High Drama

Such a moment we are in, historically. Good that we have our Shakespeares: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Elizabeth Warren, Bill Moyers, the writers of Saturday Night Live, the bloggers, the columnists. Writers I have not read, can barely follow, writers and speakers I so want to hear and put my faith in: they're loud, and they're easy to find, no books required. I watched PBS tonight, the War of the Roses, and I fear we have not evolved one whit. What entertains me tonight is the intensity of the irony of where we stand today, where we will be tomorrow, all of us together. It's not a pleasant folly, not a delight I take in this weighted time.

My community, my beloved alternative thinkers, thought we had evolved. We were sure the signs were clear, that our champion Obama had followed us to bring our government along. I stuffed my unease with his strength and clarity as his Hope and Change won so many of us over, and indeed he was benevolent and we nearly trusted him, many of us. Michelle was our regal and honored matriarch. It seemed too easy for him to rise, for us to cheer, for us to believe, but the lull in our personal wars was so welcomed, that we rested. We were happy and innocent. Still, he didn't free Leonard Peltier, or stop a pipeline when the moral ground was so evident and waiting for him to stand upon it. The G-8 and the G-20 continued to meet and the climate didn't fix itself, and the bombs fell harder and millions of people suffered. He couldn't do so many things, was so thwarted, and now, our hope tonight is still with us, but it's so very dramatic and so thinly spread. He's only one guy, only one part of it, and the cast of characters is vast and we can't follow the script.

Have the electors read their plays? Do they understand the hero's quest, the long roads of ambition and defeat, the psychology of abuse and domination, and why we fight for the innocent? In the show with its elevated prose, so well spoken, the battles were bloody and all the good men died. All the children had their throats cut. Everyone's sword was sharp and they thrust with great passion and conviction. And through it all strode Margaret, in her armor, so vicious and so fearless, yet at the end she was in chains, watching her son die. A good story, with the foreshadowed King Richard speaking right to us in the Cumberbatch mask, the actor of the moment, so endearing in his struggles in his other roles (some on other channels at the very same time), so convincing to us as someone we believe. Television brings us our dessert and takes us from our news to our fantasies and puts cartoon faces on it so we can trust only the Simpsons, only the actors, only what makes us laugh with recognition. We are not really amused. We are desperately wanting a laugh that rings sweetly, without a self-protecting twist of our mouths.

Now, in our modern world, still we battle, with weapons not hand-forged, but mass-manufactured. Our propaganda machines, our gun distribution networks, our fast food purveyors, rain violence upon us and we watch ourselves writhe in our horror, then snack again, to stop our disheartened bodies as soon as possible. For sweet relief we grow our buds and tend our roses, to wake and spend a week encased in ice, helpless, with no comforts save those our neighbors will share, and gladly, with us.The last roses were encased in thick ice, and will indeed rot soon, sink into mud, like the emblems worn by the actors in their chain maille.

If it hadn't been nature, the cruel irony would have been too rich. At the Fairgrounds, I and my fellows spread our baubles out, lined up the products of our tireless labor, and hoped that this would please our neighbors as it had before. It seemed a distraction, a pleasant diversion from the tragedies. We would have our Christmas. We did need our community gathering, warm and shiny, where we could lose our fears and put aside our terror, while we waited for tomorrow. The cheesecake case was almost empty for once, the tables full, the dancers wild and happy. We hugged and cried. We crammed our empathy and our impatience right next to each other and came home confused and unhappy, with one more week to manage. Frog had his best day ever, I heard. I haven't sold a single "fear less" hat, but the "I make stuff up" are flying out the door, showing our agreement with the fun side of post-truth.

It's only politics, American politics, not the world itself. The world itself was teaching our valley about ice, more things that it could do: exploding trees, iced branches piercing our roofs, thin soles of our fashionable shoes not enough to keep us from falling and breaking like the brittle bushes. My friend did that, broke her right hand, the one she needs, and at the other end of her family life her father's house burned up with everything saved from her whole life. Far more cruel fate than what was deserved in any way, seemingly random, but so lasting in its pain. Another told me of his aortic aneurysm, for which he will hie himself to the surgeon forthwith tomorrow morning. He was walking the Holiday Market knowing he could simply explode within and die at any moment. As could we all.

It's too damn much! We are prey. We have been eaten and tomorrow will likely be spit out, we hope with gentle rains to melt the ice, and with courageous men and women to thwart the bully with a further layer of chaos. And I sit and wonder if everything on the television was meant tonight to keep me from rage, to keep us all at home, enraptured with the play as we are unable to stomach the reality. Is it even real, any of it? The young people say not. They say it's all relative, it's like the matrix, it's like that movie, that story, and there is no reality, so it doesn't matter. So tempting. Then is this the quiet apocalypse, that already happened? This makes it easy not to care, and not caring would indeed be so much easier.

Traumatized people don't recognize further trauma...it feels normal. We know the abuse so well we can't call it out and make it stop. All of the articles I read in the paper today were subtly written to normalize the politics (I can't write his name either, the name of our tormentor/figurehead.) He will do this thing that is milder, he will renounce this thing that we couldn't stand for, he won't succeed, because good men and women will stop him. There are more good men and women than bad, as we could see when all of the chainsaws came out to free neighbors and streets from nature this week. We know that this is true. We all know so many good people, so many people willing to treasure our baubles, to give us the means to make art, to write, to be together here in our good town, where we are safe. That has to be the truth we seek.

We are counting on this. As I sat in so many City Council meetings and got to know a little the public personas of the county commissioners and the mayors and other officials, and the staff people, I watched them spin the drama of where to put the buildings they will build with our taxes, and I could believe in them. They all wanted what is best for our town, but you and I both know that what is said at the meetings and reported in the news articles is only a small part of the full story. There were meetings that were not public, plans that were not revealed, deals that will be made that will not benefit the public, but will line the pockets of those who are already rich. This can't be not true, even though in our small world we might know the family that owns the timberlands that are simply resources, the gravel extractors, the people who own the fine restaurants that serve the foods we want to taste, to stimulate our bored and needy palates. Mr. King Estates will also take down an entire hill in Oakridge, for money, despite the fact that he can't put it back, can't restore the native graves and history that will be lost, and the aesthetics of the lives of all who live around it. The commissioners set them aside, and used a thin legal precedent to stand behind, angrily sliding blame aside when faced with many who did care, very much, about preserving that land. It was an ugly scene on my laptop as I watched. It was a classic drama.

And the City Council, with the end run of the supporters of EWEB, who fully believed in their better plan, I am sure, but when in ten years or so when it all sorts out and all the buildings are built and the pockets lined, what surprises did they hide in those decisions for us to lament? These things are often in plain sight. Now the City will negotiate for half the Butterfly...so who will buy the other half? Will some investors swoop in to build the Pike Place of some peoples dreams where we want our simple farmers' market? Will that happen somewhere else entirely? I don't really believe that it simply disappeared, that comprehensive feasiblity study that looked so attractive. It's not what they say they are doing, but the cynicism I have finely honed since my political awakening in 1969 has not dissipated. I watched closely, and I saw the little evasions and things they wouldn't say. I didn't get a lot of eye contact at those meetings. Is it that I am shy and come off a little eccentric, and it was me, or was there something hidden in those official proceedings? Will I know, and will I be able to help? Will it eat me? What parts are poison and which are sweet? Easier to not care.

Of course my fallback is that it was me...isn't that our fallback now, with the national situation? We were naive, too trusting, too relaxed in our Obama haze, having too much fun with all our new strains and edibles, not vigilant and not willing to believe in the power of our abuser-elect. He didn't have to lie about most of it, but remember this...in no way was it our fault. He is the rapist. He is the Bankrupter-Elect. I can see the whole cynical plan, thanks to our Shakespeares and our lie-detectors and our courageous and vigilant writers ( I do wish my key that is between the h and k would work so I could give the press their credit...)

I can see it, but I can't do anything about it as it plays out, and I can't bear to watch, or look away. It's exactly like those gritty battles tonight, with the thrusting swords and the intimate daggers of power-over. Damn, it is painful. The frozen town and domination of nature was a relief. I can say this because I had electricity and I made money with my baubles, but I will be sad to see the pause end and the real weather return, as I loved the suspended feeling that nothing would move, nothing could move, until the sun said it could. It was a fantasy of brilliant light, a treasure to see, free for all to love, hiding destruction and suffering and loss, but so achingly beautiful.

Oh, I wish for simple, for that gift. I wish so hard that in tomorrow night's news the Hamilton electors would have risen up, and our new heroes would be our ordinary ones, the ones that could see the right thing to do and did it. I fear that my idealism will crack and break again, or sadly melt as the ice does, and I'll re-immerse in the cycles of grief, and the next week will be too hard again, something Christmas won't be able to cure. But tonight I can still cling to hope as the ice clings to our trees.

