On the Horns

This isn't the first time I have felt caught upon the horns of a moral dilemma. As usual, it has taken me a long time to accept the framing of others, to really look at my behaviors and my excuses, and to peel back the layers to the essential truth. Making a way forward is a whole other task, and I am not quite there yet.

But it's time to admit to myself that I accept my complicity in what amounts to hurtful acts against other cultures, by using images in my art that were inspired, taken, or that I did not generate myself. As a self-taught artist and crafter for over forty years, I had to learn somehow, and in the beginning I traced many signs and lettering fonts so that I could use them. Copyrighted or not, I took them for my own purposes and gradually learned where to draw the lines. Many times I refused to take what clearly wasn't original to me, but other times I wanted it too much. I made my rationalizations and excuses and kept moving.

I can think of lots of examples way back to the beginning. I knew at some point that copyright laws allowed use when the image was altered by 10% or more (or that's what I told myself) and often I used what was said to be in public domain. Those Dover books all seemed open to borrowing. The better an artist's images were, the more they lent themselves to being stolen. Until my own creations were copied, I didn't really see the harm.

The Fish Tie shirt was the first really impactful theft I experienced, with my partner in Fibergraphics, Mike Martin. He had the idea to put a fish

All original art, mine or Mike's, or Rich Sherman's.

on a shirt like a necktie, with the tail as the knot. It was one of many shirt designs we came up with at the beginning of our shirt business, in about 1984. It took off when I wore one to a small trade show in Denver and connected with a top-level sales rep who saw the potential. He got us orders from National Parks, Alaska resorts, and many, many stores in California, Alaska, Hawaii, and other states. The shirt was wildly popular and we were able to found our business upon it. We sold a ton of them. Some savvy businessmen saw our shirt, said to themselves that it was a million-dollar idea, and proceeded to make a line of polyester fish ties that did make a million dollars: for them, not us.

This was the Fish Tie Phenomenon of 1986. There was nothing illegal about what they did, but even though we followed quickly with a line of neckties, our experience was compromised. We discovered other tie-makers who had been doing fish, and they didn't get rich either. We made other products, and mistakes in other ways that didn't help, but the shirts still sold well for awhile, and we didn't legally pursue the several ripoffs of our designs that followed. Copyright protection is one thing; pursuing damages in court is quite another. We learned our best strategy was to keep moving with other innovative designs.

I "invented" the Pocket-O-Slugs shirt with the fake tuxedo shirt in mind. You have to remember that printed t-shirts only came on the market in the late 70's and early 80's. Our business was really a trendsetter by its very existence. My line of things in pockets was pretty popular too, and there were probably a dozen different ones and a lot of other tie ones as well. We had a great time with them, and it was big business for a few years. We sold to the Nature Company, Made in Oregon, science museums and gift shops all over, and had a team of sales reps and a number of employees. Mike's line of Fractal images was probably the first set of fractal t-shirts made, which carried us forward into the early 90's, when our business folded for a lot of reasons we won't get into here.

The point is that I felt the issue of infringement from both sides. I stole and was stolen from. I learned how common it was to not own your creative property, and this was before the internet. Once products went online, I gave up thinking I could protect my designs from theft. This is a part of the life of every artist now, and not a pleasant part. But it is only a tangential part of our current dilemma of cultural images.

Here's a photo of the first (and I think only) successful design chosen by the Sauna that I drew. I submitted others but they didn't have what was needed for the Sauna shirt collectors. This one is clearly derivative of Art-Deco style and is pretty original, though to me it shows my lack of formal art training. By then I had been making my own silkscreened work for a decade or so and technically I knew what I was doing, more or less. Mike and I produced a few together, and then Brad's designs became the norm and I became "only" the printer. I printed almost all of the Sauna shirts and accessories for a couple of decades, until my body started to complain and we changed our arrangement somewhat. I still printed some of the items, but let go of the bulk of the garments, and made the bags and hats. This past year was the first one that I printed no Sauna merchandise, but they went back to the flamingo icon and we're still family. I noticed, but probably only a few other people were aware of the end of my era. It had nothing to do with the imagery, but was solely a physical and health decision on my part. But it provides me a convenient break in tradition to re-think things.

