Portland Research

Lycurgus, Catherine and Melancthon in 1852

Made it to Portland, specifically to the Oregon Historical Society which had some artifacts I wanted to see. If there are more, I didn't find them, but there were two items that contained some great secrets. The medical bag that belonged to Catherine Sluyter Davis was really worn out, languishing in storage, foxed with white on the dark brown leather. The strap that held it closed was in need of repair, the handle had split open to reveal that it was a simple leather-covered wire, and the whole showed decades of use. This indicates to me that it was Mother Davis's ("the ministering angel") original bag that she brought from home and never replaced with a newer one. Inside it was, sadly, empty, but there were eight loops built to hold bottles and it was overall quite small. I didn't think to measure it but I'd guess it was maybe 10" by 8" by 6", not including the handle. It was compact, as you would expect for someone traveling by foot and by horseback. If she had more instruments they could have been carried separately, but it's unlikely she had much more than a spoon and a cup, perhaps. She wasn't actually trained as a doctor, because as a woman in the 1830's that wouldn't have been likely, but I've read that she was trained by a brother-in-law in nursing. Medical science in those days relied on herbal remedies and she would no doubt have collected and processed many types of plant material from her farm and the woods and fields, and bought the items that were available at the time for pain and infection. I'll have to research that. I think of her as someone who prepared meticulously for the trip west and was prepared to live independently of society, a pragmatist despite her origins of wealth in New York. I read somewhere that one of her sisters married Alexander Hamilton but I haven't checked out that rumor yet. In the photos she looks very determined, always, as if she had to be strong and unassailable as the family matriarch.

Her coverlet was not a quilt, as I suspected, but a woven coverlet in the fashion of the time, and she had to have brought it with her from the east. She could have woven it, but in any case she had embroidered her initials in one corner, just a C and an S, indicating that she acquired it before her marriage in 1831. If she embroidered a date, it wasn't still there, but there was a smaller part of maybe a zero hidden under the facing that had been sewed on to enable hanging the cover. The edges and even parts of the body of it were very worn. No doubt it got heavy use in the overland trip, and was on her bed for most of her life. She died in 1898, and I'd expect that she had made or bought finer coverings in that time, so at some point it was put into storage or given to a relative who hung it on the wall. I don't know when the Historical Society received it or from whom. One of the staff people promised to look and see if there were any more details in the records.

In the Museum itself was an excellent Oregon History exhibit which was full of fascinating detail. In fact I saw an identical coverlet inside their wagon replica scene. It makes sense that these would have lasted much longer than quilts, as they would have been washed less often and prized more. The internet indicated that sometimes weavers traveled through making these for hire, but a professionally-made one would probably have had a woven label in the corner. I thought that the blue yarn seemed positively to be wool, which was dyed with indigo at the time, quite deeply, and wasn't faded. The natural yarn might well have included flax for a different type of yarn that might have added strength or some other aspect to the mix. I know they grew flax both back east and here in Oregon.

The files on Lycurgus and Iantha were very disappointing, almost empty, but there was a long typewritten letter from Merritt Davis that shed a little light on a few things. Apparently Catherine never charged for her medical services. There was a little more of her history as a child, when she moved from NY to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. These areas were the frontier in those days and as Quakers it is likely they moved to get away from slavery and it's politics, and to live undisturbed, and were farmers by necessity although they were well educated. Benjamin served as one of the first judges of the Lane County Court system. Racism was a very real force in the westward expansion and Oregon has a rich history of white privilege and it helps to untangle what each group might have been thinking. I know from the Huddleston effects that someone voted for Grant, so we expect that they were not racists themselves (within the narrow confines of white thinking at the time) and we know from the family stories that the children had native playmates in their early days in Eugene and presumably believed in some level of equality. So I speculate that they attempted to honor an inclusive view of humanity although there were no doubt many ways they lived that would not gain approval today.

