Last Outdoor Market!

Aargh, it's supposed to rain Saturday, and this will be the last week that I will care, for a few months. Selling outside on the Park Blocks in November is always a challenge, and we have had a couple of difficult weeks. Last Saturday, however, was so satisfying.

Apparently a lot of people thought it was the last Market (Thanksgiving is unusually late this year) and turned out last week for a rocking day. Sales were great, approaching summer levels. There were tourists from California and France. The members who did sell mostly clustered up near each other and it was ever so friendly. We could see and hear the stage from the west block, so we danced.

One of the good parts of small Markets is that we get to see new artists or take the time to look at familiar ones, and invariably there are new, exciting crafts to discover. When food booths are missing we sometimes step out of our habits and order new foods we haven't tried before. The 3-D paintings were extremely impressive, and there was no line at the pad-thai-pork-stick booth. 

At the Board meeting last week we began with stating our appreciations, and among the gratitudes for staff and organization was this: we get to be outside all day long. This is something I take for granted, because I spend a lot of time outside, but having that one 12-hour day every week when I can stand among trees and look at the clouds is very pleasing to me. I've learned weather watching mostly from that.

The normal weather pattern here is west to east, with most of our storms coming out of the south. Those warm south winds usually bring the wettest days, but when the wind switches to the northerlies
 we get cold. The balmy intervals usually mean rain on the way, and just because the sun comes out, doesn't mean it will get warm when you stand on concrete for all those hours.

But that cup of tea is so much extra comfort, that bowl of soup, or the hand-warmer crepe. Even holding a plate of noodles is gratifying, and with the smaller crowds I sometimes even get to eat my hot food while it is still warm. The pressure comes down and we all relax a little.

Every neighborhood at the Market has a little society all its own, and ours is quite familial. Raven starts that little song right at 10:00 and the juju is shared, the hopes for prosperity and fun. The cone of power is raised and we all holler. We compare notes throughout the day, completing our loose rituals and repeating our sometimes tired standing jokes. Our competitions rarely get serious, as we all support each other and sincerely wish the best for every one. We can afford the luxury of keeping our hearts open to the day and to the opportunities that the public brings along with their browsing or intentional immersion. We are safe, we are encouraged to grow and change, and we are loved. Nothing could feel better on a cold wet day than a sense of greater purpose.

Yes, friends and neighbors, here is where I preach my old refrain about how the Market made me and what a precious, irreplaceable and ephemeral whisp of spontaneity it is. It only happens when you attend, only cooks when you stir the pot.

I've been a member since before we kept track, my first Market in 1975 when I was new to town. I've never missed a Holiday Market and though my commitment occasionally lightened when I was single-parenting and building the house, I have always kept Market close. I've had most of the selling experiences a person can have. I've written many words on the subject of my joy. It's always, in some way, just what I want it to be, exactly what I need.

But the ephemeral can never be taken for granted. The last few years have been some of our most challenging and though we are not in crisis, most of our challenges are ongoing and we haven't solved them yet. A lot of the questions we have to answer are not posed by us, but by the conditions under which we operate. We sell in public, so the public is mostly in charge, but it is our job to contain the surge of energy and turn it to our benefit. We work hard at that.

I have to get out in the shop today, with Holiday Market starting next week (!!) and there are many things on my list, but it was a priority to say this: If you can, by any means possible, come down to the Park Blocks this Saturday.

I know it's hard, and sometimes feels foolish to take the chance of coming out when there's no guarantee of comfort or success. I know those property taxes took most of your spending cash. I know the Farmers' Market will be closing at 1:00 and will be tiny anyway, but they might have cranberries and there are all of those lovely breads and squashes, and you can never have enough apples in the house. Have you seen all the new flours and grains? Emmer?

It's hard, but it's so worth doing. Saturday Market uses every dollar for the common good, to present the world-class event and make it look easy, to serve the members with what we need and more, to provide comfort and ease for the customers who come from all over that world. Our staff works so damn hard for us, and whether or not anyone else comes, they will be there hauling trash and putting up shelters and now we even have patio heaters! Beth will call out as many names as she can, and everyone can have an 8x8.

We need lots of customers, even if they individually don't spend money, to fill up the place and make it look interesting. Customers are part of the entertainment! You may not know how many of us are writers jotting down overheard dialogue or character sketches. You may not know that we are constantly inspired and gratified by ordinary heroes and friendly folks who come down and love us, or learn to. We think subtle things, like how to not see every new person as a customer, but to be open to what is being brought to the marketplace by each of us, including the person holding the cash. It's a lot more than a money exchange down at 8th and Oak.

