Quarter to four and no sleep for me. Grieving is weird, isn't it? It fills you, okay, it fills me, and I get bigger with it, but I can't shrink back to my normal, just because I want to and it's logical to. Logical remedies don't work on grief. It takes its course. I wait it out, suffer it more, or less, but still have to wait.
Most times I don't recognize it at first. I know I'm feeling something, pain, but I don't know it's grief. I usually have to write about it for awhile. Tease it out of myself, separate it from all the rest, the anger or sense of betrayal or injustice, make all my logical arguments about it, those stabs at it as if it were something I could defeat. Maybe I cry, but in frustration or woundedness, not really grief.
I set aside time for it, was planning to do it tomorrow, but no, it is here tonight. I'm a good sleeper and I rarely toss and turn. It's easy for me to read myself to sleep, if I have the right sort of fiction that pleases me and then lets me ease into closing my eyes. Then sometimes I get these nights. I didn't have the right sort of fiction. I picked up some James Baldwin from 1962, way wrong. I put it aside quickly but the mistake had been made. I tried to get back into The Feather Thief, which is engaging and fascinating, but no, didn't engage. Didn't fascinate.
A hug won't fix it, though I do wish I had a cat. A cat in my lap would help some. I can't talk this one out, it's mine to sit with, it's mine to let run and then be released from, eventually. I expect to be released, for a time anyway, but this one is going to last awhile, in cycles. I think a year or two, on and off, to be realistic. I can hope for a better scenario, but I'm kind of a practical person. I'm the age when people are leaving the physical realm, people I need, so that will layer in and make this worse. Is all aging grieving until you die? Maybe that's the kind of thing people are too kind to tell you.
I've been rehearsing for grief, since my Mom is 93 now, but I know I can't really do that. That one has the potential to devastate, particularly. We've been together so long. She's been finishing up her book, and her writing is really in the zone right now. She will next be writing specifically about grief, herself, about her grandmother's intense experience of losing a child in a blizzard and not finding him for months. And then being prevented from seeing his blackened, ruined body. Help me if I ever have to feel that kind, help us all if we do. We talk about it, as a writing exercise. I'm dedicated to helping her finish this book, helping her keep the momentum going until Johanna is released, figuratively and literally. It's exciting but fraught. She sent me two chapters this week, though, and there's just the blizzard to do, and then the after the blizzard. The waiting. She has a baby to nurse, then right when they find her son's body, she gets pregnant with my grandfather. Then the deciding to live. What a compelling story. Even more when you know it was real life, and it sits here in my genes.
I imagine it will be hard for Mom to even write it! To write deep into feelings like those takes you halfway in yourself, as you try to articulate it. You know you can't really, you'll be summarizing it at best, but you give it a good try and you have to draw on your own grief to do it. She's had some to draw on. We shared a bit of that, but it was 50 years ago now. Still, it's not hard to summon it. I can go there instantly, how I felt on the plane when I cried all the way back to Delaware, how confused I was for the next thirty years or so. Even though she didn't get to meet her grandmother, it was there in her family whenever anyone told the story, probably whenever it snowed. They lived in Johanna's dream house, with its big rooms built for parties and beer drinking. That grief was probably alive for a hundred years, is still. She's going to tap it. I feel like I could too, and I might, just for something to write about that isn't about me.
This grief tonight, it's a tough one. I have pushed it aside a lot. I am good at denial and I kept working hard at not framing it that way, but it's for sure grief. It's loss, for something I don't get to hold onto, something that really lives in me in particular and probably won't even be noticed outside of me. I brought it to life, because of the heart I have made in me, and I value it, but it has little value in the big world. I guess it comes out in service, so that's where it gets its external value. Service is useful, and it helps, helps me and the community. So I can forge my grief into more service, I suppose. Eventually. After I sit with it.
It's my job to keep it to myself, to hold it in an abstract place and not spread it around. I gave myself tomorrow to work on making that strong plan and working out how to stick to it. I know I don't make the rules of grief, though. My plan will be thin. It might take more than one day.
I have some good things coming up that will help diffuse this grief. I am going to get to recieve the grant, which is amazing and I will be proud and happy about that. I have Jell-O, which is just pure joy and we worked on our narrative the other night and it was pretty fun. But two, three, of our people were holding grief down, and I was feeling it. It was scaring me, but I kept it in then too. I was switching back and forth from one grief to another and it was in the midst of laughter and discovery as we unfolded our tale. I get to put that all in order tomorrow too. It is my special job to take all the brainstorming and make it make sense, an organizing task that really fits my creative skills I guess. I do love it.
Oh, that word love. Of course that is where all the grief comes from, since if we didn't love we wouldn't feel loss. I watched the Mr. Rogers movie tonight, Won't You Be My Neighbor. What a tender soul. What a powerful soul. There was a part at the end that I should watch again, as I kind of missed it in trying to process my grief, which he was pulling out of me with Daniel Tiger. His wife was saying that right before he went into the coma before he died, he asked her if he was a lamb. I think he was asking if he was easy to love, since everyone finds lambs easy to love, right? And she told him yes, of course he was, and then he passed into death. Am I a lamb? Mr. Rogers says yes.
I was telling myself yes at that point, my process having moved into affirmations and reassurance. I hadn't recognized my grief yet, I was just processing feeling wounded. I hadn't looked out at the bigger picture and the denial and all that. I was just in today, but what made me not sleep was trying to look at the whole of life, with yesterday and tomorrow and what will happen and what seems like it will happen and what is the best that could happen which is the work for tomorrow.
