Farmers' Survey

People of Saturday Market have been wondering how to respond to the survey about a possible year-round, indoor farmers' market (YRIM). I'm afraid right now to even go look at the survey, but I will absolutely participate, and be as strong as I can be about any parts where I can provide my perspective.

If you haven't read the book Market Days, about farmers' market history, it's well worth a couple of hours of your day. There is a copy in the library and I think one in the SM office as well. Read again our own SM history on the website, and give yourself a hug for being one of the members of a very thoughtful membership organization, the Saturday Market. If the only point you get from this post is that, get it, because we are surviving and thriving because we have held so tightly to our traditional structure and values, and that is what will take us through this new situation. Our membership gives us a collective voice that is as strong as we want it to be. Together we have all the skills we need to make the most of whatever happens.

In name, the LCFM is still a membership organization, but they have morphed a bit in the last decade, according to how they perceive their different needs. Organic, farm-sourced produce, meats, and prepared products are booming. The industry is popular, and attracting investors. The City and County have noticed and listened to the PR and they want a piece of it. Developers and business people want the FM to succeed so that they can get a piece. It's as simple as that. SM is not getting that action because we are not for sale. We don't want any investors right now with their complications of profit motives and self-interest.  We just want to keep doing what we are doing, what is working well for us. Not that we are closed to improvements, but will they really be improvements?

We do want to continue to sell at low cost on our public land, which does give us a landlord who has some power over us. We rent from the City, and we also have great relationships of offering services to the City (we manage activity permits, food carts, and other services for the city.) It seems a solid and mutually beneficial relationship, but there are no guarantees that the city will always let us use the Park Blocks. We've been there for 34 years, but still, city councilors can change their minds. The farmers rent from the County. The County owns both of the north blocks. They have said they need more room. They have enlisted help in making the site improvements or location changes that will give them more room. Both the City and the County are sympathetic, as are we. The last thing we want is a fight with the farmers.

We all know how important our co-location is to us. Both organizations benefit greatly from the exciting, weekly outdoor seasonal market. We've worked together for all of these years and more for our mutual benefit. That said, many farmers now don't feel that this meets their needs. Many of them sell at lots of markets, every day of the week, all year round, and although the Saturday LCFM is the biggest, they have a lot of other choices. They believe that they are the draw, and SM is less essential, and they don't really feel a responsibility for our success. If they decide it's better for business to move to 5th St, or anywhere else, they will.

They do not speak with one voice, though, and we know that many of their members do think they need us, and would be resistant to moving away from us, and they do care about us. Still, if push came to shove, and they could gain the consensus of their members, they could move. Maybe, if it were to EWEB Plaza or someplace that we were interested in, we would consider going too. Since there is no location for this proposed Y-R-I-market, getting worried or excited about it is premature. If it were built where the Butterfly is, that might be fantastic for us. If it had a space we could use for Holiday Market, I would love it. But if it were too far or too different, my opinion would change. I think everyone is worried about all of the unknowns.

But let's stay in the knowns. We know we need produce, and we are committed to always having it. If the FM moved, we would endeavor to have one of our own in some form. We know we want to stay the way we are. Our membership organization, with enough participation from our members, is the strongest kind of business association ever. We can have resources to share that none of us would be able to afford on our own. We are so solid in this that I take great strength from it. I don't really feel threatened by anything the farmers do, as I know we are loved in our own right and that will not stop. People need us. So we can relax about our own future. We will manage and we will thrive.

I said in an earlier blog that the farmers are not 100 year old on the PB, that that was pure PR. They sold on the PB for fourteen years, and in 1929, despite 50% of their farmers being opposed to it, their management accepted a land donation on Broadway and Charnelton and built a building. Lots of civic leaders came to a dinner meeting and sold the reluctant farmers and they all signed off on it. Prices were still kept low, and there were lots of producers, and several problems were solved. Then the stock market failed and the Depression hit. For the next two decades everyone struggled, but there were some significant things that killed off the FM. The Grange formed a different Market Board that did not have to have the approval of all of the grange members to make decisions. They opened to greater participation in their decision-making by all kinds of other businessmen and local entities, like the County Agent. They thought they all had the same goals, but gradually the little farmers had less and less power to even make their concerns heard.

They held on until 1959. There were lots of reasons why they failed. The war effort siphoned off a lot of food and farm products, and bigger producers got the contracts with their lower prices, and when another landowner sold the land they had been using for parking and outdoor spaces for firewood sales, etc, they had no parking. Gradually more shops were brought in to fill the space, who didn't sell farm products. Supermarkets (cough cough Whole Foods) opened and people preferred shopping there. The indoor space held onto the lively and friendly atmosphere of the outdoor market for a time, but it just wasn't the same.

They had sold bonds to finance the building and the property taxes rose. All of their resources went to debt service and taxes. The finally got out of debt but there just wasn't the income for enough management, much less promotions and marketing, and finally they got a big offer for the building through a management company with a name that is still active locally. They hoped to still continue in the building and did for a couple of years, but then the SF company that had bought it decided to put in a Rite Aid. and it was over.

By then the membership organization did not have the will or means to reorganize, and it was not until the 70's when farmers were again able to sell in a group setting, with Saturday Market. That's what started up this present incarnation, and when you read the history, it's pretty concerning to see them head down that same road.