Iantha and her husband Phillip F. Castleman left a few letters behind in the UO Special Collections and one, from P.F. to Samantha shows that most of the family did not approve of him or Iantha's marriage. In Iantha's obituary there is a line I hadn't seen: "Mrs. Castleman for years had been a great sufferer. A devoted wife, mother and friend, she bore with patience and fortitude affliction as it gathered around her, dying as she had lived in quiet resignation." We know some of what she suffered, as she had a brief marriage from 1850 to 1853 to George W. Evans, who died leaving her with two children. There is a letter to her mother describing how she struggled to keep half of the land grant property for her children, though her father-in-law took her husband's half in exchange for supporting her children. Apparently he did a poor job of it, and her father went to court in Lane County to be appointed guardian. He won, but a few years later she married Castleman and appealed to get them back. It seems so impossible that you wouldn't by law own your own children, but even letting women get their name on the deed for their half of the land grants was quite revolutionary in those times. You had to petition the court to keep your kids if your husband died, not to mention all of your property. I'll write more about that sometime.

At any rate, you rarely read anything that revealing in an obit, and the photos of her do seem to echo this. I still did not find any photos of Samantha, so she remains a mystery with only the one supposed photo of her in 1858. I'm just sure there have to be some, just not labeled, although it could have been the case that she refused. As Castleman was the first photographer, as well as the first sawmill owner, and later enlisted to go fight Indians, I imagine that she was part of the family who did not like him, and it could have soured her on photographs. She seems like she had firm convictions. His letter petitioned for her friendship, though we have no indication that she extended it.

There are still so many mysteries keeping me interested. I am determined to find more, and there are a few more newspapers to locate and I can take another look at the Huddleston collection now that I know more. I believe I read somewhere that they passed through the Whitman mission a few days before the "massacre" when the missionaries were killed. There's are two or three stories about encounters with natives that make me think that while the Davis family was strongly nonviolent, but were definitely in danger of dying several times. At one point Benjamin convinced some potential attackers that a small stove in the wagon was a cannon, and saved the whole wagon train. Other members of their group did kill people on their way here, but there are no reports of anyone in the family being violent except Castleman, and he was grievously wounded in his service. I'll need to pin down a few more details before I write much about him. Because he had so many accomplishments it may be that he didn't stick with anything long, and that is why his photos are lost. On the other hand, they may be in the hands of his descendants and not lost at all. Wish I knew.

So, I got a few tantalizing details of these lives and a photo of Lemuel, the one who lived in Newport. He has a very pleasant appearance, and to me he resembles Samantha. Sure wish we had a photo of Benjamin himself. I imagine he was a very important force in their lives, as well as in Lane County in those early days, and really should not be forgotten.

I also learned a little about Melancthon M. Davis, whose house in Eugene is still right there on Jefferson, that he was one of the first to bring Japanese oysters to the Newport area, and he still owned extensive oyster beds when he died. That helps explain a few of the references to fisheries I read earlier. A couple of the brothers went to the coast when it opened up to whites (more sad stories for natives) and profited from fishing and ferries and the shellfish in the first exploitations of that area. Money was certainly part of their story. Tax records show that Samantha paid a lot of them, and indeed when Benjamin died after only a decade here, his wealth had increased from the 75 cents he arrived with to over $12,000 in property, livestock and possessions. Samantha left over $20,000 to the children's home, as she had no living descendants, and only nieces and nephews that she must have felt were well provided for.

So that was it, for Portland archives, as far as I know. I'll keep looking but I may have found what there is to find. The good news is that in preparing for the trip I organized all of the people-oriented research and now have a much better idea of what I do know and where to find it. I have a few small leads to follow still and will continue to sift through what I have to put together stories. The Lane County Historical society is having an exhibit right now about early medicine and I'll bet I can get some ideas on what potions Catherine might have had in that bag. I'm also watching the PBS series Mercy Street which is about nursing during the Civil War, extremely relevant history. I'm loving all the details about what people wore, and how they moved around. Those hoopskirted dresses caused a lot of accidents, it seems. I'm grateful for sweatpants and birkenstocks today!