I love my clients. Almost all my custom printing work is with clients I've had forever. I print what they ask me to print, whether or not I love it, find it appropriate, or care about the image. It's business. I provide a service. But I do get to make choices, as a self-employed craftsperson. I choose to not print sexist or mean slogans, don't do scatological, don't print cusswords or nasty things...unless I want to. I wouldn't print a racist stereotype, or a hateful slogan. And yet...

Things have shifted in our culture regarding what is racist and hateful. Many of us are only now catching up to what has always been true about using images from other cultures. Like I resented the theft of our fish tie, other people have been hurt by my actions. It doesn't fall into the category of complimentary admiration, like flattery. That old saw falls flat now. Imitation isn't right now. Authenticity is what we want in art, and in our lives.

So when this all came up heavily last year, I gave myself a year to consider my position. I love my clients, and want to do what I have always done for them, give them quality and dependability and value when I apply my skills to their projects. I'm still not ready to cut them off completely from our longstanding relationships. This isn't about the Sauna, as they aren't currently using any borrowed images and I'm not currently printing for them. This is about me, and where I draw my lines.

I've said no to lots of printing requests. All I'm willing to say at this moment is that I'll say no to more of them. I won't take on any new work that involves appropriated images that have now been identified as hurtful. I'm moving into semi-retirement anyway, so it won't be a sacrifice. I'm not going to suffer over this. So it isn't nobel, and it isn't commendable. I just had to say it though, in some kind of public way.

Because I haven't apologized for my part. I've still been making excuses, and listening to the people who excused me from responsibility. I'm hired to do work. I'm not hired to make moral judgements. But like all business owners, I do make those judgements, and I need to be more sensitive about it.

So there it is. I'm sorry I am complicit in putting forward products that people feel are damaging. I've failed to meet my own moral standards because of my ignorance and my clinging to old thinking that used to be sufficient. It isn't sufficient now. My excuses and rationalizations are just that. I can do better. I will do better.

It's a big issue, cultural appropriation, for my hippie culture, and there is a spectrum of opinions that goes from censorship through artistic license and freedom back and forth through millenia and we don't know what will settle out to be the common truth that we will all aspire to tell. It's a conversation we're having, and we're not through with it yet. I believe all participants should have the time to examine their own parts and make their own decisions, particularly when they have invested their lives in making art and building their skills and livelihoods. Their decisions are their own and I will not push them, though I may enter the discussions. Sometimes a course is obvious and sometimes it is not. I'm not going to impose my catholic, binary tendencies on such a nuanced question.

I am going to submit to my own, embedded Catholic tendencies for right action, purity of motive, striving to be morally sound and fair and working toward justice. I won't be pure enough for some, and I'll look prim and puritanical to others. I have to find the ground I can stand on, and I may bow to one wind or another in my personal process. I'm intensely loyal and care deeply about my relationships, but I also care deeply about ethics and honesty and have to live with myself.

But I am sorry. I have used what may be sacred African images in my art (that I stole from photographs), I have used photographs taken by others, I have used iconic images that were most likely stolen originally by collectors or at least not compensated for by me. I have profited from these things. It isn't a simple right or wrong situation about a single instance of misuse. I have put in my "artistic contribution" to alter these images as required by law. I have also not done that at times.

I was commissioned to do this shirt by the first Craft Committee (I think) and was proud to do it. I may have peaked as a t-shirt artist in 1989, though I am still printing shirts.I have tried to stop purchasing and using the toxic PVC-based ink that made these multicolor designs possible and printable. I pretty much stick to one-color waterbase ink, and technology has definitely passed me by with the digital possibilities most artists access now.

And when it comes to my crimes against the Oregon Country Fair, I'm not going to apologize yet. My membership goes back forty years plus. I have a whole list of things I've done starting from sneaking in, but I don't think it makes me a bad person who should be banned from participation or even leadership. Some of these things I should not confess!

Pictured are some shirts I may or may not have printed...when it comes to rationalization I am a master. I have always felt that working with the logo adds to the wealth of culture that we do generate as original to our Fair, and all my images have intended to enhance or assist us in working within our complexities for greater understanding. I've tried to add to the fun. I put them here to make the point that no one with decades of participation has a pristine moral record and there will always be nuances that can add up to either treasure or trash, depending on interpretation. I will always defend turning the sacred upside down to look at the underside, to see what we can learn from greater objectivity.

