Not Fade Away

I don't really enjoy autumn, even though of course I know it is part of the circle we all are on, but the fading of summer always leaves me wanting more. I'm finishing up outside painting projects, canning tomatoes, working in the yard and garden. Sitting in the sun whenever it is out seems mandatory.

I scheduled the removal of metal from my foot for late October. It's scary to open up the incision again and sign up for some amount of healing and sitting around icing and elevating again. This foot injury has consumed so much of my life this year, I just want it to be over. 

Yet I'm still learning from it and hope it will encourage me to be more careful and in synch with my body so I don't injure myself again. It scares me how close to death people get as we age, and how many fronts we have to monitor to keep ourselves going.

I analyzed the Saturday Market safety net for what we might be calling vintage vendors, or some such designation. We have so many policies and practices in place, I feel rather secure about my aging experience at Market. The best part of that is that those policies are in place for everyone, not just our treasured elders. We treasure everybody.

From our simple membership point accumulation to our case-by-case system of responding, we have about a dozen options for those suffering difficulty. I didn't even remember to list neighborhood responses, which are primary during the Market day. Every little group of us has an agreement to keep things flowing, whether it be parking to load or unload, the work itself, or booth-watching and networking with each other. We often stop short of creating policy because our agreements are working so well.

I spoke to the Standards Committee about the issue, and began by saying to those gathered at our big round table that one of our core tenets is equality. We may never decide to allow extra services for any interest group because we have so many already in place for all. In almost all aspects of our Market experience, our gathering as equals sets the ground for what we do and how we think about it.

I watched a new vendor in our neighborhood last week have what appeared to be an isolated, rather unsatisfying experience, and I wondered if maybe in our comfort we seemed to be unfriendly to newcomers. I know most of us vendors are intimidating to customers, but I have to remind myself to constantly open up to other Market people as well, actually looking at and even buying their products, and engaging in the level of community we all want while we are there on any given day. When you don't know practically everyone and their thirty-some year history as I do, it must seem sometimes like an ordinary festival where you come and sell and take money home and repeat that in many similar locations. 

But Saturday Market is so much more than an ordinary festival. The frequency of our gatherings, every Saturday and then every weekend at Holiday Market, fosters the familiarity and routine we thrive on. We start to be able to look around and create community, to be generous with our time and profits, to track our experiences, and to want to share our emotional wealth. We often can't afford our neighbors' goods, but we can certainly appreciate them and even perhaps add to their artistic experience with our educated feedback. There might be some intimidation (going both ways) with customers, but there isn't very much when it comes to each other. 

I recently bought a Batitat, a very cool bat house I had been admiring. I bought the kit but it was still a substantial frivolous purchase for my current situation, but I need to encourage myself to get back to making other things besides my craft. But of course, in my confidence, I did not watch his online video or even take the time to examine the construction of his built houses, I just put it together with a glance at the photo on the instructions, and I did it wrong in several ways. I had to take most of it apart and do it again. It was embarrassing, but I did discover a way that people could fail, and suggested to him a couple of ways to change that. He's a super lovely person and I hope he appreciated the feedback. 

The rebuild was successful and reminded me that creative people take a lot of risks when they make things...they often find new ways to do simple tasks, sometimes an improvement, sometimes not. But as I had planned, using the drill got me more interested in picking up tools again, so I got more than my money's worth from the purchase. 

I hung it on my house after some internal debate about screwing things to my siding. It also re-piqued (there's a word for you) my interest in my house and I started researching again. This is one of the upsides of autumn, more time indoors to do writing projects, something that will also help me get through the minor surgery I have planned and keep me grounded through the winter. My house is an endless fascination to me. 

I studied census records for more info about my people, the ones whose names I found on the boards inside my house. I will have to go back to the newspapers for the kind of stories I want. For instance, my original landowner, James Huddleston, died rather early from a gangrened leg, but that doesn't show in the census. One decade he is head of household, the next one, his widow is. The Floyd G. Vaughan whose daughter was Grace Bowers lost his first wife (not Grace's mother) in a buggy accident in 1882. In the 1880 census his household included a housekeeper, Miranda Haskett, and in the next one, (actually 30 years later, as he seems to be missing from 1890 through 1910, probably because I am not looking in the right place) 1910, he has married Miranda and they have more children, including my favorite, Grace. There are a number of missing children, presumably deceased. Miranda's first husband died from a rattlesnake bite (really!) in 1853 yet she has children born in 1880 so there might be some gossip in that situation. There is a somewhat endless trail of leads and tantalizing details to follow up with more hours of research. All of it fascinates me as much as it would if they were my own relatives.

I love that Eugene history is only about 150 years old. Back in Delaware, where I grew up, things are 400 years old, and lead back to the Old Country. In my Mom's family, we have pictures of the farm in Poland where the ancestors were born, and my sister has researched my Dad's family to find things like relatives who fought in the same battle on opposing sides in the Civil War. Rich stuff, but my house is something I put my hands on every day. I am so intimate with my house, it's a relationship. I so wonder what details I destroyed in my ignorance. I'm so lucky the people pencilled their names on the boards, and so curious about the details of their stories.


I am so involved with my imaginings about these people, I cling to my square nail and my autographed boards and my pages of research, and look forward to the eventual book I will write. Like many writers I enjoy the isolation and free time necessary to do the research and writing, which lead in so many directions and use up so much energy. I need something to look forward to, especially when nature is telling me to wrap it up and fear is saying it might be cold and wet all too soon. 

I need to make things, to be working on things, simple and complex. It's my response to life. And I need to be able to use that energy to make money. Thus my love affair with Saturday Market, and my deep interest in keeping it relevant to my life, to keep it feeding me. I find myself attending meetings and speaking up, even taking on projects, that don't directly serve me, except as a member of this amazingly nurturing organization. I just love to look at it and record its doings and think about ways it can improve and sustain itself.

I'll admit there are many mornings I have to power myself through the impulse to stay home and create rather than take on the vulnerability of loading up and biking down there for a few bucks. Sometimes it doesn't pay off, and sometimes it doesn't quite satisfy emotionally, but overall, I'm getting a fabulous return on my investment in the Market. 

I was looking at early pictures of me there (I started in 1976 I think) and it is compelling that I have formed my life around Market. This fascinates me as much as the way my house people formed their lives around farming and acquiring land and building this house and others. It's a rich history, and if Colleen and I can get around to it, we might write a lot of it down. She has the memory and the drive, and the heart, to keep it on the burner until it proves out. I hope I do too. I'm glad I saved so many artifacts from my own life. They may end up at the dump, but they mean a lot to me now.

And yes, of course I wrote my name on the boards too. Someone someday will remodel or knock down this house, and I hope they find a trace of me. Maybe a lot of traces. 

They will look at what I left, like the marred Batitat and other somewhat foolish choices I made in the process of extending my house's life, and they will wonder what my stories were. For a minute. If I'm lucky. I won't know about it, I suppose. I will have a legend, possibly, but it will never tell the whole story.

Unless they find my blogs and my boxes of notes and false starts and brilliant ideas and piles of creations, unless they find me fascinating enough to research my many trails. Me and the millions of other fascinating people. 

So many stories! So little time! Thanks for reading.