That was then and this is now. The people on the LCFM Board who are pushing for this building are farmers, for the most part, or are doing it through farmers, and they may have learned from history to not extend a controlling interest to a profit-making entity. Unfortunately city and county government are no longer much different from profit-making entities, as we can see from the closing of the Jacobs Gallery and the  current selling off of Kesey. We don't know what the farmers are planning, as a whole, but we can guess that they are not all on the same page. We don't know what the City or County are planning. We have some voice in the discussions, which are in the early stages. They are trying to figure out if the project is feasible, if it will pencil out to be a money-maker and not a drain on already drained public coffers. It will need to make money. Never mind the building costs, just consider the operational costs.

My feeling is that it will not make money if spaces are rented for $10 plus 10% or even the $40 the farmers pay now for a 10x10. There will have to be either subsidy by local governments, or higher payments by participants. If there aren't enough producers, it would seem natural to let in others who are less invested. We have already seen that many farmers don't do the selling, or even show up at the booths sometimes. They don't have the strict Maker is the Seller ethic we are so focused on, though they haven't strayed far yet. But what they offer now is that direct connection, still intact, that the shoppers want.

We all know we can't sell every day all year round, and most of us don't want to. I like our Market the way it is, and although I wouldn't block someone's plans to participate on some level in that building, it isn't for me. I probably wouldn't even spend my considerable organic food dollars there, preferring to support the farmers I already support. I saw what happened at 5th St when people went indoors, to later be kicked out by Obie when other more profitable shops were preferred. They were used. I do not want my organization to be used. I'm not against the project, and like you, I want more information, but I'm not wild about the feasibility of it. I hope I can communicate that in the survey but I am guessing it won't be easy. I'm not going to think that the one step of filling it out will replace my thoughtfulness and watchfulness about what is really going to involve me. I will continue to increase my involvement in my membership organization as I feel the increased need to guide us and make good decisions for our collective futures. I hope many of us feel the same. Show up, sell at Market, and keep us strong and vital. Promote us well to the outside world. Don't be too worried, just keep working.

But by all means, please fill out the survey as I am about to go do, and let our voices be heard. Mine is not the only opinion. If even a hundred of our members chime in, that is more than any other interest group. Our interest is in keeping what we have built. We can do it without the farmers, but we'd rather do it with them. And there is no way, ever, that I want to see my organization sell out. Not even a little. I believe in learning from history to move slowly and keep our goals and prime directives in mind. That's why we are still here, still relevant, and still the BEST!

Fear is How We Get to Love

Yes, writing that post about my young radical days got me upset...but I gained some needed insight of course. It was the photo of Hillary Clinton next to Kissinger that got to me the most this week. It led to an article about the politics of Vietnam and all of the rage and despair came back. That part was maybe missing from the last post. Rage. Then despair. Fear, rage, despair, an unending cycle that gets me at three in the morning once in awhile, like last night.

I don't think every generation has that happen when
they are in their twenties. Maybe it is just masked and drugged into compliance. I would guess someone graduating with a degree in massive debt accumulation feels it when they have to move back into Mom's house and work at Target. Still, we Americans are infused with hope and aspiration. We are sure that at some point we will get everything we have been taught to desire. We think it might even be easy, because most of us are sure we are privileged.

In light of the cultural appropriation discussions I thought about a spreadsheet of my privilege. I am, of course, in an oppressed minority, women, but I've been able to set that aside by creating my own job, building my own house, integrating myself with a supportive community. This has been relatively easy for me because I am white, smart and not unattractive by common standards, so those go in the privilege column. I'm poor, but that's by choice, to avoid contributing to the destructive war machine. I've gotten food stamps and food boxes in the deep past, when I really needed them, and I've always had my Mom to help me here and there. She paid for my braces in my thirties (privilege) and when I got stuck a few times she paid for plane tickets home or some bill or other. She paid for a lot of my therapy. All privilege. Not much oppression there, except if I wanted to compete in the "man's world" I would fail, and I am not equal in the eyes of the law or the economy and all women still suffer from the oppression built by men. It hasn't really gotten better, but it will. Powerful women are more powerful now than ever, and more respected. We've taken some ground.

As a hippie I have been oppressed, I'd say, but again, that was my choice as an identification. As a Saturday Market member I have been looked down upon, but not by anyone who really matters to me. As a boothperson at OCF, there are ways I'm oppressed,  for instance by the fee structure, but it's balanced by my success there and that I am a grandfathered booth rep with a prime space. That counts as mostly privilege. Now that I am a volunteer too, it's working as privilege, because my skills are gaining me respect and I am making a valuable contribution in several ways, so privilege, but earned. Somewhat limited. I don't get anything for free, not even a cup of coffee at Main Camp. But I know people, and I can get free coffee now and then. On balance, I'm entitled.

 As a traumatized person, I've been distanced-from and pushed aside, but as is typical in mental health oppression, I figured I deserved it in some perverse way, for not being in control of my emotions. I've been taken advantage of and manipulated, but not so much the victim of violence. Two break-ins when I lost some treasured items and some security, one legal situation that could have been so much worse, a few situations I'm not willing to think about when I made some choices that were probably caused by my lack of coping skills as a traumatized person. So I would count those in the oppressed column, and they seem huge sometimes, and not so bad other times. On the scale of mental health oppression, I am safe and warm and can get the help when I need it, so nowhere near the oppression many suffer, but not privilege, except for the compassion gain which I count as a gift.