But more than customers, we need our members to sustain us. We need you to put in your twelve hours or whatever it takes you to bring your goods down and spread them out. It's not just your ten percent that we need. Every week we get people new to us, both members and customers, and we want them to fall in love fast. We want each person to be able to see and touch what we hold so dear in our lives.

It's most likely going to rain on me, and not just on the way home like two weeks ago. My tote bags are going to get damp and something will fall to the pavement and need to be washed. That canopy will get wet again and be a problem to dry, since I won't be using it until April. My foot will hurt and my hands will ache.

But the moments of the last day outdoors feel golden, glowing with emotion as we wrap up another season. I am constantly amazed by what we are creating downtown, by our longevity and sustainability and the toughness of our commitment to each other. I plan on spending as much money as I can on Saturday, buying those apples and cups of soup and silver rings and new socks. Yes, I could wait for Holiday Market, but if I do my purchasing this week, Market gets the ten percent, and maybe we get a little healthier with a little bigger rainy day fund in case our weather magic wanes.

Last week as I passed through the corner where we all meet, there was a young man playing classical music under the tree, one who has aged with us right through his cute stage to be a very serious musician. Lotte Streisinger, one of our founders, happened to be navigating her walker in the opposite direction (she comes every week, and on Tuesdays too!) We shared a huge grin at the perfection of the moment.

Saturday Market is as perfect as our earthly endeavors can get, due to the conscientious work of thousands of members and those who serve and love us. Come and be a part of it. It's your last chance until April, and that is a very long time from now.

Next?

Windowsill is in, caulked in every way, and I got a quick coat of paint on it yesterday in the balmy prequel to today's deluge. That project is finished, except I really don't like the wambly front surface. Put it on the list to edit. Do better next time.

I've been writing my book in bits and in my mind as I do other things, and have been thinking a lot about my friend Richard's role in the process of the house. I have to write a chapter about him, but it might not make the final cut because it is really not the subject, but part of the backstory.

Richard showed up in my life through a mutual friend's work project, and I was looking for love at the time and got a big attraction. I was also looking for a way to remodel this house, and I asked him to make a bid. I never ended up getting any others, because as we conversed about it, he said a fateful thing. Of course I don't remember his exact words, but this is how he talks:

"Some people do their own work. When the owner is building, the permit department treats the project differently." Okay, that is how I talk. He might say something about the bastards not being quite so hard on an owner-built project, and something about how there were lots of options, but what I didn't hear was essential. I didn't hear that any part of it was too hard for me to do on my own. I didn't hear "You can't" in any words, and that has been true for the last twenty-some years.

We've had thousands of complicated talks with times of annoyance or crush getting into the edges, but over the years I have been able to drop most of my defensiveness and delusion regarding the way men interact with women over projects involving tools. Richard has been my mentor.

I didn't recognize the role, as I can't think of any other mentor like him in my life. He says things like "I don't have to be right," and "so that's how you decided to do it." He always agreed to do the parts that seemed way out of my reach, like tying the two roofs (old and new) together, and he gave me a wonderful book on framing which I still reference. He checked in frequently without it seeming like he was checking on me.

Sometimes I paid him and sometimes I didn't. I have some quirks about money. My initial budget for building half a house, with kitchen and bathroom, was $13,000. He helped me make the plans, which I drew myself, he gave me essential details about how to navigate the permit process, and he was wonderful with sources, referrals to experts, and answering dumb questions. After awhile I didn't even think of my questions as dumb anymore.

We're funny together. I talk differently with him, adopting that "guy" attitude and inflections that make me seem dressed in overalls and chewing on a straw, channeling my farm hand side. Long over my crush, I don't act like a girl (whatever that means) around him, I act like a contemporary. I feel handy, accomplished, and able to converse in builderspeak. I'm not embarrassed about my lack of skills, and he somehow has gotten into my brain with his logic and extremely solid ground. I frequently feel overwhelmed with the scope of a project, and his voice reminds me that a house is just a box, and I am able to reduce the project to stages that seem doable.

