Turning Everything to Silver and Gold

My pipes are well insulated now, but I remember when the drains would freeze and I'd wash dishes in the bathtub. The snow is still too deep for my bike and trailer, but I have a car, and it starts. My house is at 55 degrees, but I have lots of clean socks, and boots, and that makes me one of the luckiest people I know today.

Yesterday was traumatic, not a good day to be one of the overly empathetic. It was hard enough on people getting to Friday's load-in, not to mention Saturday. Our Market looked full compared to the Farmers' and the Authors fair. I'm guessing any weekend event blew their budget yesterday. Still, the mood was good as Market began, vendors and supporters coming in on skiis, sleds, everyone changing from boots to indoor shoes, spreading out our offerings as if it were a normal Saturday in December, meaning fully stocked and with expectations running high.

Then a broken pipe in the ceiling of Holiday Hall let loose a deluge. Susanna's vinegars stood in a ten-shower stall as vendors and staff ran for tubs and towels and the showers spread and the ceiling tiles crumbled. In a matter of minutes the water was turned off, as well as the electricity, and each and every booth in Holiday Hall was shut down for the day.

Beth circled them up and took the lead. She promised to do everything she could for them, and if you know Beth, you know that everything she can do has been tested and will go beyond all of the things that came to your mind. Within the hour all of our members who could be were relocated, either in the lobby, or temporarily in one of the booths of the many members who hadn't been able to make it down their particular hills. Probably none of them had the sales they had expected, and all the work they had done to their displays and arrangements had to be done again, but creativity is problem-solving, and most of us are rather good at it.

A fund was started to offer some immediate relief, and I'm guessing there might be a Kareng Fund application or two. Longer-term relief will come as the situation settles out. People cried and hugged, and helped. Everybody helped. In the Main Hall, it was possible to not even know that all of that had happened.
Business as usual, hard times are hard, but we do know how to pick ourselves up and start smiling again. Even Susanne just kept working, drying off her products and assessing her immediate future. It occurred to me later that some people got drenched. No one whined.

I can't count the number of times I have said we had a hard year. Last year was a hard year too, and we were talking about the years when we had booths still outside in December. This is just not an easy life. You have got to have some inner resources when you break your foot or your car or your top shelf with the fifteen mugs on it. Oh yes, that happened yesterday too.(Not the foot, that was last year, though other people broke other body parts more recently.)

Resilience is the key. You get right up, accept the hugs and generosity and get back to work. Forced to stay home? You make more stock for next week, because our silver lining is that we do get next week. It will probably be cold and rainy, but that will feel normal. Troublesome is normal.

Why do we even expect things to be easy? A few things are, like helping in crisis, and responding to need. Yet, not so easy to watch people get sick and leave us, to figure out what to say, how to be compassionate within your own trauma, your own damage. How do you provide real comfort when small pleasures and gestures may be all that is available? It is a stumbly way, like navigating the streets with two inches of packed ice on them. Do not fall.

But if you do, do it right in the open in a community like ours. Someone will pick up your spilled groceries, hold your hand, look into your eyes. Someone wants to be there for you. It isn't easy for them, and it isn't easy for you. Not really for anyone. We all have something holding us down, keeping us back, tripping us up.

It will be okay. All will be well, as Vi has been known to say. Things happen and sometimes they are poop. When the poop headline hit the papers last summer, we thought it had the potential to kill our Market. I can laugh now, but that was huge, and yet, we played an important part in fixing that problem. Now people are viscerally aware that everyone poops, and they need a place to do that. One less thing that gets shuffled into the closet of compassion fatigue.

Each little thing makes the big picture, and the big picture is still an expansive landscape like one of Tim's photos, fractally filled with detail like one of his little botanicals. Every little raindrop holds a reflection like Katharine's dew photos. Things are just not simple, and they do not remain the same. The snow will become legend, and maybe next year we will use the Atrium instead of Holiday Hall. We don't see the opportunities in the same way we don't see the disasters coming. All we can really do is stay positive, flexible, and resilient. And sometimes we fight for what we need, fighting kindly in our way.

Don't forget that we are survivors, and our hearts are working, and we can always do more, and do it better. Just keep doing your best. There will be another Saturday, and another glorious morning, and we will learn some more about grace and love. Keep opening. It hurts a little, but sometimes it brings the help we need. 
Better go check the pipes in the shop and put on a third pair of socks. See you at Holiday Market!

Oh yes: THANK YOU.

Caring Indoors

Day three of the three-day weekend. I am always surprised how tired I get. Today I apparently slept through my alarm, highly unusual behavior for me, so maybe I am not supposed to take the time to write today. I don't seem to have a clear point (not so unusual...)

Holiday Market is so irresistible to me. I try hard to stay in my booth but am compelled to see the new crafts and artists, and the progress of the ones I know from previous years, marking time by artistic progression. I found so many things I wanted or needed. I tried to support some of the new artists who were trying HM for the first time, trying to make them "fall in love fast" as I said in my last post. Here is a pile from last week. This week I will have a much smaller pile, as I was far too busy making sales yesterday to even make it to the farm, as I call it when I hurry down the hall to the farmers' market room.