We lost some very precious ones, the Zumwalt oak, the willow at the Historical Museum that was all woven together by that long-gone Fairgrounds gardener who also loved fuchsias, whose name I don't remember. We don't know all that we have lost and will lose, but we do know that we have loss in our lives. This is the same as it ever was. Grievous, crippling loss will come to us, and that is why we work so hard to create. We have to work so hard, we are bound to it, and we will all keep doing this because of the deep love that we share for what makes beauty, what makes light. The music, the tiny paintings, the flashing crystals, the tie-dyed underwear, the soft unstructured hats, the wooden spoons, we need these things. We need the books from the guy with the personality. We need the fashion days. We need each other. That's what we have that we can depend on, that we can trust and love and feel safe around.

I'm going to relish my isolation next week, after it is all done, but I am not going to be complicit in silence with those who would abuse me. None of us should let ourselves get quiet and hide when it gets meaner and tougher and more demoralizing that we ever imagined our elder years would be. We're going to make it better, make something beautiful out of it, like we have taught ourselves to do. We're going to keep spreading our peace and love. We're going to have our Christmas, and our happy holidays of whatever kind we have, and our New Year. If it comes with a big helping of chaos, so be it. We can endure the darkness, and burn our candles through it, and see those of each other. Same as it ever was. We have our hearts, ever exploding.

Someday We'll Laugh About This

'Tis the season of irrationality. People's heartstrings are getting plucked to threads and it's up and down, whirl around and then get up and dance some more. The pipeline is stopped, for a minute, and the electoral college is fragmenting, like a dream. It's all like a dream/nightmare, and the urge to escape back into that warm bed of denial and frothy foaminess is compelling.

Collecting shiny things

Retailing this time of year is so rough! It looks so fun and easy to dress up in ruffles and glitter and collect Benjamins all day but all of us who do this know how hard we have to struggle to maintain balance. The days of retreat at home are essential and often we can't consume...I can't go shopping myself. I buy little things at the HM and turn my Xmas lights on every day at home and try to keep collected. I even tell myself not to write here because it makes me feel even more vulnerable. Then I do it anyway.

But the energy in our world is so high right now, it's remarkable. Many of our fears have subsided to a more manageable size in our scorched hearts, and we carefully build up our peace and joy with selective forays into the territory. Watching the veterans ask the native people for forgiveness was profoundly moving. This careful step forward to trust should be something we all echo somehow in our own lives. What can I do, what little changes can I really make that will last for me and help me navigate what may come?

Not everyone has to agree on everything. Certainly as an old person I plant my feet and refuse to participate in a lot of things, and that's not all bad. I dropped women's clothing because of fast fashion (you know what that is if you have bought anything in a chain store in the past decade.) Everything is cheap and flimsy, quality has been lost and the waste is unconscionable. Thus people are buying less and I am one of them. It does set up the cognitive dissonance while selling things. I had the crushing realization that all of my products are made of cotton. Does that still feed racism like it once did? Does everything we do feed racism in our denial and inability to cover all the bases of being a good person? Probably a little, so we can work harder to name it and claim it.

I'm working on it. My locally sewn bags are at least "made in the USA" cotton and local people have more work to do because of me spending my dollars that way. It feels wonderful and I am taking the time to explain it more to customers because they usually respond to it. My big denial area is that a lot of my products are still imported...I put my handcrafting on them, but I don't make them and that's an impossible thing to explain away. I can make my excuses...but it's still on me to do better. So maybe this winter I will put that closer to the top of my list.

Oh, the lists. Mine go in too many directions at once. While I'm doing one thing I'm feeling guilty for not doing another. I had some extra time yesterday so went to the library, read a magazine and got a few books. I have a giant reading pile already and some of it feels urgent, but I got fiction and essays that will make me feel things...I'm afraid of feeling things so I dive in deeper. It might work, or maybe that is my favorite recipe for disaster. I read The Sun magazine and am reading essays by Brian Doyle...reading a lot of essays. Crying is good relief so probably my subconscious is telling me to trigger myself. Feel stuff! Don't numb out. It's harder but it's better.

The giving up of dairy is beginning to feel good rather than depressing. Cheese and ice cream substitutes are satisfying, though I have not found a satisfactory cookie and don't expect to. There is something else that is causing a reaction though, mold or the germs of others or some other substance I'm ingesting...tempted to do an allergen test. Also tempted to do a DNA profile...I'd love to see what my heritage really is.

Technology continues to speed beyond my willingness and I know I should replace my laptop now. I went to Next Step and upgraded my TV and internet with simple fixes so I know how to do it cheaply, but then I have to get rid of another piece of toxic gear that even though somewhat recyclable, adds to the problem rather than the solution. How long can I resist a better car? How long can I not use my cellphone for everything and when I run out of checks, will I bank online? I pretty much need to be shamed into these changes or find things so difficult I make them under protest. The banking online thing will save trees, and of course reduce waste, and then I won't have all that paper to sort and store...but it makes me feel so insecure to not have tangible artifacts of what I purchase and sell. So perhaps slowly I will step toward these changes. Certainly being online for communicating has been positive...hasn't it?

I've almost grown to hate Facebook and regret giving away so much through it...but then I get to read posts from my son and articles from amazing writers and see images that are almost beyond belief...and the internet is a way to travel and be a world citizen without getting on a plane. You guessed it, I hate to fly, and in fact I have let my life contract despite knowing that the way this happens is not necessarily a healthy part of aging. I see so many fearful elders and I don't want to be one of them...but I am. I vow to be more brave. Perhaps this latest political debacle is an avenue to being bolder. Speak up! The Pantsuit Nation FB group is one story after another about people speaking up to intolerance and hatred and I want to be one of them.

So I talk to myself a lot. I try to own my fears and errors and work on them. I was particularly working on being intimidated by large men...so I tried some amusing workarounds. First, I'm the one being intimidated, so I can refuse to feel that or refuse to allow that if it is an actual behavior instead of a fear. For one guy I noticed that although he is heavy, he is not that tall. So I see myself as just as tall. Plus I'm probably faster. So maybe he is there to be my ally (he's certainly solid) and then I can see that he is doing his best to not look intimidating. He's intentionally being cute. I love him for it. One little problem solved.

One by one. Every problem has a solution or at least a path to one. I am lucky to be creative and well-practiced at problem solving. Mine are all small. Tiny. Miniscule. I have so few problems my tiny mind tries to make the ones I have look big. Plug in the lights. Think about finding more vegan recipes. Read a book. Turn off the devices and hear the quiet, watch the warblers. Wait for snow.

Remember it's the darkest time, but soon it will be lighter, and lighter, and more incredible things will happen. One guy and I had a little conversation where we found that we had the common ground of being idealists and truly believing that good will triumph over evil. Joy to the damn world! Peace to humans of good will. This may be the best of times. I want to be present for it. 

Putting Things Together

A friend is holding Teach-Ins and that resonates for me. What better things can we be doing right now but learning, sharing what we know, and challenging ourselves to make some coherent visions for what happens next in our lives? I jumped at the chance to borrow a nonfiction book called The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry. I was aware how much I was hungering for a deep understanding, not wanting to have shallow conversations or even passionate anger fests of what is happening and what fears are coming up for us. I didn't dream how fast my perspective would change and how valuable it would feel. I urge you to read the book. I'm only 31 pages in so I won't try to summarize or teach from it, but I'll just key into my excitement about what happened in my brain.

I grew up in Delaware, an elitist section of the Eastern Seaboard, where the duPonts settled to build their fortune, which as you might know was in gunpowder and land and is now in chemicals. I wouldn't know whether or not they had slaves...but they absolutely had servants and that is sometimes a euphemism. As people say about former slaveowners, they were men of their time. But as you will see in this book, the term "founding fathers" is a profoundly wicked and misleading label for the men who signed the first documents of our nation. All those historical sites back there, all those famous men, hide the truth that fractured my family and those of my generation. We want that truth. These businessmen and royalty were not heroes.

They certainly represented privilege, the people who surrounded my middle-class family, and I always felt like a poor kid in a rich school, but of course I was hardly poor. We had segregation and some bussing, mostly later after I was in college, but we had an African American "cleaning lady" for a time and although I tried to be a nice girl always, racism was there in me and the sexism was a big part of my life. I have three sisters and was raised Catholic. Part of the learning I know is past due for me is how to reverse the effects of my privilege and the isms that come up for me all the time. As a hippie I was able to shed some of it, at least the social aspirations of my youthful companions, but of course I still benefit from privilege and even though as a woman and now an old one, I get a little bit of discrimination, it's nothing like what I see so clearly all the time and want to work on.

