Post post

After two solid days of work

We seem to be stuck in a moist cloud this morning, just like last Sunday. Main difference for me is that this is my first real day off after the major push of work to get to Fair and back again. Getting ready for Market was hard but well worth it, as I re-establish my routine and shift gears into summer.

Everything I brought back from Veneta was damp, so I spent the week hauling it all outside, drying it, and putting it all back into the tubs and boxes. We use excessive amounts of fabric out there and each item I took was either dusty or damp or both. I did successfully tarp my booth with a 20x30 foot white tarp I bought after the mud fair a few years back, motivated my helpers to get it up Saturday night so when the big drops fell on Sunday nothing was ruined. I think I packed that giant tarp up clean and dry for the next time, rolled for ease of unrolling. I felt smart having that protection when all reports were for hot and sunny all weekend.

It was odd to be checking the weather reports and rain probabilities online from the woods, but we were wired out there this year. Even  my Square worked, though the password-protected channel got overloaded on Sunday. There was no general announcement but lots of people owe a big thanks to Clif Cox for getting the wifi set up in that daunting setting. My needs were met.

That was my first thought as I made notes for this post on Monday and Tuesday as I shuffled stuff: Fair is the place where we can all get our needs met. This concept is something I have been working on since the big rain showed me that I was doing something the wrong way, as my needs were not met and I felt unseen. I went within to see what I could change, and the first thing was my thinking that complaining and assigning responsibilities to others was going to help me. This transformation continued for the next several years as I stepped up to join the Scribe Tribe, taking committee meeting minutes, and then joined the Craft Committee.

The year of the broken foot and then the wedding last year deepened my understanding of how things really work at Fair (and in Life) and I no longer feel any "They" out there: just Us. My level of appreciation for the whole scene this year was a hundred times what it used to be. I felt the love, and the hope, and the sharing and the family that is our Fair community. Considering that this involves around a hundred thousand people, give or take a few, it is a remarkable feeling.

I had some people rant at me about their various difficulties. I've heard these rants before and now certain things ring false really loudly. Everytime someone makes a category of "them" and assigns some groupthink or behavior to them, I bring up the fact that all of the "thems" are just individuals trying to get their needs met and help others in the family. Outsiders put themselves there. There's not really a privileged inner circle that holds any power, but rather a large group of persons willing to work together for common goals. Lots of the goals are connected: having an event, regulating the event, selling at the event, living at the event, making the event meaningful beyond its three days of public presence. Each individual is creating a slightly different event, shaded by their goals, and these all happening at the same time create a rich tapestry that cannot be imagined, fully viewed, or fully known by the individual. It's huge and spinning and spontaneous and planned, and can be overwhelming and you can certainly get chewed up by it if you do not understand the flow.

No one person creates it, and not many of the decisions are made by one person either. I had a craftsperson tell me that some of the "they" (which group happened to include me) did something completely unjust, which was fixed by some of the other "they" who are really the ones in charge, and this person's view of things completely supported their version of the Fair reality. This is how we get when we forget that we are individuals in a participatory process. His version was not my version, and they were almost opposed in view. We also had tons of common ground from which to work, though the timing was not such that we could find that and work forward from it right then. We were already working as hard as we could work.

That will be the job of the post-post Fair. We have some giant philosophical and practical issues to solve, and we will have to go way back to re-establishing our common ground and our initial agreements. We may not end up with the Fair we started with. The amorphous event has grown with participation and gone in directions on its own, and created some unique problems. For example, I don't know of any other Fairs that grant lifetime ownership of a craft booth, or have artisans who are grandfathered for over 30 years now. We are different, and we have some adjustments to make to carry that into the future.

I sold logo bags for the first time this year

I believe in the elegant solution and I am convinced that given the time and patience we can find ways to adapt our policies and processes to ease some of the problems we have grown. We will all have to have a similar evolution in thinking from the us vs. them paradigm to get there, so everyone can just start working on that now. You are the Fair just as much as I am. I don't want to impose anything on you just as I do not wish to be imposed upon. Little shifts are all that are needed.

Another example is that I was having a problem with the idea that the volunteers were on the site working to serve me, the artisan. I don't want servants. I want people to admit they are participating to get their own needs met (for summer camp, for fun, for belonging, to enjoy the work) and I want the volunteers to believe that they are working with me, to get all of our needs met. We are working together. That means you can ask me for certain behaviors or commitments and I can ask the same of you. I want respect, you want respect.

This takes some questioning. Do you need that particular thing you are asking of me to make your job easier? Is there something I need to know to fully cooperate? Am I being realistic with my own requests? Are they really requests, or demands?

