Early Saturday Market History

This poster, hand printed, was in Lotte's archives. It was most definitely from the first Market in 1970. I'd love to find out more about it, if anyone knows anything. Possibly Lotte made it, but it could have been another artist. 

Instead of working on my taxes I have been archiving Saturday Market materials, my own and a box of things I got from Lotte's family. She had saved and pasted in albums every article written and some of the newsletters and things from the beginning of Market. It's three volumes but here's some of what I gleaned from the first volume:

The people in the group did have some sales before this, known as the EPIC sales, (acronym for Eugene Peace Information Center) each Christmas for about a decade. Lotte did spearhead the effort to go to the City Council and an Urban Renewal group, SCORE, and the Council approved this one-day Market. 29 people sold in the rain. After the one day it was evaluated by the Council. Two hundred people went to the City Council to support the Market. 

After a lot of discussion the Council allowed another in June.

It was held June 6th and they were allowed to continue for the summer.  The first one cost 50 cents. The second one cost a dollar.It was located by the Overpark on Oak, in the alley. It wasn't a good place for it, and it soon outgrew the space. Dogs caused a lot of problems, apparently, but the people were all delightful it seems.

The City gave three months, then in September let them sell until Dec. 19th. Even though it was rumored that it would not be held on the Saturday of the October Renaissance Fair, it was. (That was the second "OCF".) By then there were over a hundred "booths." People sold on blankets and low tables then, very minimal. The City was always supportive, but some downtown merchants were not, so often the Council votes were tight. Hundreds of people would come to the meetings with petitions, and tourists would write letters. Locations on the Mall didn't really work well, so the group petitioned the county for use of the Park Blocks in February 1971.

The County Commissioners denied the use of the Park Blocks, 2-1. Nancy Hayward wouldn't even second the motion to deny. They offered the top of the Butterfly. The City had offered a courtyard of City Hall, but neither location had the visibility and aesthetics the Saturday Market Committee wanted. They went back in April and asked for Courthouse Plaza (which has since been redesigned) and again the commissioners voted no, 2-1.

The Market people had jumped through a lot of hoops, hiring a lawyer, moving toward incorporation, etc., and were surprised at the no. The Market was homeless. Then Eugene Downtown Association and many citizens and business owners came out in support of the Market, and on May 12, 1971, the County okayed the use of the Courthouse Plaza, for a three-month trial period only.

The first year they held a market on the day of the first "Renaissance Fair" but the second year they waited until June 19th to have a strong opening (Fair was June 5th). They hired M'Lou Carden as part-time manager and charged $1.50 to sell. The county only gave them June, July and August. They had rules, including No Dogs, a simple jury by Board members to keep it handmade only, and the hours were 10-5. Food sellers had to have temporary restaurant licenses. The second week it rained, but Rain or Shine was already the rule.

They bought insurance for $800,000 in coverage for the three month “trial period”. After total success, in the middle of August the commissioners had gone back to their 2-1 opposition. After some drama with black armbands and bunting, and rain on the second-to-last day, the Market Board decided to move to the less-desirable Butterfly lot. The last day on the Plaza, Sen. George McGovern came and shook some hands! Coburg also offered to host the Market.

Courthouse Plaza permitted 250 booths but people were asked to limit themselves to a 3’x 6’ space. Vendor totals were up to about 120 regularly, and it thrived. They signed a two-year contract for the Butterfly, but it was larger, sloped, and there were fewer people selling, but the rent went down from $25 a week to $10 a week, and I think they paid that to the City.

Even Sunset magazine featured the Market. It was appreciated much like it is now, with most of the opposition to it coming from people who didn't even go see it, but feared political action, the hippies, and so on, although there were always, as now, many people who did not fit the counter-culture stereotypes.

That's it for Volume 1. I'll post more about this as I go through her notebooks. What a treasure. 