 

Winter's Passages

Darn, people in my community keep dying. Rest in peace, Peg Morton, Mike Mortemore, Pamela Raynor, and all those we've lost and not forgotten. Sometimes it is a shock, sometimes more like a soft passing and a kind of relief that their suffering is over, but loss is loss and grieving is important. I really will miss Mike especially for his gentle sweetness, and wish I had given him a lot more of my attention. I guess if any lessons can be taken it is to give our attention more generously while we can, and be more aware that our time will come, and so will everyone's.

My dad's 92nd birthday would have been on Wednesday had he not departed 46 years ago, when I was 20. He has now been dead the same number of years he was alive, a strange symmetry that strikes me as important. The twenty that I knew him were packed with my growing up, seeking his love and approval, trying to get him to hold my hand. I have one photo where he is, quite poignant. Naturally I didn't stop seeking his love and approval after he died, that just shifted into other forms, much more complicated ones. Of course he is still with me, as our parents always are, grown into our responses and our very neural pathways. Running some of my self through the filter of having had him as my model for what men were made of has illuminated much over the years, and seeing my son grow up has shown how much I transmitted long after my father was gone. Humans are so very complicated. I'm so grateful to still have my Mom, who is turning 90 next week. Her filters have been more useful, or at least more functional, to run my thoughts through. She is dependable, good and kind, thoughtful and generous, and completely inspiring about passing gracefully through life.

I don't seem to have had a lot of awareness of life passages as I went through them, always in a kind of assumption that what is now will stay that way, which is of course completely false. Most of "what is" changes radically and often. In my twenties, the 70's, a lot of my life was just reaction. Losing my dad as I was entering the big world was jarring, made so much more complex by the political milieu of the anti-war movement that turned into the peace movement and earth day and the liberation movements and made me what I am today. I was filled with a bravado then that rarely surfaces now. That arrogance of our twenties that makes us think we not only can fix the world, but we must, pleases me now when I see it in our young people. It happens more in the teens, but lasts longer perhaps. Quite a few of the people who spoke at the City Council meeting last Monday were full of passion, and some of them were my age. They had settled on an issue, maybe just for the evening, but they picked something they cared deeply about and spoke to it. The resolution against the TPP and the climate change ordinance are small steps toward environmental and political sanity, but they are steps to take and we are all lucky that people are pushing for them, whether we recognize the benefits or not.

Then in our thirties and forties we tend to do our important life stuff, finding partners, having children, choosing a career. Without a lot of reflection I did what I was compelled to do, but I was 39 when I finally had my son, and although I had a well-established business at the time and a nine-year partnership, I had no idea that the motherhood piece was going to push the other two out the window. The relationship didn't have what it took to raise a child, I soon discovered, and within it the things I needed to fix in myself were not going to get fixed. I had to strike out on my own emotionally, with just enough resources to focus on my own healing and stay just a small step ahead of my son's needs. I did a lot of things inadequately during those years, but some things went very well and both my son and I did thoroughly enjoy his childhood. I took on the whole business without a partner and that has suited me well, and I got the house, which I took almost two decades to rebuild and have found my place solidly and with lots of love to surround me.

People I see in those decades now seem like I was, fairly overwhelmed with just the practical and necessary details of living and nurturing a family, but also full of energy to get the details of the outside world to line up better with our visions of what we want for the next few decades, and what we want for our children. Somehow the energy and vision survive the mountain of work for many people and I truly admire those I see in those middle decades, especially those who take the time to volunteer and join with others in creating community. They seem to be getting a lot done, even if some of it is change I don't like so much.