But I tried to put myself to bed and I miss Mr. Rogers, and my other loves, big and small, and I do want to get to tomorrow and the deciding about what is the best that could happen. It helped to write this, it helped to cry through Mr. Rogers' movie, and it will help to sleep and wake up and have a new day, foggy or maybe fine. Maybe the kind of day to spend pruning the apple tree and not falling down to break a heel this time. Maybe the day to work on the Jell-O Show narrative and feel that joy. Maybe the day to feel like a spring lamb and gambol a bit, feel the lifting of the grief with the benevolence of daphne and witch hazel. That could be a possible scenario I suppose.
I'll try sleep again. It's almost five, and look at all I have accomplished already today. Love you.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Art in Our City: Support it!
This podcast was fascinating to me, hit me on so many levels. I didn't want to over-comment on their post, but this is something all of the people in my art circle should give some time to listening to. There's a lot here.
The City of Eugene is collaborating with a lot of artists, and this Art City group is still somewhat mysterious and yet, powerful. The podcast is produced by Eugene Contemporary Art, and if you are one of those hermit crafters like I am, you might have missed this stuff. Their events and those of the City in the last year, in particular, have been stunning and super successful (the murals are an easy one to see that in) and yet it seems to me, Saturday Market has not figured out how to align warmly here. But we need to.
We use the same space, often, as the Park Blocks are a great place for some of their events. They often happened on Friday nights, and all we at Market often knew about them was the scraps of fabric left over (which I delightfully collected) or the blue tape left on the concrete (which I helpfully removed). We have the harsh habit of having to go to bed early on Fridays, because our Saturdays take so much energy and are so much of a focus for us. But next time you see "Art City" go to whatever they are doing and at minimum, appreciate it. This is building on our work and enhancing our art lives in our City, and it deserves every ounce of our support. And anything Cultural Services puts on, in my experience, will include people you know and it will be free, and those people are getting burned out on working so hard to be taken for granted. They wore banana costumes! That's just a metaphor.
I am not an academic, though when I lived briefly in the Lower East Side of NYC I took a calligraphy class at the Art Students League and an Art History class at (what was it? This was in 1973) New College or something. I am a self-taught artist who has done it my whole life, maybe to spite my first grade teacher who really shut me down. I learned calligraphy, sign-painting, screenprinting, writing, drawing, all of those things by doing them. It doesn't make me a fine artist or a conceptual artist but I have mastered a lot and at one point, finally decided I could be capital-A Artist.
It was Jell-O Art that got me there. That is my fine art, and as it is an anti-art, it's pretty high level for someone who is usually defined as a lowly crafter. I hope we have learned to appreciate the craft/art spectrum rather than continuing any division. I know my tote bags don't lie in the same position on the spectrum as the exquisite ceramic work and jewelry work, or paintings that I've seen, but that isn't very significant in old age. I've made my living as an artist for more than 45 years, and in the process, strengthened my skills in writing, teaching, fabric arts, paper arts, and everything that came across my path. I won't be retiring and I hope I won't stop learning new ways to express myself and my world.
I started writing this before even hearing the end of their blog, but they said that some of the things people can do are to seek support, and have something to offer. Bring something with you and offer it up. Find ways to elevate all artists and broaden the public appreciation and comfort with art, from that on the conceptual edges to that of the everyday. Artists have far more in common than we think. We all are basically problem-solvers. Help solve this problem, and promote each other. This is easy.
We are at a time in our city when big things are happening, my generation is aging and disappearing, and younger artists and crafters are going to be the ones who carry on. Lotte left us. With that, I took on the task of bringing her legacy forward. She helped so many artists, not just with co-creating the Market, but by her arts administration and shows and collaborations. She gave us our roots, and allowed us to hold space for artists in Eugene for 50 years! This is the gift that never has to stop giving. You may have noticed more fine artists coming to the Market, but when I look back at our posters, I see that we have always had a large spectrum of our own in our 600-person membership. We balance that with our entry-level business incubator, which has also been an essential part of our mission, because sometimes it takes awhile to get people to notice you and understand what you are actually making and offering. Not everyone enjoys the full day of retail and the ways available to market your work and enlarge your network through the Market. It's one way, but it's not an easy way, and support can be marginal. I know I had to stop bringing my Jell-O Art because it got all the limited space in the customers' attention and didn't sell, also preventing me from selling the things that did sell. Everyone has to find their balance. Sometimes it is too hard to wait out those zero days and days when you pay all your money in fees and nobody even gives you a be-back, much less the kinds of appreciation you seek. They asked in the podcast, who validates your work? Ultimately, the only one who matters is you, but of course, you're trying to make a living. They suggested finding doctors and other professionals who can afford to support art, and you know, those people shop at our Market, and the Farmers' Market, and they do buy those $1000 dollar pieces and ask for commissioned works. I know my range of sales includes both zero days and $900 days, so things happen you might not expect. You do have to be there for that to happen.