My creative process with these things involves procrastination while I visualize each step and figure out what I have to do first, in the middle, and at the finish, and while I look online and in books to see how other people do similar projects. Sometimes I launch without the proper preparation, like with the sidewalk. I don't know what I don't know yet, so when the concrete delivery is scheduled, Richard always shows up a couple of hours early. With the sidewalk, he brought  tools I didn't even know existed, the ones to make the grooves and the flat margins around the edge, and he was there when my two young men and I got behind the pour and almost had a hardened pile in the middle. We managed, but without him there I would have a cracked, roller-coaster path with lots of mess around it.

We would sit somewhere and gaze at the project while we chatted, and every so often he would say, "Well, what you could do..." or "One way you could do it would be..." or "Some guys might..." He must have had to bite his tongue every time to keep out every single note of discouragement he might transmit. It didn't seem like he was being careful, but now when I notice some of the awkward solutions I applied, I think he showed amazing discretion and strength. I did some boneheaded things!

Even though it took fifteen years and is not exactly finished, there is no doubt it is impressive that I completed a house and am living in it, spent very little money (maybe $30,000) to do it, and learned how to do plumbing, wiring, roofing, carpentry, sheetrock, all of it, from library books and trial and error. There were other people who lent a hand to tip up a wall or give me a piece of information I needed, but having Richard in the project with me made all the difference. I depended on him without even being aware of it.

I say that I built this by myself and I feel like I did, but there Richard is in many of the pictures, walking the top plate, hanging out the fascia, backing up the forms so the concrete wouldn't spill out. He never shook his head in dismay at my ignorance, though no doubt he hid a few smiles in his shirt collar. He got frustrated, and there were times we couldn't talk about a few things, but the connection persisted and deepened and I know he is one of the few people who really gets me, and is capable of true support, not just of me, but of anyone. He's got his curmudgeonly side, but sometimes when he talks about values and honesty and right and wrong, he approaches the role of spiritual guide as well. He does some deep thinking.

I can't say that I understand men very well,or the dynamics of male-female relationships, but I feel like he didn't treat me like a woman, and this was a glaring difference from they guys at Jerry's or the inspectors who had to come every six months (they tried, but sexism is just built in). He treated me like the artisan I am, the generalist who is curious about how to do everything and wants to try it, but has to do that exploration alone and at her own speed. He never pushed, he never did an insensitive action like tossing aside my work to replace it with his, he never was anything but supportive. And I didn't make that easy.

Quite simply, without Richard I would never have done the project, and one of the most significant life experiences (second only to parenting my son) would not have opened to me. I wouldn't be the person I am now. The amount of satisfaction and challenge and comfort and prosperity that I have gained over the last few decades gets partially logged into his column. And let it be said that he worked with me on lots of other things besides my house, my OCF booth for starters.

I'm not skilled at mentoring, though I have tried to encourage many people in many ways, and use some of what I observed, but I'm not just a taker either. He recently wanted a sailboat, and I lent him a bunch of books on sailing and am excited for him that he got one and is learning to sail. That is another of my interest areas and I'll enjoy talking sailing with him too. He's got grandchildren, so we don't see much of each other right now, but we're still there. I owe him, but he's not the type to add up life debts and expect payment. He would probably counter with some ways I opened up his life, subtle things I didn't notice. Such is the nature of complex, long friendships, that most of the big ways we appreciate the person are never spoken.

I have to find a way in the book to convey the weight of his help without it seeming like we were partners or that he was in charge. It was always my project, my house, and my mistakes. He certainly didn't make any.
When I look at my living room ceiling, which is smooth and level with only that one place where the sheetrock tape came loose, I have the lovely memory of looking at it with him when it sagged six inches and was ragged with long strips of derelict wallpaper and spider webs, and we delightedly hit on the idea of putting the laser level in the middle of my screenprinting carousel, which was in the room at the time, and rotated it slowly, marking the level on the walls. He got that chuckle at the elegance of the solution, at the potential of a finished ceiling, at the progress of finally being able to tackle one of the knottiest problems left to finish. It was just one of the moments when we both felt great, a moment right up there with looking up at the Country Fair trees as they swayed and groaned and speculating about what we would do when the big ash tree finally fell on the booth. Which it did.Talk about elegant solutions.

And what a joy it was to have someone to share that with. When I finished the sill, and the shingles on the OCF booth this summer, I took pictures and posted them to the faceless internet, but I was looking around for Richard. What a priceless gift he gave me, a twenty-year gift of standing next to me in pride and alliance.

So maybe the dedication page for Richard Whyte. He's not the story, but he certainly had my back.