An Early Christmas at Home

 I'm so relieved to be finished with retailing. Every Friday I would fight down my distress about going to Holiday Market, reminding myself how well people were wearing masks and respecting distance, and what a supportive community we live in. The shorter days of the HM were the best. It compressed the selling day into a more dense experience, so all we had to do was stay in the booth and sell things, with a little tidying up now and then. The weather was hard to believe. Over the five weeks, not one was rainy. Twice rain moved off until later in the day, and yesterday the rain did roll in at 4:00 so I got wet on the way home, but almost all of us were finished packing or could quickly wrap it up by the time the wind started gusting. No booths to blow over.

I moved to the front row spot so I could more easily use the pop-up but didn't bring it once...with the weights and all, I have to leave products home to accommodate the weight, so I gambled on the forecasts and that worked out for me. The masks were a huge hit. I felt good that they were different from what the other mask-sellers were offering, as I know I cut into their sales, but mine were late to the scene so I couldn't feel too guilty. Also no one else was offering dyed jersey with head straps, except tie-dye, and once people tried the head straps, they mostly liked them a lot better. The nose strips are also really sturdy on mine, which keeps them in place nicely. The only thing I don't like about them is that they do collect moisture so I had to change mine about every hour on the colder days, but I had plenty, so no problem for me.

I did notice the main drawback of the shorter day...what we lost were the slower hours at the end when we did all of our own shopping and our visiting. I ran off a few times but hardly had time for the farmers or anyone else, just essential errands and those quickly done. I was also exhausted the whole time and unable to properly respond to the many kind friends who brought me cookies and greetings and wanted to visit...it just wasn't possible. But of course that is always true at HM indoors too...it is rare to have the time for a satisfying visit. I'm considering sending some letters and cards once I catch up on reading and housework.

I'll have to go out briefly to pick up library books and deliver merch but aside from that, I plan to stay home hard. My stress level from putting myself at risk was constant, and even though it was low risk, and I had other motivations besides just selling my still vast inventory of crafts, it was still risk I would rather not take. I found myself assuming at times that I would get sick, and making contingency plans. I want to stay in the zone of having those plans in place but not using them. I do not want this disease. 

Though I am only 70 and have a great immune system, there's just too much still to do to even spend weeks feeling ill. I would rather stay home and gain 20 pounds. Which is possible...I really stocked up on tasty foods in the last few weeks. I have stacks of books. I want to organize and archive 2020 while it is still fresh...I doubt I saved enough of the news stories and relevant info to make a coherent narrative for anyone who didn't know what we were going through with the Market. And of course it is not over yet and we might want to look back at our early decisions and remember some of the reasons we stayed closed for ten weeks in what now doesn't look like such a risky period. I'm so glad we could end it and not have to push ourselves any farther. And I don't really know how to deal with archiving in the era of email...almost all of our Market interactions were electronically. I did print out and save some emails, but there's no way to capture all the social media posts and those were really the essence of our progress. Bless Vanessa's heart, she created a group photo from our individual photos (not all of us of course, but not everyone got into the HM family photo either) so we didn't lose that warm tradition. Plus we had a poster! A great effort by Daniel Conan Young to keep our art level high. We didn't lose a lot if you look at what we kept. We might have lost members...we'll find out in March.

So all is well, we made it through, and Market will revive in the spring sometime and might someday reach its former size and form. It will be interesting to see how things change permanently...it looks like shorter days have found approval finally. Some people have wanted to close at four for years, and some of the arguments against that aren't as powerful. One of them of course was me saying that those slower hours were our shopping and visiting times...but as we were physically more distanced, we may have emotionally distanced a bit as well. Those tight neighbor relationships are a little harder, and many of the neighbors didn't sell this season. Some who strengthened their online offerings won't feel the need to come back to the in-person sales. Some will retire and do other things. Some aspects of the gathering got a little random.

The loud amplified music on the corners will be hard to dislodge, even when we have our stage operating again. I suppose we can ask for enforcement of the noise ordinances but it won't be easy. Some of the music was great, and I was grateful, but yesterday it was super chaotic and I could barely tolerate it. Maybe we can turn the fountain back on so we can have that muffling influence. I know the perimeters have been problematic for years, not just this season. The farmers' project will be some construction noise and disruption, with some kind of move for the farmers, unknown yet as to when and where. I'll try not to worry about it. Maybe I'll have to go back to shopping at Tuesday Market.

Our community will likely not forget about buying locally, although the coming recession will hit harder and harder and some types of crafts won't sell well. It will be about values and relationships and the lessons we all learned this year: supporting the things you want to retain and the people you care about. Recessions and job loss often swell our membership and that might test us, particularly in the transition back to more crowded spaces, if that happens. So many unknowns about the pandemics...we could be finding way more illness in our collective future. And more climate-related problems, too...weather patterns, and fires. More things to put on the worry list and try not to think much about.