As an old person, oppression. A teense of privilege from Medicare, though it isn't an easy system to navigate. The oppression works in a way because if I run up against something impossible, I sometimes get excused because elderly people aren't expected to be able to understand things. We sometimes get a pass on things younger people would not. Of course I an new to being old, only 65, so the marginalization has not really set in. I'm ignored, but I like that, generally. I don't want sexual attention and don't mind not being hustled. I'd just as soon go about my business without being observed. But the increased level of concern people have for me is oppressive. My neighbors interfere when I climb ladders and trees...out of their concern for my safety. I did make a mistake and broke my heel that time, so some of that is deserved. I do take physical risks sometimes to get my work done. I suppose it could be seen as privilege that my neighbors even care what I do. But on the whole, age is oppression, and I know that will get way worse the longer I live. I have some deep fear for how I will manage when I can't work and if serious physical illness develops. I do have some trusted caretakers, but soon they will all be retired so that's an issue. I'm tough, but age does not work as privilege for me.

As a single parent, oppressed, though I had the advantage of liking that I didn't have to negotiate with a dad-person. It would not have worked well for me. There were times I was oppressed by my teenager, but he gets excused for just trying to get his needs met. He was of a very oppressed class at the time, children and adolescents. He is still in the oppressed class I would say, as a young married person, in this economy. But he has his own spreadsheet and it probably balances toward privilege. He'd have to decide that.

So it's an interesting exercise to evaluate my own life. It's hard to shake that instilled privilege of the way I grew up, notwithstanding the status as child and traumatized child and person who thought they were poor. My privilege was all in place in many ways, and I've carried it with me. Lots of things were easy for me, and lots of things still are. I was not owning class, but not exactly working class. That's what middle class is, the aspiring working class that thinks it is owning class. Americans don't talk about class, but that doesn't mean it isn't operating.

So then the question turns to what do I do with my heritage of status. I've done a little, nothing to brag about. I'm helpful and dependable and I do a lot of volunteering for my organizations and groups, but those all involve some self-interest, and I always feel that I could do more. I've given, but could give more. I've listened, but could hear more and respond more. I've mostly been selfish about creating my own safety, seclusion, and space so that I can feel healthy in my bubble. That's doing everyone a favor, but it isn't nearly as helpful as my privilege would indicate that I could be.

Most of the times I have really tried to be generous with more oppressed people, it has ended badly. I'm thinking about some of my jobs at 4J, being a one-on-one with a child with disabilities, and working in the Community Resource Center. I was not really suited for those jobs, and made some huge (to my retrospect) mistakes. Before I had a child of my own I failed a few children who needed more. What can you do? You do the best with the tools you have, and try to maintain and improve your tools, or step aside and let someone else do the work. I stepped aside when it was obvious I was about to do harm. I let the bottomless pool of need be filled by others with more resources.

Politically, I'm still a hardcore radical and my cynicism sometimes lifts briefly so I can engage. I made a lot of political t-shirts at times, helping to spread my leftist thoughts. I still have a few hats that speak to this. I listened avidly to the GAs and all the coverage of the Occupy movement but it was way too hard for me to do it in person down on the Park Blocks. I was too afraid. I still am. I took my son to a few demonstrations, but he didn't like it, and when I cried my eyes out at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC he was embarrassed, probably deeply so. What teenager wants to see their Mom cry in public in front of a lot of strangers? He hasn't responded to my previous post, though I expect he reads my stuff and processes it in his own way. I am giving him all the space he wants when it comes to my self-exploration. He has had to put up with it his whole life as I dragged him to NVC presentations and went to RC classes and Market and always worked so much when he would have rather had me play with him. I probably told him way too much about things in which he had no interest. Like most kids there are probably things he admires about my life and ways he shakes his head in his own fear and despair. I hope he doesn't have much rage. I know I tried to give him a non-traumatic life and I think he got that. My creating of safety worked for him too.

This was meant to be ironic

I suppose he learned about my radicalism by my reactions to culture and my choices, like the getting rid of my clothes dryer (hated that) and my making him bike and walk places I didn't want to drive (pretty inconvenient and sometimes rather disastrous.) I didn't make it possible for him to go to MIT like I should have, though that wasn't really possible anyway. I should've sent him to Japan though. Oh hindsight, so useless and so rich. Let's just let him be in his own life now, doing his own exploration, calling his own dance. I'm trying to do that. Most parents probably have years of misgivings about not doing better until their kids let them know they are forgiven, which probably comes at about age 75 or so. If they should live so long!

I feel good about my life here, and the rage and despair episodes are brief. I am able to talk myself through them, with the evidence that I have been able to live all these decades quite joyfully with that still inside me. I know I won't fall off the cliff. I know I have what it takes to navigate the rest of my life with grace and style, and the strength to hold onto my compassion for my self and others.

