yay. Aging will need some simplification and decluttering for sure. It could bring some breaks and pains and decreased mobility. I spent a few hours wondering if the rib ache would make me stop printing. No such luck.

As an aging member of a subculture, the craftspeople, I've been thinking about this concept, which I will call the Age in Place Initiative. I'm planning to work on this in my two organizations, Saturday Market and Oregon Country Fair. It comes from the fact that we older master craftsmen and women are treasures, and our needs are a little different from other interest groups in these memberships.

In OCF, Booth reps are not currently really included in the Elders system (which is a wonderful step forward for many folks), so we have the perfect opportunity to craft a proposal for a little system of our own. We want to remain in place, doing what we do. We need the opportunity to earn, still, and we won't retire if we can help it. We don't want to give up our spaces, and many of us don't want to take on partners, pass the business to family members, or whatever options are currently viable. OCF doesn't have a plan for us, except that we should give over space to younger crafters and get out of the damn way. We can take this opportunity at the committee level to talk about our needs and figure out what to make guidelines about.

At Market, the Kareng Fund is a huge step forward in providing small grants to those members in crisis. They are currently discussing a Modest Needs Initiative that will be an expansion of the effort to fill pressing needs. I think the Age in Place Initiative is a way to frame the current wish to address what we've been calling Vintage Vendors, a confusing term that isn't quite right yet. We can look at what the Market already offers in both policy and practice, and brainstorm ways to address the needs of those who will not be able to continue to do things the same way they did them in their forties and fifties.

I see things like fee relief, point-system fine tuning, and mutual support. For the OCF I see a scenario where there would be a lot of trust of the aged vendor, to take us out of the party booth concept into the way it could be if we look for elegant solutions.

If you see us as treasures, it is easy to see why we might need some kind of protection. As the Fair gets bigger and bigger, it has been a struggle to keep up. I don't think I can work as hard as I've been working, for too many more years. I already have eight people who help me do parts of it. I can't even provide passes for that many people as it is. What if I need more? My son has a crew job, and at the moment, has no interest in my craft business. I want to stay in my space selling my stuff until I die. How can that work for me and for the Fair at the same time?

I guess I am starting a task force or committee to brainstorm and make proposals. I'll announce that at this month's meetings. We'll see if anyone is ready to work on this or if it stays in the concept stage a little longer. There's no hurry...I'm only going to be 62 this year. Maybe when a person gets social security they are happy to really retire. I doubt I will be. For one thing, I need to stay active to be happy, though whether or not this has to include screenprinting is a big question.

That's one of my problems at the OCF, that my craft definition is screenprinting, although I can jury new crafts if I desire. There is a returning vendor clause that gives extra points so the jury is more flexible about the nature of the crafts. My wish would be for a pass from the jury process at a certain age. Maybe this would be 70 or 65, but I'd like a little old lady to be able to bring whatever she has made to sell. If this means she sews one bead on a scarf and calls it transformed, I'd like to see the organizations be able to accept this reality. That will probably not be easy. We're pretty tied to the "ever-increasing level of artistry" concept.

Let's face it, things really don't get better and better as we age, although we can delude ourselves to that effect for awhile. The physical limitations are rough. The energy just isn't going to be there, no matter how much we might want it to be. I can't sustain having eight or more people make my OCF experience possible. Somehow I need it to be many people less. The Elders had to fight for one companion or helper. Even that isn't going to be enough for me to keep selling.

So how will I do it? I need more people to help me solve this problem, to help remove barriers and make it possible. At Market we have informal systems where neighbors help each other with the hard parts, erecting popups and taking breaks, etc. I'm in a great neighborhood for that and feel pretty secure for this season. It wouldn't be hard to formalize some of that. We have a great point system and pretty good compliance for the volunteer two hours for HM. We could find ways to support vendors helping vendors.

