Mid-Holiday Market, and it's all as usual. Good news is there's nothing on TV so I am not tempted to watch it so I don't get depressed by all those commercials that are so well engineered to make us feel inadequate and required to consume. The food ones are really hard on me since I quit eating dairy. I can't even really say I quit, I just limit it as much as I can and am gradually embracing veganism too. It just makes ethical and health sense so it's getting easier and easier. The dripping hamburgers and pizza don't even really look that good, mostly because I know those oversize shots are fake.
I'm dedicated to reading for hours so I can clear away some of my literary clutter. My livingroom is dominated by the Saturday Market archives and I don't even know if I will get out the decorations, although I probably will. I got them down from the attic. My top priority project is working on my Mom's book so right now I'm reading about sod houses and that early Nebraska history as background. I keep getting distracted by all of the other subjects I am curious about but I'm happy to be curious and to have plenty of resources.
Keeping on an even keel, though I got a cold and remembered how wimpy I am. I did force myself to work this week and the cold was conquerable mostly, but of course there will be more germs this weekend to deal with. Can't do much about that.
I got named Volunteer of the Month at the Board meeting...it's always nice to be recognized. I tried to come up with the reason I volunteer so much. It's not really explainable, except that I like to pitch in and if I perceive a need, it's hard to walk away. I have skills and they're needed. It does seem like my role is changing, though, as the organization changes, and I'm not going to resist that. I will always have a voice, and unless something prevents me from continuing to be a member, I'm guessing I will always find a niche. If it's not in leadership I will do background work. The Country Fair is always there for my time and effort if Market gets tired of me. I feel bad that I don't give more to OCF, but maybe I will get that writing done for the 50th in January when I have a long list of writing projects and will have lots of time to do them.
I guess I have a lot of hope about the political situation as the administration crumbles, though I know it is going to be painful and possibly horrifying to watch the death throes of these people who think they have power. They've done a lot of damage, and according to my conspiracy theories, they're doing things our future will include more of, not less. The riots in Paris are a good example of the kinds of complex movements which will emerge as we deal with the real issues of climate change. Either we deal or we all die...seems clear enough. It's a heartbreak but like the planetary cycles, there will be some good things to come in the midst of the disasters. I'm glad I live in town where I will be able to access resources and probably won't lose everything. Of course there are no guarantees.
Had a bizarre experience last night. My niece wanted to treat me to dinner and she loves Panera, so I agreed to go. It's at Gateway, somewhere I never go...and I had never been to that chain. Their website made it look bearable and it was, but certainly nothing I would choose on my own. The person on the register was an over-sharer...told us how she had lost 140 pounds and got off insulin while she was pushing some pastry on us (I had to accept and it was terrible, but it was just a bite.) She would have kept talking but I cut her off to order. They didn't actually have a lot of what was on the menu but I was able to get something with no cheese, barely. It had a lot of mayo. It was all white bread although there was a better choice that I wasn't aware of. It was all institutional food heated up in a microwave. The place had a fake fireplace and wasn't cozy, but I was there to catch up with my niece and that part was good. Being at Gateway reminded me of what the rest of the country has for choices...that is not my life. Nothing in their pastry case looked appealing in the least.
Store after store of plastic bright and shiny, tons and tons of things I don't need or want...made me see just how small and precious our Market is, and how healthy Eugene is for artists and those who want to surround themselves with real things made by real people. Made me all the more determined to hang onto it and keep nuturing it. What we have built is so full of meaning and life that it will never lose its attraction...it won't fade away with the commercial competition. It will get stronger. It speaks to people, what we offer. They see us, too. All we have to do is get them to come in the doors, and be ourselves. I'm very much looking forward to our 50th season and the opportunity to show us as we really are.
It will help if we can be our best selves. Our affinity for personal drama is one of our worst pitfalls and we have to work really hard to stay grounded and not get into it. It takes vigilance and ethics. I was proud of our Board this week as they navigated some sticky issues and did well. Nobody forced decisions, everyone was thoughtful and compassionate, and people could keep their heads above the possibility of murkiness. It takes leadership. We have some. I'm grateful for it.
Speaking of that, I get to do something this coming week that will feel kind of scary...I will be in the room with some important community leaders. I think I am up to it. I'm worried about how to portray myself, and how to avoid saying the wrong things, but I feel pretty confident that I will be able to keep my perspective. I see people all the time acting in brave and confident ways and I can certainly rise to challenges. I just hope it isn't too intimate...or too religious for me. It's just a couple of hours though. I've learned in the past year how to hold my tongue and wait, and not speak too impulsively. Not always, but most of the time. Okay, some of the time. Guess we'll see.
Probably none of them will know about the Queen of Jell-O Art part. I might not even mention it. As an old woman with an overgrown haircut, I will probably not even draw that much attention. I'll dress down. I won't drink too much coffee. I just hope I don't have to eat cheese and butter. I'll do my best.
See you tomorrow!
Friday, December 7, 2018
Monday, November 19, 2018
Change can be small
The California fires are probably what really got to me. The roads lined with burned out cars: we all can see what happened to the people in them. The look of abject horror on the men standing next to our criminal president as he called the town "Pleasure" and siad we'll have a good climate, when we all heard the estimate of twelve years left to fix something, some small part of our death sentence.
Yeah, we're all gonna die, we already know that, and lots of the conversations I have as someone on the verge of 70 are skirting that topic, which in itself is just something to accept and adjust to. Every day upright is a gain over the odds, a testament to having been lucky or careful. I got some good genes; my Mom's 92 and still with us, but that's an anomaly I get to enjoy. Can't count on anything about it, though.
Biking downtown in the smoke the summer before last, it first really sunk in that my future plans were delusional. We can't do outdoor retail in an apocalyse. There's not going to be any 50 more years of Market, with or without me, unless things drastically change. People will adapt, for sure...there will be lots of things we won't need and can't afford by then anyway, probably including cotton canvas and baseball caps with plastic inside the bills. And of course my years are limited, so I won't see that future, whatever it turns out to be. My son might, and whatever children he might have.
It's sobering, and desperate, and completely infuriating that people who don't know where they are or what they're doing are able to thwart people who are actually working on solutions and education. Infuriating isn't a strong enough word. I got a measure of hope from the elections, but seeing those determined people posing for a group photo in DC, all dressed in their suits and stillettos eroded that right away. Those people dress like that because those rules are tight. Even when they do dress like that they are easily denied the tools they need to make the changes we must make. Some of them will do some good work, and maybe all of them together will at least stop some of the bleeding. But hell in a handbasket is still our direction and mode.
Not my fault; I'm trying. We're all trying. But we have to try a lot harder. Not consuming mass-consumption geegaws and gadgets is a start, but if just the hippies are doing that, it's such a small drop in that bucket. I decided to stop buying seafood, so one more fish can maybe stay in the ocean, one more chink in the diversity of that zone can survive. Such a tiny, tiny step forward. I will work next on meat, then keep working on a plant-based, down on the food-chain diet, but such a tiny step. One person. One front in the giant war to sensible choices.
I had already decided long ago to severely limit my purchases of plastics. No new Christmas lights, no new so many, many little things I might ordinarily buy without a thought. Might help a little, and of course, collectively we will all help a lot if we can stick to it. But what happens when my phone breaks...will I quit taking credit cards and lose half of my customers? Will I stop buying ink because it comes in a plastic bucket. Will I really reuse my produce bags more than twice? What about my plumbing and rain gutters, my favorite tea bags, new shoes? How far can I get with that?
It doesn't matter how far I get, I just have to keep going in that direction. Decades of following the hippie way have shown me that we have been right since that first galvanizing Earth Day (I was in DC) and we can always do more to cement those values and teach others. Our children did learn some of them. Lots of our kids are carless by choice, as inconvenient as that is. Lots and lots of people are examining their choices and doing their best to be thoughtful and progressive.
It is not enough, but it is enough to keep trying. It's all we can do, just not stop trying. Forgive ourselves for not getting the big things done, and try hard to not dissolve into helplessness. That's the real danger, to give up, since we are so helpless in so many ways. You have your Go bag, your earthquake water jugs, your canned tomatoes, and yet, you might not have any choices when things happen. You might be helpless because your utility company failed to make the right choice. You might vote and have your ballot thrown out. You might holler loud as hell and still be silenced. You might be right and still be wrong.
We just have to keep trying. We've had bad kings before, Nixon on our side of the pond, Henry the 8th, Pol Pot. Plenty of them. We can barely trust the ones that seem good. But we've pushed our country back in the right direction, and we'll keep pushing, and we'll keep being smart and sensible and creating beauty and creating hope.
What if I made a list of all the plastic things I need, and picked one at a time to figure out better alternatives for? I can say no to lots of products and write to the stores or manufacturers to tell them why and ask for better choices. I can use my privilege to drive change.
I let my neighbor know what I thought of his new leaf blower (he said at least it was electric, as if that was really better.) I carved a new end for my broken rake handle. (Gotta get out in that forest and neaten things up...ha ha.) I decided maybe those alpaca boot liners might work even better than those foam ones. There's quite a lot I can do on that little piece of my personal front lines.
After finding two dead possums this fall, I saw a live one eating the earthworms I nurtured in my compost pile. I have hardly any garbage as it is, but I can make less. I will patch my gardening pants with my other gardening pants, and mend some shirts, and maybe even darn some socks. It's meditative. I'll read more library books and watch less TV, so the advertising won't seduce and depress me quite as much. I'll stop looking for things that bother me and look harder for things that warm me.
I'll enjoy the hell out of the Holiday Market that we are so lucky to have. I'll observe Buy Nothing Day in a meaningful way, and thank others who do. Even my worst customer at the Market is at least there, trying, instead of ordering online so we can waste more fuel and packaging buying empty boxes full of junk we don't really need. Being thoughtful and caring is a big step forward, composed of many tiny ones, and there, I can always do better. Always.
The sun came out of the fog, so I did all my laundry and hung it out on my wooden racks and clothesline. This time of year I have to move it around the yard a bit to catch that low sun, but I can dedicate my whole day to it if I want. I worked hard for a day off, so I can enjoy it. I'll purge my FB settings of the real-estate dealers and car ads that are somehow preying on my account. I'll be more careful what I like and share so I don't spread pernicious untruths and demoralize myself and others. We will still have to fight, every day, for equality and justice.
This has always been true. Our delusions can be comforting until they are not. When they crumble, we can always pick up and keep going, so that is what I will do. Maybe in the future we sell homemade smoke masks and smocks to preserve our last polyester fleece vests. We'll keep adapting, and we're good at it.
And we can support those who are better at it than we are. I like to drop twenties into the donation jars in Holiday Hall. There are neighbors of mine sitting in those chairs, backs to the sunny day, working for me. Working for real change. They aren't asking for much...your cooperation, your encouragement, your support. We can all give that. We can all keep moving forward, in the right direction, with our flawed selves and our ignorant choices and our thoughtless mistakes. We can forgive ourselves and each other, and be thankful we learned something.
Everytime I bring these little things up with people, I get new ideas and make new allies. We are stronger than we think, and we are doing better than we think we are. Let's keep going. Let's live while we are here, and leave a better planet when we go.
Thanks for your participation.
Yeah, we're all gonna die, we already know that, and lots of the conversations I have as someone on the verge of 70 are skirting that topic, which in itself is just something to accept and adjust to. Every day upright is a gain over the odds, a testament to having been lucky or careful. I got some good genes; my Mom's 92 and still with us, but that's an anomaly I get to enjoy. Can't count on anything about it, though.
Biking downtown in the smoke the summer before last, it first really sunk in that my future plans were delusional. We can't do outdoor retail in an apocalyse. There's not going to be any 50 more years of Market, with or without me, unless things drastically change. People will adapt, for sure...there will be lots of things we won't need and can't afford by then anyway, probably including cotton canvas and baseball caps with plastic inside the bills. And of course my years are limited, so I won't see that future, whatever it turns out to be. My son might, and whatever children he might have.
It's sobering, and desperate, and completely infuriating that people who don't know where they are or what they're doing are able to thwart people who are actually working on solutions and education. Infuriating isn't a strong enough word. I got a measure of hope from the elections, but seeing those determined people posing for a group photo in DC, all dressed in their suits and stillettos eroded that right away. Those people dress like that because those rules are tight. Even when they do dress like that they are easily denied the tools they need to make the changes we must make. Some of them will do some good work, and maybe all of them together will at least stop some of the bleeding. But hell in a handbasket is still our direction and mode.
Not my fault; I'm trying. We're all trying. But we have to try a lot harder. Not consuming mass-consumption geegaws and gadgets is a start, but if just the hippies are doing that, it's such a small drop in that bucket. I decided to stop buying seafood, so one more fish can maybe stay in the ocean, one more chink in the diversity of that zone can survive. Such a tiny, tiny step forward. I will work next on meat, then keep working on a plant-based, down on the food-chain diet, but such a tiny step. One person. One front in the giant war to sensible choices.
I had already decided long ago to severely limit my purchases of plastics. No new Christmas lights, no new so many, many little things I might ordinarily buy without a thought. Might help a little, and of course, collectively we will all help a lot if we can stick to it. But what happens when my phone breaks...will I quit taking credit cards and lose half of my customers? Will I stop buying ink because it comes in a plastic bucket. Will I really reuse my produce bags more than twice? What about my plumbing and rain gutters, my favorite tea bags, new shoes? How far can I get with that?
It doesn't matter how far I get, I just have to keep going in that direction. Decades of following the hippie way have shown me that we have been right since that first galvanizing Earth Day (I was in DC) and we can always do more to cement those values and teach others. Our children did learn some of them. Lots of our kids are carless by choice, as inconvenient as that is. Lots and lots of people are examining their choices and doing their best to be thoughtful and progressive.