I feel that my education went to the edge of the truth and then whitewashed everything like crazy. I thought I saw through a lot of that, but when I was in Cambridge, Maryland this summer, I could feel the racism all around me. We happened upon the birthplace of Harriet Tubman (not her real name, even) and had an amazing experience hearing legendary stories of her life from the descendant of one of the local "men of his time" who had unexplained ties to that life. He wasn't her owner, but a neighbor of his, I think. My feelings of horror at seeing the auction block where humans were sold, the store where she was injured in an incident, and the country in which she did her brilliant and courageous work were about the life and land I was familiar with. We spent a lot of time on the Chesapeake when I was a kid, and I have always been a naturalist. While my parents were sailing I was learning the plants and birds of the shores and rivers. I was not learning the history. I had no idea that Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina were places where the wealth was gained not from the watermen, like our guide in the Blackwater River and his family had found wealth, but more likely from the industry of slavery. I could feel how she carefully learned the land and the habits of the white men and was able to defy and run circles around them through her observations and strategy.

And that wealth of her owners came from not just the buying and selling of slaves, but the forced breeding of them. So yes, the wealth of this area was gained from the forcible rape of the captive women. In fact Thomas Jefferson himself actually wrote parts of the Constitution to protect his businesses and those of his fellow Virginians from the competition of the South Carolinians who were still importing humans from Africa. We could see that it was an important ship-building area, but those were not all fishing boats, were they? This is where my education rang a very loud bell and I resonated with a knowledge I felt internally. The last few days were part of my own unveiling of the shadows that cloud my deep understanding.

So I could then emerge from the intentionally spread confusion of our current political scene and see that the times we are in are not so different from the past. I can see that my first task is to fill in the gaps in my knowledge in a few key areas. I need to understand American history and world history from the original source information, not what is available in the whitewashed sources of TV and most print. I started re-reading Lies My Teacher Told Me and will look through Howard Zinn's People's History as well. I'll read some feminist literature I skipped. I'll spend a lot more time checking which Facebook links are helpful and which are designed to confuse and demoralize. I won't waste as much time as I have been on stupid TV because it feels comforting. It doesn't feel comforting any more.

It seems clear that being grounded, clear and strong in truth is going to be my position. When I take actions they have to come not from my woundedness and horror, but from my clear knowledge of what is right and from the vision of a more egalitarian, safer, and more just society for all people. I'll have to stop saying the stupid things that offend and divide, the well-meaning ways I try to connect, and work more with my abilities to see through masks and defenses to the inner conditions that drive people.

One example: I saw a man with a safety pin in his ear and remarked that it was a clever way to display his symbol of allied concern. It was obvious from his response that at least a dozen of us well-meaning supportive people had said the same thing. We wanted him to recognize our kinship but what he saw was our assumptions, and our lack of originality in how we will work with the new conditions. His presence at the Holiday Market and in my booth was not about his earring. Calling attention to merely that earring let him know that I did not see him for a full person but for my assumption about a symbol that connected us, and his response was to deny that facile attempt at connection. He was kind of saying, "No, I am not in your club because you think I am." We all want something deeper. He was shopping. I was inappropriate.

Facebook is helping us at the same time that it is deceiving us. There was a great article about how much the fake news and opinion pieces that were actually paid ads, drove the voting. We fell into that trap, most of us, and must first stop sharing the fake stuff and find the trusted sources that are out there, mostly the direct sources and the brave journalists and writers who have no master to serve. There's plenty available. We can all be more careful about what we repeat, and that includes the ways we amplify our fears instead of taking actions to be safer, smarter, and more connected to the reality we hold together. We can't allow the confusion tactics to manipulate us.

The Great Bankrupters are back. They will use tactics that are completely unacceptable under the previous rules of politics and shared reality, so we can't fall for them. We have to stay grounded, strong, and not get confused.

Work to learn. Strive to see and understand what is really happening in the big picture. We can do this together, and with the internet we have the same tools they have and much more at stake, which makes us much more determined and effective if we link arms and sit down. Do stay calm. That helps. Keep the faith. The hippies were right, and that's been proven. We have to continue to speak for our generation and to teach the children as we have been doing. It has been working. We won that election, but the dirty tricks to take us into the dark were temporarily effective. We can stand in the dark and still be strong. Never give up.

Today I read, rest, and restore, and tomorrow I just keep working. We're going to do this job and do it well. We have what it takes, what we've spent our lifetimes building. We have our communities. Reach for the peach, and keep it in your pocket. It tastes damn good, and it will ripen again as the year turns. Let's stay together.

Loving in Action, Together

Hard times indeed. It's so good to have Holiday Market to ground me and keep me working and focused. It was the best place to be to hear the news of the passing of one of our Market family, River, to hug each other and be alive to honor her. Grieving was put off until later but at the same time, shared, and felt rich and powerful. Just seeing familiar smiling faces and sharing ideas and reflections is so much more powerful than looking out the window at the rain and trying to motivate to do something useful.

I believe the election fraud is a fact, and this is not the first hacked election, but perhaps this time the people who think so will be louder than before. When it went to the Supreme Court with Gore, even that was managed (you can tell when they have t-shirts of a particular color and look very organized, so watch for that.) You used to be able to tell that these fake movements were organized, and it has been international, and I would expect one this time too, a counter-protest. There are probably plenty of red trucker hats available. Don't be fooled. Critical thinking is one of our powers.

The popular vote is way out of kilter to the results. I don't know if I believe protest will change things, but it is the tool we have. The internet is where we gather too, and it's big.

Getting together at the Fairgrounds has some qualities that repeat and bring warmth and love. The Kareng Fund gets busy providing what we can for artisans in crisis, and we made two grants this week. This little safety net is so precious because it comes from us. Most of our donations are from other artisans who want to help, so we put our dimes and pennies to work for each other. This will also be our major period of fundraising, so put some items aside for the baskets and some cash aside to buy tickets for the raffle. A big thanks to the Oregon Country Fair Board for a contribution to the printing of our brochures so we can reach more artists and crafters in Oregon.

Reach out to fellow artisans if you hear them describing hardship...ask them about it or let one of the KF Board know, or simply give them a brochure. We fund "career-threatening crises" and that includes not only health issues but domestic ones as well. If you are having blocks to your ability to produce and market your work that you can't handle alone, you might be eligible for a grant. Please don't suffer thinking there is no one out there who cares. It is more likely that people are hanging back because they care so much, that they feel devastated by the great need to be witnessed.

I do feel that this is a period of unveiling when racism, sexism, and corruption are in the light. It is the time to speak up to set the conditions of the world we want: honest, equal, open to possibility. It isn't the time to stay in the cave. It won't be easy and it will be discouraging that the progress will be slowed and complicated by the US political situation, but it isn't just about us and the world will join the efforts. Indeed, many people in the world have been working hard on these issues for a very long time...the movements are continual and haven't paused while we grieved. Our grief is an important step for us to crack open the comfort we retreat to, because we can, but we are watching people fight much harder than most of us think we can. We can fight for a better world, and we must.

We need to call back the energy we felt at other times when the path looked wider and less fraught with personal danger. We rose to greet Obama with hope and we rose to stand with Bernie with conviction, and they are still there to lead and help us stand our ground. There are so many of us, that if we do speak up, it will be loud. We certainly have a lot to lose if we don't.

Step out of comfort, take a chance on connection, help fan the flames of dissent, and put your energies where they can add to that of others. Your contributions can be small, even miniscule, even hesitant, even shy, but keep going in the right direction. We all know the world we want. There are many places we agree, as humans on this planet. There is so much work to do. Do some of it. Start anywhere.

It's cold and wet. People are sad and scared. Light a candle, honor a bee, feed the birds, smile at someone you don't know. Keep yourself healthy. Promote the health of all of us. Stay in this together. We are the people of the world.

And you can find the Empathy Tent at the Farmers' Market next door to us. Use the listeners to quell your irrational fears and let go to connection. Remind yourself how powerful you feel at your best. Do the work that needs to be done. Love yourself, so that you have love to give.

I know Buy Nothing Day has shifted to Create Something Day and Teach-In day, and it is still a day to consider your money power and put it wisely to work for what you want to see. You want art and craft in your community, so feel good about supporting Holiday Market. I'll see you there.

Moving, if not forward, along

I'm teetering on a precipice, tightrope, rollercoaster, getting ensnared in emotions like so many people I know. It makes me want to shut down and hide. I took off my safety pin: am I really of any help to an oppressed person? The uncertainty about my own strength is how this is hitting me. I will take the one piece I learned from how to help a person in an oppressive situation...try to engage with that person more or less normally. I might be able to go stand next to them, even if I am afraid to speak. I might be able to stand silently to a bully...maybe.

Psychological warfare scares me just as much as the physical kind. What our world went through in the last year was devastating. On one hand it feels like nothing new, but on the other it feels like the worst time ever to try to be a thinking person. Confusion is my problem, and the internet rarely helps with that. I sort through the responses of my friends and family and try to define the irrational responses, try not to fuel them, echo them, or even try to counter them as I am not sure I know anything helpful either.