When we hit our fifties, some of us late bloomers flounder a little, and I made some attempts at partnership and intimacy and then gave it up for art. I decided to put my energies into what was working and let go of what was not. By my sixties I had re-established my strong connection with Saturday Market, had opened up new relations with OCF, and was the Queen of Jell-O Art at 62, me with my shattered heel and the long recovery from that. I mention it because it still hurts today, as I was out in the yard yesterday pruning trees and enjoying the winter mildness and I guess I did too much. For an old person.

And today is a Saturday in the offseason, one of the richest of days. I've been burning Sue's beeswax candles lately to keep the suffering and dying in mind, to add some life to the dim light of the season. I'm planning to type some minutes from one of the plethora of meetings I had last week and the week before, and clean house, watch birds at the suet. Stay warm and dry. Eat the delicious food. Play with my Jell-O.

I'll be turning sixty-six this spring (not until May) but that is somehow more significant than 65. Maybe because nothing happens, it's just another year of aging and another year of caution. Someone told me (thanks a lot) that 66 is when our health really starts to go. Of course I don't believe that and am going to keep using my Mom for inspiration as she is still healthy at 90 and mostly because she is still active.

I reposted the photo of me with my cart on the Park Blocks because it looks so strong and able, yet so determinedly original. Yes I am an old woman who wears carhartts and rides along with a towering array of Rubbermaid, looking unusual at best and wacky at my worst. It has gotten increasingly harder to navigate with the cart, not to ride it, just to interface with downtown. Raven told me he no longer walks his cart on Broadway because people would actually try to take his peaches (they would ask first, but he isn't one to say no that often) as he passed. He stopped using his bike for various reasons but I don't think I'll have the option of walking my stuff as many do. It's too far. Maybe us old people can get together and rent some storage downtown for our fixtures and the heavy things like the weight bags and thus prolong our ability to come to Market. I can maybe go back to my car if I can't ride. It would cause other problems and isn't my first choice, but it's a semblance of a plan. I have never been good at planning ahead, at least in the long term. I'm pretty good at organizing and planning a little ahead, those forms of control fantasies, but as a child of the fifties I have never felt that the world would really let me grow unmolested to old age. I'm a bit too aware of politics and the environment to feel safe out of my bubble.

I need the bubble of safety and comfort I pretend to live in. It's warm, dry and pretty with all the Jell-O and things I've created and collected. I get a lot of strength from my home base. I don't really want to go to other places like cities where so much is happening all at once. I don't really like to think about Eugene with a half-million people, all shiny and high-tech and moving so fast a bike cart can't get around. One good thing about some of these young urbanites, though, they don't really depend on cars so much. They want to live downtown so they can walk to work. A lot of their energy is going to benefit me, but it's so interesting to think back to my earlier decades and the way society was acting then in contrast to now.

Catherine Sluyter Davis

I finally get why our parents were so scared by the hippies. Part of it was just worrying about our safely and the long direction of our lives. Once our minds were opened, how would we face the day-to-day? We learned, and they relaxed and learned to value us again, but I know I have felt similar anxiety for my son's generation and how they will get the skills to thrive, as it seems much harder now. Cars cost what houses used to cost, houses cost what only rich people used to have. Certainly everything is faster, which sometimes can be a relief because any errors we make are also soon swept away by the next challenge or amusing meme. When you see interviews with people who made it to 103 or are in the last legs of their lives, they always seem to have a calm and ancient view of it all. Sure, we pass through, but individually we are not nearly as important as we feel. We're one of us, but we're lower case. I find that comforting now that my days of making big impacts are likely over.

This week I do get to go to a big city, Portland, to do some more research on the people I am studying in relation to my house. I will get to see a few items that Catherine S. Davis owned. A visiting card with her picture will surely be something she touched. She's 63 in the photo. There's an amazing quilt that she made and I'm curious to see if she used a sewing machine and when in her life they think she made it. It's a cool Dutch-looking blue and white style. Her family was Dutch, an affluent family from New York, the Sluyters. She was a Quaker, so I want to see evidence of that. I do have something I found in the earliest probate journals of Lane County, a list of the items in her husband's estate when he died in 1858. They had only been here a decade, and they didn't have a huge amount. As a woman she did not actually possess any of it, except for the part of their Donation Land Claim that was in her name. She got to keep whatever the court agreed she could keep, so she sold the fancy chairs and kept the plain ones. She probably moved in with her daughter, Samantha Huddleston, soon after, as her land was on River Road, close in, and in 1861 and 62 there were terrible, widespread floods that must have covered much of her land. Anyway, I hope to find out more about her.