I don't do those things now, though I still feel I have the right to make original art. I redrew and donated the Elders design this year; my version has on the back "Just a place in the shade...and a pass." so you know how old it is (pre-wristbands.) I sell/sold these after hours and had many versions of shirts that I thought helped interpret our quirk and add to our fun as a family. Most of them are treasured; many of them forgotten; some misunderstood (like the 30th anniversary one.) I hope my admissions don't make you think badly of me, but remember that art is supposed to affect us. It's supposed to make us work. And it has been something I have fully immersed in and made a life around, so apologizing for it is futile.

I try as hard as I can to work in a positive, affirming way to promote the Fair as morally and protectively as I can. I'm not a saint. I will get some things wrong, be critical of some things I don't know enough about, and be as messy as the next person in my process for deciding my course of actions and what I say. That's a given.

But I will try harder. That is what I can do. If you point out to me something I need to hear, I will honor you with my attempts to not be defensive, to not give excuses. I will do my best. That is all I can promise.

That's the way I want my life to go. I want to make those improvements that are at hand, and try to correct my course whenever I can. I don't expect a reward at the end. I doubt there are reparations that I can make at this point that would be meaningful. I will sit at the table as long as I can, even when it makes me squirm. I will try to help create safe space for all of us so that we can continue to build our lives as we have together for so long. Thank you for listening. And thanks for buying my stuff.

Service

Finally attended a fairly satisfying meeting last night, which seems to be a growing trend for me as my year turns from a lot of chaos to a little less. Volunteering way too much for the last year and more, I often was in despair that my constructive energy was too little and not clean enough of my own self-interest to be really helpful. Anyone who volunteers confronts the endless well of need and while we see how many good people are trying, and how hard they are working, more people slip into the well of need and more good people are injured, discouraged, and find themselves too busy or too wounded to keep working.

The political and economic reality is indeed grim as our time tightens and conditions degrade. If you read you know how hard social progress toward equality and justice can become, derailed by desperate survival and emotional overwhelm and actual greedy and evil people who derail us on purpose. The easiest thing is to stop trying, stop working, and retreat to what makes us feel better and more protected, focusing more on our own needs and tasks and letting the bigger chips fall where they may. I am constantly encouraged to give things up, to walk away, told that "someone else" will pick up what I am doing and the implication is that they would do a better job of it, as they have less investment, less energy on the line, and don't care as much for the results I am convinced are worth working for.

In my small universe, my self-interest is built in, as I volunteer for four membership organizations and have been paying a lot of attention to the City and its plans. Those organizations (Saturday Market, Oregon Country Fair, the Kareng Fund, and the Radar Angels) occupy different levels of my commitment (more or less descending order there.) Radar Angels is almost all about fun: singing, dancing, being joyful about Jell-O Art, and putting on our main fundraiser for Maude Kerns Art Center around April Fools Day. As the Queen, I don't do much until it comes time to write and promote the show, except this year I mounted a parade entry and Sunday Streets display of 30 years of  Jell-O Art, which took a couple of weeks of effort and some stellar participation from a lovely group of good people who marched in the parade with me. Indi Stern does far more than I do to keep the Angels going and other people do too...I am a persona who gets to do what I want and most of the year I only spread smiles and click likes on posts by David Gibbs, the Knight of the Realm of  Gelatinaceae (that's my realm) who has more energy for the art part right now than I do. So we can set that service aside as not having a huge impact on my time except for the three months I am in my Saturday Market offseason. The Sunday Streets piece was one of the ways I tried to support the City this year, to turn around the Park Blocks and downtown and preserve our city center for public use. I'll write other posts about that, and have. See my other blog, Gelatinaceae.

Kareng Fund also runs itself with a dedicated group of amazing souls, who far outshine me in FB page, which I will update soon as we are entering our fundraising season. I am very proud of this emergency relief fund for self-employed artisans, and I take no credit for starting it but am dedicated to supporting it, so yeah, not dropping that part of my service.
compassion and gentleness and I mostly take the minutes and handle some of the duties of an officer. My particular officer niche is in the words area...as a writer, I love grammar and spelling and keeping accurate records so I collect all the paper archives and track legal stuff and sometimes run the meetings to a degree, and of course do my best to participate in our fundraisers, which you can find out more about on our

