Meetings

The place we meet. I have to go to one in an hour (yes, on Sunday morning) and take yet another set of minutes to type up. I volunteered to do it, so can't complain...I know it is important to record a group of people in the moment so that we can move forward from there without having to go back too far and start over. Working on craft policy has a satisfying effect, for the most part, clarifying things so people can understand them and get on board with them so we can be more unified. I know how useful that is, and also how it adds another layer of words to things that sometimes get a few layers too many put over them and other times, become transparently clear in a magical way. That's the trick I'm after.

I called a meeting of the Saturday Market membership for this Wednesday. It was a bit bold...I have never done it before, and don't remember any other time a meeting has been called in this way, recently. Usually it would come out of Board actions and be called a task force or some other thing, but I felt an urgency and acted on it. Backed off once and then pushed forward again...the urgency wouldn't disappear when I told myself to wait and see. I've been watching patiently for awhile, as things got more murky and involved, and then had the thought that if they are murky for me, someone who has been watching closely, how muddy must they seem to people who haven't even heard about them yet? When they finally do, won't they say "Why didn't anyone tell me about this?"

A membership organization has to balance involving every member on every level, which is of course pretty impossible, with letting leaders come forward and handle things. Leaders are well-meaning and generally do a wonderful, giving job with making sure bases are covered and tasks get done, but it seems in a big organization there aren't quite enough leaders and not everything gets done, or at least done thoroughly. As someone who has been in the room for many years, sometimes I can walk away and trust that it's all being handled well, and sometimes I can't.

I do trust right now that most things are being handled well and done, if not thoroughly, adequately. Our budget position is good, and we have a special group, the Street Team, volunteering to do promotional things to supplement our ad dollars, and putting that with increased promotions by LCFM, we are having a great sales season on the Park Blocks. We've only had one budget-busting hot day when vendors stayed home, (three last year) and not much rain...the blocks are filled and the tourists are happy with us. We have good relationships with City Staff and the consultants from NYC assured us that we are the best thing going for downtown Eugene, on Saturdays, anyway.

We are an internationally recognized attraction and destination and the heart center of Eugene. Yesterday a gazillion kazoos sounded out a tribute to Eagle Park Slim who recently left this world, and without the stage of the Saturday Market, the community would not have had such a simple way to gather and be together for a meaningful moment. Something like that happens in some small way every single week, something essential. It's personal, so whether it is the Breakfast Club or someone collecting a care package for a friend having surgery or someone buying lettuce starts or cousins reuniting after decades, so many heart-filled moments happen at Saturday Market, if we tried to cancel it on any given day, it would happen anyway. There's nothing so strong and lasting and valued by so many as Saturday Market.

So my last blog about my fears for our future might have sounded too anxious. I probably know too much history about the times we were in crisis to let go of my watchfulness for the next one which will surely come. We're not in one now, but there are too many big things happening at once for me to just trust that everything will be okay without checking in with the rest of the membership to see how we feel together. I know how I feel, and I have a fairly good idea of how some of my friends and neighbors feel, but there's a lot more to consider.

So I called a meeting, and my plan is to restate our essential conditions and what we know so far about what has kept us going for the last almost fifty years. After taking that first step, I want to inform people about the big things they might have missed: the Urban Renewal plans of the City, and the way they intersect with the plans of the County, and the ways they could play out for us, if we consider all the possibilities. There's a lot to pack in and we have an hour.

So I'm going to take a few things off the table for this meeting: I don't want us to do any complaining. I know people need to feel heard and they could have been storing up complaints about various things that might be related to these topics, like what the County should or shouldn't do about Free Speech Plaza. That's too big for an hour and I don't want to talk about it at this meeting. I'm thinking of handing out post-its and asking people to put their complaints in writing in one location to deal with later. I want people to have a way to express their concerns, but not during this hour. One membership meeting for one hour is not going to be the place for a member who has not been paying too much attention out of their busyness to get satisfying fixes for whatever they think is wrong with our organization at the moment. We would need monthly meetings for that. Oh wait, we have those. We have monthly Board meetings and committee meetings and task forces and they are all working on the various aspects of our Market. Standards, Food Court, Budget, Holiday Market, Sustainability, Street Team, Survey (hope I'm not forgetting one) are all groups of members who meet every month or nearly so to work on various issues of our collective needs and keep us moving forward. I hope you feel welcome to join any one of those and work with the dedicated volunteers who keep at it. This isn't about any of those.