Making art with the goal of selling it is part of what we all have to do, even if it isn't the best part. To be successful at Market, you sometimes have to change your work to respond to what people do want to pay for. It's a tricky walk with pricing and making production work as well as the stuff your heart and soul are really invested in, but lots of people walk that slackrope and get it rolling waves to a stable platform. It does take some personality adjustment sometimes. And it's ultimately a lot easier for many to sell online or get work into galleries where they don't have to put in that weekly 12-hour day and give up their weekend nights. I found ways to make it work, but had to walk away from a lot of them. I don't sell t-shirts anymore, though I heard in the podcast (maybe with a little tongue-in-cheek humor) that making t-shirts is a proven path to success. Yes, it is, I can agree. It's very fun, as well.
In my case, what has apparently emerged from my work is that I am offering a big part of my soul at the Market, and that's what people seem to really want from me. My witty shirts of the past, my baseball caps, and the occasional vestige of Jell-O Art have been fun for people and made them brave enough to get close to me and the Saturday Market community. It seems that we have the reputation as a group, of being somewhat insular and not easy to feel a part of, which seems counter-intuitive to me but probably just because I have been there so long all I see is open doors and not any that are closed.
I'm seeing this open door into the heart of Eugene right now, and I want my readers to walk up and knock on it. We have a Cultural Arts Department that is over the top enthusiastic and hard-working, and they are a huge part of why we had a good Park Blocks season this year. The City is supporting the Markets so hard right now! It will be up to those of us who can be skeptical to see the real efforts of what has been done to strengthen the richness of the cultural life of our city, and to just shut our mouths if we hear ourselves beginning to complain. Think all the murals should have been painted by locals? Come on. There would not be as many of them, and what a fantastic gift this has been to our dullish exterior! Think there should be more galleries and places to experience art? Do you go to the ones we have? Start there.
If you just want to take a couple of steps that won't hurt, go support Art Bingo on Feb, 10th at Sam Bond's Brewery. Sit with us and have some laughs and go home with some incredible prize or other. You get to choose your own from the table, which might be the best part. And there are three winners per game, and the last game goes "blackout" until everyone wins. It's an easy immersion. And there's beer. And tom and Sue Hunnel!
And you are lucky again this year because the Jell-O Art Show is on March 30th, which is not Opening Day of Saturday Market (that's April 6th). It's a 3-hour show, there's a Tacky Food Buffet, and you really do not know what you will see there. We've had performance art, and what might be conceptual art and contemporary art, but it's ephermeral and anyway I'm no expert on these things. I just know what I love.
The main thing I love about the Jell-O Art Show is that the whole point of it is, that because a ridiculously uncooperative medium was chosen, the first thing we tossed in the bin was a critical structure. There's no bad Jell-O Art, because we don't judge. We have little kids and nonagenarians and occasionally a fine artist in disguise, or sometimes not even in disguise, but we make art and we put it up on pedestals, and for one short evening we celebrate art for it's own sake. No prices on it, no credentials, but sometimes there is an artist's statement and always there is a witty, clever show that a bunch of amateur but enthusiastic performers (yes, we include professional performers if they want to be in it) put out there for your delight. This will be the 31st time. If you haven't gone, stop by. The Radar Angels are a fun group that is an essential part of Eugene's quirk.
So, to circle back a little, how I got my capital A? I was working at my son's school as a volunteer, helping the artists in residence like Paul Otte, and running little workshops and classes, and I offered some mentorship opportunities as a parent. One kid took me up on being mentored in Jell-O Art and while preparing a curriculum for it, I stopped to listen to myself. The first thing I wanted to teach him about was the creative process. I stopped and asked myself, wait, if I have a creative process, isn't that what actually makes me an artist, instead of just someone who makes things at random? Think about all the steps of that, how you get the spark, explore the possibilities, research, play with media, learn techniques, have results, reject those results and go farther, all of that. Isn't that it?
I could tell I was a Jell-O Artist. I jumped off the diving board there, feet first. I no longer beat myself up for not having a degree or reading enough art magazines or being able to draw people's faces with any skill. I might not be an Artist in your eyes, but I am in my life, and at 68, I can feel that this is more than enough.
So now my job is to give it away some more, bolster what is happening and can happen outside my home, strengthen the connections we have and make as many new ones as I can. We all need more neurons working in pleasureable pathways in our little brains. Open it up. Hold someone else up too. It will be a lot more fun than, say, watching the Grammys on Feb. 10th. And listen to some podcasts. I have to go back now and listen to episode one. I might learn something! At minimum, I will feel a spark. And that's what I really want. Pure energy. Thank you!
The City of Eugene is collaborating with a lot of artists, and this Art City group is still somewhat mysterious and yet, powerful. The podcast is produced by Eugene Contemporary Art, and if you are one of those hermit crafters like I am, you might have missed this stuff. Their events and those of the City in the last year, in particular, have been stunning and super successful (the murals are an easy one to see that in) and yet it seems to me, Saturday Market has not figured out how to align warmly here. But we need to.
We use the same space, often, as the Park Blocks are a great place for some of their events. They often happened on Friday nights, and all we at Market often knew about them was the scraps of fabric left over (which I delightfully collected) or the blue tape left on the concrete (which I helpfully removed). We have the harsh habit of having to go to bed early on Fridays, because our Saturdays take so much energy and are so much of a focus for us. But next time you see "Art City" go to whatever they are doing and at minimum, appreciate it. This is building on our work and enhancing our art lives in our City, and it deserves every ounce of our support. And anything Cultural Services puts on, in my experience, will include people you know and it will be free, and those people are getting burned out on working so hard to be taken for granted. They wore banana costumes! That's just a metaphor.
