Not Gonna Keep Quiet

I can't keep quiet...I give the credit to the song going viral that you can no doubt easily find...some women singing beautifully in the midst of Saturday's organized resistance. (Sorry to say the original video of it is a tough image and not as uplifting, so consider yourself warned.) I've been quiet. I've felt silenced by my own grief and fear, and haven't wanted to discourage anyone with that. I read a powerful essay about going into that darkness, which as writers we have already pledged to dwell in...but I didn't want to write about it.

My son broke his ankle the other day. Not that long ago, in 2012, I broke my heel, and had to spend 3 months with it elevated. To say it was traumatic takes it into a distance not available at the time. This was an unknowable, severe setback to my mobility and life, but of course as is my way, I spent a lot of energy in ignorance and denial and it took many of the weeks to understand the limitations and the most effective responses and adaptations. And I was lucky.

For a combination of reasons, I feel traumatized in the same way, responding in some of the same ways. My delayed response is typical for me...today I am in tears much more than last week or any time since the election. Only now am I feeling some of the deeper terrors and anxieties of that time. I read up online and see how rare my injury was, how debilitating, and I guess I'm glad I didn't know. It took me an entire month and the help of a dedicated friend to work up a plan for taking a bath...all I have is a clawfoot, a deep one. I was so unstable on crutches and painkillers I got a walker, which helped a lot but made me an instantly old lady. I was so emotionally vulnerable I emailed my whole family and lots of my friends with a series of TMI descriptions and details that did not gain me peace of mind but made me more vulnerable. Not that they didn't help me...I got lots of help, way more than I have given in return before or since. It is not an easy thing to see your people when they are compromised and need your patience and support, but my friends came through for me repeatedly and I am very grateful. 

And of course with your child the emotional morass is deep and wide. He's an adult with a wife...he doesn't need his mom to sweep in with all my advice and the remains of my damage...this is not the same pain and not the same situation. I'd feel lucky if he follows a small portion of my advice. It's his ankle, his life, and he will have to learn the same hard lessons I learned, about asking for help, understanding what you don't know and how to operate within that. But I'm his Mom, and there is no terror as deep for me as thinking about damage to my child.

Because clearly with medical and physical issues, you don't know so much, and neither do the medical professionals you'd like to depend on. Everyone is constrained by their positions and worldviews...to the urgent care folks in the ice world of the PNW he was an ordinary client...tons of people fell down and hurt themselves. In my case you couldn't see the break in ordinary x-rays, as it was hidden in the complex structure of the foot. Fortunately there was one highly skilled doctor at Urgent Care who got out the book and persisted in training the technician on angles and anatomy until they could find the break. But no one thought to tell me how to ice it, how to proceed with the next step, how to imagine surgery and its effects, how to take care of the rest of my body. At my age it was assumed I knew a lot more than I did. It was my first broken bone, at 62. I didn't google enough, didn't ask the right questions of the right people, and made a lot of wrong assumptions that made the situation worse. I'll spare you the details, but living alone, I crawled around doing dozens of things before the surgery, thinking I wouldn't be able to do them after it, not realizing I wasn't able to do them then either. It took me a long time to learn that I didn't know anything, and all that time I felt a level of helplessness.

So I do have some cogent advice and I sent money right away. I know he thought he'd be in a walking cast and back to work the following week...ah, no. Google it. It seems easy to get around on crutches, as you see plenty of people doing it. What you don't think about is how do you carry a cup of coffee to your place on the couch? How do you get yourself up and down stairs? I developed a whole array of adaptive behaviors, using tote bags, well-placed furniture for support and flat places, and worked it out, but not without a lot of people helping me and not without a lot of resistance and insistence on my part that I was fine. And it was hard to sleep with all of that anxiety.

I was traumatized. I didn't know as much about it then, so my foot was my teacher for that year. After three months of elevation, I couldn't walk normally, and I still can't run. I still can't stand on concrete all day without a lot of pain. I had no idea what arthritis was and that it would be coming...I'm so stuck in that experiential learning space. I've put a lot together since then, and he will too, and because fortunately I did not transmit trauma and my damage to him when he was a child, at least not overtly, he will have an easier time of things (I hope, I hope) and he will recover and be fine. But it's not like I'm not worried every damn minute. 