It's a little bit about the Board, but not fully. Members of these committees and the Board have realized their time is diminishing as big-world needs increase and people have prioritized having shorter meetings, keeping them to two or three hours. You would think that would be helpful in getting people to be more prepared and organized and efficient, but it has kind of pressured our consensus-seeking process into a mode of deferral. If there isn't time to discuss something thoroughly, it gets put aside. We have a Bin on our agenda and it gets used, and generally things in it do come out and get more discussion, but sometimes they don't. Right now there is just so much information that has come out over the last year and is in discussion on the city and county levels, no one can really keep up, even those like me who are very interested.

During May, June and July, though I tried to monitor City Council meetings and actions, and do read the newspaper, I just couldn't keep up. I know that if I'm not keeping up, 95% of our members are also not. We're basically trusting that the city and county will tell us what we need to know in plenty of time for us to express our issues with it (if we have them) and they will get our feedback and know our position on whatever it is. For a membership organization this big, this is a naive and dangerous position for us to be in. We have one staff person working with both of these huge entities, and while our relationships are good and things seem covered and fine, we already know that city and county priorities are not the same as our priorities. We're not necessarily in opposition, but we can't assume we are in agreement.

My position is that we have to be informed, paying attention, and prepared for lots of possibilities. We have a history, and it's alive. Lots of people we've worked with or against in the past are still working, and might be more canny and strategic that we are. LCFM has a bunch of committees and volunteers and staff working on things we are not: Site Improvement, what they are now calling "Public Market," and are receiving a giant amount of public funds (4.5 million dollars) to put these ideas into action in some form. We're not in charge of that. We have a presence at the table, one person, but we are not the big players. So we don't really know what they might do, and we don't really know what our positions are as a membership...we don't know enough.

Now is the time, in my mind, to get together and see if we have some positions. We can't assume the City knows our history, what is essential to us, and what we want to see for our future. We want to have ready our statements, our tenets, our rules and higher values. We want to be able to tell them exactly why we take those positions, and why we can't compromise on certain things. When the lovely street closure idea came crashing down on 8th and Oak, we had to fight hard to bring out the actual facts of what that would do to us operationally, culturally, and in fact. They didn't know, and it took some convincing. We really had to wrestle them down to help the farmers see that selling in the street wouldn't really benefit them either.

This site improvement seems exactly like that to me. There's a nice vision that seems good and like it won't harm us, but have we considered everything? Have we read the small print on the feasibility study? Do we have a good idea of what the city and county want to move forward to meet their own goals? We don't. Maybe our one person at the table has a pretty good idea, but our basket is way too large to have only one egg in it, no matter how super great that egg is. We had a strong, terrific leader at the table when the street closure hijack happened, and she couldn't stop it until we put the weight of our organization behind her. The task force got the point.

We don't want a confrontation or even an argument with the farmers or the city or the county and we don't want to get in the way of a vision that might be worked into a beautiful reality. But we have to be a part of the discussion now for that to work for us, we as a membership, we as a big, messy, organization of individual business owners with strong opinions and varying needs. We can't assume a position, we have to figure one out. In our messy, consensus-seeking way. We can't do it in an hour, or in a short tight meeting once a month. We can't put this big stuff into the Bin and wait and see. We have to check in with each other.

I'm sure this isn't just about me and my fears. I'm positive I'm not stuck in history and ready to stop progress and deny the future. I'm ready for the future. I am also determined to carry forward all of the treasure we have created with our inclusive, participatory process of trying to stay, as a group, near each other and working together. Sometimes we have to push ourselves a little to do uncomfortable things, like calling a meeting when we're just a concerned member. Sometimes we have to try to articulate our fears into plans of action to ease them, to prepare for a future we hope isn't coming in a way we won't be able to survive in.