When you really look around, you see some of the issues you might not be realistic about. For instance, Traffic crew does not work on Monday; Pre-post Security steps up to get us all out safely. Those people in the shirts may not know anything about traffic flow or what you have always done or what you want to do. They are likely just as tired as you are. Turn off your engine and enjoy the last few moments on site, as it will do no good to complain about the inept qualities of Traffic Crew. You are way off base. You're seeing a narrow view of what you think is reality.

My biggest complaint was a shortage of open bathrooms and adequate tissue at Shady Grove both pre-and post-Fair. Can I go farther into this issue to see if I am asking too much? Can I bring my own tp? Can I walk down to Politics Park, really not much farther, really not much impact on my day? Could be the crew members who cleaned toilets for a week are feeling like they have done enough. Maybe they have jobs to go to on Monday, and limiting the number of open bathrooms gets them out a day earlier to resume their other responsibilities. I could find out about this, instead of just bitching about standing in line when I need to poop. I could refuse to take it personally and feel hustled offsite, and try to understand how and why the decision was made. It most definitely was not made to inconvenience me personally. Person Me was not there and was not part of the decision. You can extrapolate from this to apply this type of thinking to your own favorite complaint.

So these are my tired thoughts about how to function a little better as a group. The appreciation of the safety and nurturing that goes on there increases as you assume your needs can be met, if you increase your participation in those common goals.

One delightful moment showed me one of the gifts we bring to ourselves. A young mother set her three small children on the evening path and shooed them. "Run away, run away!" she called after their little flying bodies. She went with them, of course, just in case, but it reminded me how safe it is to explore our site. One evening when my son was smaller, he stayed out a bit too long in the scary dark of the woods and I had to go find him huddled at the Main Camp fire trying not to look frightened. He's on Security now (worked a midnight to seven shift), grew up testing his own boundaries on the Site, and has the skills to help others now. There was no avenue for him to learn these skills in our town life. Our community empowers our young ones.

And then they go and create things which amaze and change us, and we learn we can also follow them. I miss the dark woods, now supplanted with LED toys of every description, and while I still take flashlight-less walks at night, I see my twenty-year-old self in the roaming bands of youthful friends promenading. It's not the same, but it's still good. I go to bed listening just as I have always done (no longer sleeping under my big ash tree, alas) and I get waked up to beauty and creativity each morning to work some more. I do it for love, and for money, and for participation in a most remarkable community. I really feel the Us. I hope you do too.

Not everyone gets such an opportunity, so we have to treasure it. We have to work to do that. We have to work together to do that. Let us continue.

No time like the right time

I have no time left to get ready for the big show: it's all scramble from here on in. This week was so compelling that I have to take this moment out, even though it might mean dropping a few things from the bottom of the list.

New locally made bags

I got my new locally made bags! I am beyond thrilled. I ordered them from T&J Sewing in Springfield, a wonderful little family company. Saturday Market has been using bags from them for a couple of years, and this year I decided the world needs a two-handled tote that has a gusset so there is a flat bottom, but one that isn't as big or tall as the available imports. This one is perfect, and is made from domestic fabric and webbing handles, and prints really well. The quality is obvious, so I printed some up and hung them right in the front of my booth, and shoppers responded! They were even priced a bit higher, and the difference is obvious, so the savvy shoppers who didn't need to buy the cheapest thing saw just what I dreamed they would see.

This was not a small venture for me, I invested over $1000 in this speculation and it will be a long time before I sell them all. Could be a very long time. Still, I am happy to stop stocking the imported bags and gradually move to all local ones. I'm a screenprinter, not a sewer, so I can't make them myself. When you see them you realize not only do they cut and sew them, they have to press them to put in the folds, and they did a flawless job over there, in a very quick turnaround, so I could have some to take to Fair. I'm super grateful and excited.

So that's part of the good news. The rest is what happened at Market yesterday, a quietly observed but highly significant change. Beth decided to move the Information Booth off the northeast Park Block, away from the illegal and unsavory activities at the Free Speech Plaza. After last week's crimes, it seemed that it was no longer a great idea to put our staff and customers, and ourselves, at risk of our lives and well-being by using the county property. We were being asked to increase our liability insurance to an unfathomable level just to rent that 10x10 space for our Info Booth, while right next to us criminals were paying nothing to sell whatever they wanted and were attracting scofflaws of every sort to feed off of our event. We've been struggling for years to work on the space there and return it to the intent of a space for free speech.