It is not enough, but it is enough to keep trying. It's all we can do, just not stop trying. Forgive ourselves for not getting the big things done, and try hard to not dissolve into helplessness. That's the real danger, to give up, since we are so helpless in so many ways. You have your Go bag, your earthquake water jugs, your canned tomatoes, and yet, you might not have any choices when things happen. You might be helpless because your utility company failed to make the right choice. You might vote and have your ballot thrown out. You might holler loud as hell and still be silenced. You might be right and still be wrong.
We just have to keep trying. We've had bad kings before, Nixon on our side of the pond, Henry the 8th, Pol Pot. Plenty of them. We can barely trust the ones that seem good. But we've pushed our country back in the right direction, and we'll keep pushing, and we'll keep being smart and sensible and creating beauty and creating hope.
What if I made a list of all the plastic things I need, and picked one at a time to figure out better alternatives for? I can say no to lots of products and write to the stores or manufacturers to tell them why and ask for better choices. I can use my privilege to drive change.
I let my neighbor know what I thought of his new leaf blower (he said at least it was electric, as if that was really better.) I carved a new end for my broken rake handle. (Gotta get out in that forest and neaten things up...ha ha.) I decided maybe those alpaca boot liners might work even better than those foam ones. There's quite a lot I can do on that little piece of my personal front lines.
After finding two dead possums this fall, I saw a live one eating the earthworms I nurtured in my compost pile. I have hardly any garbage as it is, but I can make less. I will patch my gardening pants with my other gardening pants, and mend some shirts, and maybe even darn some socks. It's meditative. I'll read more library books and watch less TV, so the advertising won't seduce and depress me quite as much. I'll stop looking for things that bother me and look harder for things that warm me.
I'll enjoy the hell out of the Holiday Market that we are so lucky to have. I'll observe Buy Nothing Day in a meaningful way, and thank others who do. Even my worst customer at the Market is at least there, trying, instead of ordering online so we can waste more fuel and packaging buying empty boxes full of junk we don't really need. Being thoughtful and caring is a big step forward, composed of many tiny ones, and there, I can always do better. Always.
The sun came out of the fog, so I did all my laundry and hung it out on my wooden racks and clothesline. This time of year I have to move it around the yard a bit to catch that low sun, but I can dedicate my whole day to it if I want. I worked hard for a day off, so I can enjoy it. I'll purge my FB settings of the real-estate dealers and car ads that are somehow preying on my account. I'll be more careful what I like and share so I don't spread pernicious untruths and demoralize myself and others. We will still have to fight, every day, for equality and justice.
This has always been true. Our delusions can be comforting until they are not. When they crumble, we can always pick up and keep going, so that is what I will do. Maybe in the future we sell homemade smoke masks and smocks to preserve our last polyester fleece vests. We'll keep adapting, and we're good at it.
And we can support those who are better at it than we are. I like to drop twenties into the donation jars in Holiday Hall. There are neighbors of mine sitting in those chairs, backs to the sunny day, working for me. Working for real change. They aren't asking for much...your cooperation, your encouragement, your support. We can all give that. We can all keep moving forward, in the right direction, with our flawed selves and our ignorant choices and our thoughtless mistakes. We can forgive ourselves and each other, and be thankful we learned something.
Everytime I bring these little things up with people, I get new ideas and make new allies. We are stronger than we think, and we are doing better than we think we are. Let's keep going. Let's live while we are here, and leave a better planet when we go.
Thanks for your participation.
Sunday, November 4, 2018
Our Extra Hour
Nice to get up and turn the clock back...even though it means our last market on the Park Blocks will be dark at the end when we give our final howl of the season (for those of you who aren't there, we always end the last Market with a primal howl to the Crafters' Moon as we leave downtown for a winter indoors. It's a fun balance to the little song in the morning...)I feel called to respond to Bob Warren's Weekly viewpoint about the Market's relationship with the City and the Farmers. First, I thank him for caring about us, and for saying that in public, which we as members rarely do. Those of us who try to speak for the group know we can never fully express the thoughts of 600 diverse members, our staff, our Board and all our community supporters. Hardly anything is fully in agreement with this group, except that we love the Market and want it to thrive.
His main point, which was a little hard to pick out, was that the PPS consulants from NY, who were hired to advise the City on downtown solutions, proposed closing the Market for a season and a half and tearing the Park Blocks down to the ground and starting over. It was a terrible shock to us who had been working with the consultants and immediately destroyed the trust that we, as primary stakeholders, would be heard. The City has never directly said that they won't follow that advice.
If you aren't aware, I am the head of the Downtown Developments Task Force for Saturday Market, and as such I have been meticulously tracking our relationships in downtown for the past four years, with plenty of attention given to it before that. You can check back in the archive of this blog for many posts I've written about the subject. I listen to as many of the City Council meetings and workshops as I can, and have been included in lots of meetings with City and County Staff and others working on these issues. I have a collection of paper a foot high and I have studied both that PPS report and the Park Blocks Master Plan in detail. The city has never directly told us they won't close or move us, though we have directly asked for that assurance.
And it isn't like I started five years ago. In the past I took minutes for the Farmers, and I've had relationships with them for over thirty years. I was there when they separated from Saturday Market about ten years in, and watched as they tried to make it in various locations until they secured the north block across the street from us. I've sold at lots of Tuesday Market configurations, and know for certain that the only way we crafters succeed at TM is when we are right there within the produce booths. Proximity is everything for the markets. The synergy and symbiosis is extremely complex, has a long history, and I would dispute the dog/tail analogy. Sometimes it's one way, sometimes the other. It's not simple, and involves a lot of individuals who don't agree.
One thing that's true is that we at SM are wary of following the farmers down the path they've chosen. We are heading in a different direction, or more correctly, they've struck out on a new road and we are staying on the one we're on. When the Urban Renewal Funds were allocated, the City did pitch a large sum, $11.2 million, to the Park Blocks Remodel, (Edit, I had this way off. $5.2 million was for parks spaces, which included Kesey, Hult Cts and Library Plaza at the time, and $4.7 for farmers was correct, plus their leftover $500,000 which still hadn't been spent) to match the $5.2 million for the Year-Round Indoor Farmers' Market. The money has been sitting there, some of it used in the Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper efforts to activate the Park Blocks and downtown. I would say that almost none of it has yet been used to directly benefit Saturday Market as the renter of the southern blocks, but things have been proposed. Some of it has benefitted us, indirectly, like dislodging the camping that was making the PB unsafe for us, and a general improvement of the downtown, but most of the energy has been spent on the weekdays, because Saturday didn't need fixing. We've told them that. Everybody but the PPS consultants knew what we meant.
We've been sitting in this position for years, of figuring out how to say no without saying no. The first thing was the Feasibility Study for the YRIM, which was initially proposed as a Public Market kind of development which the farmers and the crafters would share, co-managing it, finding ways to make it work together. We participated in the study survey, which showed that it was feasible, but when we realized it would obliterate the Market we built, we said a definite flat NO to further participation in the project. We coulda had a building. We decided we don't want a building. We most definitely do not want to sell indoors. "Public Market" has a history for us.
Our magic is in our once-a-week, outdoors in easily accessible, beautiful public space, with low-cost participation costs, member control, independent funding, and all of the very same tenets set in place by our founders almost fifty years ago. That's who we are, that's who we want to be, and we know we are the experts in how to do this. You can see our success every Saturday. We don't really want what the city has offered.
Goddess knows we don't want a fully remodeled space. Our deep culture is site-based. I've written about our neighborhood relationships and all the ways we've adapted to our space in the 35 years we've been in the southern two blocks. We could not move, even temporarily, to some parking lot with no shade and no services to accomodate construction, without it destroying what we've grown. Our stance is that we can't move, and we can't close, but there are lots of weekdays and a whole period of 41/2 months when we are not renting the Park Blocks. If the City wants to improve the concrete, fix the walls, remove one or two trees (no more!) or propose a way to add a restroom or a new stage within those limitations, we might enjoy that. We might support some things like that. But not all of us. If you take out the fountain and eliminate my space, well, I will have to re-assess my whole operation down there. If you put a bathroom where I have sold for so many years, change where the food booths set up, move the stage to the other block, or ask us to move to City Hall block for a year, we think Saturday Market might fail to thrive. We think we would lose members, find that a lot of people would take a leave of absence at minimum, and our budget would be broken and we'd suffer. So our position is no closing, no moving, and no going indoors year round. We want what we have built. But we are the tenants, not the owners. Yet we are a big part of the owners, which are actually the public, right? The City has patiently explained that a community solution has to be found for the Park Blocks, and we don't own that, as renters one day a week (for 35 years, though.) Yes, of course, we activate the park and downtown like nobody's business, and the City staff who has tried to emulate us during the week for several years knows just how hard it is to do that successfully. We have the keys to that and they've learned from us. They even subsidize other craft organizations to have booths at their events now. Crafters bring life and quirk and people love them. Farmers do too, and there's a lot of mutual admiration in that synergy, until it gets framed as competition. We don't compete with the farmers.
So the building and our relationship with the farmers. Sigh. I was fired from taking minutes for them, as it became clear that we (SM) were not going to agree with some things going forward, and I was perceived as an outsider. They did a lot of things that made them different from the LCFM we knew. They began appointing community members as Board members, ended informative communications and a high level of member involvement, for a different business model that they felt served their purposes better. They ended the longstanding "gentlemen's agreement" that we had held with them, that we would not sell produce and they would not have food booths. They added a beer garden, and began adding businesses that were more commercial than we allowed in our Market. Maker is the Seller went by the wayside for them, as they allowed direct agents and employees more than we did. All of the changes were things they wanted for their organization and we couldn't really even object that much. They are a different kind of market with different needs, and that just became more so as we diverged. We had to actually oppose them in some siting proposals, such as closing 8th and Oak so they could use 8th as selling space. We had to show them that would probably not work out to their beneift either.
That was all okay; we had some hard feelings but we mainly operated much the same as usual. Our friends were still our friends, and we tried to keep our disputes mostly out of the public eye. Lots of people still think all the activities on the Park Blocks are "Saturday Market." Then came the UR funds.
The Farmers' management and Board bought into the building idea. They want the YRIM. We said our hard NO but we said it softly, and we chose to not oppose the farmers in meeting their own needs in the way they want to meet them. We've been watching and listening, and though we have our fears about changing the Park Blocks operations, we aren't opposing the building. Some of our members have all along had no objections to it, and nobody knows how it will play out. It could be good for both markets, and it could kill both markets. It is speculation at its most concrete level.
Remodeling the Park Blocks into the Town Square is a huge project with lots of details, and there is where we sit, contemplating the details and wondering about how to proceed. Confidence isn't high. We could use some reassurance. Maybe Bob can get us some.
We do have a 5-year contract on the southern blocks, but things can be done to it within that. We proposed that some on-site storage might be nice, since our staff hauls tons of equipment two blocks every week, and it's hard. So the City staff thought putting four pods, two for them and two for us, might be good, and they plopped one down, after we took a hard look at the site and tried to find space. Once we saw the first one, we said no to any more. They are huge and ugly, even with a dino wrap. We've adapted to those (two now) and the unusable, low-capacity locked restroom trailer. We've lost two prime loading spaces to those, and a few to the crosswalk, but the crosswalk was necessary and important for safety and kind of works okay. We like the pink flower boxes. The effort was made to make them fun and funky with polkadots and we liked that. We even asked for a similar treatment to the place we put our info booth. Some people even liked the EPD camera in the fire lane for two Saturdays, though I was not one of them. Yes, people who were watching the tapes, I was that old lady who kept looking at the camera with my arms folded. I felt safer without it. But nobody asked me.
We didn't really have a chance to oppose the deck on the west block, and the feedback we gave about design wasn't taken, and frankly, it's kind of a folly. Little used, it is impacted by our porta-potties. We asked to move those across the street so the deck would be better, but couldn't get that. The deck didn't take space we were using, but it impacted quite a few members and mostly we've settled into being okay with the deck and occasionally it works. We will certainly always need more customer seating.
This is getting too long so I'll try to wrap up. Thanks, Bob, for speaking in public, even with the small errors like getting Opening Day wrong (It's ALWAYS the first Saturday in April.) and I hope no one thought we don't get along with the farmers or want a bulding of our own. We want what we have built. We love the way it works now, and we don't want to change anything major. We've tried to be clear, and we actually have developed pretty good relationships with City staff over the past couple of years. We think they've heard us, and we think when the plans start being made, we might be okay with them. But, there's a giant, overwhleming BUT.
The City isn't telling us what they're planning, in specifics. The farmers aren't telling us specifics either. Better communication would be great. If there are drawings, we should have them in my foot-tall pile. What I do have is not acceptable. I have resisted going to the City Council and dumping my pile of research on the table and telling them I need better answers. I don't think they have them.
I have avoided going to the public for support, because I know it is there, and I believe that community solutions will honor our needs and we'll be able to negotiate the ways we will say no without saying no. I believe in our creative intelligence in finding true inclusive solutions and there are certainly some we need, like that fourth block issue, Free Speech Plaza, the outlaw space I support with the fees I pay for services and promotion of my Market. I am always hopeful that we are strong enough to be clear and give credence and evidence to our positions so that all will see that solutions can be found that are elegant, supportive, and successful.
Hope is a thing in short supply, and I appreciate the distraction from the national crisis to get back into our local reality. City Staff will present on Town Square plans at a worksession at 5:30 pm on November 13th (Tuesday because of Veteran's Day.) I will be at that worksession, taking notes.
I will speak at the following Public Forum if I need to, but it has never been my first choice to make this about me and what I think is right. Our decisions at Market are made by seeking consensus. That's just how we operate, and the current language of participatory decision-making and community conversations and so on isn't really as far from consensus process as you might think. The test will come when the City staff decides what they will move forward with when they hear everything the stakeholders have to say. Councilors have said the Park Blocks are forgotten space, are shabby, are unused, and many other things that make me think they have never been to the Market. I know they do sometimes come...I saw one there yesterday sitting on the lawn for a long time.
I thought about making her work by discussing Bob's column, but I decided to just keep doing my Saturday job, making money to pay my bills. Property taxes are due and I don't have the money just yet, though yesterday will help. Still, I spent $15 on grapes. I love the farmers. I'll send her my link.