The Holy Grail piece I will get to see and touch will be her medical bag. I don't dare hope it will still be filled with the instruments and tools she used to save many lives and attend many births and deaths in the early days of our area. She arrived in 1847 and was the closest we had to a doctor here for many years. She was famous for riding her fast horse to help anyone, day or night, and she must have been incredibly strong. I will no doubt be inspired to write a lot about her after seeing her possessions. I'm thrilled.I'm one of the few people who is still interested in her, outside of her descendants. I found one who was really instrumental in my research and told me about the objects, which are not listed in the catalog of the Oregon Historical Society. I also hope they find a few more unlisted things to show me. I got my own research all organized to show them and I hope they are interested in it. For some reason bringing this long-gone person to life has given me a really compelling aspect to my own life, even though she was not directly connected to my house which was what got me started looking. Stay tuned for that.

Be well, my readers. Grieve well. There's a lot of life still out there for us and I for one am grateful for it on this rainy Saturday.

A Century of Progress

Howard Frank Bowers, Jan. 10th, 1916

This week was so super challenging I felt anxious for the first time in weeks. Generally in the off-season of the Market I feel a sweet and gentle winter retreat, just as if I lived in some snow-covered cabin far away from town. But I live downtown. In a town that is rapidly becoming a city. Have I mentioned that I struggle with development? This week I had five meetings in two days and so many things came at me my head is still spinning.

Tomorrow is the 100th birthday of my house, or at least the signature of two men who signed a board that I found in the wall of my house, and I may say more about that. This little 60x90 property has seen a lot of change in that century, to be sure. In 1916 the houses around me were also new, or new-ish. There's one that was in place since a few decades earlier, and this one is actually much older too, I think. My current theory is that it was hauled here from a nearby farm and fixed up
, but I know that at least two on my corner were built new in that year or right about then. Reconstructing the history is almost as hard as reconstructing the parts as they need it.

I lamented already about the neighbor's fence and it is effectively finished now. I thought to post an "after" shot to balance this before one but really it is too heartbreaking. This photo shows my two houses and the neighbors a few years ago before it changed hands.

My rebuilt house on the right.

My house before I rebuilt it

It looks not at all the same next door today, and now that open space between us and all the many plants are gone. There is a cedar-lined box with a dirt parking space at the back and somehow I will have to adjust. They took out a weedy Bigleaf Maple that was under the utility pole, which pretty much had to happen, though I had pruned it all these years and liked using the branches of it. I saved quite a few of those branches but in the process of scouring the space of any life the overzealous builder-guy actually removed all of the raspberry supports from my five foot strip garden along the side of my shop, as well as the old boards from my OCF booth that I was using to walk on, and a holly log I wanted. Nobody asked me if I wanted help "cleaning" my side yard. I was livid and still am upset, although I recognize that he was probably thinking he was being helpful to the old lady next door (yes, me) and to be fair I was not home that day to ask. I somehow hadn't conveyed the fact that I am not the type of old lady who likes "help" and that I actually wanted those boards right where they were. It is actually a bit miraculous that they didn't level the strip all the way up to the street and take out everything. Maybe I intervened just in time. Once a road, a road forever.

There's another section across in front of that car, now.