I know I come from some level of privilege and remain there, despite my vulnerability as an old lady, but I see this as a liability and a block to my understanding. Yet I don't want to undermine myself by giving away what I have worked for, my safety and my small comforts...I have lost the balance of knowing when my contributions were matching what I have gained. I see the fathomless need to give but also see myself and others hanging on more tightly to whatever makes us feel somewhat secure...and for me that is my savings, which are meagre but do exist. I have to block my fears of what will happen if our social safety nets disappear.

I'm hypervigilant and wary of self-sabotage, unsure of any of my convictions. My view of what happened went all the way to extreme conspiracy theory and back, several times. I see how the hate speech will result in some of us doing the work of the nazis and imposing the anti-world on ourselves and each other. That's something to fight...I can pledge to not act out of base motives and try to keep my morals intact. My actions, though dampened, can carefully help protect and reconstruct the world I value. I can proceed slowly and not buy into urgency that throws me off center.

I can work to not second-guess myself. I can take the space I need to work slowly and carefully and not give in to panic. I can reassure myself without taking on the responsibility of reassuring all of you. I feel like I can't carry others right now, so I will work to not give in to asking others to carry me. I don't feel inspired or inspiring.

I will focus on work and hope for the best. People keep telling me what to do...shirts I should make, things I should think or do. I'm not doing any of it. People don't really want printed t-shirts in times like these...no one wants to be a target. I've been through this before. Sure, sometimes you get a hit and it's fun for awhile, but anything powerful has a downside as far as t-shirt production goes, for me. I don't really want to talk politics, and have walked away from several conversations when they got heated. I am not the person who wants to debate you or even commiserate with you. I'm being self-protective.

I know my challenges are challenges of privilege, emotional fights instead of physical ones. I am not likely to be the target of violence, since I'm invisible as an old white woman...but the expectations are high of me. I remember when back in my twenties I met David Hilliard and he expected me to become a leader of a student movement on my campus...ah, not me. I quit the movement rather than get a gas mask (and had extenuating circumstances in my personal life that supported my retreat) and I'm not going to be on any front lines now. I support your right to be there. I claim my right to be the flawed person I am.

I probably won't write here very much in the next few weeks. My workload is large, with the extra retail a drain and a time-consumer. I am not feeling the love and affection I like to feel for my work and my community...that will likely come back once we get together, but maybe not. Anyway I doubt I'll find it helpful to crow about it.

Seems to me the toll of what we will have to pay for the torture campaign against American culture is more subtle and a much higher cost than I have ever paid in my life...so yes, there is a deep terror as I watch it play out. I'll need all the antidotes I can find. Writing is a reliable one...but not putting things out in the blogoverse. Back into my research about the pioneers and other local history...and civil rights is a big part of that, so maybe my insight will increase.

I'm guessing things will simmer down and there will be some fun to be had at the Holiday Market and perhaps the holidays in general. I hope I can find lots of butter-free treats so I don't suffer too much from my dairy allergy. It won't help to be sick or deprived of comfort foods, as staying healthy is the prime directive.

Let's all stay as healthy as we can. Think about your words and actions and be careful, be bold if you can and be forgiving if you can't. I will try to bolster my feelings of safety and keep my house warm and reconnect with my good heart. I can admit I have a shriveled black part of my heart that needs healing and compassion...I'm a human too. Maybe I need a kitten. Maybe that is the best use of my internet coverage: kittens and hedgehogs and bats. I have a pair of Stellar's Jays on the suet...when they are not being chased off by a rabid pack of Starlings. Let's march together to the Solstice. It won't be long before the light returns.

Just Keep Working

Apparently the fucking patriarchy is a zombie. It was painful to go from being a powerful woman back to a second-class citizen. I'm almost glad I'm old, but I feel like I did in 1969 when I had my political awakening...horrified, shocked, and devastated at what is under the shiny shell of America. So many people okay with a fascist misogynist bigot in the White House. Back to the early 1800s for us.

I'm horrified for my son and his fellow young people. I feel like 40 years of patient efforts to work for justice and peace have been ridiculed and devalued...but wait! That's not going to help anyone. Turning depression into angry action is the best way to remain a powerful woman. This is not the end of times. The President is a figurehead that can't do a thing without a powerful team of people who do the things. Nobody is going to be able to work with him...he's a loner. He's going to be blocked and diminished with every step we take in the path so well worn, the path to a better world.

Hillary was never going to save us from anything...Obama has done some amazing things but he still had to sell us out here and there, because this is the world we're part of. It isn't about any of our little needs and it has never been so. It's a big rolling machine that no one really directs and it will keep moving where it goes while we run to keep up. Good people will have to work harder, that's all.

So all the bigots came out of their sheds and got to celebrate their small thoughts, but they don't have the energy to do the work to change things, they were just reactionary and playing a game of dominance. The people who have been working are still working.We're picking up our notebooks and going to our meetings today. The people united are not defeated.

I'm going to the City Council worksession. There's a lot on the agenda, and I don't expect them to cover it all, but I need to hear everything said regarding the current thinking about downtown. We're still functional on the local level, still working for community solutions to our problems, still committed to preserving what we love about our town and our lives. Nothing has changed there.

I have another meeting tonight, Craft Committee for OCF. We have work in progress to improve the crafter's experience with Fair and make things more fair. It's a longterm effort and we're still in it, and will be for the rest of our time. Nothing has been ruined there.

I live in a bubble, and we have weed. Later this week, after I print some hats that say "Just Keep Working" I will get to shift my perspective a little for a few hours and remind myself that birds are beautiful and the skies are incredible and the things I thought were true are at least malleable. This will not be illegal as it has been for most of my life. My personal freedom is fairly protected at this moment in time. My personal  work will be to find the ways my fears will not be realized and to find ways to keep inspiring and bringing beauty to the lives of other humans, while protecting the earth and those who are not human. I know I can do that.

It's going to be harder for our kids. Maybe the real estate markets will ease up with the confusion and loss of faith in the economic sectors. Maybe this will help them not be lazy and excessively pleasure-seeking and learn the hard lesson that things matter: actions, words, and choices. Maybe they don't seem to matter much in the individual case, but in the aggregate, things like this will happen even if we are diligent. So our diligence is necessary.

The policies that led us to devalue education, to ruin our planet, to exploit and plunder our resources have put us here, and given us this common enemy in a figurehead for greed and hatred. It can be a gift to have such a clear example of what we don't want. The Vietnam War and Nixon and the whole military industrial complex are what galvanized my generation, and made us so committed and strong when it comes to peace and justice. So this now is what will give us the will to defeat sexism and bigotry. This is the backlash to our progress on racism and we did make progress. It will not be possible to return us to the dark ages of slavery and people who call bullshit will call it louder. People will work harder. We don't have any other choice.

So dig in and think bigger. We made it through many years of bad policy from W and Reagan, and we will make it through this. Work louder and harder. We may have gained many allies in our work with this. When the bigots gloat, use your words. Don't be meek.

Our young people are strong, determined and mighty in their knowledge of right and wrong. Let's stand with them and make the changes we need whether the figureheads are with the program or not. Don't panic or fall into despair. Go to the meetings. Take the notes.

There is no giving up, we all know that. There is no moving to Canada. Our job just got harder, but it is the same work we have been doing all this time. Forty years of going in the right direction for humanity can not be reversed by some ridiculous distorted contest of power that does not even relate to our daily lives. We will still be able to do a lot with what is in front of us, and we have the strength, the will, and the desperate need to do it.

So we found out that there are more stupid, ignorant, and limited people willing to be that. We're still smart. We're still articulate. There is still the next election, and the work we are doing until then. Keep it up! I'm with you.

Comfort over Tradition

I couldn't talk myself into Tuesday Market this morning, even though I got up and intended to go, knowing the weather wouldn't be great but wanting to be loyal to my friends there and honor my commitment to participate. I knew it would be marginal weather at best and not really that wet, though after all the rain last night the town is soaked. I guess by not going I kind of cut my losses.

My booth, sides, and bags, and boots, were still damp from Saturday. Market was pitifully small, and we even consolidated on the east  block to look like more of a group, a decision which worked well. It made sense to lessen the setup and pull in the recycling stations, fences, and other infrastructure on the west block and it made sense to group us for better sales for the 25 or so members who did show up. It worked well for me! Customers came and I made a decent amount of sales although no one spoke up for the good-works discount of my last post. I gave it to someone who refused a plastic bag (I have some recycled ones for emergencies) and told about her efforts to bring no plastic home, and she was delighted. I gave away a few of the sale hats I ended up bringing. All of us who were there gifted each other and I came home with some wonderful things! (Photo doesn't show the pears, cake, pizza, etc.)