I'll need to find energy and passion. I had a sweet reminder of the passion last night as I sat down finally and Craft in America was on TV. I have been enthralled with watching these artisan profiles, with all that joy of being in the studio, making discoveries and working quietly with hands and heart to create beauty out of raw materials. I have a lot of art to explore still, something that I can really only do when the retailing doesn't dominate. I have a lot of writing to do too. 

Hooray, it is the off-season! May we all thrive in our splendid isolation and return from it healthy and peaceful. May we find warmth and the ability to help others, maybe even happiness in our abundance and the ability to share it. 

Thank you immensely to all of you who supported me, appreciated me, and loved me as I worked to shore up Lotte's legacy. We are so lucky to have the Market, and so much more resilient than we knew. A whole village. A healthy village full of peace and love and light. Returning light.

A Good Monday

I'm feeling very happy right now, so I thought I had better mark it to remind myself in case it doesn't last. Real happiness is pretty hard to come by this year, as we are all painfully aware.

I did a helpful thing, and knocked myself out to complete it in time to maximize its effect, and I'm proud it worked, or promises to. I worked all day Sunday and it made me very tired, but I kept at it this morning too and accomplished my goals. It helps balance the many helpful things I have declined to do for various reasons.

For instance, all I did for the elections was one lawn sign for a local race and a lot of Facebooking and reading. I did not send my hard-earned funds to any candidates, no matter how deserving. The whole election by advertising and cash leaves me cold and I know it is the world we live in now but I don't have to play the game. Fortunately most of my causes and candidates won and I refuse to believe my little dollars would have helped where they didn't. A person can only sign on to so many good works without needless self-sacrifice.

My deprivation patterns lead me to want and need lots of savings for the three months of no income coming up when Market closes, and of course these days we do not know when or if we will open again, though we have lots of wishful thinking going. Tonight OCF decides how to navigate for 2021, which as we all know by now will most likely not include the 52nd Fair As We Know It but transformation is powerful and we can have something else. When and if the big juicy events return we sure will have a new level of appreciation for them. Meanwhile, we are working on ways to get some of it safely, which we can learn to do. Market this season worked pretty darn well once we got in the swing of it, and Holiday Market has been stunning so far. 

Saturday the rain held off, though we worried, and my sales were as high as an indoor day with all that work and three more hours, so we are lucky that we have a super-supportive customer base and an awesome group of staff and members to carry us through this throwback to outdoor selling. It isn't all that bad, and we are silly about the early closing, giddy and anticipatory. It is making all the difference.

My masks are a big hit and if I can just resist ending the season with a full inventory I will call it a success. I get obsessive about having every option for every customer instead of just selling out and ending the year with money instead of stuff, but maybe I can change. I have two weeks to prove it.

Just two more weeks of being out in the world and then the big retreat. I am going to out-hermit my most hermitty self. Eventually I will emerge online to learn how to have virtual Jell-O Shows and more new types of interactions, because I must, but for awhile I am going back into making your own bread land. I have a huge stack of books to read and my plan is to archive 2020 while it is all still fresh, since it was so different and won't be that easy to explain without a lot of documentation. It should be the good kind of grief and some fun. After all, we mostly got through it relatively intact. So far.

I'll stop now so the happiness doesn't wear off and the real come through too strong. There's still a lot of real. Mom and I had a troublesome call on Sunday and I worried a lot about it, but just have to learn the lessons so I can prepare for the way this is going to play out for her and for me. I am learning the right things to say and the better ways to feel. Aging people are a big club. There's only one way to resign and we all can hope it is a long way off. 

 We'll find out. Love you all.

Sunday at Noon

 Well, we put the ending at 5:00 markets behind us for the season, to my relief. Yesterday was super wet once the rain started though it mostly held off until mid-afternoon. Market was lightly attended but there were so many thoughtful people who came down to support us by buying what we brought. I had some lovely conversations, which is always one of the upsides of slow sales days. For me, those were pretty good sales and my efforts to better display the masks paid off. I now individually cellophane bag them so they are safe and brought some baskets and racks so I can get them to be more visible. Still need to do more. I just love the groups of young people who love my hats...they sometimes each buy one, carefull picking out their top choices, and they are not always what you might predict. Guys like flowers and birds too.

One wonderful young woman got excited and inpired by my style and the fact that I bike,and told me she wants to do it that way too. She told me all of her family was anti-progressive and bought into the "radical left" propaganda and that is still my operating theory, that people were fed some really polished propaganda in their bubbles and we were all so exhausted it wasn't possible to question all of it. I have not figured out what of what was fed to me was false...that is the problem with bubbles. Unless you venture outside you can't do enough real research to figure out what you might be intentionally confused about.