But that is probably going to happen anyway. They will next take out the ash that is right next to their house (that crooked one that curves over their roof) and they will take off that bumpout that is the only remaining piece of the century-old exterior and build something there, which will reduce the rest of the easement to a muddy trail they'll use for construction right next to my pear trees. I have to be prepared to just stay serene and adjust to each change even though they seem so invasive to me. Just because I have taken care of their yard for three decades for a succession of renters who didn't, I have no real claim to the space. They are trying to be kind to me as I thrash around with my sense of loss.
You can't really stand in the way of improvements, can you?

So this is on top of the gleeful development plans for the little corner of downtown where I have my other home, the Park Blocks where I spend so much time selling. There will be a building squeezed into that alley just south of the west block, the one I use to enter and exit the Market with my bike cart. I'll need a new route. That I guess I can handle although I hope there will not be any blocked streets or alleys during the construction phase, a vain hope I know. It's going to be inconvenient at minimum and then Kesey Square will also be removed. I know that's a done deal. I know how developers and builders work all too well. They like clean, clear spaces to work with every old thing tossed in the dumpster. The remodel of the house next door was mild compared to what will happen around the Park Blocks. But it is another thing over which I have absolutely no control. At least they listen to my concerns about my garden and my own yard (except for stealing my boards) and respond to some of it. Downtown developers are not going to care what I think.

Me shortly after we bought the place in 1989

Which is not going to stop me from trying to think it. I'm writing a group letter to the city right now trying to articulate Market's concerns for the Park Blocks and Kesey. Mostly we feel that the loss of open space in Kesey will compromise the remaining open space and hurt our use of it. It's hard to separate the projection of our fears from useful ways we can participate and get our needs met. My strategy is pretty much to articulate the fears and then try to link them to city goals and the Master Plan for the Park Blocks, which actually honors Saturday Market quite thoroughly in its visions, and then take most of the fears out of the letter so they can't use that as a way to dismiss our concerns. Our job may just be to get them to tell us before they toss those visions to be replaced by those of the developers, who have a very different idea of what Eugene needs or they wouldn't ask for loans and muptes and waivers and all the things they do to maximize their take and pass their costs on to us, the people.

I feel that people like me are being pushed aside because we don't want to fight against change, that we tend to just feel helpless and resentful in the face of the takers. When they started this fence project next door I clearly told them what the map said about the seven-foot easement but the builder complimented my "pretty hair" while I tried to convince him to scale back his plans. They were hoping to put that fence right on my line, which is, thankfully, right in the center of my pear trees and runs right through my blackcaps and raspberries. I've pulled my plants back really far out of the easement over the last two years, but the fence would have been so oppressive as to kill all of my plants. So I did get a huge concession when they located the fence on their side, in fact, way inside their property line. If they hadn't put in the parking space it wouldn't look as bad. I guess it is the change from jungle to scoured wasteland that upsets me. Fortunately plants will grow and I can make it okay back there in a couple of seasons. Downtown, once the open space goes, it won't be back.

Interior of the old place, pretty untouched since the 1940's. 

 

 

So, whatevs. Fears are generally not realized in quite the negativity that they are generated. Maybe the new building in the downtown alley will greatly improve my access to and from the Market. Speaking up now could help that cause. All things are possible. My house has been here a hundred years, and if Grace Bowers and Tillie Van Harken could see what I have done to it they probably would demonize me too. Those kitchen cabinets were hand-built by somebody and me using the wood to hand-build mine doesn't really bring them back.

I know I gave this house another fifty years at least by all the work I did on it over the last twenty. If I could go back I might make different choices. It doesn't really matter in the big giant picture, does it? Responding to change is something we do every day and cultivating some grace around it is the challenge of all of us, especially old people like me. It isn't going to stop. Fortunately, I have a lot of tools to work through it. One of the best is satire and I got the best little movie in my head last night about the Jell-O Art Show possibilities. Think of The Wiz and sing along as we "Move Kesey down, Kesey down the ro-oad,". Stay tuned.

Consensus-seeking Process

The year has turned and my organizations will be meeting this week to set our course for 2016. I had planned to give a quick presentation of the process used by the Saturday Market at our meetings, so looked back for blogs I had written about it in the past. I know I repeat myself...but I couldn't find one. I must have touched upon it but not as the main subject.