I'll set aside Saturday Market for today. I am an officer, the Secretary, which lest you have sexist thoughts, is not a clerical position though I do a lot of typing and filing and other writerly and traditionally sexist tasks. It is all about standing up for Duty of Care, and maintaining the integrity of the organization. My self-interest is that it function well and not cause me a lot of overwork, as I have other things to do! Making and selling my craft, showing up every Saturday and Tuesday that I can, and putting a positive face out to the community as a member of this unbelievably valuable organization are bigger parts of how I participate, but as an older person I am happy to be able to carry the legacy forward and help the rest of the dedicated members and stupendous staff keep the whole basket thriving. I take it all very seriously and in fact I have based my life upon it in many ways. Walking away from any of that doesn't seem possible to consider. Even the most serious burnout does not deter me, apparently, because as I come out the other side of a difficult time, I can see how close I came to a negative view. We had some hard times. I depended heavily on a number of other people to pitch in too, and we came through with a new staff, a very solid team, and we are rising up so fast I get giddy. There are still plenty of challenges, but the atmosphere has changed.

Last night after Craft Committee met, a Coordinator and I struggled with that silly window shade that takes a particular amount of skill to lower, and I thought to myself that if that were in the SM office, we are now at the point in our rise that we would buy a new one. It struck me as a simple metaphor for an attitude shift in problem-solving that SM has worked through...let's make everything we can easier and more efficient, starting with the small things and working through to the bigger ones. I'm not complaining about OCF's office staff at all. I actually don't care about the window shade as I only have to deal with it twice a month at most, but it's more about the way we are able to approach things that need to be fixed, in the larger arenas of OCF functions. After last night I feel that OCF has made that same shift, although the turning peach has a much more ponderous path than the basket and it takes a lot longer to measure results and sift through the details of change at OCF than it does at the smaller though equal Market. (We do also have the value of not throwing out things until they have completely been used up, and that shade does still have functional uses...but maybe we don't take it to the new office when we get one.)

A nonprofit membership organization is now a rare and beautiful anomaly as efficiency and simplicity may not be realistic goals for a large group of equal members. Finding consensus and parity are more important; gathering the multitude of voices and forging a way forward to solve problems is not simple and making it simple generally short circuits some of the consensus-building process. It can't be top-down. It has to be roots-up. Every little person has to feel the power of working together and dedicate themselves to that process. We don't shed our self-interest, as we are all far too invested to do that. We shape our self-interest into forms that will serve all of us. We are charged with bringing our tiny pieces of the whole to the forum and working together to articulate them, before we even get to defining the fixable problems and working on solutions for them.

You can feel, from your own life, how many big concerns there are and how one has to look at them in smaller pieces to even stay stable. You give $20 to your neighbor who works with the houseless and you try to shop well and live sustainably and recycle and care. People are forced by time and economics to limit what they can give, and find a balance so they don't get depleted. This has been on the forefront for people in my political universe as we try to fight dismantling social progress and hold onto our sanity and sense of hope. I have found places in my life where I can be effective and lots where I cannot do enough, or anything sometimes. But working as a volunteer Scribe and committee member for OCF has been a place where I can see the direct results of my diligence.

Our committee has not been the best at productive meetings and it has taken years for us to feel powerful in making decisions and doing work that is helpful. I've only been doing it for a small portion of the decades of the Craft Committee, but I brought my skills in good faith and offered them. Working in the future has not been something within our grasp, generally, as we mostly applied what bandaids we could and tried to carefully take apart the issues and find the parts we could work on. We listened to other crafters and tried to provide helpful suggestions on navigating the structure and policies. Decades of policy-making has resulted in some gaps and stumbling blocks in process, not that this is anyone's fault, but taking policy apart and looking at each word has been effective, so a group of us met for several years now and did that with craft policy. We were tasked with compiling it in one place and we did that, which for me was actually rather joyful as I adore organizing and writing clear sentences, which I did with the help of others who care about that. While this is a task that will never be finished, we got to a place where we had something tangible, some tools, which we were able to give to the larger organization for the benefit of the 1000 artisans, the many coordinators, all the crew people, and the wonderful staff and Board, and the future.