We all think we aren't confused, that we know the truth and our theories hold it. We can overlook things...we feel we must. Biden wasn't our choice, though we are happy with some aspects of what he is doing, but nothing that happened was radical. It was very mainstream. It's historically wonderful that Harris is VP, and I think diversity will take a leap again, though pessimistically I expect more backlash.

It is of course shocking how comfortable people seem to be with racism and anti-intellectualism. Again, the result of propaganda in bubbles and of the fear-mongering. I suppose that is one thing we could have been snowed about to a degree...the fascism. I could see it, and don't deny it was a tendency, but I don't think it was nearly as widespread or popular as it was made out to be. I think it has much less support than is being reported, but of course it shouldn't have any support at all. But when people aren't educated, they don't get the connections. Law and order all sounds good on the surface. The scary other has to be someone, and it isn't usually someone like you. I cannot wait until more people denounce the fallen pretend leader but it is looking like it might be a long wait. The court cases should help.

That such a high percentage of white women voted Republican does bother me. I am certain some of it is the stock market...the bias is that Repubs are better at making money. The lack of connection of the absence of any substantial efforts to control the pandemic to the coming (and partially present) economic collapse is troubling. It helped ramp up the fear. If all of your investment accounts are going to tank, that's scary to women who have no independent financial security as they age, and want their kids to go to college and have kids and houses, and believe if you have money you can forestall suffering and death. We remember that collapse happening in 2008, though people may not remember why it happened...because of the lack of oversight and downright greed of conservatives. The Repubs looted and pillaged as they left office, too. So we kind of expect that again, and we will probably get it...I would argue we are getting it with the pandemic response and thr continued grift.

All of these systemic issues tied to racism are so evident in how the plague is playing out. The sacrifice of those without resources is undeniable and the way 45 "had" it was emblematic. He got the best treatments for free...not what would happen to me or to anyone I know. The callous disregard for those of color and the poor and elderly is shocking and seems intentional. That alone would seem to be enough for anyone to reject the current administration...unless they don't see it and feel like they will be exempt. I certainly don't fault the medical workers, who would try their best for me, but it isn't always up to them when the resources have been withheld.

There is a fact about predator-prey relationships that tells prey to get up close to the predator in the hope that it will be spared by loyalty and adoration, that some other victims will be chosen. It even goes as far as enabling and joining in the predation. You can of course see that in politics to a ridiculous degreee. You wouldn't think that would play out in mainstream society where people are fairly safe from 45 in person, but I think it is a factor because of the increasingly problematic personal relationships we are experiencing with the spread of hatefulness. People want so much to be part of what the people around them are doing and thinking.

For instance, if you want peace at home and your husband is into Fox "News", you might have to curtail your own independent viewpoint, and may be doing it by habit by now. And if you are "Christian" or in that part of the mainstream (and to an atheist like me, hard to understand except from a viewpoint of fantasy security) you may subscribe to letting your husband lead, and may have found that life seems easier that way. It's challenging to be a strong woman creating your own life. Challenge isn't our favorite thing right now.

Or if your neighborhood group all says things are one way, you might believe those people you have learned to trust. My Mom tells me people in her care center don't bring up politics...they need to feel the approval of the people they (used to) eat dinner with. And then we assume...people assume all of us at SM are old hippies and trend left, but we most certainly do not. We also tend to not confront issues that aren't directly connected with our Saturday activities. It's a tenuous security but we don't want to fight.

I've entertained the thought that the administration took the opportunity of the plague to reduce the population of the weak...it's believable that they think like that about us, the others, and it isn't much of a leap from there to other conspiracy thinking. I'm comforted by the reports that there was no fraud in the election and I believe that election workers, like postal workers, took their jobs seriously and were extra diligent, but like everyone else now, my trust for media reports is lower. 

My USA-Today-owned newspaper and my Sinclair-owned TV channels don't help me feel more secure in finding the truth. I'm trying to get less of my news from them and look farther by reading magazines and books, and like many of my family and friends, trying to learn to do without Facebook to a degree. My bubble on FB isn't all that interesting anymore as I'm more easily irritated in my hermit life and I just stop reading the people who annoy me. I don't want to post things much and don't want to start up on another platform either, since they all seem flawed. Maybe in the offseason when I am encountering even fewer people IRL I might try out something new online. 

I'm reading more books, currently just finished Just Mercy and White Supremacy and Me, and am in the middle of Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit and The Known World by Edward P. Jones, and The Watchman by Louise Erdrich. The Solnit book is reminding me how it was to claim my life as a young woman, a process that is still evolving every day. The Saad book was extremely important and is still rolling through my subconscious and making me think. I am much less afraid to use the words White Supremacy and especially passionate about reading more truths about the genocide of the Native peoples. There needs to be more written about that in Oregon, I think. Maybe I can find more. The families I was researching might have said more about it than I caught in my first bout of research. They were among the first here, and some of them were Quakers. I'd love to get back into that research.

