Surprises Every Week

The combination of routine and the unknown every Saturday Market makes for an unfolding mix I can't resist. So often I wake tired and unwilling to mount the energy I know it will take, but I learned long ago to make no decisions in the morning. I am going. Coffee and sometimes bacon are needed and when 6:45 comes I log out of Facebook and go load up. My Tuesday commitment is only slightly less concrete. I am continually surprised at the sources of pleasure and food for thought (as well as the body) that float through my booth neighborhood. Never two days alike. Nearly always soul-stirring as well.

Yesterday so many things happened I won't be able to report on all of them. The Slug Queen did bring the Empathy Tent as well as playing onstage with his Sunday band, and I'm enjoying Markalo Parkalo immensely as he brings his style to the public. I have admired Mark Roberts for a long time due to his commitment to compassionate communication (NVC inspired by the great Marshall Rosenberg) and his own brilliance and sense of humor, as well as lack of ego and male dominance paradigm...he's just a stellar person who has made the most of his life experience and talents. He's a sweet one, restoring my sometimes tenuous faith in the human male animal. Anyway, Markalo dresses the way he wants and is quicksilver in his presentation. He is going to be a force of legend. It's fitting that there is no Eugene Celebration framing to lean on for him. He was not given the key to the city, as Bananita said so eloquently: he has to go out and find it. He's doing really wonderfully so far!

After the Coronation I was helping to clean up and happened to rescue his handwritten speech, which is essentially his promise to us, his people, and here it is. I love what handwriting reveals and he stuck to the script, promising even more between the lines.

I thought to make it into an art piece for him but used the Slug to make the headpiece instead. I bestowed him with his purple flower crown yesterday to our mutual delight and he has plans to make it part of his eclectic and ever-changing costume, which will fit his expanded role.He has already added el-wire to his pimp hat and the lovely green crown Kim Still made (she as First Lady-in-Waiting gets to make lots of Slug Queen Swag.)

  So there was that. He and I had a great chat about the Empathy Tent mid-day, mostly me reinforcing my belief that if everyone had even a little training in compassionate listening and communicating we would all make life more wonderful for each other without much effort, instead of all the self-and other-sabotage we enter into without knowing a better way to get our needs met. The Empathy Tent will have a sometimes-there presence at Saturday Market for the rest of the season, usually locating on the west block back by the south wall. Step on in with your questions and concerns. Get to know Markalo. He's Your Queen and Mine!

Lots of our members stayed home yesterday due to fears about the weather. Remember what I have said about fears and weather predictions before...there was very little rain and not much wind either yesterday, just enough to keep us on our toes. People did fine with just umbrellas, and there was no weight inspection or punitive actions and no booths went flying either. Most of the storminess went north of us although I was happy I was prepared. It wasn't easy to bring that 75 pounds of sand on my bike cart. With the repair of the fountain our longtime habit of putting one or two of our booth legs into the recess of the fountain moat is over; my popup is now skewed out into the aisle a foot on the southeast corner and I have to bungie it to keep it in place, and I'll probably need the fourth weight bag now to be in compliance with the policy. I like being in compliance with policy. I seem to have outgrown much of my rebellious bad-girl parts and given over to Miss Rule-Follower. (Not in every way, of course, but I'm 65...need a little more safety for my body.) I felt bad for those who gave into their fears and stayed home. We had so many tourists! I sold a lot of bags, too, and people were really happy to find them. I had several conversations about plastic bags and imported bags and lots of support for my line of locally made and dyed products.

There was even a moment I exchanged looks with a charismatic and gorgeous young man who turned out to be Casey Affleck, we think. He was not your usual good-looking young man, I could tell that. He had a quality of self-awareness and deep power that was either his good luck or something he has learned from being in the big world that most of us would never want to enter, if we're honest. There was a touch of fear mixed with the expectation that I had recognized him (which I didn't), and I imagine that the opportunity to live a normal day strolling the Market with his friends was very precious to him, so I'm glad I didn't know who he was. It's possible that I made up the whole story, as possible as the idea that I might have sold him a hat. I don't even know. I make stuff up, but somebody else was positive it was him and it was certainly quite possible.