And as you know if you have read here before I am a bit of a political radical. I've been quiet...I truly thought my values were good solid human values that were on the rise, and couldn't be compromised, so I got struck by the shock and awe. I can see now how thoroughly the set-up was prepared for the surge of patriarchal, authoritarian values, but I had a lot of assumptions about how things would actually go. I "misunderestimated" the thinking skills of my nation. And well, the election was hacked, so there's that. It was the long hack, of the gerrymandering and the voter IDs, and I knew about it, but it added up differently than I expected, with betrayal by the FBI and the Russians. Silly me.

So yeah, traumatized. I walked downtown the other day and halfway there realized I didn't have my keys. I had left them in the door, on the outside. Pretty much offering my entire life of possessions to anyone who happened by: my car, shed, shop, house, identity, all of it. Did not mean to do that. Feeling triggered and vulnerable makes me put all of my awareness on the wrong things. I had decided to wear a pussy hat downtown...this was Friday. I was mailing a contribution to a social change organization, thinking about that. I was putting together a care package for my son, thinking about that. I was not thinking about my own survival and safety on the planet.

So I had to skip the march. I'm so proud of the 15,000 of my neighbors and friends who went, in the rain, in their anxiety. I had to remember what triggers me, and why, and what kinds of things I have to look out for, the subtle signs that I'm not thinking well, the obvious ways my body is trying to call my attention to my adrenal glands, and I have to choose self-care. Most of the time I find myself having to do this, and most of the last year, as the Trumpism ramped up, I have been in this state. Many people are.

But I don't want to write about that, I don't want to confess my weaknesses in "public," no matter how many brave writers tell me I have to, how many readers I feel waiting for some kind of companionship here with me. I did feel that for many it was important to experience the march and feel the strength of our community and how powerful we are, and am grateful that I know what that feels like and do trust it. I have gotten that from the photos, and don't feel like I've missed a lot. I was in DC in my twenties for the moratoriums, and did my part to end the Vietnam war and to begin to liberate myself and others in the liberation movements. I know what it feels like to experience the angels of the common good.

Part of my trauma comes from there, being 2o in DC, of course. I feel that a lot of it is centered on authoritarianism. I think that one of the central issues that we are struggling with here is that between the strongman and the egalitarian. We, the dominant culture, the American  majority, we have evolved a notch toward egalitarianism. We don't want Dad in charge of us anymore. We like the Mom/Dad team, or the strong independent kid, or the collaborative small group, or any number of structures that don't model the God at the top. We thought our conviction of the present being more like that, than the 50's, was more solid than it apparently was. Add in the "alternative facts" universe and we got taken to the floor. For a minute.

But as you can see women won't go back as far as it would take to make those changes in our culture that the GOP et al want to see. Apparently a lot might, if they are lulled and fooled enough to believe that any change is good change, or whatever else they were led to believe, but I still have a lot of faith in the real dominance of a more caring set of values than the trumpians espouse. We don't actually value getting yours at the expense of everyone else. We don't actually espouse tough love on the streets that allows people to die from preventable conditions. We don't actually believe that God chooses whether or not to rain on our parade.  

And we're not going to keep quiet, and we recognize what causes our fears and what we want to fight against. We don't like bullies and we won't live in fear of them. We do know how to fight back against our wish to cower in the corner, to normalize what we are going through. We will keep working to overturn this electoral mistake and get back to valuing the common good and devaluing the power of the selfish and greedy. It is a setback, but it is also different from other times, other setbacks. 

I see trauma because I live in it still. Other people don't see it, don't have to, and they are so brave and inspiring and tireless, and they're doing it. There is plenty I can do and am doing and will do, and it isn't all on me, so we'll be okay. It's not quiet out there. It's not exactly safe, but it's safer than I thought. Now when people bully others, they get called on it, sometimes by three-year-olds. Life is better now. People are kinder and gentler (and not in the Poppy Bush way) and people are seeing through the dissembling and the lies and calling them lies. Our bubbles are connecting and there is a lot of strong inspiration out there, lots of solutions, lots of help.

And, the sun is out, and soon spring will be here. The wonderful world of Jell-O-Art has opened for the season and we will be taking our bruised and unbroken hearts and making them into art. It will help. There will be lots of help. And I don't have a broken foot. This is now. Monday morning. A good time to file a lawsuit. Or even do laundry, which is so much easier now that I don't have to hang up the clothes on crutches.