In a best case scenario, our fears will dissipate as we gain knowledge and strengthen our strategies. Excellent leaders will emerge who have been doing other things. We'll solidify our sense of community and feel certain of how our group feels and how united we are. We'll be ready for whatever happens and have tools to adapt or change what is proposed or to learn to work with it in a healthy way. Today I don't feel ready. By Wednesday night, I hope to. Let's get together and see how that works.

So What if it Gets Hot?

I like hot weather, so I'm not worried about this latest heat wave. For sure I will open my house early in the morning and close it by 8:00, and probably not do any gardening in the middle of the day...but if I stay in the shade, I don't mind being out. Of course I will go to Saturday Market! I am lucky to have a spot that is usually breezy, and I bring two umbrellas and can generally keep shade over most of my customers and myself. I get a lot of people who stop just to enjoy my cool space, and I even bring an extra chair if someone needs to sit on the grass under the trees for awhile.

Not everyone is as lucky as I am, of course. Some people really suffer, and I feel for them. I worry about the market, though. Lots of vendors stay away, thinking there won't be customers, but don't we show up for other reasons besides customers? There are so many: catching up on the lives of neighbors, seeing cute kids shake the shakers, hearing great buskers work their little crowds, and taking home the excellent peaches and eggplants we've been seeing the last few weeks. I would be so bored if I stayed home in the cool house all day. I'm not even tempted to skip.

And after so many decades, that in itself is a wondrous thing to me. To still see each Saturday as one new and different from any that came before, to still find delight and desire, those things amaze me. I can find you three new things in any given booth in my neighborhood, and now seems to be a great time for it. I made new hats last week, and every jeweler made new earrings for me to buy. Here's a photo of things I bought in just the last few months at the Market. (Okay, I got one at OCF and have had a few of them since Holiday Market...but they are all handmade by people I talked to...who made them with their own two hands.)

I love supporting my fellow members. It makes me tear up just thinking about how sweet the interactions can be when we really notice and support each others work. Our creative work means so much to us, and when we get the approval of people we admire as well, it feels great all around. The direct connection of our hearts and souls through our work is so rich. That's why people like to shop at our Market too. It's not the stuff, it's the connection we get with it. We buy the fingerprints of the artist, we glimpse their creative process, and we are granted a tiny piece of their souls. That is simply not available everywhere; practically not anywhere, in fact.

When I go into a chain store or a mall, I see people whose eyes are dead and whose faces are empty. I see people look through the cheap, silly-looking clothing despairing how to make it look good on their real bodies. They have to strive for fake bodies to fit the fake goods. I want no part of it. I don't even want to get things at the thrift stores, things that have been tossed away, sometimes not even worn out at all. It's so obvious that too many cheap goods are made just to be used slightly and then discarded. There's so little soul in them it's painful. That isn't what you see at Saturday Market.

You see a person who has been a potter for 28 years who is now doing paintings of birds. He's a bit hesitant about it, but I had to have this one, which had a bit of effortless genius in it, the way he sketched just a bit of branch and didn't put it right in the middle.It's on a beautiful piece of slate that was rescued...I like that it has a chip out of the side.

 That tie-dye in the photo is one of Maggie's. I don't buy a lot of clothing, but I need a few of Maggie's before she moves. She'll still sell online, but I like handing her the cash. I like to refuse when people offer me discounts. I like to pay extra when people don't charge enough. It's fun to give to these people I love, the ones I spend all my Saturdays with. It's my life to be part of this smaller community in a greater, loving community. Market is what makes me love living here, and it is what makes it possible for me to live.

It was too bad the Market wasn't full when the consultants from NYC were there last week. They missed a lot, and when they walked around on their lunch breaks, they didn't seem like they enjoyed us that much; they were at work. They said we were the best thing downtown Eugene had going, and they wished we could do that every day. Ironic, because of course if we did it every day, it wouldn't be what it is. It might even get to be ordinary. We told them everything we could think of about how we used the space, but it was only a small slice of it.