We are the Center, and the Center Will Hold

I'm trying to force myself to go to the March, but so strongly compelled to stay here and write...and have my excuses lined up for why I can't go into those huge crowds. I don't want to indulge my excuses, but maybe I can write and then go. Or get started and then finish after what will surely be inspiring.

I know that whenever I force myself out of the cave, I gain things I didn't know I wanted. When I stay in, I'm not contributing, and I know how good it feels to be contributing. Reposting things on Facebook does not satisfy deep down, particularly when I know my reach on there is so tiny as to be insignificant. My reach in a huge crowd will also be insignificant, but at least I will open myself to seeing others and what they are doing and saying, people who are far more courageous than I.

I spent a lot of my twenties and thirties protesting. I was somewhat fearless back then and allowed some damage to accrue...damage that has come back to haunt me again and again. But when I hear people's stories and see how they have transcended theirs---because we all get damaged---I know I can do better. I can speak louder and work harder to armor myself. I do not want to be a fearful old woman, beaten down by thoughtless people who probably don't even know they are toxic. I want to be one of the ones to shift that damage back and force the change that will stop it from spreading.

I've been reading back in the Saturday Market archives, randomly, as I try to organize the ones I have. Lotte saved every newspaper article and mention of the Markets and I have done that too. Hers are mostly mounted in albums, yellowing and with her notations. Mine are piled up and not organized so that anyone else could benefit. Reading back over only the last decade of what the Markets have been through is incredible. I was there, and it's far too much to keep in operating memory. Yet we have to carry the stories forward so we know who we are and how we got to today.

It's easy to see how people have forgotten even the recent past in politics and government, and how impossible it is to keep perspective with so much new information. That is no doubt part of the current strategy of bombarding us with misinformation to keep us confused and shut down. Even I hear myself asking "What is the point?" and feeling hopeless and lost. I know better! There has always been a point, and it might even be the same point: to make our lives better. To limit suffering and help all of us move in a healthy and life-affirming direction. To live well. To be happy, and see joy in the world around us. Simple things, simple goals, but constantly thwarted.

I can't afford, for my own peace and happiness, to get crumbly. The things I have fought for, stuck my neck out for, haven't been accomplished yet. I don't get to stop working. Since I do have access to history, and I can recognize patterns, that's part of my job. Since I have words, I must use them. I can't keep quiet. None of us should, since it is taking all of the effort we can collectively apply to even hold the center.

But the center is holding. We own the center. The center is in our chests, our hearts, and our minds, and we know what is right because it resonates there. That song "Shed a Little Light," so eloquently describes how we go to the well on the hill, how we feel the rightness of what we are filled with, and how we hold that as sacred vessels of life. It sounds religious but only in the greater sense of reverence for life. The life of our planet. That is what we are holding dear. You and I will come and go, leave our bodies and our boxes of newspapers behind. We will not finish our work.

But that's not the nature of our work. It isn't one task that can be completed. That's one thing that makes it so hard, so discouraging. We don't see the effects. But that's one reason I have to go today, as fearful as I am of my little emotions. I remember at a protest years ago, the biggest lesson I learned was just from watching a young man speak to counter a confused section of the crowd when an argument developed with a Republican supporter. (Remember we have been fighting this Republican mindset since Nixon. Reagan. Bush senior, and W. This stuff is not new, just much more depraved and thinly disguised this time around, and crass. Low.)

This young man just spoke loudly with some advice to basically ignore the troll and not get engaged in his power game, to not let him take our power from us. As I remember it he was also a Dad, with young children. He wasn't saying a simple message about peace, he was drilling down into the practice of it. He was giving us a way through our next few minutes, a new way at that moment. It was what we needed. He responded to our need, leading from the center. He was within us, and the truth and how he spoke it was the balm on the troubled waters that kept us flowing.

The days of bad dads and powerful men doing the wrong thing are waning. The patriarchy is desperately struggling for control, and we are denying them what they have felt so entitled to. They are still winning and taking all the gold, over and over, but we are winning too. We are winning a thousand, a million small battles each and every day that will swing that pendulum and swing it hard.