It has been an ugly struggle. The county has not been supportive of us. Our organization is deeply committed to longterm relationships that benefit all parties and we had been spending quite a lot to clean the space at the end of the day, deal with all of the social problems concentrated there, and we don't have the money. All of our income comes from us, the members, who pay our fees and pay our bills and keep our nonprofit on her feet. We have enough to do without doing what the county has not been addressing.

So we're off the block and it felt amazing. Such a simple change but so heartening! The FSP looked much the same, and a fascinating thing happened, which may or may not have been related. All of a sudden there was extremely loud drumming on the western edge of our site, across the street, a small group of djembe players pounding with sticks, creating an unbelievable racket that completely obscured our usual sound rhythms and took over our Market for the hour or so they played at a couple of different locations within and without our event perimeter.

It was so inconsiderate, and of course drew an appreciative crowd with dollars to tip. The expertise was there (thanks to my ex- I actually know enough to appreciate technique a little) but the presentation was puzzling. So selfish, so entitled. They paid nothing to our organization for dominating our space for that hour.

It was a profound metaphor for how outside forces pressure us, how delicately we individually set up and cooperate for our mutual good, and how easy it is to hijack our event. It sucked. It was exactly what the FSP activities do to us, plus a thousand. It was frightening. At least when they came onto our site, in the grass on the south side, they came under our rules and we could hold them to the 20-minute limit for busking in a particular location. I assume they were then asked to move and we didn't hear them again. But the point was made, and I have no idea if it was intentional or completely unrelated to our move off the site.

It's weird, but the people selling and hanging at the FSP consider themselves to be members of Saturday Market, even though they pay no fees and follow none of our rules. We're such an open, welcoming group that like the YesYesYes Fair, we try to allow rather than restrict. Our restrictions come from self-preservation. We make agreements about them. We don't punish and fine our members to try to get them to comply, we use logic and peer pressure to articulate and adapt our agreements to fit the reality.

That works for most of the participants, but there will always be a number of "us" who don't follow the rules, and don't care for the organization, don't really feel a part of it. That's inside them, and I understand it, having broken a lot of rules myself and learned why it feels better to belong instead. People feel shut out and hurt by what is essentially their inner refusal to belong, to join. It's a big part of the dysfunction of our world and we all see it in many ways. The FSP problems are our microcosm.

And they're not over, but we're not playing the same game anymore. We won't give any assumed approval to what is going on over there, won't clean it up, won't try to fix it. I'm guessing people who are already hurt could feel this as an abandonment by SM. Maybe it will cause some reflection by a few of them. Maybe the LCFM and the County can work together to change things for a bit, but I'm not confident that either of them have the management to deal with any of it.

Our Saturday Market management and staff are simply the best there is. Beth has the depth of character and the ethics to make the right call every time, and the membership knows it and backs her decisions without fail. She doesn't make them in a vacuum. She knows how to work with people, take the temperature, get the facts, see who the players are and what their intentions might be...she is a marvel. She has my complete admiration, and with her in place other good people come forward. Our volunteers and members are some of the most wonderful people in our world.

My new peach design on the new bag

I know the hippie Mall of the Woods is my current love and I am spending all of my energy getting ready to make a great presentation out there, and to maybe even have a tiny bit of fun next weekend, but Saturday Market is my first love and I am just profoundly pleased and grateful. After the drumming scalded us all with the horrific possibilities of things we cannot control that hurt us, the ceasing of it left a quiet, when we resumed our natural pace and recaptured our soulful tunes and our sweetness. We had a great day. Tourists loved us, without knowing anything about our neighborhood struggles and our deep and thoughtful deliberations. Locals came with their old and loved crafts to add to their collections, brought their ancient tote bags to see my new ones. Friends came to air-kiss (the queenly ones) and visit and share the anticipation of the OCF.

All was very well. To top it off, this week, after almost two years of waiting and spending money, the Kareng Fund received our 501c3 nonprofit designation from the IRS. Our artisans relief fund is now a real, stand-alone charitable organization, there for us for career-threatening crises. It is not just there for Saturday Market members, but for all artisans in Oregon who belong to craft organizations. That's you, Fairies. Think about it. We have a fund of over $20,000, gathered by the penny from donations of our members, ready to help those who will stand with us, belong, care, and give to us. We can help you when you get your diagnosis, your accident, your misfortune, your tragedy. The word "deep" does not go far enough here.

We have our backs. We are us. This is no small thing. Thank you. See you on the path, and the very next weekend, see you back on the Park Blocks. Love you.

Logo bags, available at OCF booth 175