I am not an academic, though when I lived briefly in the Lower East Side of NYC I took a calligraphy class at the Art Students League and an Art History class at (what was it? This was in 1973) New College or something. I am a self-taught artist who has done it my whole life, maybe to spite my first grade teacher who really shut me down. I learned calligraphy, sign-painting, screenprinting, writing, drawing, all of those things by doing them. It doesn't make me a fine artist or a conceptual artist but I have mastered a lot and at one point, finally decided I could be capital-A Artist.
It was Jell-O Art that got me there. That is my fine art, and as it is an anti-art, it's pretty high level for someone who is usually defined as a lowly crafter. I hope we have learned to appreciate the craft/art spectrum rather than continuing any division. I know my tote bags don't lie in the same position on the spectrum as the exquisite ceramic work and jewelry work, or paintings that I've seen, but that isn't very significant in old age. I've made my living as an artist for more than 45 years, and in the process, strengthened my skills in writing, teaching, fabric arts, paper arts, and everything that came across my path. I won't be retiring and I hope I won't stop learning new ways to express myself and my world.
I started writing this before even hearing the end of their blog, but they said that some of the things people can do are to seek support, and have something to offer. Bring something with you and offer it up. Find ways to elevate all artists and broaden the public appreciation and comfort with art, from that on the conceptual edges to that of the everyday. Artists have far more in common than we think. We all are basically problem-solvers. Help solve this problem, and promote each other. This is easy.
We are at a time in our city when big things are happening, my generation is aging and disappearing, and younger artists and crafters are going to be the ones who carry on. Lotte left us. With that, I took on the task of bringing her legacy forward. She helped so many artists, not just with co-creating the Market, but by her arts administration and shows and collaborations. She gave us our roots, and allowed us to hold space for artists in Eugene for 50 years! This is the gift that never has to stop giving. You may have noticed more fine artists coming to the Market, but when I look back at our posters, I see that we have always had a large spectrum of our own in our 600-person membership. We balance that with our entry-level business incubator, which has also been an essential part of our mission, because sometimes it takes awhile to get people to notice you and understand what you are actually making and offering. Not everyone enjoys the full day of retail and the ways available to market your work and enlarge your network through the Market. It's one way, but it's not an easy way, and support can be marginal. I know I had to stop bringing my Jell-O Art because it got all the limited space in the customers' attention and didn't sell, also preventing me from selling the things that did sell. Everyone has to find their balance. Sometimes it is too hard to wait out those zero days and days when you pay all your money in fees and nobody even gives you a be-back, much less the kinds of appreciation you seek. They asked in the podcast, who validates your work? Ultimately, the only one who matters is you, but of course, you're trying to make a living. They suggested finding doctors and other professionals who can afford to support art, and you know, those people shop at our Market, and the Farmers' Market, and they do buy those $1000 dollar pieces and ask for commissioned works. I know my range of sales includes both zero days and $900 days, so things happen you might not expect. You do have to be there for that to happen.
Making art with the goal of selling it is part of what we all have to do, even if it isn't the best part. To be successful at Market, you sometimes have to change your work to respond to what people do want to pay for. It's a tricky walk with pricing and making production work as well as the stuff your heart and soul are really invested in, but lots of people walk that slackrope and get it rolling waves to a stable platform. It does take some personality adjustment sometimes. And it's ultimately a lot easier for many to sell online or get work into galleries where they don't have to put in that weekly 12-hour day and give up their weekend nights. I found ways to make it work, but had to walk away from a lot of them. I don't sell t-shirts anymore, though I heard in the podcast (maybe with a little tongue-in-cheek humor) that making t-shirts is a proven path to success. Yes, it is, I can agree. It's very fun, as well.
In my case, what has apparently emerged from my work is that I am offering a big part of my soul at the Market, and that's what people seem to really want from me. My witty shirts of the past, my baseball caps, and the occasional vestige of Jell-O Art have been fun for people and made them brave enough to get close to me and the Saturday Market community. It seems that we have the reputation as a group, of being somewhat insular and not easy to feel a part of, which seems counter-intuitive to me but probably just because I have been there so long all I see is open doors and not any that are closed.
I'm seeing this open door into the heart of Eugene right now, and I want my readers to walk up and knock on it. We have a Cultural Arts Department that is over the top enthusiastic and hard-working, and they are a huge part of why we had a good Park Blocks season this year. The City is supporting the Markets so hard right now! It will be up to those of us who can be skeptical to see the real efforts of what has been done to strengthen the richness of the cultural life of our city, and to just shut our mouths if we hear ourselves beginning to complain. Think all the murals should have been painted by locals? Come on. There would not be as many of them, and what a fantastic gift this has been to our dullish exterior! Think there should be more galleries and places to experience art? Do you go to the ones we have? Start there.
If you just want to take a couple of steps that won't hurt, go support Art Bingo on Feb, 10th at Sam Bond's Brewery. Sit with us and have some laughs and go home with some incredible prize or other. You get to choose your own from the table, which might be the best part. And there are three winners per game, and the last game goes "blackout" until everyone wins. It's an easy immersion. And there's beer. And tom and Sue Hunnel!