We are winning. That is why we keep working through the discouragement. Some parts of what we are trying to save will indeed be saved. I can't say I am thrilled about the future, and the struggles still to come, but I do feel proud of how hard we have collectively worked. Pitching in works. Bringing skills works. Gathering to feel the hunger and break the bread and pass it around works.

Sure, it hurts. I'm accessing deep feelings today, which also happens to be my son's birthday. In 1990 I was laboring hard, long hours of trying to open, trying to do the first letting go of an unimaginable amount of letting go that I would have to learn to do with my son. He was born in the evening, after more than a day of that altered state that was so terrifying and also so simple and direct. Nothing else mattered. I was visualizing myself as an elephant. The task and my body were huge. I felt gravity, and waves, and immeasurable natural forces. And with a lot of help, we accomplished our goals.

We set out together on his life. He's taken it well in hand and he's doing well. He learned what I was able to set before him and many more things I wasn't. He has a fine mind and body and has only begun to accomplish all the things of his life, many of which I will not get to see or even hear about. He's a man now. But he isn't part of the patriarchy. He's a good man.

He's more than I thought I would be able to give the world. My heart wanted to keep him inside, all to myself, but that isn't how life works. We have to open. We are compelled to open. We must BE open.

So I will open the door and go downtown. I can stick to the fringes if I have to. I will take cash and I will give it where cash is needed. I might chant and I hope I'll sing. I will do my tiny part, add my tiny voice, and try as hard as I can to stay open as long as I can.

And for my reward I will pick up a library book written by a friend of mine and read one of his fine short stories, and I will go to my grocery store where I have been a loyal customer for forty years and more, and buy something for myself. Something healthy, or not. And then I will come home and get out an album of baby pictures my Mom returned to me, an album about my son that I wrote a lot of little stories in. I'll go back to that proud and focused self who was able to keep a child safe for long enough for him to grow up. I'll laugh at my naivete and unevolved cultural politics and remember those days before the internet and before decades of therapy, back when I thought pretty well of what I had done and what I was doing.

It was okay that I was naive. It was okay that I set aside what would have prevented me from leaping and created that child. It was the most brave and foolish thing I have ever done. I didn't know how much of what I got from the well was going to go into that part of my life, and how satisfying it would be. I only knew that childbirth was a miracle, and I wanted to participate in a miracle.

So Happy Birthday John, and thank you for the miracles. Thank you for your patience while I learned so many things, and your abilities as a teacher with such a complicated class. Thank you for allowing me to ground myself in your mere existence, from that egg that came from my grandmothers, was grown in me when I was in my own Mom, that was grown in her, and all the way back. We brought forward Life that we knew nothing about and are not here to fathom. We are part of Mystery.

It is not about me, and most definitely not about my little insecurities and weaknesses. Today is not about my comfort levels and my thoughts and plans. It's about Life and the Well, and where Hope comes from. It will come. It keeps coming. We keep working. We keep winning. The prize is within.

Be open.

Giving Away Art

Last night I attended the memorial for Lotte Streisinger, which was of course lovely and a warm group of friends, family, and acquaintances. As always, we learned things about her we will try to remember; they fill in the gaps and although it is too late to let her know, they increase our love and admiration of the person, and are gifts to us as we mourn.

My recent history with Lotte is mostly a repeating scene. I would spot her at the Market, heading off with her walker to set what I now understand was a frequent routine: taking a basket to fill with the beauty and bounty of fresh food and whatever else she needed from what we offer at her legacy market. She didn't shop for crafts much, as we all have to collect fewer things in our later years, unless we have a way to pass them on efficiently. But invariably I was with a customer or otherwise involved in my own routine, which on Saturdays is compressed to what absolutely has to be done in a fairly strict time frame. When it is my time to go get food, I have to do it then. So I'd try to keep an eye on her travels, and work it in to say a quick hello. Often I would run after her (she moved fast for a slow walker) and often she'd be leaving as I arrived at her car. I'd vow to do better the next time. Sometimes I didn't want to bother her.