OCF vendors are different because of the high volume of work compressed into the short time, so we tend to be more isolated in our needs, but still, I have good neighbors there who would help me, and do. If they can't remain there either, though, that falls apart. They're starting to talk about the transitions too. I don't want to feel overrun or forced to change to fit the rules, I think it might be possible for the rules to change to fit me. Not me, per se, but my subculture, the segment of our unique area population that we are so lucky to include.

So that's my idea of the moment. Now to apply the creative process.

Essay Flotsam and Jetsam

So here's some stuff that didn't make the final cut into the essay. Turns out the limit was 2000 words, not 2500, so many of my tangents were too tangential. Alas. I posted them on the Occupy writers group page, since I will probably not write the seven essays.

"Consider that to evolve, as a species and personally, might be the reason we are here right now, working and thinking and searching. If so, consider that the Occupy protests, which are a flare-up of the continual work of all movements toward social and economic justice, are instruments of that evolution. Through shifts in thinking, group process, communication, and tactics, the limited model of protest has been re-imagined into an unstoppable, accessible Movement. "

That was my opener, which was mostly a thesis statement to get me started and didn't work as a good beginning for the final essay. Some of the points I had to abandon are in this section:

"The marketing of the movement has shifted through internet sharing. Posters and signs are displayed in downloadable form for use by anyone. Patches and t-shirts are free, not sold for profit. Although there is no shortage of co-option of the language, such as television shows and advertising using the words “revolution” and “occupy,” the message of the movement is not lost in this, as it strives to become more explicit and direct. Through sharing on social networks, charts and graphs illustrating economic realities and the real effects of political theory are easy to find, to use to convince Aunt Ethel just how the trickle-down economic theory of the Reagan years worked out. Online petitions and initiatives can be started by anyone, and spread virally to everyone. Furthermore, the General Assembly meetings at the sites are livestreamed, with commenters to the side who are responded to by the person running the streaming, who can convey them to the people present in the room. Anyone in reach of the transmissions can watch and hear it for themselves without putting on a pair of pants.

In response, the actions of the authorities have evolved, using the tools of the military to target enforcement and oppression of dissent, arresting leaders pre-emptively, wearing down the protestors with constant harassment, and using the same tools as the protestors to shift public opinion. The media cooperates to carry the party line, with television newscasters repeating the same phrases and viewpoints right down to the local broadcasts, through the use of news gathering through passing on of submitted “public service announcements” or PSA’s. One famous video on YouTube shows dozens of newcasters repeating the same phrase, “Conan O’Brien may be about to push the envelope on late night television,” with the same inflections. This is known as McNews, the commodification of information. Mass media shows itself to be increasingly irrelevant in the face of that generated by individuals on the scene."

I had a lot of what sounded like propaganda in there, even I could hear it. I love it when I inspire myself while writing, and end the final sentence with a euphoria that I wish and hope gets to the reader. Mostly it is probably me thrilling to the sound of my golden words. I wonder if birds do that, love their own songs?

There is also the possibility that I just like the idea of getting attention for my brilliance from all the sapiosexuals out there. Easy pit to fall into. Whatever. I'm human. One of the things I said in my closing is that the movement is human. It's like a living organism to me.

That brings up a whole range of psychological analyses that I am just not going to touch. Keep growing, movement! We will need you to be mature, productive, and dependable, while also playful, imaginative, and juicy. Lots of people are placing this personal ad, looking for their soulmates.

Writing about The Movement

I've been trying to write an essay for the Oregon Quarterly Essay contest, which I used to enter every year until I decided I knew too little about how nonfiction was being written these days, and felt I couldn't catch up. That was essentially one of my many excuses for not following through on goals.

This book You Are Not Your Brain is kicking my excuse factory in the head (my head). I have all these neural pathways that do not serve my goals. I won't do the work they suggest (charts and stuff), I hold on tightly to my mode of making excuses for why I can't do what I actually know I can do. I mean, in terms of the essay, I can write one. I've written three so far, all almost submittable with some editing (2000 words is a short, short essay for me). The last one I rushed to finish to take to my writing group, three women who are stellar writers themselves and extremely thoughtful editors who know all my tendencies and have heard all my excuses. It was their suggestion that I do the essay when I mentioned I was trying to write about Occupy.