And you are lucky again this year because the Jell-O Art Show is on March 30th, which is not Opening Day of Saturday Market (that's April 6th). It's a 3-hour show, there's a Tacky Food Buffet, and you really do not know what you will see there. We've had performance art, and what might be conceptual art and contemporary art, but it's ephermeral and anyway I'm no expert on these things. I just know what I love.
The main thing I love about the Jell-O Art Show is that the whole point of it is, that because a ridiculously uncooperative medium was chosen, the first thing we tossed in the bin was a critical structure. There's no bad Jell-O Art, because we don't judge. We have little kids and nonagenarians and occasionally a fine artist in disguise, or sometimes not even in disguise, but we make art and we put it up on pedestals, and for one short evening we celebrate art for it's own sake. No prices on it, no credentials, but sometimes there is an artist's statement and always there is a witty, clever show that a bunch of amateur but enthusiastic performers (yes, we include professional performers if they want to be in it) put out there for your delight. This will be the 31st time. If you haven't gone, stop by. The Radar Angels are a fun group that is an essential part of Eugene's quirk.
So, to circle back a little, how I got my capital A? I was working at my son's school as a volunteer, helping the artists in residence like Paul Otte, and running little workshops and classes, and I offered some mentorship opportunities as a parent. One kid took me up on being mentored in Jell-O Art and while preparing a curriculum for it, I stopped to listen to myself. The first thing I wanted to teach him about was the creative process. I stopped and asked myself, wait, if I have a creative process, isn't that what actually makes me an artist, instead of just someone who makes things at random? Think about all the steps of that, how you get the spark, explore the possibilities, research, play with media, learn techniques, have results, reject those results and go farther, all of that. Isn't that it?
I could tell I was a Jell-O Artist. I jumped off the diving board there, feet first. I no longer beat myself up for not having a degree or reading enough art magazines or being able to draw people's faces with any skill. I might not be an Artist in your eyes, but I am in my life, and at 68, I can feel that this is more than enough.
So now my job is to give it away some more, bolster what is happening and can happen outside my home, strengthen the connections we have and make as many new ones as I can. We all need more neurons working in pleasureable pathways in our little brains. Open it up. Hold someone else up too. It will be a lot more fun than, say, watching the Grammys on Feb. 10th. And listen to some podcasts. I have to go back now and listen to episode one. I might learn something! At minimum, I will feel a spark. And that's what I really want. Pure energy. Thank you!
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Day of Birth
I think my major concern was that I was kind of a selfish person, and at 39 I thought maybe that wouldn't change enough to allow me to be a good parent. I learned some new things about that selfishness that made it much less of a problem, one being that it could translate into focus and fierceness and those had their uses. I am finding now that being on the obsessional side of commitment makes me dependable and powerful. I do my homework! I remember that while siting and nursing I would completely plan the next interval of my day, week, or however far ahead of myself I could get (sometimes an hour, as I remember) and I was never so organized. Had to do it without making a list, so I could still gaze lovingly at my baby and at least try to convince him that all our needs would be met.
And I am an A student, still, as I was in school. For whatever reasons (not all functionally postive I suppose) I want to do a good job and although the energy levels of being 68 have eroded some of that possibility, I have had to be organized and learn how to prioritize and compartmentalize and those skills have been essential. The whole time I was raising him I was running what was once a large business, then a sole-proprietorship, and also re-building a house that turned 100 in 2016. And mostly selling at Market, though I admit I left the governance to others during that time. I was still paying attention, but there were plenty of volunteers and the days of Bill and Beth were good ones. Good as they always are, if a bit of a thrill ride at times.
I came back to volunteering in 2007 or so when my son was out of school and I could drop my 4J jobs and volunteering there. Since he was my priority then, I worked more at his school than at the Market. Still did the Fair, still did the HM, but had to do things like tear out lath and plaster on the weekends. Those were some days. You generally get a lot done in your 40's, if I am typical.
I'm doing a task right now that is confidential and because of that, kind of isolating at this point. It's homework, though, and I have dug in and made my outlines and study questions and I think my process is fairly sound. I had not expected to do this task and it has brought some sleepless nights but overall I believe I may just be the perfect person to have in this particular room, so that's the good part. It's only one corner of a much bigger picture, so I'm channeling Vi with her patiently repeated "All Will Be Well" and "Things are Unfolding As They Should," and just keeping myself applied to the tasks. I wish I could discuss it.
I don't know how people live who have to keep a lot of secrets and discretion in their lives. This is an evolving skill set for me. I got the base stuff as a child about how to be polite and know when to use the less-than-complete truth and through further study began to get a handle on how to not make everything about me, but I am used to being able to do a lot of processing of emotions and I have spent a long time journaling this week. In the scenario that someone will want to research and document my life at some point (which is not a real scenario, it's that of some kind of fabulist) this will be a rich volume of my journal collection. In the reality we are actually living in, this journal will be one of the first that will have to go into the burn barrel.
No one is going to want to read page after page of "(Date, day of week:) Mood: Anxious." If I don't start out with it I soon get to it. I took some time off yesterday to clean house and ended up working on the archives (I'm archiving 50 years of the Saturday Market, if I haven't mentioned that.) and that was pretty fun, as it always is when I dive into those newsletters and minutes books. it helped lessen the anxiety somewhat and provided some perspective. Fifty years. Starting in 1970, when I was 20. I have an essay in mind about the parallels.