I did even buy into the hopey changey thing and respect the Obamas terrifically for bringing our country to a better place, much better. But I read enough to know Obama sold us out in many ways because he had to. He probably listens to Kissinger too, because the ones who own our country have always owned it and will continue to own it. I will not be surprised if

Bernie fails to advance past a certain point. I love what he is saying and I love that people are energized and hopeful. I don't want to dampen that at all, but I can't quite get there. I'm even going to vote for Hillary if it comes down to that, because a democrat is better, so much better, even if they are a bought democrat. I would love to vote for a Sanders/Warren ticket and hope that is the result of all this crapola and obsession. If all that happens is that people read about history and analyze politics and culture and learn some useful lessons, I am down for it. I hope it isn't too painful for our young ones. We don't need more cynical, escapist citizens who won't participate, because there are, without a doubt, many, many caring and compassionate people inspired to do wonderful things in the outside world. The Obamas gave us a ton of that and put many people in powerful positions to make real change, at least at the levels where we will feel it, if not so much on the global stage. They got us our respect back, the respect that evaporates as soon as a Republican opens his or her mouth. That's super valuable, and the world is a magnitude better than it was eight years ago. Hope and change did a lot. I'm glad I went along with it as far as I did, and I will try to go along with it now. I will try to remember that cynicism does not protect me.

Fear, rage and despair are only countered by giant quantities of love and care. However we can find that, even if it has to take the form of chocolates and diamond rings, we really have to create that love. All the time. Every way we get the chance to. Listening to Bernie, even though it takes me through my memories in an unpleasant way, makes me love him and love this time and this life. I don't care if these young feminists are stepping all over all that hard work we did and leaving us in the sidelines. That is what we wanted, to make them powerful. We did all that we did for the children we didn't even have at the time, the children inside us and in everyone, the tender hearts that don't need more fear and despair. The rage built a more beautiful world. It is worth it. It is honest and true. That's all I was fighting for: the truth. Keep telling it like it really is, Bernie, our activists, our Kesey-savers, our kids, our writers and our cartoonists. The truth is indeed setting us free, free from our gilded chains. We have scars and bruises, but it is a beautiful day when we hear the ring of truth.

When I was a Radical

I got to thinking that I never told my son about where my politics and life choices came from. I was born in 1950, in the time when the Great War was over, the men came back, evil was defeated, and everyone set about having conventional, safe lives. Lots of kids were born, and in Delaware where I was, parents wanted good schools, back yards with swing sets, and they worked for DuPont. We lived in a couple of small duplexes in different parts of downtown, and when I was six we moved to the suburbs, according to plan. Where I lived was almost the country, with a big backyard, and we wandered all over the place, always safe, free to explore the world. I was the second of four girls, and the tomboy, spending most of my time in a big willow tree with a book, or in the woods. I thought I had a happy childhood, did well in school, took piano lessons, cut the grass. We went sailing on the weekends. When I was twelve a brother was born, which gave me the chance to learn how to nurture a little, and anyway we all did a lot of the domestic work together, singing while we did the dishes. We had fruit trees and gardens, snow in the winter, all idyllic..

Except it wasn't, as my parents drank and my dad developed a depression problem. He was unpredictable and we were always afraid of him. I learned to dissociate when things got tense. I escaped in various ways, mostly reading, sailing by myself, taking my frustrations out on my younger siblings by teasing and other devious behaviors. But still, an obedient and good little girl; Brownies, Girl Scouts, folk dancing, all A's, a little chubby, plenty of friends. Singing, piano, art. I had a bad first grade art teacher who damaged me a lot but I still made a lot of things and loved it. We went to Catholic School a little, but that went bad. Dad was an athiest of sorts, and Mom raised us Catholic to please her mom, a Nebraska farmer. Catholics get a lot of damage, but all that is another post. My Dad was a chemical engineer, and did lots of things in his basement workshop, including making nylon, distilling brandy, and turning metal. I'm actually a lot like him, enjoying trying to make all kinds of things just to see how it is done, and seeing if I can do it.

When I was thirteen the President, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated, followed by Martin Luther King Jr. and then in 1968, Bobby Kennedy. It's hard to describe how disillusioned and shocked we all were. I must have been politically aware because I knew about the Civil Rights movement, but I wouldn't say I cared much about any of it. My family dynamics were compelling and I was thinking about myself as most adolescents do. Kennedy was our president though, the first Catholic, young and handsome. They called it Camelot. It was mythical. The death was dramatic and the rituals powerful. There's no way to forget it.

In junior high and high school I was one of the smart kids, popular but awkward. I had buck teeth because my parents prioritized other things. I had a great English teacher who taught me I was a writer. I liked student government, and our high school was new so I got to help write constitutions for the student council and the cheerleaders.  My best friend was a cheerleader so I was too, but I quit over an argument about whether or not we should have both blue and white shirts under our letter sweaters. I honestly felt that I couldn't afford both shirts, which wasn't true, but I had learned to think of my family as poor in a rich community. That came from my Dad, who was the son of an alcoholic and had his own traumatic childhood. I guess we were all very status conscious, and there were a lot of wealthy people in my school. We read Time Magazine, and my parents had some wealthy friends who were role models, probably introducing us to the New Yorker. Delaware is a wealthy state, and the whole east coast is still about status and wealth, with the conformism that comes with that. I had a boyfriend a year older, and at some point I convinced him to have sex. It was something I wanted from the books I'd been reading. Sex was power and I used it that way. 