And let me say right here, I know this is one of my things I do: instead of working on the thing I am now on the next level, procrastinating by examining in detail whether or not I should do it at all. And how I should do it, and why. And I tell myself, that as an Occuposter, I have no authority. I've looked at Occupy from across the street while I tried to sell at Tuesday Market...I read about it on Facebook.

Actually I have read an immense number of things about Occupy, so maybe I am a kind of authority, in a limited way. I can synthesize what I have learned, and frame a few opinions, which is after all, what an essay is supposed to be. I can pose any number of my theses and elaborate and conclude. My writing group pointed out that I have about seven essays packed into my 2000 words already.

Part of the problem is the contest itself. The top prize is publication in the magazine, and I have read enough of those over the last ten years to know that mine will not appear there, although I can always see it with the photos and all and imagine that. So probably not the $750 for the top spot for me, but there are ten finalists, and they all get to go to a nonfiction workshop with the judge, who ever that turns out to be. I got to do one with Lauren Kessler, and superb writers have read my submissions, which is kind of exciting. Barry Lopez even read my first one, not that I had the courage to talk to him about it. But I don't want fame...way too scary for my hermit nature.

I'm not even sure I could stand at the podium and read my submission...if I were in the top three, who get to do that. My friend Betsy wisely points that out as a highly developed excuse...I mean, I have actually wondered how I would dress to appear on Oprah and used that as a way to discourage myself. Really?

Also the deadline is Sunday, and as a last-minute editor I have taken my pages over to the building at UO enough times to find out that you can't even get into it on days it is not open, which I assume will be the case unless by some miracle I find it fully finished before five pm today. I could...if I buckle down and do that. I could get it done right now instead of using up my typing energy here and on FB. I should!

I really have to step up my commitment to my goal of being a real, functioning writer. That was the first worksheet I skipped in the book: set your goals and prioritize them and decide how much energy you are willing to spend on them. This is really a 10 to me, I really, really do like to write and to do it well. Getting into a nonfiction workshop could be a wonderful experience. I can still remember how charged up and encouraged I got from the one with Lauren Kessler. Who cares who is the writer involved? I want to go.

I want to write all seven essays, and post them online and further the work of progressive evolution. I want to change the world. I don't really have to go on Oprah, and if I do, I'll bet my sister would lend me an outfit.

Okay, what would be more fun that spending today writing, writing, writing? Nothing else on my list compares. I'm doing it. Maybe I'll win. Maybe I won't. But I will have met my number one goal today, to be a real, functioning writer.

Maturity

This year when I do my taxes I won't be Head of Household for the first time in decades. Also, next month I will apply for social security benefits. My life is changing rapidly.

I enjoyed the OCF Board meeting. I had been avoiding them, afraid I'd get mad about that old "us vs. them" feeling that comes up when I disagree with establishment policy, but like many myths, I find the us/them dichotomy a little too simple to sustain in reality. I don't have a simple relationship with the Fair. I pay them a lot of money, to make a lot of money, and I also do printing for various Fair groups, so I get a lot of benefits from Fair relationships. A lot of my friends and family go there, work there, love it. It's a huge part of my year. I think it was the rain in 2008 (has it really been that long?) that made me rethink my attitudes.

As I sat by my huge pile of wet shirts all packed to go home, for an extra night and day because "they" wouldn't let my helper drive in, I had a lot of complaints. I've sold at the Fair for thirty-some years, but I didn't feel "seen." I thought that staff lumped me into a category of "gray-haired ditzy craftswoman" and shut down the minute I walked toward them. I thought I saw that happening enough times to give it mythic status, and I was defensive about it. I wrote a nasty letter that I had the good sense to put aside, but the feelings rankled for more than a year. At some point I realized that if I wanted to be seen, I had to show myself. I had to step up a little and build trust from my side, so next time my needs weren't met, I would have more avenues to articulate them.