Our history is rich, and surprising, but I am not sure how much I will be able to actually tell. Archie Weinstein is gone but Jerry Rust might have some corrections for me. Sometimes the newsletter contains a political analysis, in those early days, that is apt, radically honest, and not exactly complimentary to any of the principals. We had some firebrands, and some haven't changed much, but there is no narrative that completely captures the deep and site-based culture of our Market community. I will try to weave the narratives and display the nuanced and nubby fabric.
It's too early to publicly announce but you 22 readers can know that we got a little grant support for this archiving project, so I am fully committed now to this unpaid part-time job. The grant monies are not for me but for the project costs. I took on this job because I wanted it to be done by someone who is an A student and who does their homework, and while I am not the only one, I know I am dependable. Single motherhood proved that for sure. Building the house that is now filled with these archives, being a Market member and volunteer for 44 years, being a good daughter and sister: all of these huge accomplishments tell me I can do this.
I trust that other people will help me do these things with style and accuracy. I trust process, and I trust a large variety of people, who while undoubtedly are generally acting in their own self-interest, also have the wherewithal to see beyond that to the common good, to which I hope we are all dedicated.
Yeah, I feel guilty that I didn't march, but I can only take so much on at a time. This weekend is for study, sorting, planning, and figuring out where those pain points and plus points will be, so I can navigate 2019 and live up to these commitments.
And I didn't even get to talking about Jell-O Art yet. It's in progress. The only reason it isn't overwhelming is that it's pure fun and will be the comic relief to all the serious work I am and will be doing. Save the date: March 30th, from 5-8 pm. Our mode is to tune into the zeitgeist and come up with something just like Jell-O: melts in your hand and your mouth, ooozes all over your best dress, slides off the plate on the way to the table, and despite its perfectly magical clarity, brilliance and splendidly gorgeous colors, disappears almost immediately. And, it's anxiety-free.
Tuesday, January 8, 2019
Joyful Girl
I've been so discouraged by politics, but not my personal life, that I've been rather silent, but just keeping things to myself. I'm editing a book my Mom wrote about her grandmother, Johanna Hytrek, who homesteaded in a soddy in Nebraska. The line of joy from Johanna to Mom to me is strong...and though Mom didn't know her grandmother, this book is her way of showing that really, she did.
Today in the book it is Christmas, and on my way to looking up the spelling of crèche I checked into FB and after several posts about how we will be rearranging our underwear drawers instead of watching TV at 6:00, I found the Resistance Revival Chorus singing with Ani DeFranco in celebration of what happened in those midterms. Those midterms! How they did revive us.
I'm eating mashed potatoes, plain, no butter, since I can't eat butter now or milk or cream either, and sometimes it feels like I live in a soddy in the sand hills surrounded by the endless prairie, and all that matters is a Meadowlark and the lilies that live across the road in the ditch. I know my Mom had some lonely times as a joyful girl in those prairies, and has a few now too in her old people's home where she will be turning 93 in a couple of weeks. Working on her book is overwhelming joy for me.
She's a good writer, Rita. She worked on this book for years and years and workshopped it with insensitive old men and lovely old women, some of whom could relate and some of whom could not. Rita walked miles to the one-room school in the snow and had a lot of brothers and sisters but still, had lonely times, as most kids do. She felt like the black sheep sometimes and I was always the one in our family who looked most like her, with our widow's peaks and low foreheads and dark curly hair and cowlicks. Rita has always been my role model and my supporter and we've weathered a few things together and apart. She says I am the only one who cares if the book gets finished but I know she cares and her joy will spread to everyone when we get this done.
So I'm loving spending my winter week taking out the extra spaces in her sentences and correcting the very occasional typo and trying to decide if Johanna, who was from Obrowiec, Poland, would spell creche with the accent or not. Turns out it is a French word, but Johanna was Catholic and I have no idea if she would use the accent. I finally decided that Mom didn't use it so that's the decision right there.
I'm hardly correcting anything in this manuscript. Once in a while I will change a sentence that could be better if it didn't start with But or And, but it isn't really my job to change Mom's style at all, just to finish the book. Just get the book into print. I'm almost ready to do that, though I got a wonderful idea the other day. I had one of those flash realizations that I could do some drawings for it...don't tell Mom, as it's her birthday surprise. I drew a Meadowlark and the lilies, and am working on some of the other plants that Lewis and Clark found in that part of the prairie, and ones that Mom mentioned in her writing, though I will have to guess what the slippery grass was. The sand hills part of Nebraska was both long and short-grass prairie and there are lots of photos to reference on the internet and in library books.
It's not intuitive at first to realize that there are parts of the land back there that are still natural prairie grass and native plants. On those homesteads, there are lands that haven't been plowed, that maybe haven't even been grazed. I'm still learning that when they got there, they didn't plant alfalfa or anything...they used the natural pasture, not only for their cows, but they twisted up the grasses and used them for fuel. There were no trees where they were, except willows in the creek beds and later, the cottonwoods they planted on their tree claims because they grew fast. There were shrubs, like chokecherry and wild rose, and you can bet they gathered whatever fruits they could find, but mostly they had to coax whatever they could out of that deep rich soil after they took out all the roots and grass and only harvested if it rained properly and didn't hail and lots of other things went right. They burned hay twists, buffalo chips (dried flops) and later, when they had them, corn cobs. After they got some ducks, geese, and chickens, they had feathers for quilts. Before that, they were cold. The soddies were kind of warm though, with walls three feet thick. You still had to go outside to pee, of course, and feed your animals and milk your cow. Once you got one.