At Holiday Market on what was her last visit, I ran after her and stuffed a tote bag into her basket. I said "It's a present. I don't think you have enough presents." I figured she'd pass it on to someone or at least enjoy it. She so loved other people's creations. Other artisans have told me she would stop and look at their displays and smile. She was a great appreciator. I often characterize what we do at the Market as the artist/appreciator direct relationship. She of course was extremely good at both roles, and has inspired me to collect many works, mostly earrings and bowls of which I have far too many. Need is not the operating value: it's connection. I want the crafter to know I value them, and want them to keep working, and my cash is a path to their success. I refuse discounts and tell them, "Make money."

Alas, I never collected a piece of her pottery. I remember what was surely the last time she came, with a minimal display of pots, and I don't know my reason for not buying one. I'm good at excuses, so I'm sure it was something lame like I have too much stuff or too many bills, or I just didn't think it through. But when I had an essay published in an anthology, (Winter Tales II: Women on the Art of Aging) I gave her a copy of the book and she gifted me a copy of her book. So I have a precious object, and am satisfied, but of course I have my regrets.

She actually invited me over for tea at that time. It was years ago, before I broke my foot, and maybe that was part of my excuse litany for why I did not go. I know I was intimidated, not knowing how friendly and gregarious she was, and I know I have kept it on my list of things to do, as I really wanted to connect with her about the Market in a deeper way, but I didn't follow through. Lesson number 3487 in how making excuses hobbles my life. Sigh.

Now I know she would have made us tea or even maybe a whiskey and we would have had the most wonderful time telling stories and filling me with what I know in my heart is what built me and fed me all of these decades. Her vision for how we live as artisans and humans who love beauty and nature, birds and plants, who closely observe and understand what is real and how we must protect it, her vision was manifested through her careful and diligent work. I was afraid I would cry, but now I know I would have laughed.

When I found out that she is the reason we have John Rose glass work in the Hult, and a bronze umbrella and the flying people at the airport, and a collection of small and profoundly attractive works instead of some expensive and pronounced sculpture, a key piece of my awareness of her legacy emerged. She really is why we have our 4x4s and our 8x8s at the Market and not a department store, why our town has so many craftspeople and so many lives built around us, and why I am here and have thrived here.

Yes, she did this in community and not all by herself, but she brought that vision and calmly set it in place. Her daughters gave the Market a box of her archives and I went through some of it yesterday. We saw some of it at the memorial. She kept in scrapbooks every newspaper reference, every opinion piece, and every photo published about the Market in the beginning. It's quite a treasure. I was dumbstruck how many of the original issues are still our issues almost 50 years later, and how so many of the ways we do things were set in place then, in 1970 to 75, before I got there. I know that her guidance is why. She watched over us.

When it was needed, she went public with letters to the editor. One of the last ones pled to not change the Markets, and it was in reference to our present situation. It made me cry. As the person who has self-appointed to carry this legacy of hers, I felt helpless and knew that I would not be able to make it so. I've worked for years now, decades really, to hold on to our essence and move it forward intact. Every change gets my scrutiny and often I despair that we can't know what the longterm effects of our changes will be. Did we blow it when we got this or that policy or fee? Did we make the right choice about that person or that situation? We can't get it right each time.

I have a collection of little stories about how her strength brought us through. I should maybe have told one or two of them last night, but it was the time to tell real, personal information about her and I didn't have enough. I may have told some of them in here, and maybe along with our 50th I will put together some type of history of how her legacy has butressed us as we have moved through our hardest times.