Most of us who sell outside have a palpable sense of relief when we walk into the doors at the Fairgrounds, dressed in our nice clothes, without our many layers, ready to focus on our friends and neighbors who come to see the gallery that is ours. We relax as the facets of our jobs shift slightly to a different focus, as the sometimes desperate feeling wanes, as we increase our trust in ourselves and our choices. I know I will do well. I don't have to worry about it at all. I can look at the totals of my past years (I have sold at every Holiday Market we've had, from the first when we invented it.) This trust turns to pure love as we deepen our friendships and our enjoyment of our community.

It's always enlightening to see the new people who don't quite see our existing culture, the ones who pack early or complain about the management when "the management" is walking by, the ones who don't sell well and get desperate and hawk their wares to our guests, the ones who sell out because their prices are too low,or sell little because their prices are too high. The Holiday Market at its best is not a discount show. We don't offer early bird specials or loss leaders or any other tricks to get our potential customers in the door. We dress ourselves up and try to present a warm, rich, gorgeous showing of us at our very best.

The complaining ones don't see the deep love that is going around the room, the neighborhood alliances and romances and new friendships and history and joy. They miss some of what is running under the surface, the river we ride in and the strength of its flow. We're not perfect, but we are us.

I try to help with bringing others in with us. The first weekend Art Bag project was a perfect try at bringing people in. Yes, it was transparent that we were trying to get more shoppers and booths to commit to the first weekend. We had a lot of empty booths last year and far fewer this year. A practical look at the costs and returns leads some to just sell on the sure-thing December weekends, but the bag project worked for me and I made more money the first weekend than last year. And, in a bigger surprise, I sold more bags.

I will admit that because I sell canvas bags, as well as print the ones the Market sells, I made the complaint that the bag project was going to cost me. I fell into a petty space, and I could feel that it was petty, but I learned that lesson one more time. If it feels petty, just quit it. I was wrong. The bag project served to raise the interest in canvas bags, and aligned with the plastic bag ban in Eugene and other cities, bags are more popular and needed, and Saturday/Holiday Market is now known as the place to get the good bags.

This will, of course, be of direct benefit to me, even if all of my fellow members develop and sell a bag. It's like selling tie-dye in the tie-dye capital of the Universe. People come. They want the selection and variety and artistic expression that we do so well. Those 46 bags with the 46 recognizable artistic styles were a joy to see and touch and the people who won them were more than delighted. To our credit, we did not take their addresses and add them to our database. We simply gave the bags away. Joyfully and with our whole hearts. We were us at our best.

Much is made of the consistently amazing philanthropy of my other organization, the OCF, but people may not see our quieter form of this at Saturday Market. We give free space, even the costly HM space, to nonprofits every week, where they can sell handmade items and raise funds for their organizations. Womenspace runs the coat check/ package wrap tables in the front of the room. We have buskers, and there are many, many people who seek to attach themselves to our success. We are happy to share.

What is more, we formed our own emergency relief fund, called the Kareng (caring) Fund. I'll write more about it, but I just want to announce that we have started a little bag project of our own. I say we because I serve on the Kareng Fund Board, with eight other kind folks. The Fund is ten years old, and has given out over $20,000 in grants to artisans in crisis, with career-threatening situations or injuries. Almost all of our funds have come from Market members and friends, and from the fundraising efforts we do at the Holiday Market.



In the coming weeks I will post pictures of our latest good idea, more tote bags! We decided to ask artists to decorate the back of our Kareng Fund bags (with the Market basket filled with hearts) for us. I have collected several now and this week I will get them photographed. They are sweet! This time Market members will indeed be eligible to win one, but these come with a cost, and will be auctioned off on the last weekend.

The fun just never ends! This one will feel good. On that morning, we drop our frame of being all about making money for ourselves, and we share it with each other. People seem to love contributing to the Kareng Fund. I know it is deeply satisfying to work with the Board, giving grants and expanding our scope.

This year we applied and hope to be granted our own 501c3 status. We now serve not just Market members but any low-income self-employed artisan in Oregon. That means OCF members, LCFM members, and those from other towns in our state. We will be doing more outreach and making ourselves known in the next year (still waiting to hear from the IRS regarding our status, though once we do gain it, donations will be retroactively tax-deductible.)


I know many people don't know about the KF, so come ask me if you have questions. We are always accepting donations through the Saturday Market office, and will be mounting our campaign this week. Be part of us. The working poor, the self-employed, have not had an easy decade. Some of us are so far below the poverty level we may never rise above it (certainly not on our Social Security income.) We need each other. We are the safety net that we have woven for ourselves and our community.


Give of yourself this season. It is about so much more than cheap appliances and sock sales. We don't have kettles and bells, but you can find us at the Holiday Market. We want you in our family.

I will be there by the south side doors, near the entrance to Holiday Hall where the nonprofits put up their tables. Wave

at me as you take a few bucks in there and help your neighbors. Stay small and make big changes. I know when I broke my heel and a lovely card came in the mail with an unexpected grant, I cried big tears. It was not about the money, which of course I badly needed for my three months of immobility and year of recovery, it was about the caring. I felt held in the hands of my people.


Let's hold out our hands, and hold each other. Not just now, but especially now, when there is so much we need and so much we want. Presents, yes, but also presence. I will try to be here for you. Thank you, from my heart, for being here for me.