I did see that many of my past posts were quite long and this is the type of thing that can get that way. Even though forty years of history is fairly short in the big picture, these last forty years of my membership in Saturday Market have formed my life and how I work, so this is actually a big and critical piece of it.

Membership organizations are rare and particular in that the pressure to "think like a business" is always there as we measure ourselves against the increasingly competitive business world and think that perhaps we should be more corporate and less personal. I would say that most of the time this pressure comes to our table, it has not been thoughtful about who we are and how our community works together to meet our mutual goals. Sure, when it comes to promotions we need a social-media presence and our image is important, and we do have a primary goal of staying solvent, with as many vendors as possible making money so they will remain members and keep the organization on its feet. However, we are about much more than making money and I would say it is not even our primary goal.

Our primary goal is living and working in community to meet our mutual goals. Those involve our safety and health, our willingness to belong and work together, our development both personally and as an organization, and the protection of our artisan careers and ability to thrive as craftspeople and artists, as well as the health, safety and personal development of those we hire as staff and to provide services. Making money is an activity that serves those goals. So it would be rare and short-sighted to allow money to be the deciding factor in our process. Vendors who do well don't matter more than those who struggle to sell. People who pay reserve fees aren't more important because they do. "Loving the market" isn't about what you can take home from it, but what you give to it and how you apply your skills to benefit the common good.

The process of seeking consensus is based upon the premise that each person holds a piece of the truth. Nobody's truth is better than someone else's, though one can be more logical, one can be more self-serving, and so on. When all of the pieces are combined a momentary version of the truth is formed that can be useful in that moment or possibly in a longer term. Truths that are more thoughtfully formed and inclusive are generally the most useful and last the longest, but there is no absolute truth when it comes to human relations. It's all conditional. So our truth, embodied in our policies,  needs to speak to our context of being members of an organization working for our common good.

This means that when we make policy, we need to make sure we have asked for and listened to all possible stakeholders and considered the effects of our policy on those who didn't have a voice in the room. In the case of Saturday Market, when we make policy we ought to consider our neighbors, the farmers, our downtown businesses, our park-dwellers, our city and county agencies, our customers, and the general public who connects to us whether or not they attend or spend money. Me making money is not the primary goal of any policy. Me making money in the context of the common good surrounding my 8x8 in the park in the downtown in the city in the county in the state and in the world is not even the primary goal, because we also need to include the fourth dimension of time. Saturday Market needs to make policies that ensure that it will thrive for the next forty-five years or until whenever it does not serve the common good and decides to stop operating. As members we commit to be loyal to that survival and that longterm goal, so we set aside the self-interest of "me making money" and tend all of the other interests as well.

With good process all of those interests will align and the common goals will emerge so good policy can be written. We have years of good policy that has been put together by many individuals working together for the common good, which has mostly been consistent and relatively easy to grasp. Most of us know most of us and when we gather usually things run fairly smoothly because people's needs are being met. Mostly.

Of course new needs surface and new policy issues have to be discussed. We didn't used to have people living in our park during the week when we are not renting it. Now we do. When Occupy moved in a few years ago we were spun into a tizzy because we didn't have a method for dealing with forces who didn't use contracts or people in authority positions to make promises, and we weren't sure our contract to set up on Saturday would be honored. It was, and we learned a lot at the time about even more radical consensus processes than we were using. I credit the Occupy movement with bringing me much sharper understanding of real group process and making me open my mind to a much more inclusive form of decision-making. There is still a lot of useful technique coming from people's movements that can help us make good decisions and it is our responsibility to pay attention to it and bring it into our meeting room and marketplace.