Our local celebrity Rich Glauber came by to sing the almost-finished version of a new song he has written about the 1920's, another in a series of very clever and accomplished songs he seems to write with a magical access to skill and knowledge built up over years of practice. He makes it look easy but when you hear the process from the beginning you can see how he layers it up like any piece of writing. He starts with a musical phrase or an idea, and with sometimes only a note or two he can add a whole new aspect, like a little reference to a Gershwin song he threw in there. He captured the giddiness before the crash of 1929...we can look back and see it, but he doesn't foreshadow it heavily, just enough to make us think about our times now, as we see what is coming but still party like it isn't. Do people really believe we won't be able to drive cars and have plastic everything? No, they do not, but some of us are operating like this is already the case. Some of my alternative culture friends don't even accept a plastic bag, because they don't want to be part of that stream of consumerism when they decide its next use. They don't want to be the one to throw it in the trash. I'm getting to be more and more that way, saving my bath water to use for other things, cutting down my water bill and feeling like I can still grow flowers in the drought. Riding my bike even for the awkward and distant objects I do need to consume. Mostly it seems eccentric, but really lots of us hippies have always known the future will demand such skills and comfort with the less-consumptive patterns of our society.

We want to already do the right thing even before it is legislated. That's not an easy road to walk. The booth weights issue was a great example of that yesterday. Those of us who got with the program were relaxed, and those who have resisted were caught a little short. We all know that the future will catch us all short, and we recognize the human nature in avoiding and procrastinating and not working on the skills we need. When we have an emotional crisis, the same things happen if we don't gain some skills while we can.

The gossip mills were less active yesterday (or didn't reach my ears) and the Empathy Tent was well-used. Little by little we are improving, working things out. We're still getting used to life without Beth, as a community, seeing how much we depended on her to keep us together, do all the necessary counseling and keeping out ahead of our tendencies as someone who knew us so well. We commiserated yesterday about how much we still need a Mom down on the Park Blocks. Well, I don't want the position, and truly we are better off not having someone we put into that role. Everybody needs to grow up, no matter their age, not just in the Market/Fair communities but everywhere. There is nobody in charge of your emotional growth but you, though of course you cannot do it all by yourself. Look around and listen well to all the forces that are there to assist you in being a better you, having a better experience, making life more wonderful every day for each other. That was Marshall's legacy, and the unspoken wish of all those we have tragically lost in recent days from our collective society. Hurt people hurt others. Take care of your pain; get the help you need. Keep working together to work for positive change. It has never not been needed; it has never not been the way. It has always been The Way. Humbly yours and mine.

Old Ways

Ah, summer is winding down, long before I am ready. It might even rain on Saturday! Of course rain is really needed, but we also need the Saturday income flow...but Sunday, rain on Sunday would be fine with me. This past Sunday I actually stayed inside because of the smoke, reminding myself how much bad air we tolerate already, not so much here, where the smog isn't visible (yet) but in other places, cities mostly. One of the reasons I seldom drive.

Had an interesting chat yesterday with my neighbor at the Tuesday Market, a person half my age who is a woodcarver. He's very dedicated to the handmade ethic, thinking hard about how he can make things more handcrafted in his life, not less. I draw great hope from young people who take on the hippie values (which to be honest were probably just traditional farmer values that the hippies adopted along with all the other cultural appropriations of the alternative culture.) Certainly the direction away from more mechanized solutions to everything is my direction. I got rid of my clothes dryer at least a decade ago, and don't miss it. I have a clothesline and know how to take advantage of the weather, even in the winter. I enjoy the biking and walking and even how long it takes.

We talked a bit about the politics of the Markets and Fair and the things that have changed over the 40-year history that I know and it was hard to pin down any separation or real change. Visually, almost everyone uses pop-ups and most of the change has been so gradual it isn't noticed, but the hard parts are mostly hidden. The laser cutters and 3-D printers and other forms of automation have crept in, though thanks to the dedication of a few there is at least an awareness of it. Personally I think laser-cutting needs to be eliminated from the handcrafted market, but I can surely see how computers have aided and not always subtracted from the ways we do things. Defining "handcrafted" becomes more challenging with every meeting, for both Market and Fair, and it will be a long process to dial things back if indeed we can. He and I talked about how a person can only make so many things in a day, and prices can only go so high. I bought a cool little coffee spoon that I had been wanting, which will fit inside my coffee jar, but how many people will pay $25 for a thing you don't actually need? Maybe a lot, as the real handcrafted things become harder and harder to find. He doesn't even sand, but uses sharp tools to smooth the utensils, and they look and feel wonderful. I know I will get more than $25 worth of pleasure out of the spoon, and will have it forever. That means a lot to me.