The farmers were also smaller in number and decided to pack and go two hours early, at 1:00 pm. They came over and told us, so our GM surveyed the members of our market about an early closure. Although it didn't rain on us during set-up, heavy rains started right about ten and didn't let up, and it was gusty too, although not at all as predicted. I knew the weather was going north as I had been tracking the weather on this wind map but even so it could have swung toward us and gotten as wild as people feared, and I was by then wet in parts and the customer flow was getting smaller. I was happy with the prospect of getting a few hours off to dry out and rest.

Ironically, of course right at two when we closed, it stopped raining and we all got to pack without a lot of extra trouble, and most people were off the lot quickly. I was the last. I have a lot of details in the way I display things and also tried to pack carefully so the wet things would not get other dryer things wet, though basically everything was damp enough that I'd have to spread all the bags and hats out in the shop for a couple of days to dry. I was still there when the zombies came.

They were so disappointed that their scheduled flash mob would have no audience. They were a little shocked at the unprecedented closure of both markets, as were the other few people who wandered down expecting to find booths. It wasn't enough economic power to support the three hours we missed, and it did start raining again right about five as I was finishing up with my labors at home, so to me the early closure was right on the fence of good/bad idea.

The process was handled well, with inclusion of member opinion and gaining of consensus, and really there was no one advocating to keep to our usual hours, although obviously all of us had taken the "Rain or Shine" maxim seriously. We were, however, about 5% of the total market members, and we were all acting in our personal self-interest for the day, as well as concern for our staff who also had to stay if we stayed. I don't think anyone second-guessed the moment too hard, although in retrospect, I wish we hadn't done it.

Saturday Market has always been so dependably there, 10-5, rain or shine. We've made such a point of that. Now we are going to add an "unless" to that. Yes, storms seem so much bigger and more destructive now, along with the access to media hype about weather. Yes, if there had been lightning with the force of the previous day, when thunder literally shook my house enough to knock things off shelves, we could have been in mortal danger. Yes, it doesn't really make sense to sell on a super wet day when no one wants to be out in the weather and we all take some losses of inventory or signs or something.

But darn it, now when people ask themselves if we will be there, they aren't going to be sure. Now it's qualified by "unless we aren't for some reason like extreme weather or ?" I guess we can make an effort to qualify it by "extreme weather only" and I do remember one other day when we closed for tons of snow (in the 1980s) and no one questioned that. I guess we do have to consider the safety of our staff and ourselves as more important than being consistent in our advertising. And with social media, we were able to announce the early closure (the zombies must not have been online) so we can notify at least a portion of the public.

But I feel like it is a slippery slope we stepped out upon. It makes me wary of decision-making for the current conditions when we don't know what will really happen. We were speculating that it was going to get way worse, but it didn't. Next summer when it is predicted to be super hot, will we forget that it is usually breezy on the blocks and can be fun? If it snows during HM, will we lose customers who will assume we will close for the day? No one can answer these questions.

Am I a traditionalist who dislikes change? Possibly in some ways. I admit it takes me awhile to embrace change and I'm suspicious of the need for it. When we talk about changing our hours (because the farmers did) I am against it; throwing out the many years we have advertised 10-5 doesn't seem smart. It took people a very long time to assimilate the 3:00 closing for farmers, even with the gradual change to 4:00 first. I still get people all the time buying bags near 3:00 who have to be advised they only have a short time to shop for produce. On the other hand, would we lose a lot if we trimmed one hour off our day's end? Would we gain more? Again, it's a gamble and we won't know the answer until we try it.

So we tried the extreme weather policy and the results are inconclusive, to my mind. About 40 people were happy, and about 40 people were not. We had to still pay for the bands we cancelled, and no doubt they were unhappy with the loss of a gig, even though not many fans would have showed, and it's dangerous to have electricity on a wet stage. There is probably not a final answer yet on how flexible our hours should be.

And while my loyalty was rewarded on Saturday, it didn't stretch to today and although it is not raining and I wouldn't be wet and maybe not even cold, my not showing up to Tuesday Market might mean Tuesdays in October might not fly next time the farmers decide to look at their cost-benefit ratio. Guess I should have gone since I am not actually getting much work done anyway (I am planning to, though, right after this...)

Last night at the City Council worksession, City Staff emphasized that one of the things coming out of the Placemaking process is that Eugene loves our historical and social traditions. They want the community gathering at the center of our downtown every Saturday. They want the spaces activated in the ways we are using them. So we had better not get any flakier. It's not just about my wet bags and hats but about holding the center for the people who need to gather. Maybe we do figure out some ways to keep us open on days when it is wet or hot: flexible covered spaces that can be used for shade or rain protection, storage or ways to limit the infrastructure we erect every week for our event, which requires so many hours of labor to set up and put away. Ways to improve our dependability, instead of get less predictable, should be part of our planning process for activating the spaces.

Planners have joked that they want us to do what we do every day of the week, to build on our success. Of course we know that if we give up the Saturday specialness, we lose a lot of what is attractive. We've tried Sunday markets. One of the reasons I am not as loyal to Tuesday is that it just doesn't draw the crowds needed for lots of booths to thrive. Still, there must be a way or two that the specialness of Saturday could be extended. A night market in August? Little pop-up markets of specialties, advertised as short events that don't need to include all of us? Let's keep thinking.

City staff said their number one trend from the process is to build on success. That's what we have to do, too, value our history and all that we are doing right, and see how we can build on that to involve more of the community. I am working to be flexible, open, and willing to test things out if they are not too high risk. Closing early was low risk, but I didn't think it was wholly successful. I'm worried about all those disappointed zombies. Maybe it will just make us all the more precious when we are there for them, though. I hope so.

Like sand through the hourglass...

I was out in the shop pouring the sand out of my weight bags and lining them with plastic bags, even though the nylon they are made of seems to be coated inside. Each one weighs 25 pounds and I guess I am committed to going to Market Saturday, because now that I spent two hours making a mess of the floor of my shop, I am going to take those bags down to the Park Blocks and strap them to my pop-up.

A rainy day when I won the haiku contest and the duct tape!

Whenever I do some task that takes a lot of focus but no smarts really, my lovely mind starts to build metaphors and write blog posts...and this one was rife. I'm doing this because of water. They are raving on the TV about all the water that is coming our way, with wind, and you know, I have plans on Saturday. I could stay home, but I like what I do and Saturday is the best day in the week for feeling powerful. I get to stand there with the things I made out of nothing but my imagination and skills, and trade them for other people's money so that I can buy my heat and food and all the necessary consumables of modern life. That direct relationship feels great and lots of people have smiles on their faces and walk away happier than they were. It's one of the sweetest parts of life to make someone's life better.

Even if it is a small thing, a hat that will keep the rain off their glasses on the bike trail or a bag so they won't drop their slippery bag of grapes. I'm out there today putting slippery sand into slippery plastic bags and thinking about how I won't have an extra fifteen pounds of water on the way home from my wet Saturday, making up stories and thinking about power.

And I realize all of a sudden that I am giddy, absolutely delighted, with what I see right now as the Fucking Death of the Fucking Patriarchy!  I'm sorry if you feel offense at my delight or my words, but you can choose amusement instead as I am choosing amusement with the utterly ridiculous throes of the taking down of the ultimate symbol of the abuse of power. The whole world is watching with disgust, horror, and like me, delight, as that orange person learns the hard lesson that despite what he says, no one likes him. He can't even get a hug or kiss without having to use his power to take them from people unwilling to give.

Yes, this is not about sex and it is not about gender, and if you never got this before, get it now. This is about power. And remember what we learned: there are three kinds of power. There is power from within, that which we have carefully cultivated for so many decades and taught with the word "empowerment." We have done our jobs, parents and teachers. We now have lots of people who feel power from within. They are sure of it. Thank you to our young people who are so brave and fearless! You are using your gifts well.

And then there is power with. You know that one, when you stand in a line where people call out the person who cut in, or even all the time now on Facebook when people like and share, read and discuss, and we all get on the same page with the concepts and events that are changing the dynamics. We know what this feels like so well! Thank you to our elders and all those who stood together and taught us this with all of the liberation movements, with our heroes like Harriet Tubman, like all of our heroes, like Bernie. What we can do together is so much more powerful than standing alone with all of our internal conviction. We are using this, around the world, so much better these days with this internet thingy. Kids get heard, women tell their stories, people get helped, life gets better. I am so happy with the internet today.

And then, my friends and neighbors, there is power over. That is the tool of the patriarchy that is being dismantled as I write. We saw old Puddinghead Cosby fall from grace, we saw over and over how men who used power to dominate oppressed peoples fell to their disgrace. It's not over, not at all, but the winds did shift and the waters did run over the lands. Trumpy is done. Oh sure, he will dangle and dip and dance and he will always have a few syncophants, but his day is over. And as soon as Hillary takes the oath of office, as soon as she gets into the White House, I hope she looks at her philandering husband and says to him, as she locks her door, I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee. Now maybe you should go and learn to bake cookies if you want to keep busy for the next eight years.