Consultants, what do they know? They come with a set of assumptions and probably aren't changed as much as they hope to create change. With Market, it's not broken, so it was hard to feel their energy about fixing things. They say they just want to help downtown users improve downtown so more can love it, but what do they want to change? Don't they want to remove some of the color that makes our rainbow? Don't they find a few things they'd like to do without, like maybe the scruffy parts, or the way people sit on the lawn when they should probably be on chairs? What is their vision, and how much will they try to impose it on what we have built? How much will the city listen? I saw the Chief of Police at the Market for the first time in my years, not to say he hasn't come before, but I don't see many of the other people who work in and for the city...do they know me? Do they get me, and what I need?

Of course I am wary of these "improvements." I know that selling in the winter won't work for me...I treasure that three months off when I get to do my other creative work. I know selling indoors would kill my soul if I had to look out on a sunny day with no one in it. Even Holiday Market is a bit hard when we're all in a building much too close to each other. The breeze, the clouds, and even the rain are part of us. Those trees in the Park Blocks...will they cut them down to make a playground? What will the City do with our beloved space? Would they ever think we could move into a parking lot again? Could they make us want that?

I'm not one for shiny plastic crap wrapped up as new and better. I'm extremely wary of improving our space for municipal purposes. I'm totally not enamored with losing the tight connection I have with my farmer friends right across the street. I love that I can hop over for my tomatoes and a chat. I don't want to go to Whole Foods for them, especially if they got there in a truck from some big farm owned by some corporation instead of my friend Rich. I'm not really excited about these new developments being sold in our town right now.

So I'm watching and listening and reading what they say. I'm translating these things into real words and real commitments. I know how it has worked for the last 41 years downtown, so when I hear about these improvements, I'm hearing the subtext too. Do they really want to help me thrive, or is someone trying to make some money off my hard work? Are these improvements to make my life easier, like a smoother surface on the concrete where everyone's hand trucks throw off their stack of boxes, or will I find a play structure or a bench on my spot when I show up in the spring? Am I being pushed aside for someone to make money, or for some theoretical person who may come down occasionally to look at the fountain and walk away? I'm working there. I need a few things, but I don't need an overhaul. Saturday Market isn't broken at all. We're having our best season ever. Let's be careful with that. Let's protect and preserve that. Let's pay attention and speak up and make sure none of these new great ideas break our treasures. 

Thinking Bigger

This week I was called upon to write a summary of what has changed in the last year for the Kareng Fund, specifically in response to the wonderful grant we received from the Rex Foundation. It quickly came to me that while business went on as usual, there was a subtle but gigantic shift in how I, at least, think of the Fund, my role as a Board member for the nonprofit, and by connection, my role in the Saturday Market and the segment of life surrounding me as a craftsperson in Eugene.

If you live here, you know by now that we are in a boom town. For whatever reasons, lots of people want to live in Eugene now and are rapidly buying houses and properties and making the move, here and to other parts of the PNW. The scenario is the same everywhere: richer people move in and poorer people are pushed out. I'm not feeling the pressure yet, as my house is paid for and I'm not planning on moving, but I do fear as an aging person that my options will be more limited. I'm counting on having a network of people so I might be able to find a solution that works for me, without having to be warehoused or living in my car. Since I'm only 66 and doing well, it still seems a distant and vague plan, but the years do fly by.

What Pogo Said

The place my Mom moved to is fine for her; she likes it. She has no responsibilities for maintenance and most of her needs are very well met, so it looks pretty good to my sisters to live in a place like that. To me it looks grim, like nothing at all that I want for myself. That's powerful denial and a fantasy that I will be able to either keep using stairs or get the modifications I might need...it would be quite a remodel to make this house accessible. I suppose I could trade this valuable property for another, which is kind of what she did. You sell your house and then have the money to put something in place for the rest of your time. So there's that... let's just change the subject.

So keeping my network and putting in my giving time is a big part of this time in my life, and the Kareng Fund service is one of the best parts of my volunteer efforts. We help people who really need it, sometimes so much that they won't even ask. We gave more grants than ever this past year, partly because of the Rex grant, and partly because we have a lot of aging craftspeople in our midst. I have noticed that linking ourselves with a giant like the Rex Foundation made me think bigger about us. We provide something very needed, and to the people we help, our help is big. It can be pivotal. More than the money and what it facilitates, we give support. You hear from us, real people who took a moment to care about you. We've often been told that knowing someone cares is the most important emotion our recipients feel in the heat of their crisis. We're with you.