Johanna and Gregor arrived in 1886, which wasn't that early, but where they were it was just about the right time because there was a train to Atkinson, about 40 miles away from their smaller town, Stuart, and they had some neighbors (mostly relatives of theirs) and some opportunities to buy land and lumber and things that greatly helped. But they built those first houses from big chunks of sod, whitewashed them inside, spread clay on the floor, and put in a couple of windows and a door. The roofs leaked, there were critters dropping down on them, and they built frame houses as soon as they could, but they really did start in the dirt there and built their wealth the hard way.
Those families were mostly short, powerful people who could sing well and who didn't chatter much. They worked hard and took what came. Johanna lost her 9-year old oldest son in the Blizzard of 1888, just the second winter after she arrived there. That's the part Mom is writing right now, the great loss that defined the rest of their lives. They didn't find Romanic until March, after two months of deep grief. Snow in Nebraska in those days was nothing to play in. Blizzards literally took your breath from your lungs and no one could go out to save you without perishing themselves, so there was a lot of torture in that experience, and Johanna was nursing Uncle Stencil at the time, who had been born in November. January 12th was the date of the blizzard. My own grandfather, John Paul Hytrek, was born the next year. Johanna kept living.
Here she is, surrounded by flowers, when her asthma had gotten so bad she had to live in town. She died at only 69, in 1921. She was 34 when she lost her son.He wasn't the only child lost to these pioneers, these settlers. These immigrants. That wasn't their only sorrow.
Mom says they all thought that the Poncas who lived in Niobrara had been duly compensated for their grasslands and that the buffalo had been harvested for their robes, and it's highly likely that none of them thought much about why there was free land for the proving-up. All they knew was that they were earning it for their families, at the request and the benevolence of the freedom-loving American government, and we all know the mythos and perversions of all that.
I recently finished the book The Bone and Sinew of the Land which was about free black americans who tried to settle in the frontier of the time, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, where the earlier part of the 19th century was acted out in all of its horror and injustice. That frontier story was much less romantic than the one of my Polish ancestors, much less joyful, and way, way harder. One of them was even named Free Frank McWhorter, a different bookend to my family shelf, whom I suppose, was at least related to someone who was at one time, property of one of my white McWhorter ancestors, or someone from our clan. Almost no one in today's world has a history that is fully separate from the injustices of the American past, in America, anyway. And the Poncas had no choices, like the people we're going to be lied to about tonight, have no choices. Their suffering was generational, everlasting, yet they'll find joy. We will only find it if we ground ourselves in reality, as they likely have had to do too.
The thread that ran through all these stories, we know now, was about how ugly, selfish, and grasping some men could be. Nothing's changed there but the victims and the details of the horrors. What an easy story, to be battling snow and drought, in comparison to murder and theft and brutality. What a do-able life, to get over family tragedy and know that things would improve, that strength could be found and abundance would increase. Most of us do have do-able lives, here in the land of our privilege.
Sorrow and joy, birds and flowers, potatoes and wild rose hip tea. Can we keep this world? Can we slow down the destruction, right the insane wrongs of our present reality? I will certainly try. I realized this year I've been doing the Market and Holiday Market for ten years now, without the use of fossil fuels. Not perfectly, as I had some help there when I broke my foot and had to be driven in vans and such, and I suppose there are some compromises made in the climate footprint of bikes and tires and Rubbermaid tubs and zipties and all the details I still have to improve upon. And I'm 69 this year, the age Johanna was when her trials ended.
I'm still in pretty good shape, though, and probably not being able to eat cheese and butter is going to help me in the long run. I enjoyed those potatoes immensely, good creamy Yukon Golds grown by my farmer friend on his clean Yoncalla land, with his cippolinis and my own homegrown garlic. Little joys can go a long way. Maybe I'll dig some cherries out of the freezer while I watch Henry Louis Gates tell some more people their ancestors were slave owners or slaves, or worse, kings and queens. I'll just keep the TV off until Jeopardy comes on. There's always joy in Jeopardy, watching ordinary, good smart people do their best. No one is ever mean or nasty on Jeopardy.
Rita Louise Hytrek, maybe 17?
Today in the book it is Christmas, and on my way to looking up the spelling of crèche I checked into FB and after several posts about how we will be rearranging our underwear drawers instead of watching TV at 6:00, I found the Resistance Revival Chorus singing with Ani DeFranco in celebration of what happened in those midterms. Those midterms! How they did revive us.
I'm eating mashed potatoes, plain, no butter, since I can't eat butter now or milk or cream either, and sometimes it feels like I live in a soddy in the sand hills surrounded by the endless prairie, and all that matters is a Meadowlark and the lilies that live across the road in the ditch. I know my Mom had some lonely times as a joyful girl in those prairies, and has a few now too in her old people's home where she will be turning 93 in a couple of weeks. Working on her book is overwhelming joy for me.
She's a good writer, Rita. She worked on this book for years and years and workshopped it with insensitive old men and lovely old women, some of whom could relate and some of whom could not. Rita walked miles to the one-room school in the snow and had a lot of brothers and sisters but still, had lonely times, as most kids do. She felt like the black sheep sometimes and I was always the one in our family who looked most like her, with our widow's peaks and low foreheads and dark curly hair and cowlicks. Rita has always been my role model and my supporter and we've weathered a few things together and apart. She says I am the only one who cares if the book gets finished but I know she cares and her joy will spread to everyone when we get this done.