It was a gratifying moment and we had a large group last night to witness it. We had representatives of maybe five crews, some of their coordinators, three Board members, one candidate, at least nine artisans, and some of these were the same people. We represented as broad a swath of those interested in craft issues as you can cram into a meeting room. We took our Duty of Care seriously and we worked to identify our concerns, our possible solutions, the exact sticking points, and with transparent process as a goal, we worked to suggest some small changes that will ease some larger concerns. It was a small step in a tiny segment of a big effort to keep that peach alive.

There was a lot on our agenda and we addressed most of it. We were honest and could laugh and see both the big pictures, the realities, and the small details, holding it all in mind and all united in the same goal of making incremental progress toward equality for all members and Fairness. Any conversation you have about OCF will include this goal. This is why people serve the OCF.

We each have our own Fair. That means there are thousands of them, many thousands, and all are cherished and held dear. We all are challenged by giving validity to the many thousands that differ significantly from our own. Your needs are not necessarily my immediacy, and my concerns are not necessarily on your radar. What discourages me about the organization is the limited view of service to it that some people seem to hold.

I will say that invariably, once they get involved at the end of the table that works on policy, process, and consensus-building, their smaller interests tend to fall away into the greater goal of making things Fair. Mostly people who come into service with a limited agenda get the education they need, if they are open to it. It has been a struggle to get boothpeople into the policy-making system, to even get some of us to see how we can be useful or heard. Board members like Sue Theolass and Lucy Kingsley and Justin Honea have worked really hard to listen to others, to ask questions, and to find out what is really different about the crafter experience, the food artisan experience, and the experience of the person who works mostly pre-Fair and maybe doesn't even see the boothpeople in their true light. They've worked to bring out not what is different, but what is the same, and how we all work for each other for our mutual goal symbolized by the round, juicy peach. There has to be enough abundance for all. There has to be a balance between order and spontaneity and everyone's Fair has to be the work of everyone together. There isn't a better way to do it, and it will never be easy.

That old us vs. them is a bugaboo that will always be part of human experience but building consensus means we work through that. One of my dreams is to never hear it again. We find our common ground, we hear about what other people feel, we take our problems apart and we work through the details with our good faith and our dedication and we take our small steps toward better functioning. We bring our skills, whatever they are, and we give them.

It's service. It is actually not about what you need or want, except that you get to throw that into the mix. If there is a way to get what you need and want, you may find a path in that direction, but rarely do you get to have it without the consensus. We are not top-down, and may we never be. Ours is the greater challenge of working for the common good, and we in our community are so damn lucky that we get our little universe to do that kind of work. I cannot imagine how I would be able to tolerate the present greater world without the comfort of my smaller universe where I can see results from my work. Our endless well of need at OCF does not compare to the one we all must live with. Ours has a bottom, and we're nowhere near it. We have resources, we have incredibly dedicated individuals, and we have a complex, deeply developed legacy of problem-solving skills. It is alive in us, and we have the huge gift of our children, who have been paying attention, who have been nurtured, and who are always stepping up to pitch in and help with their energy and joy. We have people of every age, all the ages. There's no division there.

It's election time for OCF. You must vote. If you get the benefit of Fair, you have to accept part of the responsibility. And as you know, you must be an informed voter. Watch the candidate forum, please. Ask yourself about the skills these people bring, and how interested they are in serving all of us in our goal for equality and Fairness. Do they get the true meaning of volunteering, that you do it as its own reward, no matter the cost? Do they bring a narrow agenda, or are they looking at all of the concerns of all of the Fair? Will they serve me, or only you? Are they open to learning? Can they handle the humble role of participatory democracy, of the kind of self-effacing leadership we need?

I like many of the Board-level volunteers. I hear many of them understanding the Duty of Care, the real leadership role they play. I was at first dismayed by the candidates forum, but gradually came around to the realization that willingness to be open to learning was going to help me decide. I know Lucy and Justin have what it takes. I heard Diane Albino indicate that she has heard our desire to be thought of as artisans, not vendors. We do not vend...it is way more complex than that, our Right Livelihood and our lifetime investment in Fair. She has been open to listening.

Two candidates came to the Craft universe to find out about us. George Braddock is a boothperson, and I know people fear he is a one-issue person but that is a groundless fear. Watch him speak, look at his skill level. He has said so many wise things during this controversy that show his openness, his willingness to make personal sacrifice for the greater good, and his huge understanding of service. His whole life has been an unselfish dedication to help those who need help. He has supported dozens of artists and craftspeople, helped empower thousands of differently-abled folks. He suffers misjudgement with grace. I sincerely hope he is elected so we can move along in the process of healing the damage of the past year, and so he can continue to give to the organization with his huge heart and deep soul. Please vote for him.