College was expected, but when it came time to apply the trauma was showing. Dad suggested I go to Purdue where he had gone, as I could get a scholarship. I got $100. It seemed very expensive, but my parents were able to pay for both me and my older sister, with our summer jobs and the babysitting and things we had always done for money. We got 35 cents an hour to babysit. I was used to doing a lot of work and expected to, and I worked hard at Purdue, but was in over my head. I was studying to be a medical technologist, maybe because I wanted to be a doctor but knew that was out of my reach. Girls really were programmed to get married as a primary goal, and have a job while you waited to meet Prince Charming. We all thought that was our path. We all dressed in sweater and skirt sets and little flats that had to be the right kind. My clothes were mostly homemade to stretch our budget, as I continued to feel poor. Indiana was a hick place with kids that I couldn't relate to, and I was extremely lonely and unhappy.

I thought transferring to a school closer to home would help, and landed at American U in Washington DC. It was kind of a party school but I was in with medical and dental students and lived in a house with a group of assorted people who shared a kitchen in the basement. I shared a room with a girl who was the daughter of lawyers, from Connecticut. One day at school I went to a film, The War Game. It was about nuclear war and how it developed, and I remember the repeated refrain that it was "perfectly safe." I was completely shocked to see how the public was deceived, and was immediately radicalized. We had grown up with drills where we huddled under our desks, as if that would have saved us. I felt that everything about my world had changed. I completely lost my faith in authority, my own safety, and my future.The innocence that was eroded by the Kennedy assassination was now gone completely. When that happens, you don't get it back. I'll never trust authority.

This was in 1969. I had loved the Beach Boys and the Beatles and knew a little about the social changes of the sixties but nothing about pot or hippies or the Dead or any of that. I stopped wearing a bra (women had burned their bras in front of the Miss America pageant on the boardwalk at Atlantic City) and started wearing the same jeans and wool sweater every day. No more fashion for me. My roommate must have introduced me to Democratic politics, and I was reading things. The anti-war movement was already happening at my school, and I got involved in it very quickly. I went to all the demonstrations. I knew now that nothing the government said was true, that Kennedy had been shot by conspiracy, and our country was morally bankrupt. They told us we would find out what happened to Kennedy in 50 years, but that has now come and gone and we didn't find out, did we. I suppose I thought that was the one thing that would be true.

The Vietnam War was extremely painful for people my age. The draft was a lottery and took thousands and thousands of young kids, truly cannon fodder, and it was the first war that was shown on the nightly news: atrocities and suffering with your dinner. Everything was shocking and unjust and the popular movement to end it was powerful and hopeful. Standing in the streets with 500,000 other ordinary people was astounding. I learned about Dylan and Joan Baez, folk music, and inevitably, started smoking pot. Jefferson Airplane, the Who, the Stones, the Dead, Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young all fed our passions and described our dreams, and it united us. There had never been such a large group of people of the same age, a population bump that gave us a lot of social power. We made the most of it.

All of the liberation movements were starting as an extension of the Civil Rights movement of the sixties. My roommate's father and brother were involved in the defense of the Chicago Eight. These men were our heroes when they were accused of conspiracy to riot after a demonstration at the Democratic Convention in 1968. I got to meet them, and some of the Black Panthers, through my roommate. We got to serve drinks to them at a party in Connecticut. I was still naive and immature, but I could see that there were ways to fight the government and the power of the people was real. The deck was stacked against the people but when there was unity, it couldn't be overcome. (This all went away for decades through Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes, and although Jimmy Carter was authentic he didn't have power, and the hope didn't come back until Obama. That was why he was such a phenomenon, because he rekindled that for my generation. Of course I was too cynical to really believe in him fully.)

The student movement increased in seriousness and in 1969 and 1970 it was peaking. My little sister and I were attacked by mounted police that came at us from behind the Washington Monument. We ran for our lives. I was teargassed on campus, in what felt like a battle. Earth Day happened for the first time in April, and the US illegally invaded Cambodia. In the space of two weeks in May, 1970, four students were killed by the National Guard at Kent State, Ohio,(May 3), more were shot at Jackson State (May 14) , University students all over the country went on strike (May 6), I turned 20 (May 5), and my father committed suicide (May 16).

The world changed color for me. It was as if everything was the same but my eyes, and no one could tell. It seems impossible now that the juxtaposition was that close, that I felt the possibility of my own death by my government, and then the floor dropped out of my life. Things started to be bizarre and stayed that way for the next decade as I struggled to fit myself into the world somehow. I find it fascinating that here in Eugene, Saturday Market started at that very same time (May 9).

About fifteen years of brave and foolish deeds crammed into the next five years that someday I will relate, and in 1975 I got to Eugene. Here I found my counterculture and my community. Saturday Market, the Radar Angels, and Country Fair became the life I wanted and could build upon. Mike and I met in 1981, my son John was born in 1990, and then I began my inner journey to heal my trauma and learn to be a mother.
That is another long story that can be told, but these were the things that got me here, made me who I am, and opened me to the family and home that I built. Any questions?