I know, she will use power and we all will still use power over. It is in our DNA to dominate and it will still play out in so many ways, but everyone knows now that rape culture is power culture. He is such a wonderful symbol and this campaign has been such a terrific illustration of all the ways that it is a bankrupt way to be and we the people do not accept it. Even my 90-year old mother is being a rebel in her old folks hotel and thanks to the media we all are watching the squirming and apologizing of the people who still cling to the past. The people have moved on. We are looking within and talking with each other and we will work together until the vestiges of the abuse of power are put on plaques and become the historical past and not the present. I'm giddy about this today.

Of course it is going to rain on me and this parade and I know I will not be able to hold onto this feeling and I might go back to the disgust and horror but I don't think I'm going back to fear. People are smart, more than ignorant, and just like nature is going to humble us a little for the next couple of weeks, the people are going to humble the unworthy and take away their power. I know this.

So later for the ways we are still going to try to humiliate Hillary when she has worked so hard in the halls of power to do better. Later for the work we will have to do to stand with women in all areas of our lives as the power-hungry thrash their last. Later for the complicated self-examinations that we will have to do to eradicate the ways we capitulate and fail to protect the powerless and don't follow our gut feelings. Later for the fine points.

Today we celebrate locked doors and careful consent. We pat ourselves on the back for raising good boys who get this stuff. We stand proud of our young and old women who don't put up with unwanted hugs and unremarked insults. We stand proud for all the new opportunities we will get to use our wit and wisdom to make these changes last. Take him down. Take down all the symbols of abuse and all the perpetrators of it. Bring up the real powerful and stop the DAP and all the rest of the things that are unjust. Let's have justice for awhile and see how we like it.

And quit using so much oil, people. If I can bike to the market in the rain with my 75 pounds of sand, you can do without one plastic thing or take one less car trip for a corporate cup of coffee. Come down to the Market and talk to an independent artist or farmer and share the abundance and bounty that we are so fortunate to have right here in the town we love. Walk down in your rain gear.

We're having the Market-wide sale this week. I have thought a lot about this as it does not work for me to take more stuff on a rainy day; I have to take less, at least 75 pounds less. So I don't want to bring a basket of old stuff and sell it for cheap. I don't actually want to sell anything for cheap.

If you know me you might have heard my little rant about people who ask for discounts. This is a good example of a subtle power-over relationship that gets my gut feelings to simmer. Someone wants me to give up my hard-earned profit, my reward, so that they can use their money to buy something else that is more valuable to them. They spent all their money on organic tomatoes and they want a hat, but for less than the very reasonable prices I have set. Or they are just used to cheaping out, which is something I have certainly done for most of my life and have no defense about...it's easy to use being "thrifty" as an excuse to try to get something for less than it is marked or valued by someone else.

But it is one thing to be given a discount and another thing to ask for it. Mostly my customers do not ask, and sometimes I give it, and happily, because I am happy about the transaction or like them a lot or am in a giving mood. So I do want to participate in the sale in some fashion, without begrudging it, and without allowing someone to dominate me against my will. And we all know what happens on rainy days at the Market: lots of people don't come. Lots of people don't sell and lots don't buy, so for those who do brave the weather, the pickins are slim and you might go home with wet shoes. So I think I will offer a discount. If you read this, and you come and tell me one thing you did to help smash the power, I will give you a dollar off anything you buy. I'll be generous about what that means: maybe you became a parent even though you were scared. Maybe you bought a car with better mileage or passed up the Starbucks for Dave or Colleen's coffee. Maybe you did a big thing you are kind of embarrassed to take credit for. Maybe all you did was read this, knowing that you might have an uncomfortable feeling or two.

And we'll have to have a little conversation about it. It might be kind of intimate or we might have a guffaw. I reserve the right to refuse your dollar off if I have something I can't settle with you about our power dynamics. Maybe we'll have time to settle it. We all know that one of the good things about the rainy Markets is that there is so much more time. We'll see. And for every dollar that I give off one of my products in this little campaign for justice and compassion, I will give a dollar to the Kareng Fund. I hope it is my biggest donation ever.

And I hope we have some fun. Because oh dear, that weather forecast is grim. We are all going to have to dip into our power reserves for sure. No guilt if you can't. It's not a judgement to admit where you have to protect yourself from harm. That is part of accessing your power within, to set your boundaries and take care of what you need. I need to go to Market. I need to stand on my spot on the west block and be my strongest self. I want to do it for my community and for myself. I even want to do it for the City and the damn placemaking in downtown and the lovely people who came from NYC and want to get to know us. I want them to know the real us, the creatives and the intrepid and the endlessly delightful. 

So I guess I have sealed my deal. Now when the alarm goes off at 5:30 am on Saturday, I won't be able to second-guess myself. I'm going. See you there.

Back in the 70s on the Butterfly with my little paper things.

Downtown Spaces Mean More Than Markets

Of course when I hear Park Blocks I hear Saturday Market but next week the Project for Public Spaces will be back in town to talk about what our whole community sees as a vision for using our open spaces more safely, creatively, and to meet more of the needs of our growing community. As a major stakeholder, we of Saturday Market know that this is not about us, but about the town we live in, so while we have a lot of ideas coming from our place at the center, we're excited about the chance to take that vision to the rest of our community and see how it aligns and can be informed by what everyone wants.

I don't expect this to be a painless process because I know not everyone loves what I love or agrees with what I think to be true. I have been trying hard throughout this process to enlarge my vision and take in the full reality of how all of us use our city and what the future might be, starting with now.

Our market task force met yesterday and came up with some great ideas and I took photos of our work.


We're nowhere near finished but wanted to refine our long wish list to see what surfaced as really important, so we can take that to the discussions knowing it would have wide support. We recognize that limited funds will likely preclude many of the projects we'd like to see, and as renters of the Park, however successful and desired, we do "live" there only as long and as well as we provide added value to the spaces. So here is what we think at the moment:

Rough draft of a visual for it

A new stage to replace the awkward and not-very-functional covered space on the Southeast block would serve all community groups who want to hold events there. To not have to rent, own, or erect a stage structure with lights, tent weights, and a sound system might make it possible for many events to have performances there, large or small. If it could include storage for a number of chairs, tables, and the necessary signs, cones, or other safety items to have these events, this would be grand in so many ways. It would also be cool to have some kind of a kiosk to use as an info booth, with electricity (we now run with batteries in the info booth) and other services. It could be used by other groups as well and maybe have an employee in it during the week to track tourism, give out information to visitors, be the connection for services, and do lots of tasks not currently be covered in the center of our city, except by the EPD and the downtown guides who don't have a place to be consistently found and might benefit from that.

It must be widely known by now that public restrooms are needed downtown. There will increasingly be excellent innovative designs for these and there have to be some that will work. I found a cool photo yesterday:that might show up here, not sure. The slats on the side make bike racks! If it doesn't show you can see more at this link:http://www.designcurial.com/news/public-toilet-architecture---10-of-the-best-4210193/3.

And of course that is not all of our ideas but the ones that floated to the top right away. There seems to be no shortage of ideas but part of the problem is bigger than the infrastructure and this is the challenge that seems to be the hardest for people: we have to work within the current reality. Like my thoughts on the FSP, my thoughts on the people who are currently using our parks for shelter are evolving. I want a lot of tiny houses in our town for people to use for permanent or temporary homes, so that they feel safe, have places to sleep and store their belongings, have privacy, and have support for their basic needs. I want support for Occupy Medical and White Bird for the kinds of health services that traveling or houseless people need. I want it to be normal that you might need and seek help or have problems you can't solve yourself, that are covered by social services. There seem to be plenty of resources to meet these needs and plenty of compassionate people to help set things in place. The Reagan years and other times when people lost that support are over. Let's have support systems that work. Let's enlarge our hearts and compassion to speak frankly and really work together to ease the impacts of people whose needs spill over until they become desperate and hopeless. This does not seem impossible, but it will take a lot of us working together to get there.

I understand why it is hard to talk about these things, but they will be part of the placemaking discussions and it would be great if we could speak without the ironic doublespeak when we say "all citizens of our community" and "the public." This does mean all of us, not just those of us who have found ways to be comfortable in our lives. It includes children and the elderly, and even that guy who likes to use the Park Blocks to smoke cigars that he probably can't smoke at home (though he is kind of out of luck now with the smoking ban.) We all have to keep in mind that we have to speak for all of us. I know our Market and our Task Force are full of compassionate people who think of others (just giving up time to come to a meeting shows that much) so I am looking forward to the opportunities for dialogue and new ideas that will come next week. I hope to see you there!