Let's Handle This and Keep Getting it Done

As a response to feeling like I was played in the national political arena (not alone in that, but I still take it personally) I tasked myself with learning more history and more social awareness. This is not the easiest road I have traveled recently. It's making me feel more like a chump, initially, reminding me often how I have chosen to live in a pleasant bubble characterized by some self-righteousness, some faith in my core values that may not fit the times, and my own addiction to escapism.

Yes, I'm being really hard on myself lately. This weather is isolating and reinforcing my chosen mode of solitude, so I'm kind of happy in here, but the knowledge I am gaining is brutal. I want to be shaken to my core, to have to rebuild some sense of peace with it, and to emerge stronger, but I can see that this is going to be a long process and is going to make me work a lot harder than I want to. I hope I stick with it.

The facts of the slave-breeding industry that built the wealth of the white man is devastating. (I'm reading The American Slave Coast.) It galls me that we can so easily dismiss this, as white people, as something of the past that we fixed. It is not fixed. Reading Between the World and Me got through to me the point that a person's body, the one most vital thing, can be profoundly not their own. At first I was comparing this to being a woman...yeah, me too, men think they can own me...and now I see this as a pale defensive reaction to the reality of the level of brutality that was used. Sure, it's sometimes difficult to be a woman, and being the easy victim of a violent crime is a very sobering reality, but I also get all those layers of condescending protection and reverence that although thin and a lie, do grant me some avenues for building my life that people of color certainly do not get. I'm also reading Lies My Teacher Told Me to understand the framing that led me to this bubble and right to the edge of knowledge, but not into it.

It's emotional content that weighs so heavily on me I find it staggering that I could have gotten to the age of 65 without really getting a grasp of it. I'm shocked at my own compliance at building my bubble. I am someone who reads! I am someone who does think about things! Yet, I am someone who has been part of the problem much more than part of the solution. And I expect to continue in that, for my lame reasons and pale, flimsy excuses.

I think as an old white lady I do need to beat myself up a little about this stuff, stopping short of completely demoralizing myself, but really driving home the message that this IS MY PROBLEM. This world situation, this political chaos, this economic injustice, this sexism, this racism, these leaders, these citizens, are ME. It seems I have constructed so many excuses for not only my own selfishness, but that of everyone else. I blame the system. I blame the stupid people, I blame the fake news people, I blame the ones who tune out and don't work for progress, I blame the complexity of the problems, and it all amounts to me letting myself off the hook.

I guess this is how we survive emotionally, compliant like slaves, though that is an insensitive comparison. Most of the statements I can come up with at this stage are insulting and insensitive, and I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm not wanting anyone else to let me off the hook, or enable me, or try to convince me that I have been doing the best that I can under the circumstances. I have not. I have been compliant as I was trained to be, and learned to be, as the easiest way out. I have wasted many of my resources.

We use our resources for entertainment...we take rich celebrities as heroes and project all kinds of holiness on them, and we spend hours studying them as they play these fictional roles. We grieve for them when they die as if we actually were friends with them...we put them in the place of our friends, who can't measure up to that kind of grace and wisdom, which we tend to forget is a projection on a silver screen. We take the glitter for granted and forget that it is massively wasted resources that people need desperately. We allow entertainment to be our drug of choice and we use it with passionate religiosity. And those of us who like to travel often use it the same way. 

We "do" Paris, or rafting the Yangtze or wherever. We frame it as personal growth (valid), as collecting experiences instead of things (also valid, if you believe that we are also not addicted to things), as any kind of rationalization structure we please. We aspire to it. We, as a culture, are bankrupt.

So to me, this election of the prime bankrupter, the agent of chaos, who happens to be a gilded celebrity, is a cynical manipulation decades in the making, and should not surprise us in the least. We had Reagan and  Bush, also not diplomats, not inspiring public servants, but simply smooth-looking managed celebrities we wanted to bring into our homes and families. Many of us cynical survivors of the 70's revolutions did see through this, but we didn't really take the opportunity to frame it as a long-range game that we would ride to here. Our attraction to drama was fed and we worked around it, still trying to keep to our progressive values of making a better world for everyone. We did some good. We dropped the ball often and we had our excuses.