We'll get through whatever comes. As archivist for the Market, I've read about lots of times when things looked dire, and here we still are to tell the story. We're not going anywhere.
If you would like to join my task force, you can email me at dmcwho@efn.org and I'll send you updates and links to articles and meetings. Not everyone wants to know every little thing about the Park Blocks, but if you do, there's a way to keep track. I can't channel the words of the goddess, but I can let you know what I know, and occasionally what I think. It's essential to me, and why I volunteer to listen to all those lengthy meetings and read all those detailed documents. I care. I know you do, too, and that was Bob's message. People care.
See you next week for our last howl in the gathering dark. Then the shiny Holiday Market! Let's hope for the best on Nov. 13th, after we survive this next Tuesday. You know what to do about that.
Friday, October 26, 2018
Something Feels Right
Don't want to dwell on it too much, but for some reason today I feel good. Maybe I got enough distance on fears, by skipping the news and reading only some of the articles in our now, stripped down and eviscerated newspaper. It just doesn't pay to buy into fear, and I think I got kind of mired in it.
Not that the fearful conditions have disappeared, but just that I got some distance, I guess. Remembered that my little life is mostly protected, at least at the moment. I have a good roof, dry space, and safety. I keep getting messages from some email hacker but I don't believe them...they're in my spam filter so I don't care. Today my internet was down for unknown reasons, but I think it was just that it was windy and wet last night, and it's back, so I don't care.
I still care about a lot of things, but they're over there somewhere. I'm annoyed with having to take the booth and weights tomorrow, but we only have three more outdoor markets, so they're kind of precious. I can't believe the good weather is gone, but we had a lot of it. I got so many of my outdoor projects done, I actually feel that my property is well-maintained at the moment. No one will care that one wall only got half-painted. I'll catch up next year.
I don't get a day off this weekend, but I'll get one someday. I had a week without much commitment, so I got to do what I wanted most days, and that felt great. Next week I have only one meeting on my schedule, which is amazing. Thank goodness because of Holiday Market we put most of our groups on hold until January and February.
I've got tons of writing and archiving projects piled up in my livingroom, but my niece got an apartment so I don't have to clean up to make space for her, just for myself. I feel free and alone, in the solitude in which I thrive.
Even had the energy to rake my neighbor's leaves. He's old, older than me, so I get to do it and keep the leaves. I have realized I can't get a load of leaves from the city anymore; it's too much work. I have to work less. It is now my job to work less.
Except tomorrow. I have to work more. Property taxes are due, and I don't quite have it in my bank account. It will come.
Okay, back to work, but I just thought I should record some ease and not anxiety for a change. May it last.
Not that the fearful conditions have disappeared, but just that I got some distance, I guess. Remembered that my little life is mostly protected, at least at the moment. I have a good roof, dry space, and safety. I keep getting messages from some email hacker but I don't believe them...they're in my spam filter so I don't care. Today my internet was down for unknown reasons, but I think it was just that it was windy and wet last night, and it's back, so I don't care.
I still care about a lot of things, but they're over there somewhere. I'm annoyed with having to take the booth and weights tomorrow, but we only have three more outdoor markets, so they're kind of precious. I can't believe the good weather is gone, but we had a lot of it. I got so many of my outdoor projects done, I actually feel that my property is well-maintained at the moment. No one will care that one wall only got half-painted. I'll catch up next year.
I don't get a day off this weekend, but I'll get one someday. I had a week without much commitment, so I got to do what I wanted most days, and that felt great. Next week I have only one meeting on my schedule, which is amazing. Thank goodness because of Holiday Market we put most of our groups on hold until January and February.
I've got tons of writing and archiving projects piled up in my livingroom, but my niece got an apartment so I don't have to clean up to make space for her, just for myself. I feel free and alone, in the solitude in which I thrive.
Even had the energy to rake my neighbor's leaves. He's old, older than me, so I get to do it and keep the leaves. I have realized I can't get a load of leaves from the city anymore; it's too much work. I have to work less. It is now my job to work less.
Except tomorrow. I have to work more. Property taxes are due, and I don't quite have it in my bank account. It will come.
Okay, back to work, but I just thought I should record some ease and not anxiety for a change. May it last.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Silence
I shouldn't write I shouldn't write I shouldn't write...my brain keeps telling me this since I am so obviously triggered by what has happened this past week. All the signs are there and I know my patterns pretty well, though they can still surprise me. I know a lot of people read this who might use my vulnerability in ways I can't control, who might not know they add to the grief, who are mostly respectful but also might be compelled to read this like people watch wrecks...for the juice, for the life exposed, and it doesn't make me feel safe. My safety is an illusion I cling to with both hands.
I know I go to this confessional to lay bare my emotions, for myself and in case there is someone out there who needs my clarity and help. I know the confession hurts me more and any net gain is dubious. Trauma just keeps giving and it doesn't matter what the original source or the recent event is, it doesn't matter what the specifics of this episode are. Damage is real and accumulates, and truly I don't believe it is healable. For me. I hope it is for you. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help in real life, in some subtle way. You help me, and I know it, and I appreciate it. The more quietly you do it the more I appreciate it.
I know I no longer walk around feeling like I have a visible gaping wound in my chest that shows my faintly beating heart with all of its scars. I healed that over with fifteen years of therapy with a wonderfully supportive woman. I know I forgave my Dad by visualizing a tiny flame in the ball of ice that lay in my pelvis blocking me from a healthy sexuality for decades. That tiny flame did melt that ice, but only just. What helped the most with him was looking at his wedding photo, where both he and my Mom looked so innocently nineteen, with no possible idea what their lives would bring. He didn't mean to do anything to hurt me, but was a product of his own damage. If anything, I blame alcohol, but of course that is too simple. I don't really want to blame, I mostly want it to not have played out the way it did. Yeah, no do-overs. As I recall I was having a beer on his birthday when I made that forgiveness happen. I love irony.
Between episodes of this PTSD I am always certain that another will never come...that learning my patterns gave me the tools of prevention and self-care that would steady me so I could turn it off. I am always so discouraged when the lie is put to my faint denial. I'll carry this damage to my grave just like my broken ankle and heel and whatever else simmers inside me. The task now is to be strong despite it, to speak out through it, to use it for the forces of good instead of complete submission.
I cried yesterday just trying to watch twenty women on the street corner dressed in black. I was so grateful to be working so I didn't have the option to join them as they asked. I was grateful that they didn't walk by my booth so I didn't have to dissolve in tears of gratitude and horror. The pains are always so fresh when I am around other hurting people. I love my empathy, and wouldn't trade it, but I see too much of all you transparent people and it makes me so vulnerable to know how transparent I also am. I also derive joy from this...and hope. If we can see, we can help.
We can carry each others' pain, maybe easier than we can carry our own. I am crying for my brother and my son as they have to sort through all the ways I didn't help them, protect them, teach them how to be better men, though I suppose it wasn't completely my job and I probably did okay at it. I know, though, that my damage prevented me from projecting a healed sexual being who could teach the good ways. I hope I gave them some skills to find their own paths through what our culture throws at them. I have always tried for honesty, to an extreme, for justice, and to not be phony. My son didn't see me put on makeup to be something I wasn't, or dress to seduce, or use controlling behaviors to get my needs met...or more correctly, he helped me identify them and stop using them, a constant life process of learning improvement. I dragged him and one early girlfriend to an NVC workshop. I asked him to teach me what he knew of NLP and how it operated from his perspective. We were able to be allies rather soon in his life, though he might have rather had a bit more parental authority in place. Can't re-do that one. He seems fine: exploring, balancing, being honest.
My brother is part of our deep family tragedy that is so far back we can hardly address it any more than we have. It doesn't unfold so much now, but we've kind of evolved into addressing ways it set us up for what happened later, when we left the family and tried to find our way as independent adults. At our recent reunion all was not comfortable in our family group, despite our mutual wish that it would be. None of us have all the keys to make it so. We try pretty hard, and have the gift of the great-grandchildren and the kindness of each other. Mostly it's good, but then the damage seeps out. I try to minimize it as much as I can, keep it in my journal. None of them deserve it either.
It was rough, my past, though not so much compared to what I've read and heard about other women and children. My experiences in college and during the Sexual Revolution of the 70s and 80s were mild enough but deeply unsettling. Rough enough that I don't like to think about them. On Thursday and Friday as the world watched a battle on TV, I worked myself to exhaustion on my roof hammering on shingles one by one in the extreme heat. I didn't eat and didn't drink enough water, obsessively working in silence. I wanted to "finish it." I finally stopped on Friday at 4:00 which was probably my breaking point, and had the sensibility to take a bath, drink so much water I was amazed, and sit still after making a beautiful meal and smoking some bud. I did not allow myself to walk down to the store for a beer, though I dearly wanted one or two more than just about anything.
Escape is necessary in some form, it seems. I know better than to add alcohol to the mix at these times, though the impulses are very strong and are why I keep it at the store and not at home. I know it can be cathartic, but it's just too loaded with guilt and shame. Sugar is safer...bud is good in that it limits what I will do and say. I need limits...it's at these times when I wonder if a supportive partner would indeed help, but really, the silence of my backyard is what works best. I drink that in.
I went though the first stage, exacerbated by my 50th HS reunion which I missed. I would've liked to go, but 3000 miles and thousands of dollars prevented me, since I had to go to the same place for my family one month before. But I would have liked to see some of those friends I went through so many years with. Some of us were together since first grade. We stumbled through a lot. The first stage of examining my past was thinking about some of the hundreds of harassments and assaults I experienced as a woman born in 1950. Stuff was just built in. There was no way to avoid a lot of it, and I was unprotected, mostly, except by suburbia's relative safety, and my privilege of being in the middle class. Plus I was a smart kid, so got some entitlements. But no one encouraged me to think big back then...not really even to go to college, though you would think someone in the 99th percentile would get more encouragement. Maybe it was those old men who were the Guidance Counselors. I had one brilliant English teacher, Kay Booth, but she stands out as the only one who empowered me, and she just made me give up on college when her estimation of me didn't follow through into my treatment by my male teachers there.
College, oh dear. I dove into the revolution. We ended the war that was killing off the boys of my generation. We all sacrificed our psyches too, though it took a long time to realize that. We had our bodies on the line as well. I can't think about the details. I stopped adding them up long ago.
What surfaced for me, this time, was all the ways in which I was complicit in the oppression of others. I feel devastated by ways I turned on other women, and even men. I see no way to make amends. I can't even remember names for sure, or all the details, and I feel sure none of the other people involved want to talk about it. I am sure no one at the reunion wanted to talk about the party where someone "pulled a train," which is a deflected way to describe gang rape of an incapacitated girl. In my memory I heard about it the next day, and it was outsider boys, not anyone in my friend group. I turned on her, though, and took away the support she deserved. I was at that party. We didn't do much to monitor each other, our level of drinking, our willingness to go all the way with our boyfriends. We were all confused kids lying to ourselves and each other about what was right and wrong. I was raised Catholic...a bad setup for sexuality, at best. No parents were watching us. They were off drinking with their own friends, I suppose. I would love to check out these memories with my old friends, to see if maybe we took better care of each other than I remember. We would now, I think.
I remember two incidents of assault, one physical and one verbal, on the day of my Dad's funeral in 1970. Really, grown men? Did you think because he wasn't there to protect his daughters, they were now fair game? So damaged. I remember being angry, and telling my Mom, but what could she do? One was a neighbor, and one was someone from my Dad's job. She couldn't respond. I could barely respond. Were they just drunk? I'm sure they had their excuses.
I don't want to list my credentials for MeToo. I don't want to have these credentials. I am fully aware that I participated in some of my own damaging experiences more or less willingly. Trauma victims do that. They often ruin their own lives, unable to imagine anything else. On some levels I have done that, though my life is far from ruined.
Yes, the challenges today are to work right though the damage to keep on shouting for less of it. I am so happy to see how powerful young women are these days, at least ones in the progressive culture. I fought hard for that, with so many others. We bought that with our painful experiences. We want that for you. That's one reason why it is so devastating to see it erode, to see the Kavanopes and the Brocks get away with their shit over and over. I am so tired of bullies. I am so dedicated to calling out bullying, no matter who it takes down, even when it is me.
Bullies hurt all of us, whether they do it through sexuality, racial injustice, economic injustice, or the current depravity of power over all. I hate America so much right now. I hate old white men (I give some exceptions to that, for those of you who are really trying, and I hope you know I see you and love you for it.) I am sad to be feeling hate. I am full of grief for so many reasons. I am stalled and can do only this.
But I'm going to call my Mom in 30 minutes and talk about none of this. Then I'm going to go out and put on some more shingles and work harder on forgiving myself, and most of you. I'm going to look harder for what's going right, to be grateful for the young man who had my back yesterday, when in my trauma I took it on myself to kick a vomiting man out of the Market. I wasn't thinking. He almost clocked me. It wasn't my job and I wasn't keeping myself safe, because traumatized people often can't do that. Thank you to my fellow member, who might not have known that he was there yesterday to save me from myself for a minute. That's the good news: allies. We are legion.
We are in this together, and we are in the right. We may not be winning all the many races and jumping over the many obstacles, but we will. It has taken our lifetimes, and it will take the lifetimes of our children, and theirs, but it is not all pain. We also have joy. I saw the Bewick's Wren and a woodpecker at the same time today, because I could rouse myself to put out the suet. The birds are hungry. I'll start there. Forgiveness is a process. Practice peace. Work for justice, one foot in front of the other. And cleansing it all with tears is pretty cathartic too, so I can feel good about that skill. I can weep. I am proud to be a woman who cares.
I know I go to this confessional to lay bare my emotions, for myself and in case there is someone out there who needs my clarity and help. I know the confession hurts me more and any net gain is dubious. Trauma just keeps giving and it doesn't matter what the original source or the recent event is, it doesn't matter what the specifics of this episode are. Damage is real and accumulates, and truly I don't believe it is healable. For me. I hope it is for you. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help in real life, in some subtle way. You help me, and I know it, and I appreciate it. The more quietly you do it the more I appreciate it.