Politics Unusual

I am not very interested in the national presidential race, except as a cynical observer and a woman. It is way past time the US got past their ridiculous lack of trust for women and let Hillary lead, and I think she is already winning the election, because you can't get real news from the usual outlets. They always say the election is neck-and-neck, they always spin it as an exciting race to the finish. I really do not believe people are as ignorant and crazy as you might think if you watch TV or social media. People want safety and stability. They want progressive change. The stupid will not prevail. That said, you had better vote for the establishment, just because. We have to have a government and if you have forgotten that we all lost 25% of our wealth the last time Republicans were in power, that they looted and pillaged right to the last day, even trashing the White House offices in their meanness, then refresh your memory.

Hillary won't save us, just as Obama couldn't, but just as he pulled away the veil on racism, she will pull it on sexism. Bernie would have been attacked as he pulled the veil on anti-Semitism, but let's get this gender thing done. Good heavens. I would like to finish my life thinking that we got somewhere with this centuries-long process of seeing women as equals and hearing what we all have to say. The people are ready. The power-mongers may not be, but there is another reason why we need to support Hillary so she can help them get it.

I do prefer our local politics. Anyone (except a classic businessman of the archaic model perhaps) can see all that Kitty Piercy has done for our city and state. Her compassion and deep understanding of the needs and beliefs of human beings has held ground and helped thousands of people gain some purchase on living lives that empower them and meet their ideas of the "American Dream" on what's left of the commons. She works for the people in the ways the people want her to work. I have similar confidence in Lucy Vinis, and I am proud to say I know Emily Semple, who is running for the Ward One Council position, and I am placing that confidence in her as well.

It's about priorities, mostly. People over profits has always been my guide as I have navigated society since my political awakening in 1969 when I was in college in Washington DC. If you are a guy in a suit you have a few barriers to overcome with me before I will automatically trust you, anyway one less than if you are a woman in a suit. Of course this is not a clear gender division but I know as a woman that being a nurturer and supporter comes early in life and informs the ways we use power that simply do not become the experiences of all men the way they do for almost all women. There are lots of great compassionate men! I know many and have complete confidence in them for having found their compassionate and caring inner strengths, in many cases much more so than I have found my own. I'm not saying all women politicians are better than all men politicos. Sometimes it is so much easier for men in power that they can be super effective, but bringing that privilege as so many do is more of a detriment than an asset.

I don't know Emily's opponent and I'm not studying him very closely, but for the issues I'm passionate about right now, which are mostly about downtown developments and the future physical and emotional landscape of our city, I think Emily is going to align more closely with my values. There are no easy solutions to the real problems that are the subtext of the downtown development picture. We need people who really see people, understand their needs, and really care about inclusivity.

I wrote to Emily today to see if, in the midst of her last intense push to get elected next month, she and I can craft some statements or work out some knots in the Saturday Market positions on what is coming up for us in this Placemaking process about Open Spaces downtown. This is huge for Saturday Market and no politicians have asked me, as the head of our Task Force, what we are thinking, outside of the meetings of the Joint Elected Officials Task Force who are mostly working through our GM as our spokesperson. Our GM is doing her job, going to many meetings and giving the information about our organization that they want to know, but there is so much more to think and talk about than comes up at that type of meeting. Specific city and county staff have specific concerns related to their job descriptions, as does our GM. They ask and answer the questions that come up as they do their jobs, and while they encompass many or even most of the issues involved in making these plans, there are other levels of the conversations that sometimes don't come up. Some of the things are tricky to talk about. People can't always speak frankly in those situations, and assumptions are frequently made without time to check in on the details of them.

I see the bigger pictures of what is happening in our city, our lives, and our futures. We need Democrats in office because their values support human lives over the businesses of capitalism. Perhaps marginally so, in the cynical analysis, but much more so than what is Republican or right or transcends the political in forces like the Koch Bros, and the other anti-human corporations taking power from the people. People need progressive leadership to fight for our lives and those of our fellows, human and otherwise. Don't think this is not important. Your vote is a tiny tool but it is one you hold in your hand and must use. You have other tools, and if you are not too distracted working for survival and a little time off, you have your mind and heart to apply as well.

Vote for Emily. Vote for Hillary. Vote for Kate Brown. Let women lead. You've watched the Obamas. You've seen how Michelle has fought to be seen as beautiful, strong, supportive at the same time as being equally powerful, equally smart, and perfectly capable of leading and working together to change the national and world landscape of racism and power. Things are so bad right now because this is the last throes of the forces of exploitation and greed. We are winning these fights. We just don't believe in it. Believe in it. Put your whole heart there.

The people united will never be defeated. You know this. Act upon it.

Another Week, Another Meeting or Four

I suppose it's time for an update...so much has been happening. I'm busier than I want to be, and tired, and don't know when I'll get a real day off. I take a few hours now and then, read some short stories, do housework or yardwork because that seems like fun compared to people stuff. People stuff is so hard sometimes.

Got to go to a big meeting. I had to laugh at myself because I thought it would be with some politicians, and I had to talk myself out of being intimidated. It wasn't too hard; I knew I didn't have any professional clothes but I remembered I'm an artist, so I could wear artist's clothes. I have lots of those. I know the mayor a little, and she doesn't intimidate me at all, so I thought I would just use that to act big around the guys in suits.

When we got to the meeting it was not the officials but the staff, but it was the top staff. After I got over my disappointment I realized that it was actually better to meet with these people. They are the ones who get the projects done, who work together to make successes and give the politicians what they need to make the best decisions. These people were managers, and I'm a manager, so felt right at home with them. In my thinking about these issues it has always been in front for me that everyone needs to know who we are at the Market, what kind of people artisans are and what we need and feel, so that if decisions are made that will involve us, they will be well-informed decisions that will actually work for us.

So I took copies of the Saturday Market history as written by Lotte Streisinger and I took maps of how we use the Parks, and all of our promotional materials so they could see our presentation. I took brochures of the Kareng Fund in case any of them were looking for a way to support us with their high-level salaries. Not really, I just wanted them to see that we were thoughtful enough to have started an emergency relief fund. I wanted them to see how well we help ourselves, to see our independence and our identity.

I put the materials in my little tote bags that I have made for me, the ones we sell with the Saturday Market logo and "I buy local" on them, and mine that say Eugene, Oregon and Oregon with the ferns. I wanted them to see how well we promote where we are and all that we have to offer. All of these things were wonderfully received. They were very interested in the history, as if it were a missing piece they had been looking for all along. It does say almost all that is needed to understand us, the artisan culture.

The history needs an update and I want to do that someday, but everything that we were founded upon is still very relevant and it's all there in one document. It told about how the farmers were part of us. We didn't, in the meeting, elaborate on the many ways farmers have changed their organization since leaving our midst, but we made our point that we were two separate organizations with quite different goals. I said it wasn't one of our goals to grow, for instance. We tend to grow in lean times, when the economy is bad and there aren't many jobs. In better times, the artisan life doesn't have as much appeal as a paycheck with benefits to a lot of people. Their creativity goes back into the hobby arena and they go to work in offices and stores. But that's just one of the specific ways we differ from LCFM.

So we made some points, let them see us more clearly, and I hope it gave them some guidance for the tasks they are assigned. They kind of wanted to know what might happen if the land swap didn't go through, and probably were aware of what came out in the paper today, that the Skinner descendants will contest it. It's not clear if the Skinner descendants even know the farmers want that block, though I'd guess they must. They just don't want City Hall on it, I guess, and might be fine having the County Courthouse on it, but I don't get why they wouldn't think the farmers would be the proper use of it. Maybe they are also fighting the Public Market concept, but I don't know.

I noticed in an article on Portland Food that they are building something called the James Beard Public Market in Portland, and remembering the Boston Public Market and the one down on Fifth Street, I expect this is just a trendy development concept, a way to get a mall built in a more upscale fashion, filled with trendy upscale stores selling expensive foods and gifts. It's certainly not something we need on the Park Blocks, so I can see how I will agree with their opposition if that is at the base of it, but I kind of like the idea of City Hall over there with the farmers in front in a nice plaza.

But of course we have now made it clear that Saturday Market is what it wants to be and won't be buying into any development concept. We need to be quaint and keep that link back to the commons and the market where the sheep and wool were sold and the potters came and the scribes would write a letter for you to your relatives in other countries and towns. We don't want to get modern and upscale. We want to be there for our poorer artisans just starting out or struggling to survive health crises. We want to be there for that direct connection between artist and appreciator. I think we got that message across in the meeting and I think we might be able to get that across to our city in the next weeks and months.

Because our next challenge is upon us. The Project for Public Spaces is coming to placemake our town, and lots of people are going to speak up about what they want for downtown open space. It won't be about Saturday Market or the farmers, but we are some of the experts on what is really going on in the open space downtown. I can tell you that I see things, especially on Tuesdays, that you might not want to know about down there. Some of it is a little heartwarming, as there is some community being formed in the Parks, but most of it is more on the perplexing end of things. Are the people who live in the parks really out of better choices? Some of them must be, but some of them are addicts and pleasure-seekers who just want no responsibilities and to live off what they perceive is the surplus of society. They don't seem to care if that is a result of the hard work of others, and that conversation is getting harder and harder to have somehow.