And that is what is so important about my role in the Saturday Market, too, and in Fair and the Tuesday Market, and even in the Radar Angels and Jell-O Art Show. I offer support. I'm there with you. I'm selling downtown two days a week, talking to lots of locals, tourists, and my fellow vendors. When I'm not there, a little bit of our local color is dimmed...and not just me, of course, but any of our artisans, our Board members, our customers, our neighbors, all of us. We all shine a little differently and make up the rich colors that make us so attractive to these new folks who want a piece of what we have.

Eugene is full of nice, caring people who go out of their way to help others. This goes in both directions, to help those in need, but also at the other financial end, to facilitate things for people who want to do big things of their own. We draw our lines: lots of us see no need to help multinational or even smaller corporations come here to exploit us, but those who do help them see the jobs and taxes that are paid as justification for the help that is given. Some people feel that we should not be so helpful and welcoming to people who don't bring any of those things, people who don't seem to be contributing. The whole FSP situation brings out the worst of some of us Market people who see our resources being used by those who aren't paying in like we are.

I personally have come to terms with it. We don't always get to choose how our gifts are received. We are there for the public, to create an event, and it isn't always up to us who enjoys our event and how they enjoy it. The people who come through and don't see our culture and offend us in some way, with their dogs or their stoned questions or their littering or their loud music on a corner we don't rent, are not within our control. The more we try to control them, the more we actually lose in the effort. We do need to have rules and ask that they be respected. On Saturday Security told someone with a dog in the fountain that we don't allow that, and after the guy pretty much ignored the Security guy, his dog shook water all over my bags. Nothing was ruined, and it's my fault for having merchandise right there next to the water, but it's a good example of something that was not planned. They guy didn't make his dog do that, or even foresee it, but he also didn't apologize to me for it, or even notice it as far as I know. We had a little clash of cultures, and I kind of lost, and that is how we build up resentment and forget to love the people who are not even necessarily aware of our rules and the logic behind them. The people using the Plaza don't know that I am paying for the bathrooms and promotions that benefit them, and in fact they think that they are part of the attraction and are giving just as I am. So my solution for the FSP problems and the use of Park Blocks problems is the hardest way we're going to find to solve them: we need to get a lot of us together, with people from the drum circle and those who feel the right to sell for free, and the landlords who feel the need to charge us and not them, and see if we can all come to some group agreements that will work for all of us. You can see why no progress is made in making changes down there with that challenge ahead. There isn't a simple solution.

My back yard more than two decades ago

Eugene is just experiencing the tiniest glimmer of a beginning of the ways the boom economy is going to change us. My neighbor is about to tear off the oldest part of the house next door, the part I want intact for my research on the neighborhood, but as with the fence I didn't want, to them it will be a big improvement and I don't get a say about it. All of the property developments that are going to come, the cellphone towers, the high rises, the old people's warehouses and fancy townhouses and luxury student housing, all of those things are going to happen because the people who want them see them as improvements, good things, that will make life better. Sure, there's greed in there, and exploitation, but mostly it's pretty nice people not seeing the harm in their decisions, not really caring how it looks to you or feels like destruction of something you love, because they are powerfully carrying out their visions that they think are good ones.

I think Saturday Market will continue to thrive with the increase in population, because we offer something truly valuable, the intimacy of art, but at the same time the New Zone and the Jacobs close, and may not be replaced, and we may have our own challenges of place. The Farmers worry that they will lose the awkward space they do have in a PB remodel...we fear that too. We see that the trashing of the blocks by the heavy use of people living there has hurt us, and could hurt our survival there, but we all hope that the caring people will prevail and the affection for place will be true for them too. We hope the people selling at FSP will learn to value the event like we do, and work to make it safer and better and find reasons to pitch in.