It wasn't just staff, but I could frame lots of the volunteers as my enemies as well. I could build that pile of resentments and complaints as high as I wanted, but it all mushed down to the fact that if I wanted cooperation and trust, that had to start with me. I give Jen-Lin the credit because we were friends, and through her I met a lot of the people I held responsible. And if she liked them, and I trusted her, by extension...I might like them too, or at least get to understand their perspectives. She gives good attention. I could give better attention.

And sure enough, as I looked closely at what people said and did in the context of their jobs (whether for pay or not, all of the work we do for Fair is work) trust blossomed like a strange and terrifying orchid. Pretty soon it was impossible for me to see any "them." All I could see were issues that might benefit from the application of more energy, perhaps my energy.

Did I like everyone and want to hang out with them? Not really relevant in the context of work. Not enough communication in both directions? Read the minutes, or better still, go to the meetings. I heard there would be an effort to better document the work of the committees through a group of minutes-takers, and this was really up my alley. I am fascinated by meetings, but I like to have something to do. Taking minutes is fun for me. So I started going to meetings, as an active observer, taking minutes. Immediately people became real to me, and I'm assuming I became real to them. When I sat in the room with people who craft the budget, do the longterm visioning, work to articulate guidelines and to make the Fair walk it's talk environmentally, I got the big picture in a lot of new ways. I had not been paying real attention.

And personally, did I want to be reactive? I could throw angry letters out to the FFN, but did that result in change? Anger, shaming, taking people to task: those are violent and don't result in effective leadership. The people I was meeting were humans. I could see when their feelings were hurt, when they got defensive, what closed them down or frustrated them.

It did not take long to build trust for me, and I hope it is mutual. Last night I was officially appointed to the Crafts Committee, a longstanding committee that is quite vital in the process and perhaps not fully utilized in some ways. I don't have an agenda beyond listening and contributing to forward movement. I went to the Board meeting with a little trepidation, mostly embarrassed because I had not attended a Board meeting in so long I couldn't be sure I ever had. That's pretty disgraceful to me. I read the minutes word for word, but even though those minutes are explicit, there is nothing like being in the room to get the sense of a meeting, and by extension, a community.

I think the Fair is so many fairs happening at the same time, (since we each have a complicated relationship with it) that for decisions to be made to serve the most people, many many stakeholders have to weigh in. I didn't really have an opinion about Barter Fair, except that the proposal to take a break from it this year seemed too harsh. That was easily amended to put closure off, although it is tempting from a "let's get this change in the works" viewpoint to see what a relief to many a closure would be. Problem is, Fair decisions have to work for everyone, if that is remotely possible. Taking one more year to solve the problems of Barter Fair was the right way to go for now. The problems are big, and what is on the ground in that parking lot is real, and has grown naturally from the desires of the participants. That has to be honored. It isn't just a managerial problem that can be solved managerially.

That's the crux of the matter at the Fair. We challenge ourselves to act from the heart in new ways to make a better society. That ethic is strong in the Fair operations and policy-makers, by my observation. It comes up at every meeting I've attended, that someone says "Well, to be consistent with our values," or "to do things the Fair way" or some such statement. I firmly believe this does come from the heart, and Fair people generally have well-developed hearts. People say "family" without a trace of irony. It's a giant, messy, wide-ranging and very powerful family, doing ordinary things in a rather extraordinary way.

At this point in my life, I really want to be consistent with my values. Honesty, trust, hard work, being loving and giving and forgiving, just simple basic things. Layers of actions are built from there, about how to make money, how to be creative and feed myself physically and emotionally, how to be proud of my actions and words and contribute to the common good. How can I ask the world to be what I am not willing to be? I can't be a hypocrite, if I can help it.

I'm not saying I'm drinking any Kool-Aid in regard to the love fest part, though I have seen the magic and felt it for myself. It's definitely an amazing, earth-shaking event and organization that enriches so many lives and changes the world. Of this there is no doubt.

