We'll Be There

This will be our last, cold Saturday on the Park Blocks for the season, so everyone is naturally focusing on the ever-so-much-warmer Holiday Market. We'll have the groovy Art Bags http://artbags.tumblr.com/ , a free drawing for customers of high-quality locally sewn bags decorated by 25 individual artists. They were totally amazing last year and so far this year, with new artists (mostly) they are again refreshingly creative. I enjoyed the challenge last year but am happy to just bring my own bags this season. I use the same locally sewn bag, a lovely USA-made canvas bag sewn up to my design in Springfield by T&J Sewing. I'm so proud to have them, and hope to gradually stop using any imported ones. Come see them and help me decide on my next bag design.

We'll have a new backdrop for the stage, painted by Reality Kitchen, which will be a visual treat. See artists at work. The place will be full up with treats, visual, victual, and stuff you can hold in your hands and marvel at. Hand-crafted treasures by real live artists and craftspeople are not just anywhere, and the opportunity to be handed them by the actual artists themselves is a precious gift of the season that you will not find at any mall.

But before all that, we'll be bringing our hearts and souls downtown one more time for that long full day of connecting, joking, singing, laughing, and hugging. In our neighborhood we always show up, and we always treasure it all, and we will be sorry to see the end of the outdoor season. It was a surprising and fulfilling year, what with the successful switch in managers, the sweet move off the county corner with all of it's random dysfunction, and the new relationship between the Market and Fair standards-keepers. We have set a bright future in place for next season. It will seem like the same old place but it is never the same place.

Each person brings a new treat each week, a new self, an insight or a story or a friend. It amazes me over and over and fills me with joy. Even if I am freezing all day and not selling what I brought to sell, I always have a good Saturday. Holiday Market is just a bonus.

For way too many years we tried to sell outside until Christmas, with our propane heaters and our battery lights and our various schemes to attract customers. The year (1986?) we created what we called The New Holiday Market, we wanted to create a new holiday, not Christmas, not Xmas, not the Dickens' Fair. We made something with our collective creativity that was special and fantastic and precious and we have made it better every year. All of us have worked to do that, the committee members and the people who do their work tasks and the excited people who bring their newest work to Standards to be screened. Beth did a lot, so much, did everything to help us raise our artistry and stand tall as professionals and experts in our city, but she did it with us. We all did it together. We are a community within a wonderfully receptive and supportive community, those of us who will be there this Saturday and those of us who used to, will be, and care about us.

It will be good to see you. I'll try not to tell you about the root canal I got today, which turned out to be arduous and an important part of my human education. I'm a person who gets my teeth cleaned every six months and just did not even know what a rotten tooth would be like. It didn't hurt, was just a sore spot on my gum, but shit oh dear it turned out to be a big deal. I guess I needed a compassion adjustment about people who can't afford dentistry. The poor people's dentist would have removed my still-good tooth rather than spend three hours saving it, so because I had some money left from my successful season, I don't have a big hole in my jaw. I will need to think about that. My Mom told me that when she was young on a Nebraska farm, they knew exactly what a bad tooth was and what to do about it. She made sure we didn't know by sending all five of us to the dentist over and over again. Different times, different problems.

A bad tooth is such a little problem in the world. So many have so many much greater problems. I feel lucky today. I biked there, did I say that? Ice was falling off the trees in the woods and on the way home I got soaked just like I did last week. This time I didn't complain to myself, I just felt happy. I told the old men jogging in the rain how tough they were. I felt tough. I am tough. I have real staying power.

And that is why I'm still showing up on the Park Blocks, still loading in my Holiday Market booth for nine hours next week, still so grateful and appreciative of my craftsperson's life. It isn't easy, but it's easy to keep doing it. It's easy to keep loving it.

And that in its turn makes it easy to keep loving you. See you Saturday!