I will give a loud shoutout to candidate Laurel Georger. She came last night and she did not campaign. She took zero time for herself, but spent the meeting taking notes, listening hard to all of the complicated issues we were navigating, and she adopted throughout a respectful attitude of learning. She didn't interrupt to ask questions, but I expect she will when there is time. She understood that we had a packed agenda and no time to bring anyone up to speed. She knew the importance of what we were doing. I hadn't met her before but I know she is about the age of my son and their friend groups intersect, so I had some expectations of her...I figured she was smart, maybe kind of nerdy (which is a great quality in service) and after the meeting I threw her the logical question, "Why should I vote for you?"

She gave a great answer. She said she has been going to Board meetings, to Path Planning, and she came to learn more about Craft Committee and what we do. She talked about her service and her openness to learning. There it was, and she didn't sound political. There was nothing about power. There was nothing about needs. She said she had time to give and the desire to work hard. That's what I want. She got my vote.

You make your own choices when you vote. You have your own reasons, and you get to follow them through. Just please know that it does matter who you choose, and how you evaluate them. Take it seriously. My actual future depends on OCF, and maybe yours does too. For so many reasons, we need the peach, we need each other, and we need the hope that together we will continue to identify and meet the needs of our community, our place in the state (political and geographical), and our role and tasks in the universe. We want this opportunity to live right and work with people we value.

It's a little thing, this vote, this event, this bit of stuff we do. Yet, it is our metaphor, it is what feeds us. We want it juicy. We want a healthy tree with lots of branches and fruit for everyone. We want to be in it and of it and taste it and savor it. Our little lives are the best we've got, our wealth, so let's turn our pockets inside out and share our gifts and tokens and never stop sharing.

I am so grateful for it, for these people I get to work with and witness. A huge thanks! I will now mail my ballot in. Forgive me for missing the meeting after my 14-hour day at Market. I do what I can. Do what you can as well. You don't do it for yourself, but sometimes you will feel the benefits.

Living in Community

Woke up this morning, late for me (9:00 am!), and remarkably, surprisingly, anxiety free. I can ramp it up, when I'm ready, but I wanted to note my sense of freedom and find ways to expand it before I dip back into all of those areas where I can't seem to escape the stress.

Standing on the Park Blocks on Saturdays (and Tuesdays) with my creations, trading them for money and compliments, is always a pleasure for me, despite the emotional load it carries and the uncertainty and exposure that comes with it. Yesterday it rained all over many of my hats, as I had opted for the sand-bag-free umbrellas instead of the heavier pop-up with weights. Wrong choice for the 20%-plus rain probability; it was a gamble and I knew it, and I lost. I looked unprofessional and I have more labor and some loss with the wet goods, but I wasn't very upset by it.

I'm quite sure I wasn't upset because I had grounded myself really hard this week in what makes me who I am in this community: our shared values, and our alternative culture. This was spurred by several things; some were personal, some came from watching the City Council meetings (I keep up with them by video, and thank you City of Eugene), and some were seasonal. It's now on the winter side, while I prefer the summer side, in the Willamette Valley. That means I get cold, constrict, and have to use much more gear to walk and bike around, and I can't sit out on my deck and read, which is my chief source of escapist pleasure. I did buy myself a fake mink blankie and some hot tie-dye longjohns and I have an excellent supply of warm socks, so I am confident I will survive the harsh winters we seldom get around here and will be able to manage the advent of Jell-O Art season when we finish off the Holiday Market. My routines are solid and I like bean soup, but I still clench up when the plants die off and I have to close the windows.

Humor aside, I spent a lot of emotional labor in the past year, or maybe several years. I can't see back to a time when I wasn't carrying the extra weight of my volunteer positions (which are a few too many.) Some of that was the brew of cognitive errors I lump into the Over-Responsibility Syndrome that in me, convinces my pysche that I have to fix everything I see as not functioning optimally in my small and greater communities. Obviously that adds up to me not functioning optimally. But as a leader I do share in these responsibilities to be part of the solutions and less a part of the problems, and I take that very seriously. The degree of how seriously increases with the amount of discomfort I feel, in a spiral of the-worse-things-get-the-worse-I- get. I have my issues as a flawed person, and you've probably heard more about those than you need to hear.