It has to be sustained, and have a continuing life for as long as it can remain positive and enriching. Lots of forces are always present to take it down other roads, and it has gone down a few I wouldn't have chosen if it were my choice. But, it has gone down those roads through collective action, and because into the open space came the people who came, carrying what they carried. There is a certain brilliance in the concept of "it is what it is."

Quite simply, I am one of the creative people who make it so, whether I do that in reaction or action. I can watch and criticize from the sidelines, I can make it harder to move forward, or I can be one of the ones who adds my efforts to the wheel.

Last night the facilitator looked in my direction about fifty times, and I was invited to respond as much as I wanted. This was true for everyone in the room. This Fair is responsive. Questions were thoughtfully answered. Concerns were actively heard. Opinions were expressed, and it felt like equality.

I still have things to sort out in regard to OCF. Reasons people don't participate are many, and I can articulate some of them as I make this shift into a more solid "us" position. Maybe I can even bring in a bit more participation in addition to my own. I would welcome more crafters at the Craft Committee meetings, and there is one tonight, at 6:00 in the town office. Good decisions take thorough efforts. We have to think things through, and untie the knots that bind us into contorted positions that don't serve the common good.

Lots of people have been doing this for all of the forty-plus years of the Fair. They've done their best. I am grateful to them. It feels a lot better to join them than to criticize them. I'll try to be careful, and I suppose I'll continue to make errors as I go, since life is a mystery and a wonder and there is no one right way to do it.

But if I had to make a list of what I love about the Fair and what I don't, one would be long and one would be short. I enjoy pitching in. I like it when my assumptions are challenged. And I love to watch good process unfold, and the Fair does really good process, when we all pitch in.

Fear Buries Truth, Film at 11:00

A long time of no writing for me. I've actually been writing other things (yay!) and trying to retreat from expressing my opinion for awhile, trying to find a vacation in the week between the holidays. I was somewhat successful in that I stayed out of the shop, but I worked on a puzzle (no accident in that verb there) and spring-cleaned the bathroom. I did some sitting around. I started the pruning and spread some gravel, and made some lists, but mostly tried to empty my mind a little from all of the holiday clutter.

If I don't have solitude and down time, I get attracted to drama, and it is really hard at HM to avoid getting involved in at least some. Most of the stuff that was operating last year is over, because I tried hard to stay away from people or situations that might lead me there. I didn't get fired from anything and I worked on gratitude and not complaining. My goal was to not make my problems other people's problems and I did pretty well with that. I struggled with what we all struggle with, all of the consumption in its various forms and the ways my life doesn't measure up to the norm, but I constantly reminded myself that my ideas of the norm come mostly from the barrage of advertising and from TV actors and writers...it's not real. It's not true. Anyway, why be normal?

But my norm, if I have one, is really not mainstream, and I'm glad of that. I'm not much of a consumer. I use the retailing as an excuse not to get involved in a lot of gift-buying and my needs were for socks, a new pair of waterproof boots just in case it ever rains on a Saturday again, and a few things for my son and his gf. I sent Jell-O art to my family. It's the thought that counts, right? I thought they might be amused and maybe even a little delighted in the ephemeral beauty and uselessness of it...and I had a lot left. It most emphatically did not prove to be a viable Holiday Market product, and neither did the silk scarves and flags. I still have a lot to learn.

Winter is the lovely offseason which is such a joy, to have the pressure of production off or at least slowed way down. I will have to find work of lots of kinds, and the sitting around week is over. Some of my customers have already brought me work, for which I am very grateful and I'll get around to it soon. I have to re-examine my strategies for improving my retail life, which is just a continuing process. One thing the Jell-O did was provide a source of creative juice, amusement and relief, and it improved everything in my life, so I'm not ready to let go of it.

I suppose I could work on less attachment to money...I will be old enough this year to draw social security. I dream about never retailing at Christmas again...about quitting the Country Fair. I dream about renting out my other house and not needing a shop to avoid. These are far down the road and might not really be what I want, because many times what I think I want is not what I want, at least if you look at my actions and what I seem to be trying to find.