When we make decisions about our space that we rent and the surrounding spaces, we have to struggle with the concept that just because we have a financial contract to use the space one day a week, it isn't our space and we are simply park users, without automatic rights that supercede those of other city residents. If we ignore the needs of those various people, from the people with the shopping carts to the ones who hope to fill their baskets and drive home, we won't be making workable or fair policy. Those who come to spend money and those who don't have any are all our stakeholders, whether we like that or not.

That's a digression though, as talking about the business model of the Farmers would be, so I'll limit this to the more general. LCFM used to be a membership organization like ours, but it has morphed into something else now, a more corporate type of organization. OCF has arguably morphed as well, into more of a festival perhaps and less of an organization set up to serve its members. Long philosophical discussions could be held about both of them and how we intersect or don't, but the point is that we, the members, can change our organization with our policy and our self-interest, so we want to be careful and go slowly so that that fourth dimension doesn't teach us things we should have known and make us lose things we can't get back.

Craftspeople are a throwback to ancient times in how we view our work, using our hearts and hands to create beautiful and useful objects out of raw materials. There is a holiness in that, that we feel and convey and that is one reason we have customers. People recognize the value of that ancient link and want to glimpse or touch or own a piece of it, and many want to participate in it as much as they can. They bring their souls to us and sometimes skills and useful resources but some come to take and don't give back. We want to protect ourselves from the takers while at the same time being wide open to those who want to participate. Members have different definitions of the takers and we joke about particular types of customers and others who don't really see what we're about and blunder through our midst making waves. Sometimes it is not funny. We have our own selfish members who don't see or don't care about the common good and it is part of our job to illustrate that and point out how it can be better served. Thus we make rules about dogs and smoking and health issues and we are often invited to make more rules to further restrict participation in various ways. We are always treading a fine line to balance restrictions with openness.

Often those who are not feeling their needs being addressed get fearful and demanding that their views be validated and actions be taken. It is not easy to strike that balance and feelings can be hurt with any policy. This is where it is critical that the policies be thoughtful and thus defensible. Justice and fairness are powerful concepts that drive a lot of emotion forward. Good policy protects the Board from attacks of prejudicial actions and protects the managers and workers from abuses that they might suffer in the course of doing their jobs. We will always have members who understand rules differently, are defiant and dismissive of certain ones, and we will always have people who don't see or understand the bigger picture. Board members and staff have to stand tall and remind people in crisis that the job is to serve the common good and not just one piece of it.

Everyone in a membership organization operates with self-interest, but knowing that this is built-in can be used as a strength instead of a compromising aspect. We can all learn to set aside our personal needs to think about the needs of everyone. It's a useful life skill and lifts us up out of our base concerns to feel the larger spiritual or emotional issues that are sometimes at play in the most difficult crises and situations. That's one of the challenges in policy-making and the consensus-seeking process serves that very well.

Fortunately, in the organizations I am a member of, the grand majority of members bring a lot of heart and soul to the meeting rooms and events, and we are generally well-tended. None of them suffer much from neglect or members who are purely about self-interest, but probably the opposite it true. Most of us care a lot and that great love is why we feel the problems so deeply.  It's our responsibility to not fall into despair and go away mad when things get messy. Seeking consensus is way messier than what is called "up or down voting" in the code of people who care little about the common good. In good consensus-seeking process, most of the votes are formalities and are "all in favor." The work has been done to find the truths available and set a course that is logical and practical for the longterm. Right before the vote is when you can do the gut-check to see if it feels right. If it doesn't feel right, it is usually worth it to speak up and see if you can identify that feeling. Ask some questions. Will this decision stand for the longterm? Is this the right direction for the organization? Did we consider all of the people who weren't in the room? Are we serving the common good here?

Take the time to do it right and using those hands and hearts just like you would in your kitchen or workshop. You know when you are compromising to serve your short term comforts rather than your bigger goals. Bring your best self to the meetings and try to set aside or articulate your fears so that they won't get in the way. Allow the possibility that you only have a tiny piece of the larger truth, and don't come with your mind made up. You are participating in a process and you are only doing a part. You are not as important as you think, yet you are essential.