I know I no longer walk around feeling like I have a visible gaping wound in my chest that shows my faintly beating heart with all of its scars. I healed that over with fifteen years of therapy with a wonderfully supportive woman. I know I forgave my Dad by visualizing a tiny flame in the ball of ice that lay in my pelvis blocking me from a healthy sexuality for decades. That tiny flame did melt that ice, but only just. What helped the most with him was looking at his wedding photo, where both he and my Mom looked so innocently nineteen, with no possible idea what their lives would bring. He didn't mean to do anything to hurt me, but was a product of his own damage. If anything, I blame alcohol, but of course that is too simple. I don't really want to blame, I mostly want it to not have played out the way it did. Yeah, no do-overs. As I recall I was having a beer on his birthday when I made that forgiveness happen. I love irony.
Between episodes of this PTSD I am always certain that another will never come...that learning my patterns gave me the tools of prevention and self-care that would steady me so I could turn it off. I am always so discouraged when the lie is put to my faint denial. I'll carry this damage to my grave just like my broken ankle and heel and whatever else simmers inside me. The task now is to be strong despite it, to speak out through it, to use it for the forces of good instead of complete submission.
I cried yesterday just trying to watch twenty women on the street corner dressed in black. I was so grateful to be working so I didn't have the option to join them as they asked. I was grateful that they didn't walk by my booth so I didn't have to dissolve in tears of gratitude and horror. The pains are always so fresh when I am around other hurting people. I love my empathy, and wouldn't trade it, but I see too much of all you transparent people and it makes me so vulnerable to know how transparent I also am. I also derive joy from this...and hope. If we can see, we can help.
We can carry each others' pain, maybe easier than we can carry our own. I am crying for my brother and my son as they have to sort through all the ways I didn't help them, protect them, teach them how to be better men, though I suppose it wasn't completely my job and I probably did okay at it. I know, though, that my damage prevented me from projecting a healed sexual being who could teach the good ways. I hope I gave them some skills to find their own paths through what our culture throws at them. I have always tried for honesty, to an extreme, for justice, and to not be phony. My son didn't see me put on makeup to be something I wasn't, or dress to seduce, or use controlling behaviors to get my needs met...or more correctly, he helped me identify them and stop using them, a constant life process of learning improvement. I dragged him and one early girlfriend to an NVC workshop. I asked him to teach me what he knew of NLP and how it operated from his perspective. We were able to be allies rather soon in his life, though he might have rather had a bit more parental authority in place. Can't re-do that one. He seems fine: exploring, balancing, being honest.
My brother is part of our deep family tragedy that is so far back we can hardly address it any more than we have. It doesn't unfold so much now, but we've kind of evolved into addressing ways it set us up for what happened later, when we left the family and tried to find our way as independent adults. At our recent reunion all was not comfortable in our family group, despite our mutual wish that it would be. None of us have all the keys to make it so. We try pretty hard, and have the gift of the great-grandchildren and the kindness of each other. Mostly it's good, but then the damage seeps out. I try to minimize it as much as I can, keep it in my journal. None of them deserve it either.
It was rough, my past, though not so much compared to what I've read and heard about other women and children. My experiences in college and during the Sexual Revolution of the 70s and 80s were mild enough but deeply unsettling. Rough enough that I don't like to think about them. On Thursday and Friday as the world watched a battle on TV, I worked myself to exhaustion on my roof hammering on shingles one by one in the extreme heat. I didn't eat and didn't drink enough water, obsessively working in silence. I wanted to "finish it." I finally stopped on Friday at 4:00 which was probably my breaking point, and had the sensibility to take a bath, drink so much water I was amazed, and sit still after making a beautiful meal and smoking some bud. I did not allow myself to walk down to the store for a beer, though I dearly wanted one or two more than just about anything.
Escape is necessary in some form, it seems. I know better than to add alcohol to the mix at these times, though the impulses are very strong and are why I keep it at the store and not at home. I know it can be cathartic, but it's just too loaded with guilt and shame. Sugar is safer...bud is good in that it limits what I will do and say. I need limits...it's at these times when I wonder if a supportive partner would indeed help, but really, the silence of my backyard is what works best. I drink that in.
I went though the first stage, exacerbated by my 50th HS reunion which I missed. I would've liked to go, but 3000 miles and thousands of dollars prevented me, since I had to go to the same place for my family one month before. But I would have liked to see some of those friends I went through so many years with. Some of us were together since first grade. We stumbled through a lot. The first stage of examining my past was thinking about some of the hundreds of harassments and assaults I experienced as a woman born in 1950. Stuff was just built in. There was no way to avoid a lot of it, and I was unprotected, mostly, except by suburbia's relative safety, and my privilege of being in the middle class. Plus I was a smart kid, so got some entitlements. But no one encouraged me to think big back then...not really even to go to college, though you would think someone in the 99th percentile would get more encouragement. Maybe it was those old men who were the Guidance Counselors. I had one brilliant English teacher, Kay Booth, but she stands out as the only one who empowered me, and she just made me give up on college when her estimation of me didn't follow through into my treatment by my male teachers there.
College, oh dear. I dove into the revolution. We ended the war that was killing off the boys of my generation. We all sacrificed our psyches too, though it took a long time to realize that. We had our bodies on the line as well. I can't think about the details. I stopped adding them up long ago.
What surfaced for me, this time, was all the ways in which I was complicit in the oppression of others. I feel devastated by ways I turned on other women, and even men. I see no way to make amends. I can't even remember names for sure, or all the details, and I feel sure none of the other people involved want to talk about it. I am sure no one at the reunion wanted to talk about the party where someone "pulled a train," which is a deflected way to describe gang rape of an incapacitated girl. In my memory I heard about it the next day, and it was outsider boys, not anyone in my friend group. I turned on her, though, and took away the support she deserved. I was at that party. We didn't do much to monitor each other, our level of drinking, our willingness to go all the way with our boyfriends. We were all confused kids lying to ourselves and each other about what was right and wrong. I was raised Catholic...a bad setup for sexuality, at best. No parents were watching us. They were off drinking with their own friends, I suppose. I would love to check out these memories with my old friends, to see if maybe we took better care of each other than I remember. We would now, I think.
I remember two incidents of assault, one physical and one verbal, on the day of my Dad's funeral in 1970. Really, grown men? Did you think because he wasn't there to protect his daughters, they were now fair game? So damaged. I remember being angry, and telling my Mom, but what could she do? One was a neighbor, and one was someone from my Dad's job. She couldn't respond. I could barely respond. Were they just drunk? I'm sure they had their excuses.
I don't want to list my credentials for MeToo. I don't want to have these credentials. I am fully aware that I participated in some of my own damaging experiences more or less willingly. Trauma victims do that. They often ruin their own lives, unable to imagine anything else. On some levels I have done that, though my life is far from ruined.
Yes, the challenges today are to work right though the damage to keep on shouting for less of it. I am so happy to see how powerful young women are these days, at least ones in the progressive culture. I fought hard for that, with so many others. We bought that with our painful experiences. We want that for you. That's one reason why it is so devastating to see it erode, to see the Kavanopes and the Brocks get away with their shit over and over. I am so tired of bullies. I am so dedicated to calling out bullying, no matter who it takes down, even when it is me.
Bullies hurt all of us, whether they do it through sexuality, racial injustice, economic injustice, or the current depravity of power over all. I hate America so much right now. I hate old white men (I give some exceptions to that, for those of you who are really trying, and I hope you know I see you and love you for it.) I am sad to be feeling hate. I am full of grief for so many reasons. I am stalled and can do only this.
But I'm going to call my Mom in 30 minutes and talk about none of this. Then I'm going to go out and put on some more shingles and work harder on forgiving myself, and most of you. I'm going to look harder for what's going right, to be grateful for the young man who had my back yesterday, when in my trauma I took it on myself to kick a vomiting man out of the Market. I wasn't thinking. He almost clocked me. It wasn't my job and I wasn't keeping myself safe, because traumatized people often can't do that. Thank you to my fellow member, who might not have known that he was there yesterday to save me from myself for a minute. That's the good news: allies. We are legion.
We are in this together, and we are in the right. We may not be winning all the many races and jumping over the many obstacles, but we will. It has taken our lifetimes, and it will take the lifetimes of our children, and theirs, but it is not all pain. We also have joy. I saw the Bewick's Wren and a woodpecker at the same time today, because I could rouse myself to put out the suet. The birds are hungry. I'll start there. Forgiveness is a process. Practice peace. Work for justice, one foot in front of the other. And cleansing it all with tears is pretty cathartic too, so I can feel good about that skill. I can weep. I am proud to be a woman who cares.
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Looks like Fall
Lots of emotions swirling around today. A friend lost her husband, and he joins a list of lamentations that are a function of my age that I am struggling to get used to. Sure, we know people die, but many of us are still not equipped to ride through the storms of feelings that come each time. I guess it gets easier. Mom, at 92, is much more philosophical than I am about it. I'm sure I'll learn, the hard way.
OCF struggles with deep structure at the moment, and some issues are so complex I haven't even wanted to weigh in. I try to pay attention, to witness, but this last Board meeting wasn't livestreamed, though I sat there waiting just in case it kicked in, while I watched the Eugene City Council on another channel. I monitor the City Council for my Market community, so we can prepare for when they come to us soon about the changes to our home ground, the Park Blocks we have rented for 34 years (and 15 or so more if you count the Butterfly and Courthouse Plaza.) This is our 49th season. I've only missed the first five. I should have gone to the OCF meeting I guess, but I just don't have enough energy to get deeply involved when it's so complex. Even witnessing takes a lot of energy. It's chilling to think that my own volunteer efforts could come back to bite me. I have the skills to be a good Board member, but skills wouldn't be enough in the current climate. It takes true dedication to work very hard to find that balance of all those needs. I can't do it for more then KF and SM right now. I'm still working, too, when I can fit it in. I'm drawn to help OCF, but I can only be part of the mostly silent network that supports and waits. I will most certainly vote.
I find myself wanting to go out to Fair site in a deep way, to visit the Spirit Tower where I have always connected with my lost people, even though it has mostly disappeared and lost its sacredness. The river is still the same, the land is still quiet, and you can still hope to see the Pileated Woodpeckers and hear the tree limbs clacking together in the high breezes. That land is ours, is mine, when I need it, something which feels like the most amazing accomplishment of the community I am so lucky to be in. Grateful for the people who had the foresight to make that happen, the big group that raised the money and understood the need. It's a safe place. Still, when I go, it's a bit like work.
I go to my booth, all packed up for winter, and poke around looking for lost pushpins or scraps of wood that will float, but it's usually quite clean. Sometimes I rearrange the vegetation into the living boundaries of our camping clearing. I try to envision the next project I'll do, and talk myself into the new design of the roofline. I am the one who has to do this. It's the same ownership as I have for my two houses. I'll think about my 50th Anniversary projects. I have big plans, but can't do them right now.
I vacillate between feeling too old to do the work and too young to give up using my hard-won skills. I evaluate my abilities to climb ladders and make the right decisions. I try to think about when I will fit the work in. In one sense it's vastly easier to pay someone to do the construction, but in other senses I need to do it. I need to go out there and see how my choices have played out, how my directions have been followed, and how nature has treated what I've made. On my two houses, (I have two small houses on a city lot, one of which is my shop) I've done substantial amounts of the work, in fact spent about fifteen years remodeling the larger house. It was life-altering work and it brings me a great deal of satisfaction. I thrive on a feeling of accomplishment. Yet death reminds me I could go quickly too, so what projects should I prioritize? Everything's right at the top of the list; everything's vitally important.
I've been trying to find that satisfaction in less physical work, in archiving and writing, but it's harder. I recently removed a piece of the plywood siding on the shop to replace a rotten place, and had to take out the window and add some trim. It took a lot longer than I had planned and while it was relatively straightforward, it was just maintenance, one little project on a long list. I'm reluctant now to start another one, with the weather changing and deadlines coming up. Here I sit on a day when it didn't rain, thinking I need to get out there and start on that roofing. But my friend and her husband were roofing, and now I know she wishes they hadn't been. Certainly today is not the day for me to climb that ladder. So I got out the archives, and told myself I'd spend a day organizing and writing, but I have a feeling I will end up finishing up the summer pruning and preparing for the next rain.
I had to navigate someone's unjust interpretation of my actions again, and his attack. It wasn't the first time from that person, so I could discount some of his ire since I know how he works it, but of course it still derailed me a little. I'm mostly aggravated that he was thoughtless in his actions, in his drive to have his own way, and caused damage, not just to me, but to our process and other people involved. it wasn't major damage, but the discouragement of injustice adds up. Again, I'm getting used to it. I'm starting to tell myself things like "people will always be messy to deal with, and it's unrealistic to think that they will understand ethics in the same way I do." I'm trying to be patient with those who are young, rash, and need more education, because lots of people had to be patient with me while I learned how to be a little wiser and slower to react. I have enough support from people who do understand, but most of yesterday I spent checking in with various people, not even all the ones I needed to, and it was an astonishingly low sales day for me. I didn't even get near to $100, with my great-selling products that easily bring much more than that on a better day.
So it wasn't my day, and I joined the ranks of the discouraged who really get creamed by our fee structure, so I made a vow to bring out my chart early next January, and petition again for fee relief for the low-end earners. I commiserated with a lot of members yesterday who have had many bad sales days, so it isn't about me at all. I can certainly absorb one when it was mostly caused by my inattention to my customers and my job. I talked to many who are experiencing lots of marginal or just really bad days, and I don't think it is "paying their dues" while they build their businesses and improve their products. I think it is the capriciousness of our event, that on any given day there is a lot of luck involved in how well you sell. I think we can build a much more compassionate fee structure that acknowledges that unpredictability and eases the burden on the majority of our members without savaging our profitability. But I will set that aside for now, as it will be better done later and other things are on that horizontal list that push profits to the edges.