Public Relations Spins Me

The fog isn't lifting for the promised sunny day. That means no laundry for me, not really a big deal but inconvenient. I realized it has been about ten years since I got rid of my clothes dryer, so that gives some perspective on whether or not I can live without it. I haven't resorted to the laundromat yet although when my foot was broken I did let a few people do my laundry for me. (Keep that in mind as a way to help people in medical crises...easy to do and while somewhat intimate, it's not as hard as lots of other ways to help.) But I can't make the sun come out, only wait for it. There's no use at getting mad at the weather-spokespeople either. Patience and steadiness is all I can apply, and optimism may or may not be rewarded.

I feel burned out on city government-watching. It's educational for my work with my own organizations: how scripted discussions sometimes are, because they are in the public eye and are being recorded, how wild the wide array of public opinions can be, how mistakes are constantly made because it is so hard to see the big picture when looking at the small details. I really don't like the opinions of developers and republicans, and they really don't like mine. I try for transparency in my own words and actions but I can't maintain the perfect balance of wisdom over fear and get my needs met and goals furthered, particularly when I am not clear on those goals and fears and in reaction mode. I keep reminding myself that this is not a crisis.

I have a long history here, but not much real inside engagement in most cases. Observing and standing back are ways to keep a distance and avoid responsibility. This has been super apparent to me with my lack of willingness to weigh in on the OCF cultural appropriation debate, the current discussions in the city over Park Blocks/ Kesey issues, and others. I'd like to sit back and see what develops, but how this plays out over time is that my voice is not heard and I haven't done my part in making sure my needs are met. Sometimes you have to wade in and be a part of the messiness, or so I keep advising myself.

I applaud those who have the courage and skills to articulate the way their positions are actually bigger than just their own needs-assessments, the way the decisions should be guided to meet the real needs of most of the people. That of course is the stated aim of most politicians, but close observations expose the self-interest and manipulations of those who don't really see the common people and don't really have a clue about what would really benefit them. They need their feet held to the fire, as I do, reminders of why we do what we are supposed to be doing and why it is important to make the effort.

Developers of our city properties are fairly easily understood: they want to profit, and use as little of their own resources to do that, to maximize the profit and minimize the loss, clear money management tactics that don't include much about the quality of life and needs of others. They usually don't want to build places for old ladies and young seekers to live during life transitions, but of course those are huge needs that I see the opportunity to address. We need places to sit and places to feel safe and the young seekers need support while they figure out how to make their way. They don't care that putting a building in that tiny little alley on Broadway will take away my safest access to my workplace downtown. It's so far off their radar I hesitate to bring it up. I'll have to accommodate, and I have a long history of being adaptable and resilient, so I'm okay, but not happy about that building project. It seems a stupid use of resources and a money grab in the shortsighted quest for a piece of a track meet that might not even make it downtown. But whatever. I don't expect that anyone but me really cares about whether or not I can safely navigate with a bike cart. However, if I thought that all bike carts would be unusable downtown, I'd speak loudly...but I won't know if that is a possibility until the PR spinning stops and the construction site fences go up. Then it will be too late.

We need to support what is working and not destroy it in the rush to do something new and shiny. Reining back the visionaries and novelty-seekers is necessary to a degree, but to use the same metaphor, we don't want to hamstring those fast-movers. The tech community downtown is seen as the fast horse that is going to win some race and people who think of themselves as winners want to back the winning team in any race. So it seems to makes sense to get those people what they need if possible, and they want fast internet and nice apartments downtown, so a lot of energy is being directed their way. If a few low-level bikers are inconvenienced, well, that's too bad, but there may be a bandaid for that. Let's see the wound first, they might say. In other words, let's not operate from your fears, but if you could provide some compelling force, like a million dollars, that might help.

Early 1970's, Saturday Market

With the farmers, there are also young enthusiastic entrepreneurs and more mature money people who see that building a storefront so they can sell every day would be cool, especially if someone else would pay for it since it is out of reach of even the collective efforts of the farmers. They have to invest in their own properties and crops, and marketing takes a lower priority. Yet they have to sell, and the roadside stand or weekly appearance at a little market doesn't satisfy their bigger needs. They've turned to the city and county and dangled the proverbial (and real) carrot of money for everyone, interesting the development community and committing them to a PR effort to sell their concept. It's not a concept that history would support, but that was then and this is now. As long as they don't try to take down Saturday Market in the process, I can't stand in the way.

I'm really burned out on PR. Maybe it's just the post-Xmas and Super Bowl residual effect, but every time I see that 100-year Farmer's Market spin I get angry. For the record, going indoors year round killed the farmers market in 1959. Killed it. Read the book Market Days

if you doubt me. In 1970, in making our Saturday Market, we included farmers and set it back on its feet. Saturday Market visionaries, while investing in our own way to market our crafts and the products of our lifetime investment in art, realized that the food producers were the exact same type of self-employed entrepreneurs that we were, and we helped them gain the strength of membership to re-establish the Farmers Market. After ten years they wanted to branch off, and we gave them our blessing and continued to support them as they struggled, sharing an office and helping train their managers, as well as continuing to do the lion's share of providing health and safety amenities like bathrooms and garbage disposal, as well as promotions and governmental interface. The city pushed them from place to place, and it was soon established that the only way they could thrive is in close conjunction with our own members as we gathered together for mutual benefit. Saturday Market largely gets the credit for Farmer's Market success during the years of 1970-2005 or so, from my perspective. But their PR did not mention that, and in fact, buried us a little in the dust of their re-invention. We brushed it off, but it isn't the first time they disregarded our needs in their rush to get their own needs met. I'll stop with that, but there are lots of other subjects in that file. Complaining about it has no purpose at this point. I'm always hopeful and have sold at the Tuesday Market next to the farmers quite successfully and hope they know that I am a supportive partner as long as I am a respected one.