But sometimes I get a reset, and I got one this week! What a joy, and what a luxury! I knew what I needed to do and say, and said and did it, and set a reasonable goal (or metric as they like to say now) to measure it, which was met, and I allowed myself the sense of relief and ease I needed. It may be brief, as I immerse into the volunteer tasks this week, such as voting for the OCF Board and typing up a few sets of meeting minutes, but I do want to savor it today. I give the credit to a few individuals, and I'll keep this vague, as well as the ways I was able to use that ease yesterday to listen well to a few in my community who needed some kind attention, because that's not the point and you know how long and detailed I can be.

The point I want to remember is that when I get what I need, I can give others what they need. It's that simple in structure. It's complex in action, and takes a lifetime of learning, but I can trace my bits of knowledge back to key people in my life who have given me the benefit of their wisdom. One person mentioned her intention to build community; at that time we were talking about Family School and why it was created (to establish a functional, deep interface between home and school for our children). One person relentlessly built community every Saturday in her little addresses in our Market newsletter. One person has spent years dropping meaty, cogent phrases on me in our casual talks, that have spurred my blog explorations and framed my storytelling so that I could share it.

One person said she had learned a particular skill set because she saw that we would need it. A little panel on the Sixties at the LCHS led me to open my archives and spread out my tangible contributions from my craft universe, which began when I came to town as a traveling signpainter in 1975 and found the Saturday Market. My first client was Humble Bagels, right as they were beginning. I dropped into the alternative society of Eugene and our area because of the almost accidental fact that my Aunt Lud and Uncle Homer lived here. I've been immersed in it since then.

Thinking about Kesey Square naming initially made me defensive about our Alternative Community, since RG comments are so mean and I resent being labeled, particularly in negative, untrue ways. Kesey wasn't really a hero of mine (and someday I'll re-tell the story of being nearly run over by Furthur-II) but I recognized his greatness, and I do believe that common usage has named the Square now and it should stick. I kind of agree that we should shift our thinking about the center of our city to the Park Blocks, if that doesn't endanger my uses of it. That's what our founders intended, and it's more suitable than Kesey, architecturally, and I had to agree with Councilor Yeh that we don't need any help in naming places after white men, but really the branding has been done by the people, so we can let it be. I don't have a better name in mind.

But in feeling defensive about the community, I ran through my speeches in my head. I often compose speeches that I'd like to give at the Public Forum but am too chicken to deliver. I know I owe it to the City Council to come out of the kitchen and let them know how involved I really am with what they do and say. I've been watching every meeting and worksession for over two years now. I take notes. I print out the materials and archive them. My small interest area is the Park Blocks and downtown developments, with a side of history starting with the first inhabitants (in detail) and I am actually quite an expert by now on my many theories and analyses of what our city and community is up to. But I communicate that to a smallish group of people through my task force emails and my blogs, and mostly stay kind of quiet about it.

I don't want to be wrong. I want to be a good leader and help us get to the elegant solutions and I want to be extremely careful to be logical, rational, and helpful. Keeping quiet and studying hard is a good tactic for me, but I see that the Councilors need to know I care, and the community needs to know what I know and think. I get stymied by trying to speak for others, and the difficulty of speaking only for myself when I'm so enmeshed through my many positions of responsibility.

Someone suggested this week that I merely identify myself by my role when I say something. Am I speaking as an equal member? Am I granting myself some positional authority, such as being an officer of a corporation, or a member of a Board, or a Committee Chair? Am I speaking as a citizen, a homeowner, a mother, an elder, a white lady, or as a human without labels? Can I speak without any labels? It's pretty impossible for me to separate my roles. I'm generally speaking from the compendium of them all. I'm me because of all these things. I can't not be me.

