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.