My hope is that people value such things increasingly, but I might have to stay off places like Facebook to hold onto that hope. Every time I look there someone is saying things like the smell of line-dried sheets is amazing but they prefer the softness of those tumbled in the electric dryer. Walking is good but cars are convenient and necessary. Doing things by hand or in the old ways is too hard. We are too soft. I'm getting to be a crochety old lady about this stuff. Work is supposed to be kind of hard. Of course my work ethic is really puritanical. I do get lazy too, and there are things I will have to give up. I try to channel my fantasy Tillie Van Harken sometimes, the woman who lived here for almost twenty years and likely made many parts of my house be the way they are. She didn't even have running water until maybe the year before she died in 1942. That means she had an outhouse, heated water on the stove, and did all things inconveniently.

As far as politics go, apparently little has changed as well. I got the "while-you-are-packing-up-I-will-rant-to-you" lecture at the end of the day on Saturday. It seemed to be focused on the opinion that I am too nice and won't admit that there are people who are devious and evil and would kick other people out of Market. I am not inclined to ascribe evil motives to Market people, that is true. I make excuses for them, that they don't hear well or have good social skills or are too isolated and don't see the big picture. The gossip mills turned in an ugly fashion on Saturday and there are a couple people convinced they have to fight for their Market membership despite the fact that nobody said or is planning to kick them out and that isn't how we work. I insist on that. Like the fact that we try to work toward consensus in all of our efforts, which is largely hidden and not spoken about much, we also work very slowly when we sense important change or irrevocable actions. The whole fight for the handcrafted is a glacial, careful process.

I dislike the getting offended and going away mad thing people tend to do. It's human and happens all the time but I always feel the failure of framing that causes that reaction. These people need the empathy tent! They need to talk about their feelings and fears and shift their perspective to see the salient points and real problems and to not be caught up in those fears and emotions. It's common but not that hard to break through to better understanding. It just takes time and listening. My policy with the rants is always to listen as well as I can and point to the fears if I can, hoping to diminish them. Fears persist though. What happens is that people cause the exact outcome they fear most if they proceed to think that way. It's needless and sad.

So I hope the Slug Queen Markalo Parkalo the Empath comes back to Market this week and all of these people find their way to his tent. Empathy and good listening is needed, as well as a re-grounding in the nonviolent and compassionate. Yes, there is a problem, but yes, there are solutions still out there we haven't found together. No one needs to do anything rash or irrevocable. We are a process in motion. Wait a bit if you don't yet see it. Ask a few questions instead of making so many assumptions.

Yesterday Rich brought down his guitar for a bit of singing at the end of the day, and it was really fun. Let's all sing more. Let's look around and see what is great and working well and try not to complain so much. There is a lot of good happening all around and it is lazy of us to forget to celebrate it. It's our habit as humans to want improvement and progress but there's time to think about it a bit before we rush in and mess it all up without a solution in mind. Let's not break things we can't fix.

Like the old ways of hanging up the clothes and canning the tomatoes, things take more time to do in the traditional manner. I found it fun to get a chance to talk about the alternative culture as an old culture...it must have been something back in the mid-Seventies when the hippies gathered in Eugene and started to change things. I'm sure we were viewed with suspicion and dismay by many until the common ground was found. On that score little has changed. I'm certainly not convinced that the student housing developments and the prevalence of heat pumps and air conditioning is good change. I have to allow that some of the things I protest will indeed look sensible and elegant to me over time. I pitched my fit about the weight bags only a few months ago, but now I take my bags to the Market and strap them on, and I like them. Last Saturday it got pretty windy and people were holding down their booths, and the big one over at Farmer's Market almost went over again. I saw the usefulness, practicality and safety of the weight bags and I wanted everyone to have them. That's only one example of a change that only took me a few months, but one I couldn't imagine back in the winter when the idea surfaced.