I wasn't planning to watch the PBS show the other night about Boomers, as I dislike being put in a group of mountain beavers and don't always agree with the generational assessments, but I did end up agreeing with some of it and though I missed the beginning I got the gist. The point seemed to be that our core values were formed by what our parents brought back from World Wars, where they worked together in deathly conditions to find a sense of foxhole equality. Something shifted there to give a framework for us all working together for shared goals and that stuck with most of us as we moved into our lives. All of the liberation movements of the 70's, as they were developed and refined, gave us a solidarity that other generations didn't get in quite the same way. What I found most interesting is that of course, like all bubble qualities, the result of this is that we are surprised and shocked when other people do not share our values. We were sure everyone did, because we had thoroughly proven the truth and justice of them. Thoroughly! 

And to a certain extent that was true, but we raised our families and perhaps failed to transmit some of those, as I know I failed, and gradually we made our compromises and fought for our individual gains and as things grew more chaotic and desperate, we almost didn't notice the erosion of our values. "Common decency" is no longer a known quantity. Our kids do not necessarily agree with us on the way forward in this life, and I can't fault them completely...they live in a different world, where it is less safe, there are fewer good choices, and often the people with strong values are put in the position of being chumps. That was how Hillary supporters were portrayed and public perception is so much stronger than any other reality. We were spun. We're still reeling. That won't help us, though.

Kids who grew up with all the dramatic renderings of the apocalypse and future chaos expect that now. I think they kind of welcome it, as the gritty reality of work and death is not lit up and attractive unless you have the beaucoup bucks to consume in an upscale fashion, and they are simultaneously locked out of that. I don't buy the idea that it was parents building up their egos that caused it. My experience was that I desperately wanted to frame a positive model for my child as I didn't observe that he was seeing what I thought was true. He wasn't going to have access to the so-called and mythical American Dream. He was MIT material, but we didn't have the means and he didn't have the drive, and I didn't know how to make him want it. Plus I knew that many types of science-based positions were not going to be good for him...he could build robots for the military, he could work on tech gadgets for the intelligence industry, and so on. I couldn't work hard enough to create a scenario for him that would justify me allocating tons of borrowed money to set him up for a huge and devastating disappointment when his degree did not get him anything he wanted. It was a gamble that turned out to be some valid thinking...at least he wasn't caught up in the student debt crime, too much anyway. But it left him in a deficient position along with most of the rest of us. Which is why we blow the bubble and step so willingly into it.

I wanted him to be educated, but I probably transmitted too much cyncism. I tried to make him care about others, but I think that might have backfired when we had to hang out in my social service job at his school. He didn't see a lot of hope and change in there. I don't think he has ever really gotten caught up in political action, and I don't fault him for that. You have to be quite the idealist to dedicate your energies to that.

I, of course, am still that idealist, and I'll stop talking about my particular son because I am guessing he is a lot more committed to my values than I know, and is in the time of life when he gets to answer to his own values. And he is not bankrupt, and he does read, and he does think, so I know he will come to useful conclusions on his own throughout the course of his life. He was not ruined by me telling him he had everything he needed to succeed. He, as a tall, good-looking white male, with intelligence, has all the right stuff to do anything he wants. I'm speaking of him more as an example of "our kids," basically anyone younger than myself with a similar genetic makeup.

What life offers him (them) at this point, is mostly surface glitter and the pursuit of more money in a never-ending struggle that isn't winnable. When I see kids of his generation spinning their wheels I do not think it is their fault or my fault, or their own parents or their wives or friends. They got the same raw deal all of the common people have always gotten, with the varying degrees of horribleness that get portioned out according to the luck of birth. He got a bigger pile of cards, and if he wants to play them in particular ways, he can get some wealth and power, or at least the means to fuel his addictions to entertainment and experience-collecting. He can be a man of his time. Or he can have principles and probably be a poor person with high ideals, which is not really a terrible choice, all things considered.

But to me today, being a man of your time is not something to be proud of but a trap that is code for being willing to adopt whatever bankrupt values are offered, as it is not a coincidence that this is the term used for people who used to breed human beings to use their bodies to build wealth at negligible cost. I don't really want him to be a man of his time. I hope instead he has found some models for building a life that is meaningful to him and others, that satisfies his basic needs with some surplus to share, and a life that will make the world a better place, somehow, at some times, in some really true and just way.