Fiftieth Season and Anniversary design projects are in the center, and stories from the archives, and the time is near when I will lose the opportunity if I procrastinate. I have good designs worked out in my mind, but nothing on paper. I dread that feeling when I try to go from mind to pen, when I am not really capable of expressing my vision. I know it's common and shouldn't stop me, but it makes it hard to start. Of course there is only one remedy for that, starting. Or saying maybe later.
At some point there will no longer be a maybe later available. Quite possibly that is the base fear that is behind all of my distress today. At some point I will have to lose my attachment to all my things, to all my future accomplishments, to all my visions and cares. I will have to let go of all of it. Maybe I'll get time to finish up a few, but maybe not. Staying off roofs won't help. Successfully processing small traumas won't help. Calling out injustices won't matter. It's all going to be one big injustice if I don't get my mind around the ultimate justice of It Is What It Is. What Goes Around May or May Not Come Around. Que sera, sera. Be Here Now.
Fortunately I can access a lot of wisdom from my community and what my generation has learned in our explorations, and of course, humans of the ages. They've all stood more or less where I stand.I'm not experiencing anything that new or that serious, just more steps down the human paths. Think I'll wander off for the rest of the day. I always feel at my best when I'm out in the yard, putting things in order, just enough to feel good to me but not enough to really disturb her comforting chaos. I guess I can thrive with a messy garden, so can thrive with a messy life. No sense in trying to change everything at once, even if I could.
OCF struggles with deep structure at the moment, and some issues are so complex I haven't even wanted to weigh in. I try to pay attention, to witness, but this last Board meeting wasn't livestreamed, though I sat there waiting just in case it kicked in, while I watched the Eugene City Council on another channel. I monitor the City Council for my Market community, so we can prepare for when they come to us soon about the changes to our home ground, the Park Blocks we have rented for 34 years (and 15 or so more if you count the Butterfly and Courthouse Plaza.) This is our 49th season. I've only missed the first five. I should have gone to the OCF meeting I guess, but I just don't have enough energy to get deeply involved when it's so complex. Even witnessing takes a lot of energy. It's chilling to think that my own volunteer efforts could come back to bite me. I have the skills to be a good Board member, but skills wouldn't be enough in the current climate. It takes true dedication to work very hard to find that balance of all those needs. I can't do it for more then KF and SM right now. I'm still working, too, when I can fit it in. I'm drawn to help OCF, but I can only be part of the mostly silent network that supports and waits. I will most certainly vote.
I find myself wanting to go out to Fair site in a deep way, to visit the Spirit Tower where I have always connected with my lost people, even though it has mostly disappeared and lost its sacredness. The river is still the same, the land is still quiet, and you can still hope to see the Pileated Woodpeckers and hear the tree limbs clacking together in the high breezes. That land is ours, is mine, when I need it, something which feels like the most amazing accomplishment of the community I am so lucky to be in. Grateful for the people who had the foresight to make that happen, the big group that raised the money and understood the need. It's a safe place. Still, when I go, it's a bit like work.
I go to my booth, all packed up for winter, and poke around looking for lost pushpins or scraps of wood that will float, but it's usually quite clean. Sometimes I rearrange the vegetation into the living boundaries of our camping clearing. I try to envision the next project I'll do, and talk myself into the new design of the roofline. I am the one who has to do this. It's the same ownership as I have for my two houses. I'll think about my 50th Anniversary projects. I have big plans, but can't do them right now.
I vacillate between feeling too old to do the work and too young to give up using my hard-won skills. I evaluate my abilities to climb ladders and make the right decisions. I try to think about when I will fit the work in. In one sense it's vastly easier to pay someone to do the construction, but in other senses I need to do it. I need to go out there and see how my choices have played out, how my directions have been followed, and how nature has treated what I've made. On my two houses, (I have two small houses on a city lot, one of which is my shop) I've done substantial amounts of the work, in fact spent about fifteen years remodeling the larger house. It was life-altering work and it brings me a great deal of satisfaction. I thrive on a feeling of accomplishment. Yet death reminds me I could go quickly too, so what projects should I prioritize? Everything's right at the top of the list; everything's vitally important.
I've been trying to find that satisfaction in less physical work, in archiving and writing, but it's harder. I recently removed a piece of the plywood siding on the shop to replace a rotten place, and had to take out the window and add some trim. It took a lot longer than I had planned and while it was relatively straightforward, it was just maintenance, one little project on a long list. I'm reluctant now to start another one, with the weather changing and deadlines coming up. Here I sit on a day when it didn't rain, thinking I need to get out there and start on that roofing. But my friend and her husband were roofing, and now I know she wishes they hadn't been. Certainly today is not the day for me to climb that ladder. So I got out the archives, and told myself I'd spend a day organizing and writing, but I have a feeling I will end up finishing up the summer pruning and preparing for the next rain.
I had to navigate someone's unjust interpretation of my actions again, and his attack. It wasn't the first time from that person, so I could discount some of his ire since I know how he works it, but of course it still derailed me a little. I'm mostly aggravated that he was thoughtless in his actions, in his drive to have his own way, and caused damage, not just to me, but to our process and other people involved. it wasn't major damage, but the discouragement of injustice adds up. Again, I'm getting used to it. I'm starting to tell myself things like "people will always be messy to deal with, and it's unrealistic to think that they will understand ethics in the same way I do." I'm trying to be patient with those who are young, rash, and need more education, because lots of people had to be patient with me while I learned how to be a little wiser and slower to react. I have enough support from people who do understand, but most of yesterday I spent checking in with various people, not even all the ones I needed to, and it was an astonishingly low sales day for me. I didn't even get near to $100, with my great-selling products that easily bring much more than that on a better day.
So it wasn't my day, and I joined the ranks of the discouraged who really get creamed by our fee structure, so I made a vow to bring out my chart early next January, and petition again for fee relief for the low-end earners. I commiserated with a lot of members yesterday who have had many bad sales days, so it isn't about me at all. I can certainly absorb one when it was mostly caused by my inattention to my customers and my job. I talked to many who are experiencing lots of marginal or just really bad days, and I don't think it is "paying their dues" while they build their businesses and improve their products. I think it is the capriciousness of our event, that on any given day there is a lot of luck involved in how well you sell. I think we can build a much more compassionate fee structure that acknowledges that unpredictability and eases the burden on the majority of our members without savaging our profitability. But I will set that aside for now, as it will be better done later and other things are on that horizontal list that push profits to the edges.
Fiftieth Season and Anniversary design projects are in the center, and stories from the archives, and the time is near when I will lose the opportunity if I procrastinate. I have good designs worked out in my mind, but nothing on paper. I dread that feeling when I try to go from mind to pen, when I am not really capable of expressing my vision. I know it's common and shouldn't stop me, but it makes it hard to start. Of course there is only one remedy for that, starting. Or saying maybe later.
At some point there will no longer be a maybe later available. Quite possibly that is the base fear that is behind all of my distress today. At some point I will have to lose my attachment to all my things, to all my future accomplishments, to all my visions and cares. I will have to let go of all of it. Maybe I'll get time to finish up a few, but maybe not. Staying off roofs won't help. Successfully processing small traumas won't help. Calling out injustices won't matter. It's all going to be one big injustice if I don't get my mind around the ultimate justice of It Is What It Is. What Goes Around May or May Not Come Around. Que sera, sera. Be Here Now.
Fortunately I can access a lot of wisdom from my community and what my generation has learned in our explorations, and of course, humans of the ages. They've all stood more or less where I stand.I'm not experiencing anything that new or that serious, just more steps down the human paths. Think I'll wander off for the rest of the day. I always feel at my best when I'm out in the yard, putting things in order, just enough to feel good to me but not enough to really disturb her comforting chaos. I guess I can thrive with a messy garden, so can thrive with a messy life. No sense in trying to change everything at once, even if I could.
Sunday, July 1, 2018
Policies and Practices
I find so much irony in life; it's a curse at times, other times baffling, mostly amusing. Currently everyone is up in arms about rules, one of those micro-macrocosm things we get tied up in way too frequently. In our little lives, remember that there is the intent of the law, and the letter of the law, and then the procedures and practices that grow up around the law, and also the guidance or misguidance of the levels of enforcement of the law. And your opinion of the law, of course, which is probably somewhat different than mine. Let me say before I launch into anything that I am speaking here for myself, in my own private blog, and not as an officer or responsible party for any of the rules and regulations of any of my member organizations.
Kids on the border: clearly zero tolerance is evil and beyond absurd. The phrase itself is a buzzword that gets strong emotions roused. It's duality thinking: right or wrong, this way or that way, no grey areas to interpret, no mitigating circumstances or good excuses or any other kind of justification. Doesn't really work too well with people. Really doesn't work well with the kind of people I hang around with.
At Market, for instance, we have a lot of policies and guidelines and rules. Like Michael famously says, when we add a rule we don't take away any of the old ones. Generally I am a rule-follower, but that is tempered by what I perceive as the intent of the law, as well as the equity and sensibility of the procedures and enforcement directives. For instance, there are quite a few Market rules that I interpret a little differently from the way you might interpret them. Sometimes I have modified my thinking over the years, for instance when I got on board for loading out at HM instead of pretending to. That was ethical, as I realized we were making our GM, my friend, essentially lie for us when she signed the contract. I don't like to lie and didn't want anyone to do it on my behalf. The rule wasn't likely to change, so I did.
And with the weights: we didn't use to have a policy. The fire marshal came with a draconian one, involving 80 pounds per leg, and specific types of weights, unlike what most of us had been doing for years to keep everyone safe. The intent of the law was public safety, but we worked hard to craft a workable policy and negotiate it with the marshal. We settled on 25 pounds per leg, but I only have three corners to my space. I used to put a corner in the fountain well, but that was prohibited, so I developed a workaround. It isn't strictly in compliance with the policy. I'm not thinking the Market would get shut down because of my workaround, but it could in a zero-tolerance atmosphere. About 80% of us are not in strict compliance with our weights policy, I believe. We all have workarounds, be they in the type of weights we use, the way we use them, or the other time-tested methods of securing our booths to the ground. I want and need that flexibility. I would have to change my space to comply or maybe quit the Market. I know quite a few people that won't come on windy days because they can't comply. It's a policy that needs a compassionate procedural adaptation that still meets the goals of public safety while allowing us to sell in iffy weather. That struggle isn't over. Market, however, has several compassionate responses. There is assistance available to meet the policy. That's how we work.
So I was alarmed to hear that a potential volunteer was told that service meant you had to obey all the rules to the letter. Um, does anyone do that? It's akin to saying that someone can be completely honest. There is always that lie of omission or kindness or convenience that gets the denial going. I tend to agree that it is good to follow rules as well as one can. Yet our rules are flexible for a reason. We know our population is a group of self-motivated entrepreneurs who live by their own efforts and reasonable adjustments to systems. There's a lot of personal choice built in because we like it that way. You don't want to bring tent weights? Don't bring a tent. Don't want to pay $13 plus 10%? Get a 4x4 or share a booth. We still have the honor system because we are honorable, and we enjoy being treated as honorable people. Because some might not be, do we want to have to keep receipt books and have our fees assessed like some Fairs used to do? No thank you. Let's build up reasons to act honorable, like respectful interactions and neighborly policies, and compassionate enforcement.
Packing early is a great example of how a zero-tolerance rule could go bad. Suppose you are doing some organizing in preparation for packing and your neighbor interprets that as packing and reports you, and you lose your point for the day. What kind of due process will we build into that system so you can explain you were putting away your lunchbox? What about your eight hours of full compliance with every rule? What about your years of dedicated service? What about your migraine? What about your exhausted kids? Nope. We delegated our staff person to take away points, and that is that. I venture to say no one wants to sell at that Market.
I've watched one of our associated organizations react to rule breaches with fines and suspensions. Those people resented the hell out of it and generally quit. Sure, there are others glad to sell, and customers rarely know, but do we want members going away mad? Is that good for our community?
What is good for our community? What kind of organization do we want to be? I'm guessing compassionate is high on most lists. I think we continue to want case-by-case, workable solutions for our common problems. Over time, we need to find ways to keep our values in place while we adapt to changing conditions. Right now, we have a fading founding generation and a lot of new members. They might not feel the community interest yet, so maybe they think packing early is what you do when there are few customers to notice. Maybe their needs are getting more attention than your need to keep the community value of waiting to pack until the moment of 5:00. We will have to work with them to bring them into our community feeling so that they are motivated to honor it. It's a long discussion, and it could end in lots of ways: closing earlier for everyone, for instance, like another organization did. All members' opportunity to sell was cut short so the big guys could maximize their employee time and cut their costs, and get on to their other work. I know some members who still resent that, years later. Decisions have consequences too.
But maybe there are a lot of solutions for this particular problem that aren't punitive. For instance, the GM gives them a call to make sure they get the intent of the rule and the expectation of the community, after someone files a written complaint. Or maybe we stop allowing envelopes to be turned in early and pay all of our staff to work longer hours to accommodate a later closing procedure. Maybe we ask our GM to work a 12-hour day so she can be there to monitor closing and respond in the moment, or maybe we decide she is human and works hard enough to not be there for early opening and late closing. Maybe we hire parking staff to tell us where and when to park. Maybe we pay a closing monitor to go around and make lists of people who do get their points.
Maybe we ring a bell at 5:00 and make it clear that you have to wait for the bell, or maybe we don't allow any cars at all in neighboring parking spots until 5:00, including customers, or issue a parking sticker to member cars so they can be so identified. Maybe we give out flyers, maybe we make jokes and point and laugh at early packers, maybe we kick them right out of the Market or maybe we do nothing and let them do whatever they choose. Karma will sort it out.
Obviously there is a range of solutions and some group needs to sort them out and find the best ones. That is why we have a Board, to work out policy with which to direct our staff. But this Board can be composed of lots of types of people, some who don't mind zero-tolerance or others who don't like rules at all. That's why we have discussions. That's why we continue to work toward consensus on these types of decisions, so we can come up with the most well-thought-out solutions that will work the best in practice. That's why Facebook discussions of policy are so marginally useful. You can't build consensus on the member's FB site.
