One Week Home from What Was That?

The last time John wore his fairy wings.

I feel wiped clean. All of the anxiety and stress of the pre-Fair is gone, almost all of the many cloth piles and rugs are washed and stowed away again, and I am beginning to restore my piles of work and archives and piles of things I need to do next.  I miss Fair. It went by fast and full of joy and work and I want some of it back. My favorite day was the rainy day when all I did was dump water off my tarps every hour or so, and proceed slowly to make sure nothing got wet. A few things did but I worked hard at it, slowly, and loved the pace. Setup was delayed a day but camping in the rain has a charm about it.

Summer is finally here for me, stretching out in its gentle way with plenty of heat and breeziness and quiet in the backyard. I dozed on the deck last night trying to read and just felt perfect.

Had to spend the day cleaning up the front yard, as I got a letter from the city telling me I had to. There was still some tree damage from the big snow I hadn't addressed so I cut some limbs, pruned everything, and had a huge bouquet of flowers from it which I put on my neighbor's back porch. She is rather desperately traveling back and forth to the hospital as she faces what might be her husband's final medical crisis, or not. She doesn't know. It's how those things go, rarely with certainty for a period of time and then with crushing certaintly as it all changes forever. I did her yard work and tried to comfort her. She must feel so lonely.

Fair did bring the renewal as we all paused all of our differences and arguments and had a huge event together. Through the exhaustion I observed all of the wild color and over-the-top creativity, dipping in as much as I could while mostly just trying to hang on and do my work. It is so much work, but at least I sold a lot of things so it was less to pack up. 

The 50th put so much pressure on it all but some diamonds did result. Radar Angels got some juice, a lot of participation and recognition, of which I only tasted a tiny bit. Had I known about the midnight show I might have attended, but I'm glad there is video. They worked hard for it and made a purple and gold splash. I dressed up for the Elders meet and greet and sadly missed something else I meant to attend, but it's so hard to focus on anything but the retail part that I forgive myself.

People probably don't realize how overwhelming it is to have all 59,000 people passing by the booth a few times apiece, and those are just the public attendees. I had to hide out in my room periodically and even took a nap one day. The demand hasn't ended. I have some printing to do today and will resume Tuesday Market tomorrow and still have to get out to the site and finish up the work I do when it's over, cleaning up and making sure we will survive the flood season.

Lane County Fair is also this week and I've signed up to table with the archives in the Historical Museum on Wednesday. I wish I had some more showy artifacts to share but we'll see what I can put together this afternoon. I hesitate to spread it all out in my living room again as I know it will never be put away until possibly next spring, but oh well. That's my living room, a workspace more than anything else.

The City and architects' teams had public presentation #2 on the Park Blocks last Thursday. We were all pretty prepared and kind of understand the public engagement system now but it was still hard to sort through all the possibilities. It's another place where there just aren't concrete answers yet and a lot of speculating is going on. The fact is that no one knows what will happen or when, but the trend seems to be to support the farmers' part of the project first, and to put off cutting down a lot of trees until people can be more prepared to deal with that. The maps showing our booth spaces, mostly still in place, served well to calm our members down and let us focus on other aspects of the plans...mostly on the parking, and the trees. While I understand the theory of making the park over to last for the next 50 years, there's no way I support cutting a lot of trees at once. No one will be able to use the park if it is too hot in the center...the cool shadiness is what people love about the southern park blocks. People who completely lose the shade on their spaces will likely want to move...if there are shady spaces left. Doing it in phases would allow much better adaptation. Everyone will miss the fountain. There isn't enough money for another water feature so that needs to be addressed. We need a fountain.

I feel like we as a Market had to teach the community and the teams a lot about our organization so they could understand our positions, and we did well with that, but there is still more learning to do. For our part we all have to learn more trust for the city and it's processes, as we still range all over the map on how we integrate the possible change. Even though I have been telling about this for two years I still talked with people on Saturday who were at step one..."does the city know how much we bring tourists to downtown?" Yes, you can be sure the city knows that. It was an interesting perspective shift for me, far down the road on details and knowing the people we are working with, to hear these step one comments. Reminded me how much work we have done.

I haven't written anything about Fair politics in a long time and enjoyed the breather of the event where those things were little discussed. Focusing on the fun and frippery was such a relief I hate to pick up the hard process work again but we will. I'm still behind on craft committee work and that's high on my list today too. There are things needing to be repaired, or put into place, and we'll have to get some energy for it together. I feel a little lull but it will soon be the first Monday of August and a Board meeting to watch.

City Council meets tonight, so I'll watch that. Downtown is in another safety crisis or the perception of it at least...and everything that happens downtown also happens to Market. We try hard to put on a safe and friendly event and we manage to do that, but troubled and angry people are still roaming about trying to get their needs met and I have to be a part of the solutions.

And national politics...what the fuck. It seems unbelievable that we are still in this place. It's so terrifying that we can't think about it, but that's part of their strategy and it's disheartening to see how well it is working. I'm still hopeful, but it seems impossible that we can continue like this. I can feel momentum. We all want to make it stick, but with the climate emergency on top of it all, I'm just devastated, like so many, that people are not rising to the challenges. I'm doing everything I can, I think. Maybe I can think of a few more things I can do.

See you around! A big thanks to all of my lovely customers and supporters who made my last few months so successful. I really appreciate all your appreciation. Be well.