That's my boomer-value-system speaking. I can't provide a huge amount of help to him to get there, or even to help him want to get there. I can't assume that is what he wants. I have suicide in my family, and mental illness, so maybe all I can want is for him not to have that in my family in the future. Maybe all I can want is some simpler kind of emotional survival that feeds some of his needs. Maybe all I can want is to get to see him once in a while and get along fairly well for those hours. It's not something I can control.

So leaving the younger generation to their collective fate, what can I do? I can read books forever, as there will not be an end to my self-education, and I hope I can move through the beating-myself-up stage to a more hopeful stance. I can use that education to spread what really is truth, and not buy into this post-truth bullshit. I can stand with the many people of my generation who do hold my values, and know that dedicating ourselves to the betterment of all people really is a worthwhile and real goal, for real truth and  justice. We will have to work together to construct a better story about the American Way, as that is truly bankrupt and we should stop pretending it isn't. We all know that a huge part of the group who don't vote simply refuse to use that compromised method for working forward. We hope they do it in other ways. We hope that putting chaos in power will be a way to defeat it and restore some better type of order...that may be our calling at this point. We may be able to communicate and restore our values to those who want values, are desperately asking for values. Suicide, which now takes the form of murder first, is a message of the desperate wish for something better, without the means to articulate it. We can continue and increase our efforts to communicate what a better world will be built with. We can bring out our tools and use them in modelling the way we want the world to go.

So I have to agree with people who are saying we should ignore the Twittering, stop finding so much pleasure in the drama and humor of it, and hold ourselves accountable for really doing our best. We can continue our work or start it, begin to think about our values or step up the way we live them. We can all make one better choice, one at a time. It will matter. It does matter. The zombies aren't here yet, and the bubble can stretch to be a bit healthier and more inclusive. Step by step, little by little. Start anywhere. Do what you can with what you have. What you do will help you and help the world. 

And if it doesn't, well, like I said, reality is grim and gritty and then you die. Whatever. Meh. I'm going to get high and enjoy this beautiful if inconvenient snowy Saturday. Fuck it. But I will pick those books back up later and keep working. One thing I am sure I did transmit is that nothing matters more than hard work. If you can handle it.

Park Blocks Vision

Yes, Saturday Market has one, a quite detailed one in fact. Our task force worked on it and I went wild with post-its and glued it up last night. Our idea was that this would be a template or suggestion for some willing architect or graphic artist to translate to a shiny 11x17 flyer, or some portable version that we could share with city residents and others who have ideas about the park.

Since we use it so thoroughly every Saturday in the season, any changes will affect our footprint and each one of the little squares on the blue map at the bottom represents a business owner. Sure, a micro-business, but if you are the owner, you are invested, sometimes rather heavily, in your location, your display configuration, and your equipment. So it's understandable that we Saturday Market members are wary and worried about substantial changes to the south Park Blocks.

My observations of the Project for Public Spaces folks who came to view us twice was that they were good people, working hard to do what they were experts at doing, which includes re-imagining how spaces are used and thinking about the big picture of re-animating public open spaces. They told us several times that Saturday Market was the best thing going downtown, that we were doing everything right, and they wouldn't want to change a thing about us. I did try to take them at their word, and as far as I know, that's the city plan as well.

But as luck would have it, the two days they came were not the best days. The first one was one of those unimaginably hot days in August when our vendors stayed away by the dozens. We didn't look full at all. The second day they came in October, it was the monsoon day. They left, being completely unprepared for that, and both Markets closed early as well, which was unprecedented in recent memory.

So they never saw the current reality that we fill almost every inch of the two south blocks and spill over into the streets, and the two north blocks are full to bursting as well. So they might not believe that. Lots of people who come on marginal days might not believe that, but I will swear on a stack of bibles that it is the truth.

So lots of the ideas pitched by the public were not realistic or applicable to Saturdays in that location in the selling season of April through mid-November. A play structure for kids? Great idea, but it would have to be removed every week for safety and spatial reasons...they need the right surface under them, the right amount of space around them, and so on. A water feature that kids can play in? Well, maybe, but it won't be only kids that use it...people take baths in the fountain all the time in our current reality. So do you really want some half-dressed adults playing in the water too? Because you can't put a chain-link fence around it and sell tickets.