For one thing, staff can't weigh in there. You might not realize that only the GM is authorized to enforce rules like parking and leaving early. You might not know that you are asking for her to prioritize being there from 4:30 to 5:00 instead of in the morning when bigger, more complicated situations need her attention. So if the consensus is to prioritize parking and leaving early over dealing with the mentally ill, the cars that need to be towed, or hazards on the site, she can be directed to work then, and can delegate the other things, but I prefer to let her decide on priorities. Public safety and operations flow are more important to me. She knows her job, and I want her to decide how to do it. She'll do what we ask, but we need her input in the decision-making. And we need the input of all staff, most importantly when we are discussing their jobs. So the member's page is not the best place, but the Board meeting can be.
And philosophy issues like how we get loyalty and buy-in on our regulations, how we move forward when things aren't working ideally, those things aren't driven by someone's opinion, however forcefully or eloquently they are stated. Those are group decisions made by as large a group as possible, in an organized group process. With rules. With a facilitator and a scribe, so the discussions can move forward to action. With careful process, with people who understand how to make good participatory decisions in a group. That's why we have elected Board members, who get training. And we have non-voting people at the meetings, who are equally able to give input and help find the solutions. Our process is sound, and has been in place for almost 50 years, and is why we are thriving now.
I had my best Park Blocks day ever yesterday. I have never seen it so crowded in the aisles, and even with quite a few regular members absent, we were full. I hope everyone did well. There was a lot going on. I had quite a few situations that weren't ideal for me that I was mostly unable to deal with in a really elegant way. I had to wing it and do the best that I could. I was only operating one tiny business in one tiny space. I can't even imagine all the things the staff members had to handle with so much happening. I barely saw any of them, but I trust them and I know the reason it ran so smoothly was that they are stellar at what they do. They are amazing. Their energy is high and their accomplishments are legion. I truly appreciate how willing they are to respond to our needs and help us make the Market we want. I support them fully in interpreting our intent and our letter of our laws for the common good of us all.
I do not want a Market that is punitive. I do not want the point system to be compromised by tieing operational rules to it. I want us to have sensible, well-thought out policies with room for interpretation and incentive for compliance, not punishment for non-compliance. We have always, throughout our history, maintained a lot of respect for ourselves and each other and worked very hard to craft policy and procedures that meet our mutual needs.
We've always had to struggle to get everyone to follow them, but we work it out so the intent is clear. We count on each other to make our rules work. We ask questions and think deeply about solutions. I have a lot of faith in our process and abilities to work together. So I ask people to be patient and engage in the process in similar good faith. We all work toward improvement, within the framework of who we are and how we want to live. See people on August 1st for policy discussions, at the Board meeting, where they are best done thoughtfully. And slowly. And inclusively. And above all, from our best selves, not our tired selves on our one day off. Thanks for reading.
Kids on the border: clearly zero tolerance is evil and beyond absurd. The phrase itself is a buzzword that gets strong emotions roused. It's duality thinking: right or wrong, this way or that way, no grey areas to interpret, no mitigating circumstances or good excuses or any other kind of justification. Doesn't really work too well with people. Really doesn't work well with the kind of people I hang around with.
At Market, for instance, we have a lot of policies and guidelines and rules. Like Michael famously says, when we add a rule we don't take away any of the old ones. Generally I am a rule-follower, but that is tempered by what I perceive as the intent of the law, as well as the equity and sensibility of the procedures and enforcement directives. For instance, there are quite a few Market rules that I interpret a little differently from the way you might interpret them. Sometimes I have modified my thinking over the years, for instance when I got on board for loading out at HM instead of pretending to. That was ethical, as I realized we were making our GM, my friend, essentially lie for us when she signed the contract. I don't like to lie and didn't want anyone to do it on my behalf. The rule wasn't likely to change, so I did.
And with the weights: we didn't use to have a policy. The fire marshal came with a draconian one, involving 80 pounds per leg, and specific types of weights, unlike what most of us had been doing for years to keep everyone safe. The intent of the law was public safety, but we worked hard to craft a workable policy and negotiate it with the marshal. We settled on 25 pounds per leg, but I only have three corners to my space. I used to put a corner in the fountain well, but that was prohibited, so I developed a workaround. It isn't strictly in compliance with the policy. I'm not thinking the Market would get shut down because of my workaround, but it could in a zero-tolerance atmosphere. About 80% of us are not in strict compliance with our weights policy, I believe. We all have workarounds, be they in the type of weights we use, the way we use them, or the other time-tested methods of securing our booths to the ground. I want and need that flexibility. I would have to change my space to comply or maybe quit the Market. I know quite a few people that won't come on windy days because they can't comply. It's a policy that needs a compassionate procedural adaptation that still meets the goals of public safety while allowing us to sell in iffy weather. That struggle isn't over. Market, however, has several compassionate responses. There is assistance available to meet the policy. That's how we work.
So I was alarmed to hear that a potential volunteer was told that service meant you had to obey all the rules to the letter. Um, does anyone do that? It's akin to saying that someone can be completely honest. There is always that lie of omission or kindness or convenience that gets the denial going. I tend to agree that it is good to follow rules as well as one can. Yet our rules are flexible for a reason. We know our population is a group of self-motivated entrepreneurs who live by their own efforts and reasonable adjustments to systems. There's a lot of personal choice built in because we like it that way. You don't want to bring tent weights? Don't bring a tent. Don't want to pay $13 plus 10%? Get a 4x4 or share a booth. We still have the honor system because we are honorable, and we enjoy being treated as honorable people. Because some might not be, do we want to have to keep receipt books and have our fees assessed like some Fairs used to do? No thank you. Let's build up reasons to act honorable, like respectful interactions and neighborly policies, and compassionate enforcement.
Packing early is a great example of how a zero-tolerance rule could go bad. Suppose you are doing some organizing in preparation for packing and your neighbor interprets that as packing and reports you, and you lose your point for the day. What kind of due process will we build into that system so you can explain you were putting away your lunchbox? What about your eight hours of full compliance with every rule? What about your years of dedicated service? What about your migraine? What about your exhausted kids? Nope. We delegated our staff person to take away points, and that is that. I venture to say no one wants to sell at that Market.
I've watched one of our associated organizations react to rule breaches with fines and suspensions. Those people resented the hell out of it and generally quit. Sure, there are others glad to sell, and customers rarely know, but do we want members going away mad? Is that good for our community?
What is good for our community? What kind of organization do we want to be? I'm guessing compassionate is high on most lists. I think we continue to want case-by-case, workable solutions for our common problems. Over time, we need to find ways to keep our values in place while we adapt to changing conditions. Right now, we have a fading founding generation and a lot of new members. They might not feel the community interest yet, so maybe they think packing early is what you do when there are few customers to notice. Maybe their needs are getting more attention than your need to keep the community value of waiting to pack until the moment of 5:00. We will have to work with them to bring them into our community feeling so that they are motivated to honor it. It's a long discussion, and it could end in lots of ways: closing earlier for everyone, for instance, like another organization did. All members' opportunity to sell was cut short so the big guys could maximize their employee time and cut their costs, and get on to their other work. I know some members who still resent that, years later. Decisions have consequences too.
But maybe there are a lot of solutions for this particular problem that aren't punitive. For instance, the GM gives them a call to make sure they get the intent of the rule and the expectation of the community, after someone files a written complaint. Or maybe we stop allowing envelopes to be turned in early and pay all of our staff to work longer hours to accommodate a later closing procedure. Maybe we ask our GM to work a 12-hour day so she can be there to monitor closing and respond in the moment, or maybe we decide she is human and works hard enough to not be there for early opening and late closing. Maybe we hire parking staff to tell us where and when to park. Maybe we pay a closing monitor to go around and make lists of people who do get their points.
Maybe we ring a bell at 5:00 and make it clear that you have to wait for the bell, or maybe we don't allow any cars at all in neighboring parking spots until 5:00, including customers, or issue a parking sticker to member cars so they can be so identified. Maybe we give out flyers, maybe we make jokes and point and laugh at early packers, maybe we kick them right out of the Market or maybe we do nothing and let them do whatever they choose. Karma will sort it out.
Obviously there is a range of solutions and some group needs to sort them out and find the best ones. That is why we have a Board, to work out policy with which to direct our staff. But this Board can be composed of lots of types of people, some who don't mind zero-tolerance or others who don't like rules at all. That's why we have discussions. That's why we continue to work toward consensus on these types of decisions, so we can come up with the most well-thought-out solutions that will work the best in practice. That's why Facebook discussions of policy are so marginally useful. You can't build consensus on the member's FB site.
For one thing, staff can't weigh in there. You might not realize that only the GM is authorized to enforce rules like parking and leaving early. You might not know that you are asking for her to prioritize being there from 4:30 to 5:00 instead of in the morning when bigger, more complicated situations need her attention. So if the consensus is to prioritize parking and leaving early over dealing with the mentally ill, the cars that need to be towed, or hazards on the site, she can be directed to work then, and can delegate the other things, but I prefer to let her decide on priorities. Public safety and operations flow are more important to me. She knows her job, and I want her to decide how to do it. She'll do what we ask, but we need her input in the decision-making. And we need the input of all staff, most importantly when we are discussing their jobs. So the member's page is not the best place, but the Board meeting can be.
And philosophy issues like how we get loyalty and buy-in on our regulations, how we move forward when things aren't working ideally, those things aren't driven by someone's opinion, however forcefully or eloquently they are stated. Those are group decisions made by as large a group as possible, in an organized group process. With rules. With a facilitator and a scribe, so the discussions can move forward to action. With careful process, with people who understand how to make good participatory decisions in a group. That's why we have elected Board members, who get training. And we have non-voting people at the meetings, who are equally able to give input and help find the solutions. Our process is sound, and has been in place for almost 50 years, and is why we are thriving now.
I had my best Park Blocks day ever yesterday. I have never seen it so crowded in the aisles, and even with quite a few regular members absent, we were full. I hope everyone did well. There was a lot going on. I had quite a few situations that weren't ideal for me that I was mostly unable to deal with in a really elegant way. I had to wing it and do the best that I could. I was only operating one tiny business in one tiny space. I can't even imagine all the things the staff members had to handle with so much happening. I barely saw any of them, but I trust them and I know the reason it ran so smoothly was that they are stellar at what they do. They are amazing. Their energy is high and their accomplishments are legion. I truly appreciate how willing they are to respond to our needs and help us make the Market we want. I support them fully in interpreting our intent and our letter of our laws for the common good of us all.
I do not want a Market that is punitive. I do not want the point system to be compromised by tieing operational rules to it. I want us to have sensible, well-thought out policies with room for interpretation and incentive for compliance, not punishment for non-compliance. We have always, throughout our history, maintained a lot of respect for ourselves and each other and worked very hard to craft policy and procedures that meet our mutual needs.
We've always had to struggle to get everyone to follow them, but we work it out so the intent is clear. We count on each other to make our rules work. We ask questions and think deeply about solutions. I have a lot of faith in our process and abilities to work together. So I ask people to be patient and engage in the process in similar good faith. We all work toward improvement, within the framework of who we are and how we want to live. See people on August 1st for policy discussions, at the Board meeting, where they are best done thoughtfully. And slowly. And inclusively. And above all, from our best selves, not our tired selves on our one day off. Thanks for reading.
Monday, June 18, 2018
A Fiction About Fair
From a few years back:
Disco Inferno
Just before dawn Jane descended into sleep, in the quiet that she
hadn’t believed
would
come. The Country Fair was starting tomorrow, or had started today,
with thousands of people moving into their aged wood booths along the
dirt paths. Ten feet from her head passed a river of excited people,
mostly under thirty, prowling the darkness for possibility. They
caffeinated up the street at Liberty Coffee, and cruised down to
Dana’s for desserts. Maybe they didn’t need fuel, propelled by
desire and held up by each other until they dropped, or maybe they
didn’t know where their beds were.
They would suddenly howl like young wolves, connecting with old
friends or new lovers, and it was catching, that exuberance. The
howl spread up and down the path and one time Jane joined in. They
were irresistible, and if it were not dark and she were not
exhausted, she would go out to the front of her booth and watch them,
their young smooth faces in the moonlight, beaming and blank, in
their bliss.
Of course they had no idea what it was to be old, and to need sleep,
to be thinking about selling tomorrow and how hard it would be, so
tired. Some of them could sleep in their tents most of the day, or
go around in spaced sleep deprivation. Jane would have to draw on
all her resources, to keep working for a few more days with no hope
of real rest. She stayed in her sleeping bag while the birds
replaced the revelers, until the Recycling Crew in their garbage
truck came by, until the Holy Cow Cafe across the street started
ringing their blasted cowbell. Perhaps some lukewarm, weak coffee
was ready, which would almost be adequate. Jane pulled on her pants
and shoes and stumbled to the outhouses, then wandered up the path
for the stronger stuff at Liberty.
The old folks complained, like they would about the weather,
standing around in the morning with their coffee. Jane and her
neighbors, Don and Lou, and Tim and Paula who camped in the woods
behind Jane’s booth, and various friends and acquaintances who
happened by, gathered in the one sunny spot they had been standing in
for two decades, one weekend a year.
“Geez, they were noisy all night. Did you hear that one woman who
couldn’t stop talking? Her friends kept trying to quiet her down,
but nothing worked.”
“Until you told her to shut the hell up. That was effective!”
Jane’s neighbor Lou was the neighborhood mean Mom. She could
always be counted on to get to the point.
“Then there was that little bluegrass band who set right up across
the path. They said, “Here’s a place to play!” like it was the
middle of the day. It had to be three in the morning.”
“They were actually kind of pleasant,” Jane said. “And when
you told them to move it on down the path, they actually apologized.”
“Yeah, but they probably just went and woke up some more people.”