One of my stories has a dark humor to it. I'll tell it here but you have to promise to laugh. The short version is that I co-sell with the farmers at Tuesday Market, and I take a smaller more flexible display for the shorter day. I try to fit in small spaces so I can locate among them, as I like the friendships and the continuity of that, and I sell tote bags, which people need there. So one morning I was setting up and my whole entire display fell over. I had spread it too wide and the bags and hats are heavy, so with a great metallic crash, it fell flat on the sidewalk in the somewhat narrow aisle. In my horror I looked up, and here came Lotte with her walker. A minute or two of difference, and the headlines would have read "Longtime Member and Officer of Saturday Market Wipes Out Founder."

I know, not funny, but no one did get hurt and I certainly learned a lesson about physics and professionalism, which as a seasoned member I still needed a refresher course about. I thought making a sort-of funny cautionary tale about it was kind of how I do things. Make mistakes, write about them. Maybe she would have laughed with me. I was way too embarrassed at the time to discuss it. But at our tea, we could have...while she encouraged me to put some more berries on my stoneware plate and poured me a little more tea into my handmade cup. It's a dream sequence now.

I know Lotte will stay with me. During Holiday Market, when we had a table display for her, I would run in there and put another little comment in the book. Not enough of them, though. On Sunday nights I went and put away the flowers in a cool place so they'd last, and I took home my copy of her book, and her photo in its frame. I put her in my kitchen for the week and burned a handmade beeswax candle for her. I kept her company that way, singing, washing dishes, just thinking of her and the Market and my life there, and just loving her in a sweet and pure way. She deserved a gentle departure, which I think she experienced.

I should have told that last night, but I try to fight the urge to make things about me. All of my stories are always more about me than about other people. I don't think she was like that. In the notebooks she didn't editorialize. She turned outward where I turn inward. She modeled that for me. The stories others told were about that, particularly those of her grandchildren. Her history shows that. She did what she did for the community and for the world, not for herself, though she lived a life in which she was rich with time and love.

And that is why what she gave us will be a living testament for her for as long as we exist. We come to the Market to take the products of our inward turnings and turn them out. We turn out. The appreciators turn out, and people's needs are met, in all the ways the central plaza promenade and market work for communities around the world. She brought us that and it was exactly what we all wanted, and thank goodness our town took that and ran with it, and continues to.

You can see how many ways that could have happened differently. The quirks of Eugene and surrounding areas are directly from all of the little self-expressions that we feel free to bring out here. It's warmth and life and makes for a lively downtown and an ever-expanding universe of love and peace. We are way more than a Market. She was way more than a potter.

She gave away her heart, and last night many many pieces of her art were piled on a table and all of us politely pawed through them and took a few home to love. They have a life of their own, mostly quick studies, paintings, not all of them skillful, not all of them finished or polished or frameable or even important. What was important was the giving. What was important was the sharing. May we all remember what generosity really is.

May we never cease being inspired by Lotte. I will hold her dear. I will carry her forward as hard as I can. I will fight using the tools she used, write using her words, draw from her inspirations. I miss her so much. And next time I get the chance, I will put Lotte in the center of the table and try to channel what I think she might want said and done about our Market. I will need your help. Someday we will all depart, and the treasure we have been given is far too valuable to let fall.

I look through my kitchen window where I see the same birds Lotte saw, and drew, and shared with her grandchildren and children and us. I see the huge maple tree that I drew and printed on the tote bag I gave her, which one of her daughters is now using. I feel her loss and I know my gain.

Ahh life! So brief, so ephemeral, so full. Now I shall call my 91-year old mother, and treasure her as the other nonagenarian who made me. I feel so very lucky. And I'm glad it isn't sunny, because I need to be sad today. Plus, I feel some Jell-O Art coming through...maybe a tribute. Maybe just some playtime with art, in my kitchen, finished off with a carefully arranged exquisite snack on pottery with the fingerprints of people I love, maybe tuna salad without pepper, with whatever is in the kitchen that might look lovely with it. I will repeat her words: "Let's just see what happens!"