We support an enhanced stage area so that more groups can use the infrastructure during the week and at other times when we are not there. Some lighting, an electrical upgrade, a covering that drains better and doesn't cause puddles to form where guitarists want to stand, yes to those. On the west block, the existing coverings have problems too, but many of our members count on the shade and weather protection and rented their spaces with the idea that those would be provided. So some accommodations will have to be made if those are removed, and the walls on that block are used and loved as well. The stairs and access for wheels are pretty lame on the west block, though we've adapted, so we have mixed feelings about leveling it, but we could probably cope with changes like that. With difficulty, though.

We want a kiosk that provides information to tourists, with maps, charging stations, permanent restrooms, and other amenities, that could include storage for tables and chairs that the city could own and lease or lend out for events. In concept it is a win, but location is an issue of course. If we could use it as an info booth and put it over on East Park and Oak where our booth is now, that might be ideal...and many, many people support permanent restrooms. 

We rent nine porta-potties on Saturday, and it's a huge chunk of our operating budget. Of course as a large event we would still have to rent some, but it would be great to get some city support to lower that cost. But yes, location is an issue once again. It leads to the thought of redesigning the southern corners of both blocks to see if utilities can be fitted in with a gain of sales space instead of a loss. Might be tricky, but if it is planned for, well, great.

Most of our other issues are small...smoother concrete in places where people regularly lose their loads from hand-trucks and dollies when trying to load into the center of the blocks, and some anchors embedded to hold down some of the booths and eliminate the 100 pounds of sand we are each required to haul down there as booth weights. Let me tell you as an older person that the weight bags are going to be the determining factor for me to attend on rainy days, maybe even this season. I can't do it without hurting myself, and of course I am not the only one. We have 600 members! On any given day in the season we fill 250 booths.

We kind of want to stay exactly as we are if the choice is a big change or none...but of course we don't know yet what the choices will be and as renters of the parks, we aren't going to be making the decisions. We are included in the process, thus the task force, thus the visioning process, but yes, the wariness too.

It might be impossible to imagine what the loss of even one space does to our system. Each member commits to a space on the basis of a complex point system that ranks us with lots of variables worked in. You can hold your space for years if you keep your points up by attending and paying on time, so many of us feel that we have permanent homes and neighborhoods. My particular space has its issues, like backing up to the fountain and in fact losing a corner to it, but I love it and have made it work for me. So putting benches or other items around the fountain could eliminate my space. If that happened, it's not a simple matter to fix. Any space I was eligible for would be someone else's unless they gave it up and I had the point order to get it. People strategize and plan for years to get the space they want, so the good locations don't generally open up. Moving my booth to another location entirely is a huge disruption for my business and my personal experience at the Market. 

Sure, it might be good, but it might destroy what I have built so patiently and with so much effort. And it we displace a lot of members with some structure or other, we might have to start all over and remap and redistribute space. Some people think that would be a good idea, but I see it as utter chaos and a plan that will involve a lot of loss, people quitting, people arguing, people hurt and relationships disrupted. It would not be simple or effortless in execution, so if anyone suggests that it would, let me give you my full rant on that. It could take awhile.

I should say that everything so far that has involved our organization and the city has worked out fine, even big things like the fountain repair last summer and the siting of dog-waste stations and signage...if it is in the wrong place, it gets moved, and we adapt. There's a pretty strong trust relationship between SM and the City staff. I don't want to set up anxiety or speculate on what horrors change could bring. I'm really here to illustrate that we are artists, so we do have a lot of creative ideas, and we generally celebrate the creative ideas of others. 

I think I've said this before, I simply do not want Eugene citizens and leaders to break what is working really well. We're here to help make these decisions work. We want the Parks to be loved and healthy and used by a wide swath of residents and visitors. We want to continue to be the well-loved gem that we know we are. We do not want to be forced to stand in opposition to something lots of people want.

So if you are interested in this process that is coming up this next month when PPS reports and recommends to the City, stay tuned, and keep me in mind if you have questions about what the Market wants. A large group of us got together and distilled that and we are ready to work together. Let's do a good job of this. It is vitally important to a number of business owners that we get this right from plan to completion. I'm ready with my post-its and my heavy notebook of all that has been said and done so far, from the Park Blocks Master Plan of 2006 to this fall's forums and presentations. I know we can all end up on the same page and I can put my notebook on the shelf at some point. I'm paying attention, and keeping a lot of people informed as well, so any discussions about the Park Blocks are not happening in theory, they are happening in a living reality, a legacy event that is a town treasure. It's the city's front porch. My rocking chair is on it.