Lou was a musician herself, but between the two Parades and the
circus shows, plus the evening gigs in the food booths, she found
plenty of music during the day and didn’t need to play all night
too. But of course, she was old now, at forty-five.
Ron wandered up, already dressed in the total American Flag outfit he
wore every Friday for some obscure reason. “You know the rules.
One, we don’t come here to sleep, and Two, we don’t come here to
be alone.” They all laughed at the simplicity of it.
“You can sleep when you’re dead. Somehow that had a different
meaning when we were thirty. Now we seem to want to do it every
night.” Jane shuffled off to get in the coffee line for a second
hit.
It was indeed a grueling day, hot and dusty. Jane scrambled to get
shelves arranged and kept neat and labeled and pointed out to the
customers who came in waves to buy gifts and souvenirs and
back-to-school clothes. She was so much less interested in the sales
than in the passing streams of costumed people, who might be
accountants or veterinarians or teachers but were masquerading as
hippies and fairy people. Women wore see-through tops or none at
all, with painted breasts or strategic flowers. Men wore loincloths
and kilts and sarongs and barely anyone was dressed in just regular
clothes. Sometimes she thought people bought her t-shirts so they
could put on something normal again before they lost their composure
altogether. It was a hippie theme park, where it seemed the tourists
were stranger than the residents. It was a zoo, where the visitors
were the show and the attractions were mirrors.
Finally evening fell and the tourists were swept out in a long,
complicated process of checking wristbands and gently pushing the
swell of humanity in the direction of the front gate. The din damped
down only slightly as the prowl continued. Jane and Paula closed up
with curtains drawn over the front of the booth, and sheets pulled
over all the displays to catch the damp and dust. It was well past
dark when the neighbors gathered in front of the booth again, cold
beers in hand, thinking about dinner.
“What’s still open? We had chalupas last night.” Tim and
Paula’s two boys were chomping on pizza but that was a last resort
meal for adults. “I had the philly cheesesteak for lunch, so
that’s out. I say Golden Avatar.” Tim was used to directing the
action but everyone was comfortable in the lawn chairs they had
dragged out from the deck in back. There would have to be some real
impetus to move. Glow sticks and other raver bling were coming out
and it was endlessly amusing to see how people would decorate
themselves with the flashing LEDs and fluorescent plastic tubes. The
darker it got the more interesting the interactions were, as people
peered into each others’ faces and recognized each other by tribal
clues. The energy was ramping up again, with snatches of music and
loud conversation bouncing around above the heads of the streams of
people. At home it would be bedtime, but here that was an
impossibility.
“We could go for ravioli. Rising Moon has that Friday night meal
thing, in fact Lou is playing there now,” Don told the others.
“Too bad we’ve eaten Holy Cow’s food so many times. I see they
finally figured out their light-glare problem. It really isn’t bad
this year.” Paula drew their attention to the food booth across
the path but Jane noticed that the brightest light in the
neighborhood was the full moon coming up behind it, through the
trees. No wonder everyone was so amped.
Jane was munching crackers with her beer and didn’t care too much
about dinner. She considered going to bed, maybe going up for a
shower first. Maybe she’d sleep better if she went to bed clean.
But when the group decided on ravioli, is seemed like a good idea to
wander a bit with them.
The meadow on the other side of the Fair was a soft panorama of
colored glowsticks, with small groups of people gathered in circles
on the ground, and a low hum of music and laughter floating like a
mist. It was gentle, like an eddy where the river slowed and pooled,
the hot pursuit of the prowlers caught here for a spell.
“Here’s where our kids hang out.” Don and Lou and Jane all had
teenagers who didn’t spend much time at the booth. Paula and Tim’s
were younger, but only by a few years. “What did they do before
there was the meadow?” It was easy to see the exponential of
population growth here, with the rest of the Fair just as full as it
had ever been.
The friends drifted off to Rising Moon. It was still lit up, but
only one man stood behind the counter, with a look of amusement. He
shoved a plate of chocolate sauce and a chunk of bread across the
plastic surface to a crusty guy in a battered felt hat. “Try it,”
he said. “Who doesn’t like chocolate.”
The man grunted as if to argue, but took the plate and sat at one of
the tables.
“So, no food?” Don asked.
“No food.” Behind this man two others were dressing, one
applying torn pieces of duct tape to the ruffles of a huge yellow
petticoat, seemingly to make it stay up in front like a can-can
dancer. His head was bald, his legs in striped stockings. Pirate
night? We looked around for Fellini. The man at the counter was
speaking in slow motion to another wandering couple.
“No-o-o fo-o-o-od.”
“But there’s bread,” Don said, indicating a large steel bowl of
chunks and slices of rough wheat sourdough. “Pesto?”
“Pesto. Pesto and bread, we can do.” The counterman emptied a
container of pesto onto a paper plate. Everyone took a handful of
bread.
“How much?” Don took out a pile of small bills.
“No charge.” Don shrugged, looked at the others and took the
food to a table. No food. No money. They ate but didn’t get
full.
The pirates finished dressing, grabbed large knives and faded out the
back of the booth. The counterman strung up sheets and turned out
the lights, still smiling graciously to the succession of two-and
threesomes approaching the counter. When it got dark no one even
looked toward the booth---just kept walking toward the next light.
Jane licked her fingers and stood, and the group rejoined the flow of
people shuffling in the darkness. The moon wasn’t making it
through the trees here in the deep woods. She kept sight of the
others, just barely, and walked slower.
Around a bend, in a clearing, she saw the scatterlight of a mirrored
ball. The Disco Bus! The Disco Bus was back! Jane started to
groove to the beat of the familiar song, those silly Village People,
singing YMCA. A syncopated crowd was packed in around the bus,
moving as a unit to the pounding bass, arms in the air, some spelling
out the letters, singing along. Red and blue lights pulsed from the
bus, which was more like a cart this year, carried by a quartet of
young men, one at each corner. A framework like roll bars supported
the disco ball and shiny streamers and flags. It was moving slowly
toward them, the groovers stretching from side to side, completely
covering the path. It was a portable crowd, moving together, lost in
the groove, a party you wanted to be in.
Laughter was immediate. Jane and Don looked at each other and cracked
up, but they didn’t hesitate. Tim yelled “Disco Salmon!” and
they waded into the crowd, dancing upstream, fingers pointing up,
crying “Hoo,Hoo” with the rest. The crowd allowed them in, and
Jane’s body pulsed with the music and the lights and the contact
high from the young bodies all around her. Her hips met their hips,
their shoulders curved smoothly past hers as they danced one foot and
the other up and back, side to side, dancing all directions, spinning
like the disco ball. Each time she caught sight of Tim and Don and
Paula, they laughed harder and danced with more ease. Burn baby
burn, Disco Inferno!
On the other side they watched as the crowd of dancers detached from
them, laughing again as they reluctantly let go of the groove. The
Bus would keep on going around the long path, crossing the figure
eight at the junction and around again, all night long as it had last
year and the year before. The outrageous Disco Bus that you just
couldn’t get mad about when it woke you straight upright out of
sleep. It took away your tiredness, it carried away your dull old
self, it brought you back to the land of fur hats and tight pants.
You could get with it, get by it, or get on it and go with it all
night, but you couldn’t get along without it.
The old folks hobbled home and went to bed, but when the bus came by
her booth two hours later and woke her up out of a deep sleep, Jane
got up and went out to have a last look. The crowd pulsed by like a
river otter or a friendly dragon. The party moved by and down the
path, a chatter of conversation trailing behind, a bit of hypnosis in
action, like the Pied Piper. It was taking those young folks for a
ride. As it flowed on past, Jane wondered how long it would be
allowed to exist. Surely someone would complain about the noise,
want to move it to the parking lot like the drummers who used to keep
everyone up all night at the junction.
It came around again Saturday night, but Sunday night she saw it for
the last time, and there was a strange change. The ball was
spinning, the glitterlight was falling all around on the groovitude
of the surrounding crowd, and it was all moving in unison at the same
pace. Fingers were in the air, shoulders humping to the same beat,
but it was all silent. Each person had a wire to their ear, an
earbud inserted. They were all synched up to the same broadcast,
something only they could hear.
The future of the Disco Bus was assured. Nobody could complain about
a silent moving rave.
Jane let out a howl, that echoed in communal response up and down the
path. She didn’t want things to get too quiet.
Sunday, June 17, 2018
How to Begin Writing the Stories
Since the light wakes me up around five anyway, I've been going to bed early and reminding myself what a joyful time it was when I got up every morning to write. I produced an unpublishable novel and many short stories and essays during a period of a few years, about a decade ago, and I miss that richness. I worry hard that my aging process will make writing harder or impossible, so I've vowed to use my self-discipline to restart.Both OCF and Saturday Market are asking for member stories, and I have a wealth of them. Writing them is the easy part; deciding how to write them for publication is much more difficult. They're personal, and some are confessional, and some thinly disguised as fiction to tell the more embarrassing or deeper emotional truths that I don't want to fully claim. I want to share them, but am I ready for what could follow?
I don't want much of that vulnerability: people passing judgements, learning intimate details, having access into my interior life. It's why I haven't been writing this blog much. I also don't want to make pronouncements as I tend to do about my reality, imagining it as universal, sounding like I have expert opinions that must be shared for the edification of the masses. I don't want to sound that confident in my own judgements. Mostly I don't want to get wounded.
It's these times. We're all so constantly in shock and ashamed to be white Americans with all the privilege we carry. We see all our collective sins, and we know we have to pay. The psychology is deep and I feel I know why we are not in the streets protesting every minute this corrupt regime and the turn our political life has taken. I feel manipulated no matter which way I move. I feel helpless and profoundly confused, and at the same time completely sure of my convictions and completely present and poised for action. Yet no action is clear.
And I am busy working. My refuge seems to be work, when I can be engaged, thinking, solving problems, and not trying to fix the seemingly unfixable. I can do the writing part of my tasks, but how can I help myself do the putting-it-out-there parts?
First, write. I put together one short piece today and reviewed some written a decade ago. I have more in my files to unearth and edit. Do I make a plan and release them one by one? Do I figure out some framing or parameters for myself to make them a collection that makes sense with a context, or let them go out unexplained, at face value? Do I simply give them away? Do I hand them over to be edited by others?
Or do I write all new ones with my present perspective, less personal ones perhaps, and set these aside? What is being asked for is not blog posts, not opinions, but actual stories. Can I be a storyteller, or am I stuck in this role as personal essayist and confessionaire? Will they lose their value if I take out all the insight and emotion I am actually proud of, in my egoist role as person who writes the best about these things. Dropping the ego is the first thing I have to work on, as well as the biggest. I'm in my own way, that's clear.
It's humbling to be needed, and I see that I run from it. It's a responsibility. I went out to pick berries and think through some of these arguments. What if I take the egoism all the way out to its limits and expose it right now: I am one of our community's most willing and able writers. Lots of honest people have told me I am good at it, and I believe them. I have a perceptive position in the interstices of our organizations, as one who has participated in lots of levels with a full heart and plenty of personal investment. So I am qualified. And I have the skills. And I'm of an age that allows me to use some applied wisdom, and maybe can do it without some of the pitfalls of my earlier writings.Plus it brings me great pleasure. I'm really happy today at getting up early, having so much extra time. I got up because either a bug crawled into my ear and fluttered wildly or I have some congestion in my head that needs to drain, but it was enough of a cosmic message to make me sit up and type instead of reading our dreary newspaper. A lot of my vulnerability at the moment comes from the recent RG article about me, for which I feel explicitly and embarrassingly exposed, but look at how he titled it: Veteran vendor contributes to marketplace of ideas. Could that be any more affirmative of what I should be doing with this opportunity? It's my chosen path, and not by accident. I'm here because I have applied my combined skills to make my niche with my wit and intelligence.
The writer, Christian Wihtol, intuited and prised out a lot of my authentic self. He asked a lot of
questions I was happy to answer. While appealing to my ego in a sense, he also had a story to tell about the Market and those of us who are invested, and he told it well. Many have thanked me and come to support me and each time I read the article, it seems more benign. There's little to fear. I didn't tell my innermost secrets. He didn't say anything objectionable, except calling my booth a stall (we don't use that word, as we aren't animals and it isn't a barn...) but I didn't get around to telling him the forbidden ways to speak about craftspeople.
So my fear that something bad will happen with my writing is groundless, and anyway, why do I care? If someone thinks my style is annoying or my ego is showing like a soiled slip hem, so what? Will I even know? Won't that be balanced by the delight of another person who enjoys my story?
What's my real problem? I suppose it is losing control of my products...squandering my material by giving it away, pearls before swine. Easily remedied by asking for editorial control, or by more diligent editing so I don't give away points I might want to use. I sincerely doubt I will write a book about OCF, though I do plan to write one about Saturday Market. I don't, however, want to write a definitive history book about market, but actually have another plan. It would only add to a body of writing about the Market, not be the one and only book. The more available to not only outline, but to fill in the details of our experience, the better, from a historical perspective. My thoughts die with me, unless I put them on paper and share them while I can. If I truly have enough ego to think they are valuable, giving them away should cost me nothing.
So I have no good reasons to hang onto my writing and now, with the 50th arriving, now is the time. I want to feel compelled like I do today. I want to immerse in it and get all the deep feelings that make the brief week of Fair so rich for me. The more I write about it the better it gets.
So it seems I've decided. One first draft every morning, and one edit of an old piece, and some research into the blog posts for forgotten writings. Then start, soon, giving them away. Maybe do that today, send one. Push myself a little, for the common good. When someone reads mine, bad or good, they will feel a tiny push to send in their own. I want to read them, and I am not the only one.Write. Pick berries, move the sprinklers, read, write. Turn the sacred upside down. Gaze at the beautiful summer light, go deep, feel satisfied. Cry. Write. Push "publish."