Saturday Market is still essentially the same membership nonprofit as we began to be in 1970, in structure. We buy in, we operate together, meeting in public, selling in public, and working together to keep ourselves strong. Indeed, we have thrived, and continued to bring in young entrepreneurs and every kind of artist and producer as we worked. A couple of us were here in the beginning (I arrived in 1975, and retained membership since then) but mostly people have come and gone and put in their efforts as long as they wanted to. We've had good years and bad years but are stable and self-sufficient, and indeed that is our micro/macro style. We put our money together and meet our own needs. After decades of being dismissed and even reviled, we are still creating a completely magical and beloved event weekly, and in the last decade or two this has been recognized. But it seems that to be counted as part of solutions, we have to buy some PR like what the farmers have done. We have to let people know that our makeup is about 20% old, 30% new, and 50% every combination possible in the middle. Every Saturday is a new and different variation. That's our reality, and we won't have to lie to show that as a strength. We have to remind people how easy it is to find your bootstraps in our system, and how many have used us as a springboard and a way to be a productive citizen. We're so woven into the business fabric of Eugene that apparently we are now invisible. So we go to the meetings and listen for encouragement.

I'm not excited to do a pitch to some unknown audience. I see that the farmers organization spun a lie about their origin that has become the public truth, and basing things on a lie cannot be a good course of action. Yet all PR does exactly that...more mildly put, it spins a glamour that shows what the organization wants to show, and the truth isn't relevant. So now everyone thinks the farmers are the venerable 100-year old producers and Saturday Market is irrelevant. I'm angry about that, but of course many of the farmers are people I love, so what is done in their name is not something I can really fight, at least not publicly. My willingness to do some PR of our own is born out of necessity, but it isn't natural to me. We have the opportunity to highlight our good and true strengths and spin anything that isn't working as well...but it's a big job and not only do I not want to do it, I don't trust the process. If faced with the advice to put out a similar lie, I will balk. So I don't expect that I will be that helpful to the process, and am thinking to step back from leadership, at least in that area.

But I am one of the leaders, and stepping back will hurt us. I am one of the articulators, someone who has seen decades of our efforts, and while I wouldn't say I am essential, there are certainly people counting on me. As I mentally stepped back, I thought of what I could do that would help the big-picture, root-cause sorts of issues and in the process protect my interests. I recognized that I can support the progressive parts of our governments, and be sure to elect representatives who will speak for me, and if I can, supply them with the kind of helpful information that will help meet my needs.

So Bernie or Hillary, someone from the left side for sure. I don't want either of them to trash the other in the process of competing. That's easy and I don't feel much need to get involved. Down a level, find other progressive candidates for more local offices and support them. I already told the Lucy Vinis campaign that I support her for Mayor. I love having a woman for Mayor and I think Kitty Piercy has done a wonderful, amazing job at keeping positive while so many tons of criticism have been thrown at her. I think the progressives on the City Council are doing pretty well (in my limited observation) at holding the line against the clearly self-interested among them. I trust the hearts of most of the people sitting up there trying to make good decisions for the common good, and I think they are wading through the PR fairly well in most cases. But we'll need more progressives, most importantly for Ward One, right there in the center of it all. My ward.
I'm not running, but someone needs to!

I don't think I will like the decisions they make about Kesey Plaza and the Park Blocks, but I see the progressives weighing the public passion against the private profit motives and I see them protecting what they can of the will of the people. I sympathize with their positions, juggling so many needs and interest groups. I'm tired of watching though. If this were the Super Bowl, I'd be at the Kareng Fund Art Bingo event instead, just as I was yesterday.

The fog is lifting, so I started the washer. Things may get partly dry this late in the day but they'll be clean. I'm still unsure if I'm going to the City Council meeting tonight, but I found a little bit of energy to do it. I don't have to stay for the whole thing, but listening to them and trying to add some positive energy to their efforts will benefit me and the city public, so I guess I can give up one additional evening. I have a wild little plan to execute, as some comic relief...and as a gift to our Mayor. I think it could be a sweet gesture in the midst of a bunch of angry contention. I'm scared to do it, but that's a good sign that it's important to do. And yes indeed, it involves Jell-O Art. No one can bring that but me.