So I'm loving spending my winter week taking out the extra spaces in her sentences and correcting the very occasional typo and trying to decide if Johanna, who was from Obrowiec, Poland, would spell creche with the accent or not. Turns out it is a French word, but Johanna was Catholic and I have no idea if she would use the accent. I finally decided that Mom didn't use it so that's the decision right there.
I'm hardly correcting anything in this manuscript. Once in a while I will change a sentence that could be better if it didn't start with But or And, but it isn't really my job to change Mom's style at all, just to finish the book. Just get the book into print. I'm almost ready to do that, though I got a wonderful idea the other day. I had one of those flash realizations that I could do some drawings for it...don't tell Mom, as it's her birthday surprise. I drew a Meadowlark and the lilies, and am working on some of the other plants that Lewis and Clark found in that part of the prairie, and ones that Mom mentioned in her writing, though I will have to guess what the slippery grass was. The sand hills part of Nebraska was both long and short-grass prairie and there are lots of photos to reference on the internet and in library books.
It's not intuitive at first to realize that there are parts of the land back there that are still natural prairie grass and native plants. On those homesteads, there are lands that haven't been plowed, that maybe haven't even been grazed. I'm still learning that when they got there, they didn't plant alfalfa or anything...they used the natural pasture, not only for their cows, but they twisted up the grasses and used them for fuel. There were no trees where they were, except willows in the creek beds and later, the cottonwoods they planted on their tree claims because they grew fast. There were shrubs, like chokecherry and wild rose, and you can bet they gathered whatever fruits they could find, but mostly they had to coax whatever they could out of that deep rich soil after they took out all the roots and grass and only harvested if it rained properly and didn't hail and lots of other things went right. They burned hay twists, buffalo chips (dried flops) and later, when they had them, corn cobs. After they got some ducks, geese, and chickens, they had feathers for quilts. Before that, they were cold. The soddies were kind of warm though, with walls three feet thick. You still had to go outside to pee, of course, and feed your animals and milk your cow. Once you got one.
Johanna and Gregor arrived in 1886, which wasn't that early, but where they were it was just about the right time because there was a train to Atkinson, about 40 miles away from their smaller town, Stuart, and they had some neighbors (mostly relatives of theirs) and some opportunities to buy land and lumber and things that greatly helped. But they built those first houses from big chunks of sod, whitewashed them inside, spread clay on the floor, and put in a couple of windows and a door. The roofs leaked, there were critters dropping down on them, and they built frame houses as soon as they could, but they really did start in the dirt there and built their wealth the hard way.
Those families were mostly short, powerful people who could sing well and who didn't chatter much. They worked hard and took what came. Johanna lost her 9-year old oldest son in the Blizzard of 1888, just the second winter after she arrived there. That's the part Mom is writing right now, the great loss that defined the rest of their lives. They didn't find Romanic until March, after two months of deep grief. Snow in Nebraska in those days was nothing to play in. Blizzards literally took your breath from your lungs and no one could go out to save you without perishing themselves, so there was a lot of torture in that experience, and Johanna was nursing Uncle Stencil at the time, who had been born in November. January 12th was the date of the blizzard. My own grandfather, John Paul Hytrek, was born the next year. Johanna kept living.
Here she is, surrounded by flowers, when her asthma had gotten so bad she had to live in town. She died at only 69, in 1921. She was 34 when she lost her son.He wasn't the only child lost to these pioneers, these settlers. These immigrants. That wasn't their only sorrow.
I recently finished the book The Bone and Sinew of the Land which was about free black americans who tried to settle in the frontier of the time, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, where the earlier part of the 19th century was acted out in all of its horror and injustice. That frontier story was much less romantic than the one of my Polish ancestors, much less joyful, and way, way harder. One of them was even named Free Frank McWhorter, a different bookend to my family shelf, whom I suppose, was at least related to someone who was at one time, property of one of my white McWhorter ancestors, or someone from our clan. Almost no one in today's world has a history that is fully separate from the injustices of the American past, in America, anyway. And the Poncas had no choices, like the people we're going to be lied to about tonight, have no choices. Their suffering was generational, everlasting, yet they'll find joy. We will only find it if we ground ourselves in reality, as they likely have had to do too.
The thread that ran through all these stories, we know now, was about how ugly, selfish, and grasping some men could be. Nothing's changed there but the victims and the details of the horrors. What an easy story, to be battling snow and drought, in comparison to murder and theft and brutality. What a do-able life, to get over family tragedy and know that things would improve, that strength could be found and abundance would increase. Most of us do have do-able lives, here in the land of our privilege.
Sorrow and joy, birds and flowers, potatoes and wild rose hip tea. Can we keep this world? Can we slow down the destruction, right the insane wrongs of our present reality? I will certainly try. I realized this year I've been doing the Market and Holiday Market for ten years now, without the use of fossil fuels. Not perfectly, as I had some help there when I broke my foot and had to be driven in vans and such, and I suppose there are some compromises made in the climate footprint of bikes and tires and Rubbermaid tubs and zipties and all the details I still have to improve upon. And I'm 69 this year, the age Johanna was when her trials ended.
Rita Louise Hytrek, maybe 17?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)