So if I go to speak to the City Council, will they see me as the voice of Saturday Market, even if I provide a disclaimer? I think I can speak positively for the Market, but so do the people who say outrageous things to city leaders about how we feel about the FSP. I don't agree with them, and I don't want them speaking for me, because I have grown to see how that thing over there works within our community and it isn't all bad. I know and love some of the drummers. I see how the newly hatched artists and crafters can't quite make it across the street to join Saturday Market, and I want them to build up to having that chance. I see how desperate some people are to make a single dollar with the skills and damage they have accumulated. I am not a mean person who thinks things should be swept clean and trashed instead of supported. Let me repeat again that any fixes over there have to be a community solution, with buy-in from the users, the neighbors, the public entities, the social-service agencies, and all of us who are involved and affected by the use of the northeast block. This will not be an easy solution or a simple process, but anything less will be a tragedy. That needs to be heard.

So I feel I should counter those opinions spoken in public by some who would represent me. I don't label people as "druggies" or "hippies" (though I have warm feelings about that label) or any other designation if I can hear myself. I resent labels for me and I resent them for others. I hate so much this rising atmosphere of hate and intolerance and I should be one of the people speaking loudly to counter it. That needs to be heard.

Park Blocks: big complex subject and all my study does not make me enough of an expert to go tell the City what to do. Changes to the Park Blocks are a community conversation. I'm certainly a part, but I am not here to deliver pronouncements and answers, though I have definite opinions. It is a process. I am engaged in that process. I will fight to stay engaged, but I won't fight the process or the other participants. Framing it as a fight is always a mistake. I will trust the process, and the participants, to be good listeners and to trust me as well. I hope the Council knows I'm here. I might owe it to them to remind them. I know they feel vulnerable sometimes that they are out there by themselves trying to make decisions without adequate citizen involvement. They would welcome me at the public forum. I could make a three-minute statement that would be helpful.

What I'd try to say today would be that when I got here, in 1975, I found a fairly well-established group of amazing, caring people who were trying to work on a better, more stable corner of America that would offer the space for growth: sustainable, thoughtful, ethical growth within the lessons we had learned from the Fifties, the Sixties, and the rebuilding of the American psyche that was so damaged by those decades. The assassinations, the lies, the Vietnam War, the actions of the CIA and FBI, and the betrayal of solid human values needed a huge healing. We applied our damaged selves to the task and we built things here. We sold our goods at Saturday Market and OCF and we volunteered at White Bird and we worked at the Homefried Truckstop and the newspapers and we talked and we cared and we built. We bought the dilapidated post-WWII properties and the old 1920's houses and we rebuilt them and made the downtown and surrounding neighborhoods valuable again. We created schools and clubs and groups and neighborhoods and we built a wonderful solid core that got us through the depression of the 80's, replanted our forests, re-invested in our downtown, and we did it with our open hearts and our deep desire for a better world. We're still here, most of us, still doing our best.

We did this next to all the people already here, the loggers and the farmers and the people who didn't welcome what we brought and built, and through the decades we proved our worth and our dedication and we not only survived, but we thrived. We built treasure together and we won't rest and say it's enough. We will do this until we fall over, and then we'll do it from our beds. There are so many shining examples of this kind of person that you all know many, many of them, living and not. We have a stunning, living legacy in Eugene and Lane County of a society that has embraced the place and helped to work to make it one we are so proud of we can barely see it in it's entirety. We've invested our lives in this.

You might say we take it for granted. I'm here to tell you that every day that I stand on the Park Blocks, every single Tuesday and Saturday, I hear from someone their deep appreciation of our town and their recognition of our hard work. I should tell this to the City Council and the Lane County Commissioners. Perhaps my problem is really that I feel it so deeply, and it is so much a vital part of my being, that I am fairly sure I would dissolve in tears as I try to explain that fathomless love.

I don't want it to feel trivial. I don't want it to fall on any deaf ears. I don't want to compete for attention with the rest of us, the 350 people, the climate change activists, the advocates for the unhoused, the people fearful of losing the equity they have built as I have built mine. It's all of a piece. We're all together in this, whether or not we agree about the details. We have the unity we wish to see.

We've been saving our world all this time. The Vietnam story brought this back to me in waves. My friends the Marines, the protestors, the liberators of love and women and people of color, we're together in this. We haven't put down our tools and we aren't going to fall into the chaos that's being pitched at us. We have got it going on.

So thank you all, and thank you for reading and listening. Thank you for what you do. Keep seeing this big picture. Keep the faith. Love what you do, notice the moments, and love harder. Let it be.

Let it be Kesey Square. It's not like you can stop people from using their Free Speech. It's not like you would want to. That isn't what people want. We want our human needs met. Let's start there.

Every day.