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.