Sunday, May 13, 2018
Writing All the Blog Posts, Without the Paper
Generally on my slow way home from Market and as I unload my trailer, I write blog posts in my mind about my day...post-Market I have so many deep appreciations for what we do there all day every week. Sometimes I'm chewing on some situation that needs resolution, sometimes I'm feeling that I should shut up and crawl back into my cave. Most times I am singing. I do the same walking home from meetings. Walking to meetings I am usually going over my mental lists of what I have to do, or say, but going home I just let the reflections flow while I enjoy the flowers and trees of my wonderful neighborhood.
This week I ran around Market on adrenaline getting set up for the Founder's Day display, buying flowers, excited about a photo shoot for a future RG article, full of anticipation about a wonderful surprise that is going to hit the news on Monday, and a little bit worried that something random would spoil these golden moments that are going to be such important parts of our history.
I spent a lot of time in the office this week, and last. It is not my habit to dump big projects on our staff. I am more used to having an idea, and then putting my whole heart and soul into making it happen, with the attendant hours of labor involved. I do the work happily, take on whatever isn't really in someone's job description, and have no problem spending my time and money on something that has fed me so richly for so many years of my life. I do it because I love it. This week I found out a lot about Vanessa as we worked on making easel backs for those posters, and I found out that our staff is a group of singers. They just break into song all the time! What's not to love about that?
It was fun and I could have done more of it. Our staff, all of them, get my undying gratitude for running with this honoring Lotte concept, and for saying yes so many times all throughout. It's one of those types of promotions that might not show direct effects...though we had a nice Weekly mention. I didn't get to spend a lot of time on the deck myself, but once I was surrounded by Lotte's daughters, her best friends, and some of the artisans who were built at Market as I was, and another time three former managers and Vanessa were up there laughing and talking shop. Every moment I got to be on the deck was golden. Bill Goldsmith patiently sat there ALL day and also took home parts of the archives to scan, as we need a digital archive as one of the first steps toward keeping our history accessible and complete for all of us. I hope many more people than I am aware of took home something valuable from Market yesterday. https://www.facebook.com/eugenesaturdaymarket/videos/10155255581981640/UzpfSTcxNDQ5OTYxOToxMDE1NTgwNjk3OTg2OTYyMA/
I have decided that Archivist is my next role for the market...way beyond the Secretary role, which I will at some point gladly mentor another member into. I was very nearly voted out of that officer position this January after ten years...for whatever reasons, I got the message that some are ready for me to shut up and get into that cave. Carrying the historical legacy better suits me anyway, so I won't question the ondas (kind of a silent wave) or care about who or why, just acknowledge that change is good and I have plenty of ways to use my time that might actually result in more important and more personal gratification than just selfless service.
The 50th Anniversary of Market and OCF is the force of nature that will maybe catapult me into a new phase of my life. I need more time to write. I have several books nearly written in my mind and in my many journals...I also want to make sure that Market history is set into permanent and useful form. I plan to study and acquire techniques for the physical parts, preservation of the artifacts, and hope to use and develop some personal skills for interviewing and networking with people in person, something I do rather badly and can improve by being less tied to the day to day overseeing of our legality and proper Board actions and also to whether or not I have approval from the membership for the many actions and decisions in which I am involved. Maintaining the approval of others is wearying and I dislike both examining it and being re-assured, caring about it and thinking about it. I'd like to unhook from it completely and just do what I want to do. Maybe not realistic, but I do seek ways to diminish that anxiety and do less of what brings me criticism and more of what brings me simple joy.
The ways our membership organization, and Country Fair's as well, fail us all, is when we descend into our pettiness and resentments and forget how we are all on the same team working for the same goals. If someone has a great idea, ideally we all get behind it and help push it through! Ideally we don't pick it apart, especially afterward, or bring up how one of us gets more than our share of whatever quantity or perceived benefit, while others are unfairly deprived. I get that this comes from deprivation and insecurity, but it serves no one when this dominates our work. I have heard many times now how us old people need to get out of the way for change and for the young and how the new members are the future and so on. Who invented this duality where if one gets, there is an "other" who loses?
If one of our master craftspeople is still successful after a lifetime of effort, not only have they earned it, but we are so lucky to get to share their gifts! They know things we will never know starting today...our history is rich with ways we have adapted and struggled and overcome. They are our precious treasure. New is fantastic and change is essential, but it isn't a choice of one or the other. We have everything in the Market. The more of everything we have, the better. We don't have scarcity. We have abundance. When someone brings their success, we all gain.
We're going to be in the civic spotlight tomorrow and for the next while. We are in a golden moment for our organization and we are so poised to make the most of it. We've always had stellar and hard-working staff, and right now we have a marketing expertise that is unmatched in any time of our history. Goodbye to our inferiority complex about whether or not the city loves us (actually it has been mostly the county that has made us wonder.) I had a meeting with the City Councilor for my ward this week, and she got us so thoroughly I laughed in relief. She said all the right things.
So often it has been our self-sabotaging perceptions as humans that have gotten in our way, more than any external force. Take a look at "internal and external locus of control" readings. When we operate from an internal locus, our confidence rises and we are freed from a lot of doubt and hesitation that can cripple us. With our crafter population, one of my problems is that I have seen all of our warts and flaws and witnessed many of our errors in judgement, and I fear that we will destroy our momentum and bite ourselves in our collective asses. Fear is not a good driver! Get someone at the wheel who can drive well, and maybe just read the map for awhile. I have always been a better navigator and support person that driver. I'm so happy to let our great staff drive our bus.
I'm happy to yield to the real visionaries among us, to let experts in the many aspects of us come forward and be expert. I am not a person who wants power and control. I want to be left to my simplicity and joy and also to feel in control of my seat in the back, my lunchbox, and my satchel of homework. I've always been happier to wind my way home on foot and meander my way through the woods while other people rush to keep up or get there or make big plans or do big jobs.
I do have a big plan, which is to have Lotte and the Eugene Craft Movement be enshrined in a museum wing. I intend to do my little parts to take that dream as far as it can go. In my imagination there is a little display of Jell-O Art in a corner. In my plan maybe I get paid to write things instead of hauling tote bags to the fountainside so often, but as long as I can be by that fountain, I intend to stay there. For those of you happy about that, thank you, I really appreciate the support. I got a lot yesterday, and it feels wonderful.
For those of you resentful of that, or who want to stick out a foot and trip me, well, that is in your power. I suffer as much as anyone with emotions. Go right ahead with your bad self if you have the need to punish others. Be prepared to be ignored. Be prepared to watch the positive among us rise above it.
Get on Board, children of the market! We need your positive energy and your great ideas right there in the room. We need you to collect our wisdom before we rest. Run for the Board! Drink one less beer and attend a committee meeting instead. Put aside your phone and take minutes for it. Extend yourself. Our success is mutual. Now is the best possible time to be a Market member who thrives, with the connection, the support, and the outstanding collective expertise of our almost fifty years.
We have everything we need right now except robust volunteer participation. We have people waiting to step away, as soon as you step forward. Volunteers made this Market, including Lotte, who did it all for free, and continuing through the thousands of us who already stepped up. It's your turn. Please try. This is the common good we are preserving, with a big slice for each of us, in the ever-growing, never-finished pie. There is a piece for you, and it is luscious.
And now, a chat with Mom, who also has my undying gratitude, and a HOT DAY! I will be silent and on the deck. Or possibly singing and in the garden. Or both.
This week I ran around Market on adrenaline getting set up for the Founder's Day display, buying flowers, excited about a photo shoot for a future RG article, full of anticipation about a wonderful surprise that is going to hit the news on Monday, and a little bit worried that something random would spoil these golden moments that are going to be such important parts of our history.
I spent a lot of time in the office this week, and last. It is not my habit to dump big projects on our staff. I am more used to having an idea, and then putting my whole heart and soul into making it happen, with the attendant hours of labor involved. I do the work happily, take on whatever isn't really in someone's job description, and have no problem spending my time and money on something that has fed me so richly for so many years of my life. I do it because I love it. This week I found out a lot about Vanessa as we worked on making easel backs for those posters, and I found out that our staff is a group of singers. They just break into song all the time! What's not to love about that?
It was fun and I could have done more of it. Our staff, all of them, get my undying gratitude for running with this honoring Lotte concept, and for saying yes so many times all throughout. It's one of those types of promotions that might not show direct effects...though we had a nice Weekly mention. I didn't get to spend a lot of time on the deck myself, but once I was surrounded by Lotte's daughters, her best friends, and some of the artisans who were built at Market as I was, and another time three former managers and Vanessa were up there laughing and talking shop. Every moment I got to be on the deck was golden. Bill Goldsmith patiently sat there ALL day and also took home parts of the archives to scan, as we need a digital archive as one of the first steps toward keeping our history accessible and complete for all of us. I hope many more people than I am aware of took home something valuable from Market yesterday. https://www.facebook.com/eugenesaturdaymarket/videos/10155255581981640/UzpfSTcxNDQ5OTYxOToxMDE1NTgwNjk3OTg2OTYyMA/
I have decided that Archivist is my next role for the market...way beyond the Secretary role, which I will at some point gladly mentor another member into. I was very nearly voted out of that officer position this January after ten years...for whatever reasons, I got the message that some are ready for me to shut up and get into that cave. Carrying the historical legacy better suits me anyway, so I won't question the ondas (kind of a silent wave) or care about who or why, just acknowledge that change is good and I have plenty of ways to use my time that might actually result in more important and more personal gratification than just selfless service.
The 50th Anniversary of Market and OCF is the force of nature that will maybe catapult me into a new phase of my life. I need more time to write. I have several books nearly written in my mind and in my many journals...I also want to make sure that Market history is set into permanent and useful form. I plan to study and acquire techniques for the physical parts, preservation of the artifacts, and hope to use and develop some personal skills for interviewing and networking with people in person, something I do rather badly and can improve by being less tied to the day to day overseeing of our legality and proper Board actions and also to whether or not I have approval from the membership for the many actions and decisions in which I am involved. Maintaining the approval of others is wearying and I dislike both examining it and being re-assured, caring about it and thinking about it. I'd like to unhook from it completely and just do what I want to do. Maybe not realistic, but I do seek ways to diminish that anxiety and do less of what brings me criticism and more of what brings me simple joy.
The ways our membership organization, and Country Fair's as well, fail us all, is when we descend into our pettiness and resentments and forget how we are all on the same team working for the same goals. If someone has a great idea, ideally we all get behind it and help push it through! Ideally we don't pick it apart, especially afterward, or bring up how one of us gets more than our share of whatever quantity or perceived benefit, while others are unfairly deprived. I get that this comes from deprivation and insecurity, but it serves no one when this dominates our work. I have heard many times now how us old people need to get out of the way for change and for the young and how the new members are the future and so on. Who invented this duality where if one gets, there is an "other" who loses?
If one of our master craftspeople is still successful after a lifetime of effort, not only have they earned it, but we are so lucky to get to share their gifts! They know things we will never know starting today...our history is rich with ways we have adapted and struggled and overcome. They are our precious treasure. New is fantastic and change is essential, but it isn't a choice of one or the other. We have everything in the Market. The more of everything we have, the better. We don't have scarcity. We have abundance. When someone brings their success, we all gain.
We're going to be in the civic spotlight tomorrow and for the next while. We are in a golden moment for our organization and we are so poised to make the most of it. We've always had stellar and hard-working staff, and right now we have a marketing expertise that is unmatched in any time of our history. Goodbye to our inferiority complex about whether or not the city loves us (actually it has been mostly the county that has made us wonder.) I had a meeting with the City Councilor for my ward this week, and she got us so thoroughly I laughed in relief. She said all the right things.
So often it has been our self-sabotaging perceptions as humans that have gotten in our way, more than any external force. Take a look at "internal and external locus of control" readings. When we operate from an internal locus, our confidence rises and we are freed from a lot of doubt and hesitation that can cripple us. With our crafter population, one of my problems is that I have seen all of our warts and flaws and witnessed many of our errors in judgement, and I fear that we will destroy our momentum and bite ourselves in our collective asses. Fear is not a good driver! Get someone at the wheel who can drive well, and maybe just read the map for awhile. I have always been a better navigator and support person that driver. I'm so happy to let our great staff drive our bus.
I'm happy to yield to the real visionaries among us, to let experts in the many aspects of us come forward and be expert. I am not a person who wants power and control. I want to be left to my simplicity and joy and also to feel in control of my seat in the back, my lunchbox, and my satchel of homework. I've always been happier to wind my way home on foot and meander my way through the woods while other people rush to keep up or get there or make big plans or do big jobs.
I do have a big plan, which is to have Lotte and the Eugene Craft Movement be enshrined in a museum wing. I intend to do my little parts to take that dream as far as it can go. In my imagination there is a little display of Jell-O Art in a corner. In my plan maybe I get paid to write things instead of hauling tote bags to the fountainside so often, but as long as I can be by that fountain, I intend to stay there. For those of you happy about that, thank you, I really appreciate the support. I got a lot yesterday, and it feels wonderful.
For those of you resentful of that, or who want to stick out a foot and trip me, well, that is in your power. I suffer as much as anyone with emotions. Go right ahead with your bad self if you have the need to punish others. Be prepared to be ignored. Be prepared to watch the positive among us rise above it.
Get on Board, children of the market! We need your positive energy and your great ideas right there in the room. We need you to collect our wisdom before we rest. Run for the Board! Drink one less beer and attend a committee meeting instead. Put aside your phone and take minutes for it. Extend yourself. Our success is mutual. Now is the best possible time to be a Market member who thrives, with the connection, the support, and the outstanding collective expertise of our almost fifty years.
We have everything we need right now except robust volunteer participation. We have people waiting to step away, as soon as you step forward. Volunteers made this Market, including Lotte, who did it all for free, and continuing through the thousands of us who already stepped up. It's your turn. Please try. This is the common good we are preserving, with a big slice for each of us, in the ever-growing, never-finished pie. There is a piece for you, and it is luscious.
And now, a chat with Mom, who also has my undying gratitude, and a HOT DAY! I will be silent and on the deck. Or possibly singing and in the garden. Or both.
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