So maybe some of the other things I fear and don't understand will become clear. Maybe I am indeed too nice and we have some devious forces that need exposure, some wrongs to right in our little community. I'll keep watching, but I don't see myself becoming less trusting of the good and honest forces among us. Help me out with your sensibility. Go to the empathy tent with your fears, instead of spreading them around all over the rest of us. Do your part to make us stronger.

And conserve water and power. We are going to need it, because that rain on Saturday might not appear. Predictions, like fears, do not always come true. Good thing.  

All of my art life is tangled up in one weekend!

Don't have time right now to write a full post, but did want to remark upon the second Radar Angel Slug Queen, Markalo Parkalo (aka Mark Roberts). He is a fine man with superb listening and communication skills and might be the most responsive Queen ever appointed. With his practiced skills at NVC and empathetic listening, many will be able to appeal to him for all manner of assistance and support. He came around Saturday Market yesterday promising all sorts of things...our heart's desires!

I plan to pitch the Kareng Fund to him to see if we can ride his coattails a little. A Market-grown nonprofit to help artists of all kinds (the low-income ones anyway) undergoing career-threatening crises. We give grants of up to $750 (soon to probably be raised due to a grant we received for $5000) and have given about $25,000 out in the past decade. He can help us with our outreach plans I think.

Mark has been running an Empathy Tent at the Market on occasional Saturdays. It's a neutral place where skilled listeners are available to all. He does this in honor of Marshall Rosenberg and it is a needed service.
I plan to use it myself next time he appears.

Singing for him was a blast. We rehearsed slightly the night before and didn't coordinate anything. Our costumes and styles are as always left to our own artistic inspirations and that is one of the keys to understanding the Radar Angels. We shine from within, and we try to help others unfurl their wings, so you never know quite who will participate and what they will do and say. We were asked to waltz if we wished and some of us did. It felt lovely to stand in front of yet another loving Eugene crowd and sing in public. I'm still surprised that I can do that after so many years of thinking I had stage fright. Maybe I still do, but when I dress in glittery clothes and wear Jell-O my inner glamour takes over and I am simply happy to be me. Like a bird. We were described as an "entourage of strangely clad hangers-on."

I suppose we could have been seen as outsiders to the Slug Queen Coronation, but that is simply not the case. Radar Angels have always been there. Radar Angels come and go from the active performance or art participation levels. We're like the Old Queens. You can't get rid of us, and you can certainly dismiss us (repeatedly in some cases) but we're not going anywhere. We are a shining thread of the Eugene fabric. We have our wings on and our fingers in every pie. So as the royalty we are, we find our shortage of photos and accolades amusing. At least Roger Rix and Kim Still recognize us. Not to mention Maude Kerns Art Center
(see previous blogs about the Community Partners thing.)

Have to go and picnic at the Country Fair site. Tra-la! Finally the picnic is held on a Sunday so craftspeople can make it before the food is gone, so I will go walk the land and love the community some more. This is a weekend full of heart. Love for everybody!

Coast Research and Fun Trip!

I took Saturday off to go to the coast, as I was really in need of a real day off, one with actual escape from responsibility and the super kind of relaxation that comes from leaving town. It was cold and foggy but divine, with the thoughts of how hot and smoky it was in the valley we had left behind. Seems like we enjoyed it! A huge thanks to Beth and Cathy for giving me such a fun day off.

One of the best parts was how easily dreams were fulfilled. I happened to mention my book project and the fact that there was a graveyard somewhere up by Newport with some of "my people" in it. Lemuel Eli Davis (5 Sept. 1832-22 March 1917) was the eldest son of Benjamin and Catherine Davis. He married Mary Jane Ogle Webster (25 July 1831-24 Jan 1913) in 1853, shortly after arrival in Oregon, and presumably lived on Lemuel's DLC next to his parents. I'll have to dig up and review all of the details of their lives but in 1866  they moved to the Yaquina Bay where they were among the earliest white settlers. They established a fishery there and ran a ferry across the bay. I have a couple of letters with more details. Cathy and Beth seemed to think it was a simple thing to drive on up to find it. I hadn't even brought a camera or any of my research but had enough in my memory to look it up on their phones.