Research Continues

After I got back from my research at the Oregon Historical Society, I still had questions but no real leads left. I checked out newspapers.com and found some fantastic details that both encouraged me and made me stop and think. On the Vaughan front, I found the news articles about F.G. buying a dairy in July of 1900. He bought an existing dairy called Barett's which apparently gave him "one of the finest herds of Jersey cows in this county." There may be county records of the sale to find. There were several ads, beginning in 1906, which show F.G. selling the cows, one "splendid Jersey" at a time. He sold them "fresh" which I think means that they had given birth and were full of milk, and if he was no longer selling much milk himself that would make sense. I'm guessing that he was a tired old farmer and when the government started demanding more inspections and procedures for insuring clean milk, he gave it up. These old pioneers were determined and hard-working people, and he was in almost 70 when he bought the dairy. Land disposal would have been on his mind, providing for his remaining years and his children.

In one paper I found an article about TB in milk and the resulting killing of exposed dairy cows in the Portland area, so I suspect that at that time there was a push for legislation and government control of  that disease vector, and that may have contributed to him ending his dairy at about that time. The only previous evidence of it was the recollection by Grace Bowers that she grew up on the dairy, and she would have been about twelve in 1900 so that all fits nicely together. I have records of property Vaughan owned throughout his lifetime and probably can track fairly accurately the lots he bought and sold and used as pasture for the cows. He then, to my theory, let the dairy operation go when the city limits changed, his properties were no longer practical for livestock, and he and his family turned to hauling buildings to the Van Buren and 12th Street lots and remodeling them to sell, or selling the lots to others to build on. At any rate, by 1916 when my board was signed, the dairy was probably all the way  gone.

As far as the Huddleston and Davis families go, I found out details about several siblings but when I got to the articles about the various lawsuits involving Samantha Huddleston, things got sad. I think she lived too long. Her son died about a year before she did, and it seems that Margaret Bilyeu, Lark's wife, was involved in helping her settle her estate, and was in fact the executor. Lark had crossed the plains with the Vaughans in 1847 and had been the lawyer for both the Vaughan and Huddleston families in many land transactions and lawsuits. I don't have the complete picture yet (and may never) but he was a young man when they all met and a lifelong friend and associate as many of the pioneers were. It seems that to suffer such a hard journey together was a bonding as would be expected. I believe that FG so admired Lark Bilyeu that he named one of his sons after him (Bilyeu Vaughan,the name on my board) and although Lark himself died shortly before Samantha did, Margaret Bilyeu no doubt felt responsible for helping Samantha for many reasons. Perhaps the most compelling was that she needed help.

We must consider the source, but in the lawsuit over Samantha's estate brought by one of Iantha's sons, William Castleman, he said that Samantha had been ill for many years, was so weakened that she was mentally unable to have a coherent conversation, and was incapable of making her will. She had apparently had a falling-out with her brother Melancthon, whom she had previously put in charge of her properties. While this may or may not have been true, the suit did not change the will, which left the bulk of her estate to the Children's Home in Corvallis. The article put that value at $55,000 but others said $20,000. There may be more I haven't found, but it's a sad story no matter what, so I don't know quite how to handle it. Descendants may not know the particulars, as it's not the kind of family story often told, and it isn't a very honorable last word on someone who lived in Eugene for almost 80 of its earliest years.

But it could explain a few things, such as the dearth of photographs. Samantha could have suffered from dementia or some other debilitating illness, and it could indeed have lasted for many years. The other big lawsuit, one brought twice by her son's Henry's wife in 1917 and 1918, accused her and her brother MM of undue influence over Henry causing him to divorce his wife after seven years of marriage. They apparently accused her of being after the family money, and she sued for $20,000. She was given some type of settlement but the case did not go forward as she had no proof, and it was likely that the social position of the Davis family influenced the judge that the suit did not have merit. Henry, 63 at the time of the divorce, was 32 years older than his wife, Evelyn, and it seems both sides accused the other of wicked and malicious treatment. We can't know from a newspaper article who was right, but life tells us that both sides probably had some legitimate complaints. There are a couple of small articles about property on 8th St., which I will write more about when I figure out the nuances. There was apparently some resistance to paying some city taxes for improvements on land that was once county and became city land. That could have been more neglect to keep up with business that proof of some ill feelings...again, we can't know.

It's still a mystery to me why our local history says little about these families, except for the fact that most history is carried forward by proud descendants and the artifacts they saved. The recent exhibit at the Lane County Historical Museum is about early doctors in the area and fails to mention Mother Davis, the ministering angel, most likely because there is little in the historical record about her. My studies are important but will likely remain incomplete, though I hope to write a few articles with what I do know. It's an interesting question to me why more wasn't written about them, but it might just be unlucky coincidence caused by the early deaths of the men and the personalities of the women, which of course is complete speculation on my part fueled by little facts found here and there.

I will go and review the Huddleston collection at UO again soon. It's really in the little tiny details that the story will be found. My current theory is that Margaret Bilyeu put together the collection in Samantha's last days, and what was donated was meant to tell a story without making actual statements. The letters and bills and excerpts from Huddleston's diary, the artifacts such as the US Grant campaign ribbon, and such objects point to political and personal opinions about the important subjects of the era. I can theorize a lot about what they all did and why, and at least for myself paint a relatively factual portrait of this family and those lives. Whether or not that will be historically useful or interesting enough to publish isn't quite clear yet. I get discouraged but then I read more and find that these ordinary stories are useful and interesting in themselves, and when placed in context still have lessons for us to learn about our town and how it grew.