Two Queens

And the Kareng Fund has to work to keep thinking bigger, something that doesn't come naturally to me. We have to challenge ourselves to reach out in bigger circles, plan more ambitious fundraising events, step up to get into the ranks of the important nonprofits in the funding cycle so we can find our loyal donors who will sustain our efforts. Since we live in such a nice place among such good people, this should not be an uphill battle. It's more of an inner struggle, for me at least, to trust growth and change, to see that often it is good and better, and that I can think bigger too. It seems counter-intuitive to the way I'm aging, when I'm trying to get simpler and make things easier, to size down and work less and rest more, but I'm not doing it by myself. We're finding younger people, people with more energy, to supplement our earned wisdom with new ideas and the ability to take more chances. Keeping an open mind to change and a positive attitude about it are all I really have to do to keep up. That and not dig in and stand in the way of change.

As long as the boom has room, there's no way around it but to ride it. As the Radar Angels, always ahead of the zeitgeist, put it in the Jell-O Show, we're riding the gravitational wave, headed for the Jell-O Getaway. There are great waves in the Jell-O Getaway. Face it, we live in a town where we have Queens for events that are long gone, and we love that about ourselves. No one who moves here wants to ruin that. For this first part of our increasing popularity, we just get to revel in it. We get to have a good Market season and put away money for when our rents all go sky-high. We get to support the organizations we love and places we love, support them and keep them alive and share them a little while they shine. We get to crown another Queen and keep doing that as long as we want to.

 We aren't in charge of the future, not really even in charge of the now, but we can do a lot to enjoy it more while we have it. Let's keep loving and giving and see how that works. It's the best we can do for each other and for ourselves.

Summer, finally!

Ah, I love it so much when I get to relax into summer and stretch out and pretend there is an endless parade of days when I will be warm, well fed, and not have any work to do. Yes, of course, it is a fantasy, but it is one of my favorites and it is finally here today. I did have to work this morning, and have done some neglected tasks since, but here I am with no pressure in the still-cool house and I am happy.

Under the Crape Myrtle

Vacations are a good idea, it turns out. I had a bit of a hard time with the concept of going someplace strange to spend a lot of money but it turned out to be delightful in many ways and due to a great span of productive months I had the money to spend, and it was easy. I went to Cambridge Maryland, for a family reunion, and lots of happy things occurred. We didn't grow up there; we lived in Wilmington DE, but we did go there once on a boat, and it is a sleepy town that is not a big tourist destination. I got to see my 90-year old mom, all my siblings (though not the extended family) and took my son and his wife too so got to hang out with them quite a bit and was very satisfied. I shared the third floor of a 1912 Colonial that was deluxe with the young couple and the other floors were filled with relatives. Same style as my original decor in my house so that was fun and I do love the architecture and history of the East Coast. We were on the Eastern Shore and that culture is rich and full of seafood so all the smells and childhood references were there and so pleasant. We ate a half bushel of crabs (they're tiny compared to ours here) and ate everything good we could find.

All of us on the porch

The biggest surprise was that letting go of Mom's house meant letting go of some parts of the past that had always hung there for me. I didn't have to revert to my childhood self much at all. I got to be more of the me I am now, even in the family interactions which were just easier on neutral ground. We came within a mile of the place and I wasn't even compelled to go look and see what changes the new owners made. It isn't my house now. What a relief!

It was good to come back to Oregon, too. I do love it here. I missed Market and Tuesday Market and now I'm back in place and all seems well. I am evaluating all of the projects that need to be done in summer, the roofing and the painting and fixing and gardening and may do some of them. I will do some of them. I'm happy to do the gardening. I know this is the best year to make some progress on the house proects that will just get harder if I put them off. It was also way fun to sit and look at the ocean, go to the Boardwalk in Ocean City, see dolphins and the ponies of Assateague, play with kids in the sand. I would enjoy taking myself out in nature more, here in such a paradise.

Next week is the Slug Queen Coronation, always a good time and an opportunity to dress in fun clothes and wear Jell-O. There's even a party to go to that weekend if I can manage to do something after Market. I might. I miss my friends. It's silly not to make the effort to at least do the things I know about.

Extraordinary ordinary moments

But since it's summer everything is now optional. I can sit around and read if I want. There's always fall for some of those projects and some of those hikes. In fact I think I will take the rest of the day off and play.
Just wanted to say hello...all those serious subjects can wait. You have my permission to do the same.

And thanks, family, for a great time! Thanks, Eugene, for not changing too much while I was gone. I kind of like you the way you are.