I'm hoping it will get easier to have. I'm hoping that some of the ways people are being so divisive and violent to each other will ease after the upcoming election, when the haters don't win and good hard-working people get a little boost of gratitude for each other and mutual appreciation. I do hope it works out that way.

I still am having a lot of issues with leadership and collaboration and am not quite over the difficulties it brought, but it has felt like a productive few weeks on many fronts and some things have gotten easier. I like local politics quite a bit more than national and feel that I can indeed make a contribution, and must, but it is hard to put in the time. It's a struggle to get paying work done with so much volunteering, so lots of things like dishes and cleaning are not getting done. Writing this was not happening...it's hard to form coherent paragraphs when you're sleepy and just want to watch stupid TV or doze with a book.

I sat down to type some minutes and now it's too late for tonight so it will have to go onto the next time-off interval. I figured it would be nice to get back to my readers with a reassuring message though. Making change is a hard, slow process that is really a dedication to steady effort, not a passionate flare, however empowering that may be when needed. Whatever gains I made were tempered by the pain that came along with them...and the net gain will not be recorded. It's already in the past, and was at best a slight reorientation easy to minimize at this point. People who were with me are still with me. Those who weren't still aren't. Maybe a couple of people got some points...maybe they didn't.

But anyway, we have another task force and a good and important task, so we'll just keep working. As Vi is known to say, All Will Be Well. We know that is true, mostly, and anyway, that's the direction we're going.

The Illusion of Choice

That's our modern condition. I just watched a Facebook spot about the fact that almost all eyeglasses and their delivery systems are owned by the single company Luxxotica, and read in the paper how Monsanto and Bayer are merging. We all know this is how things are going in the giant world of conglomerates. It's the kind of cultural thing that people feel helpless about it and even when "Adam Ruins Everything" tells us the facts, we tend to kind of file that away and keep going as usual. Extrapolate that to climate change, politics, and you can make your own list of the ones you choose to live uneasily with. I have to buy glasses.

Boy that has an effect on our psyches, though. I'm reading what is for me a heartbreaking book, the new novel Barkskins by Annie Proulx, which is a book so well written I can only hope to understand its structure and the expertise she has applied to literary fiction. It's character after character through hundreds of years, and we watch development work through their lands and lives and see how helpless they are to prevent losing what they treasure, how they participate it for smaller reasons of their own. I think we accept that as a condition of our human lives now...instead of things getting better and better, we will lose piece by piece until we are left with nothing. Maybe that's just age talking. I've seen some sad situations lately that underscore why people say things like love is all that matters.

There's very little else you have control over but a slice of your emotions, and choosing love is a pretty good adaptation to that if you can hold onto that illusion. I let my cynicism loose on love, having tried on lots of forms of it and come up lacking in skill and expertise to keep that glamour drawn over that hard reality. Honesty always forces me down into realism and I see romantic thinking and wishfulness underneath, and to me it looks quite thin. Not that I think you shouldn't keep working on it. It really is all that matters, because bringing love to the human situations is the best we can do to get through them. Giving up on that doesn't give us much in the salvage pile.

I admire people who can form a solid partnership and draw strength from it. Must be such a comfort. I see it kind of like religion, something that feels real and makes you feel strong, strong enough to keep going and keep trying and rest easy when there is nothing else to try. You hold the person's hand and get some peace and safety there. You promise each other, and hope you can keep the promises. Everyone should have that comfort, because life is hard, but alas. Lots of us don't.

I like to say your cynicism won't protect you. My cynicism does me no favors, but if anything is my religion, it's honesty, and I can't seem to get my cynicism out of my honest calculations. So my trust is compromised. I don't feel as safe as I'd like and I hardly trust anyone...really deep down. I trust people who are really honest with me, who are humble enough to not be prone to drawing the glamour veil over whatever is between us. I trust hard workers who speak directly and look within before they cast about for blame. I do have such people in my life, thank goodness. I have others who work toward that. Then there are plenty who don't get it and don't want to and don't want me to bring it up. Be positive! Assume the best!

Sometimes, I suppose, honesty is not the best policy. Maybe it's the base of a slightly rose-colored version of the concept or impulse or thought and maybe the cheery exterior is helpful. This is getting a little too theoretical to check for fact...what exactly am I talking about? I'm afraid to say.

Unleashing my cynicism isn't going to get my community through the hard times we're in. All of my artisan communities are having problems with our realities...maybe not huge problems, maybe mostly our normal problems: attacking our leaders, losing perspective, letting our selfish sides out, saying things without thinking of the possible effects, hurting each other, trusting the wrong people. Trying to keep the love spread over it all when the glamour has some spiky nails poking through is a constant effort. OCF just went through another huge upheaval which is how decisions seem to have to be made in the age of Facebook and too many people to fit in a room. It gets ugly but a few key people always know what to say...and lots of people are still able to listen. Love for each other can certainly be a deep and real emotion.

Obviously the TV and music offerings of our day have given us some terrible examples of how to behave and how to treat each other, with the glorification of the thug culture and "getting mine" and we all see every day ways that well-meaning, good souls are taken advantage of, crushed, and ruined, by desperate, blind predators who have no idea why or what they are doing, thrashing through their pain. I don't think it has ever been different really, but when the population was smaller and we didn't have media so entertainment-oriented, it was less obvious and in our faces. We could live in our illusions and get away with it. It's harder now to do that. I was walking home last night after dark and passed a few people...no one scary, though I've had the habit of crossing the street to avoid passing large men as a rule. Last night I didn't, so I took a closer look at the dark shapes and worked with gut feelings, and everyone was cool. People were walking their dogs, exercising, smoking, or just going somewhere like I was. Some were afraid of me, with my backpack, bag of bread, roll of posterboard falling out of my open pack. I looked awkward, and I actually tripped on the sidewalk and fell on my face, cursing loudly. Damn fucking sidewalk. I guess I wasn't lifting my feet enough. The worst aspect of it was no one came to help me. I didn't need it, and there wasn't anyone close enough anyway, but I thought that if they heard my loud cursing and saw my confusing load of stuff, they wouldn't come near me. They would back away, because I would look like a drunk or someone else who could be dangerous. I felt that loneliness of having pain that no one cared about.

I got some scrapes and bruises but am fine and made it home, but I did remind myself that the universe likes to send me lessons (how I draw my glamour veil) and here was one about judgement and stereotyping. Everyone who falls down deserves a helping hand. The poor woman who was arrested behind the Tuesday Market had spent her morning desperately weeping, spreading her damp clothing and towels out on the rock walls in her cubby, and she deserved better than to have her belongings put into black plastic bags and hauled away. Who knows if she will recover any of them, or need to? Maybe that's what people on the street expect now, but what I expected was that some of the people who watched this happen might gather them up and put them back into her pack and save them for her...I wanted to do that myself. No one did. I saw another person spend the day doing personal grooming of all kinds, trying to hide herself by the same wall and pretend she had privacy, in the privacy of her black hoody and pants. A hundred people saw her and ignored her, and she ignored all of us. My gut drew me so strongly to give her something, money, food, a word, something...but I did not. We exchanged a glance or two, hers suspicious and defiant (I imagined), mine full of dismay and indecision. I didn't want to invade the little privacy she was trying so hard to create.

I told myself to be careful, to be cautious, to keep working and not take on things that were not my business. Down the street at the federal courthouse were hundreds of people not being cautious, speaking out and supporting our kids who are working for climate change repair. I know people are working for homeless advocacy too. I know lots of people are working hard for exactly what I want: less judgement, more justice, finding safety and privacy for those who can't buy it for themselves, helping. Giving the comfort of a hand and a partner to those who don't get that, aren't successful at arranging that for themselves.

So I have a lot of work to do. We discussed how to be a good partner at the Task Force yesterday, and it helped a little, and we worked together very well to take some steps together as a membership to articulate our position and protect our needs. I'll keep the veil over my cynicism but it hasn't alleviated in the least. The set up has been deliberate and the deal is laid out, and it's not like we have any real power when millions of dollars are on the table. We have the illusion of choice. We're going to make the most of it.

We're going to assume the best, and step our way carefully into the inevitable and keep doing what we can to use our own crayons to color it good for us. I can't tell you all will be well, that it will be what you want. No one knows exactly how these downtown developments will play out in detail, but they will play out. It will be "what the community wants". Let's just hope that it isn't all what the development community wants. Let's keep working and bringing in our people and putting forward our vision of what our alternative community wants, too. We are an important cog in the wheel. There's no way to stop the train, but we can keep helping to draw the map, and keep working on ourselves and our friends and neighbors to make the best choices we can. Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together, and it is where we are. Fear less, love more.