We had a fairly good description of the place from an online posting 15 years ago, but that said the graveyard was derelict then, and it wasn't all that easy to find. The first wrong turn fortunately led us to a man who knew the place and pointed us to the correct hill in the distance. Following his directions, it was easy to get to the right hill and up some stone steps we found it! I was thrilled and tried to take pictures and write down all of the details. There were quite a few people buried there who weren't from the Davis family, but they were probably known to them or had some other connection to the old settlement. Unfortunately I wasn't as diligent as I could have been but it appeared that the oldest family stone was Mary's original one, and some had been replaced with newer ones, or the graves were finally permanently marked later. Mary's had been repaired. There were several fragments and I can make a few guesses about them. Lemuel's stone is a replacement, as is Zenas's, I think. I looked up the graveyard and there are about 30 people buried there, mostly early residents of Yaquina Bay. Another of the very old ones turned out to be their grandchild, Mary E. Copeland, (daughter of Catherine Winant,) who died just before turning three in 1881.


According to my records Lemuel and Mary had four children: Rebecca Catherine (1854-1936) Tracy W. (1857-1936) Zenas C. (1861-1907) and Fanny, who lived only three years from 1867-1871. The fragments might have been from her grave, as they were small, but totally unreadable. She is there and was probably the first burial. The other three children were there.

Tracy Davis and Catherine Winant had graves marked with identical stones set at the feet of their parents in the fenced family enclosure, and Zenas was to the side of his parents. I think Mary and Lemuel's stones had been replaced in a reversed position facing away from the graves, as they were right up against the metal fence and didn't face in the same direction as Tracy and Catherine. In fact an older photo of Lemuel's shows the fence behind it as it should have been I think. The children both died in 1936 and the stones were fairly modern-looking. I can't believe it but apparently we didn't get photos of them, although I have some from the internet. You can see one of them standing at the left of this photo, Catherine's. It is facing away from her parents. Tracy's was closer to us, even with Catherine's and in line with his father's.

 The shot with the view is from above them looking downhill. The graveyard was near the top of the hill, and the graves scattered around at the feet of tall trees or tucked into the woods. The metal fence seems the same age as the ones at the Masonic cemetery in Eugene, from the 1930's maybe. Further research is always needed for the details.

But here we have the Lemuel Eli Davis family buried so long ago. It was a satisfying search and set the mood for our later stop down the coast at the scene of the drowning of our young friend Jack Harsongkram only a few years ago. I hadn't been to the scene yet and it was heart-wrenching as I had expected it to be. Still, life and death are a part of our emotional landscape and they are not as easily escaped as valley weather. They stay with us as we walk through our lives and when we stop to mark them, it is gratifying to have a time and place set aside to do this. I am grateful to those members of the Davis family who made this little place and to those who documented it for me to find. It renewed my excitement about my research and I want to dive back into it and fill in the details of their stories.

Mary's obituary and her photo were essential details for me as she changed little in appearance over the decades. I have had a photo of the "Davis women" that I have been working for years to identify and she is clearly the person standing behind the other two. With my subsequent discovery of photos of Iantha Davis (thanks to Peter Steelquist!) I am now completely certain that the person on the left is indeed a young Samantha Davis Huddleston, and by carefully dating the details of their clothing I have convinced myself that the photo was taken on the occasion of their father's death in 1858, making it a historically significant photo and the only one I have of Samantha. As soon as I can I will take up the quest again to find more photos of Samantha and fill in more details of her life.She was one of the most long-lived of the early Eugene pioneers and arrived here when she was still a child in 1847.Putting together some kind of story of her life seems really important to me, although her direct connection with my house is a slim one. She did own the land, and sold it off eventually, but whether or not she even set foot on my little spot is a big speculation. Still, I know enough about her to think of her every single time I walk on the west side of our town. My search for her, fueled by the sweet look of her in this photo, is one of the things that warms my heart. Finding the resting place of her oldest brother and essential sibling was a very good day.