I love the open space in my life to go in a lot of directions at once. I'm reading and writing fiction and nonfiction simultaneously, sometimes even about the same subjects. I'm cleaning up clutter and creating more. I'm putting my yard in order so that I can invite in more natural chaos.

Every direction presents with a contradictory direction, or at least one that is merely tangential. I like to wander around like that. It's a gentle soft focus where nothing is all that important or essential...a form of peace. I need it.

I'm writing about Occupy (present and future), and reading about PTSD (the past intruding). I'm watching birds, and enjoying having my feet on the ground (too much gravel). I want to feed suet to the yellow-rumped warbler and that pair of Townsend's, and chase off the starlings.

It was lovely to go into the Saturday Market office and listen to the Standards review, and see dozens of market people at once. Beth led the group through all of the guidelines, which didn't take that long and proved to be much more interesting than reading them in the handbook. One thing she mentioned is that people used to know how to make things...everyone in a room would know how to make a fire, how to preserve food, how to fix a sewing machine and how to make a tool handle. Now people do not...in general. We are a group of people who make things, all the time, in lots of different ways, and that is a very beautiful way of life that needs to be protected. We are important to the world and not just to ourselves, and not because we are archaic or left behind, but because we are skilled. We are amazing fine artists and our collective skills and knowledge are awe-inspiring.

And we keep busy being productive, adaptable, and positive. We have lots of other skills that we developed to sustain our lives, marketing and managing skills, communication skills, emotional skills. We don't need a boss to direct us, we don't need a paycheck, we are not dependent in the same ways as those who have to operate in the more limited world. We do have to interface successfully with it...to get our materials and to sell our wares. Still, it seems a more simple arrangement if you can develop the skills to create, produce, and sustain your life. I'm proud of us.

It's complex and rich. Whenever we gather it's important to focus on that, our strength and our value, and not let our doubts and despairs overwhelm our ability to dream and imagine. The world needs art. Our town needs art. Our neighbors need art.

It doesn't need our drama. I was going to write about fear. That came up this morning when Poling's fence was on the front page, and he displayed well the poor thinking that comes when fear overrides rationality. Yes, it was unfair that he was targeted in his house with his family. Pretty much everyone agrees that was wrong. However, the message of the second protest, composed of women undressed to the waist with TRUTH painted on their chests, was, I believe, to remind people what they are really afraid of, the naked truth.

Unfortunately the message was mixed because they were hooded, probably out of fear for their own safety in the atmosphere of irrationality that quickly arose. Putting an expensive fence around your house will not protect you from the truth, because you will still be afraid, maybe more afraid, as you look at that fence every day. The truth is packed with fear, and it is our job to sort it out, and find what matters in there.

Fear is violence. Defensiveness is violence. Instead of these fairly affluent people being afraid of losing their home and their relative luxury, which is the economic reality, they let themselves focus on their fear of some young passionate people being somewhat inappropriate in their proximity. Do fans of other sports teams erect fences to defend themselves against irrational drunk sports fanatics? No, because they can recognize what is going on. I don't know why people can't recognize what is going on with the protests.

I'm guessing they can't because it is too overwhelming. People driving to VRC just hated looking at the poor people in the tents who weren't participating in the festivities. Need is overwhelming. You write a check to some safe agency, which pays for some administrators, and you call your job done. You have contributed to solving society's problems. You have done what you can afford.

But by all indications, you will have to pay a lot more before you will really be safe. The protestors are not your enemy, even if they are scaring you with their words or actions. Your fear is your enemy, as it is making you distracted and unable to act on the real problems, the real things we need to be afraid of. There are plenty to choose from. Pick one and pitch in. That's just what the Occupy people did.

They chose economic injustice. They're working on it. People who can't seem to see that are just acting out wildly, wasting money and time with fences and stadium lights and police overtime to the max. It's a waste. Fear or love, people. Fear or love. Translate that however you want. Compassion or avoidance. Numbness or engagement. Distraction or discussion.

Truth is powerful. I support truth, even if it has to wear a hood and be afraid too. Fear or love. Neither one is going away, so where will you put your energy?