Have quite a long list of requests at the library, and a pile of old New Yorkers and Funny Times. I'm looking to reading a lot as the leaf-collection is almost finished and I don't have all that much printing work to do right now. Those archives loom...I am about to cover them with the Xmas decorations just to balance the low light conditions. I guess I have plenty to do. 

Still a full slate of meetings and minutes I am behind on. I'm not keeping up with the City Council that much. The news that the Park Blocks remodel is put off for 5-7 years is bothering me, since in 5-7 years I will be in my mid-late 70s and probably not a leader in the Market anymore, if I am still able to sell. Nothing is for certain at my age, with this plague a factor and the knowledge that other health challenges may follow. I think I'll still be willing to serve, but I hope that younger leaders will pick up the work and make decisions for the world they will inhabit. I don't necessarily think I should be in charge of things like what happens in the Park Blocks. Maybe in 5-7 years my archiving will all be organized and I can just color-code the things they might find still important as they navigate what we had to work through as it begins again for like the 5th time. I do kind of miss it as an intellectual and emotional exercise of figuring out what is important. My appreciation for our organization and for the City deepened as I learned about the process and met with the people doing it. Some of it was even fun.

Time to call my Mom and then since it isn't raining I guess I should get out and sweep up some leaves. I'm loving the quiet day with the hungry birds at the feeders and the kitty napping on the windowsill above the heater. Sundays are the best. I heard on the news it is National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day. That is a trend I should get behind. Or not. No Thanksgiving to make room for. Maybe up into the attic to check the mouse traps and get the decorations down. Even though there's no Xmas, I am still going to enjoy my personal rituals. 

Hope to see you at the Holiday Market, briefly and with space. It's not the community gathering we want but it's the community gathering we have. Hope it isn't too cold and wet, but if it is, we close at 3:00. That is going to be some fun.

Resuming Hope

 It's been so tense for so long I don't even feel relieved yet. Truly I don't expect it to be much less tense for the next months, as the norm-breaking intensifies until all of them are steaming piles of wreckage. Then we try to keep working patiently to make that better world we promised ourselves and the future.

We can get back to working on climate issues. We can try to rebuild trust and work together again. There will be some relief when we aren't assaulted every day with nonsense. It's already happened that he is marginalized and ignored, and even delightfully, laughed at. Finally.

Yet we are left with knowing how deeply racist our country is. That is hard to take, but like sexism and other areas of generational progress, there was a strong resurgence of attempts at control and domination and they won't just subside. But we have grown in our resilience and it is important that we didn't give up. It's essential that we really understand what oppressed people have been telling us for so long. We are experiencing it ourselves, always an important factor in developing empathy.

We all owe a debt to the people with the patience to find joy and keep working despite how tiring and hard it is to explain, over and over, how racism works, how oppression feels. We have to be woken up over and over. People seem to have to be personally touched, deeply, by their own experience with it, and even then, the draw back into comfortable numbness is strong.

I made myself stop writing here until the election was over, for a number of reasons. I didn't want to be mined for ways to increase the vulnerability of those of us who are struggling. There is a lot to struggle with. The uncertainty of our lives and health has never been absent, but it is brought back to us every day as the pandemic grows and threatens to engulf us all. Staying home and pretending we are safe is easier than almost anything else. When we have to go out, we are shocked.

I walked through downtown for the first time in a month or two and so many storefronts are empty. Businesses you would not expect to fail are gone. It's so important to support the ones we love. I feel good about the amount of support Saturday Market is getting, and my part in it. We'll be able to keep our staff through the winter, and open next season, and we were flexible and strong enough to bend and not break. 

I feel lucky I have been able to work and have worked hard after those first months of being able to do little but read and wait. Work came my way and I put it on top, and it helped me and others. My ability to print things has made it possible for a lot of value to be added, and give a way for people to contribute when all they had was money and emotion. OCF sold a lot of shirts and was able to retain staff and make plans, even though the plans are not going to give us everything we want. I hope to be surprised that we get more than we expect.

Some things are still blocked for me...I have not been able to get into the archive project, even to find things to support this outdoor Holiday Market we are doing. We have no choice except to close, so we are going to do it, but I dread it really and am not doing my usual cheerleading. I'm old...I hate to be cold and the physical workload is getting much harder, but I have two more months left in me for sure, so one week at a time. 

I will mount up and get into it. Looks like rain this week and next, but sales are good in the rain now Some people are willing to come out and shop as they think the crowds will be smaller. Plenty of people have not been down to the Market and I would have been one of them if I didn't have so many things to sell and so much loyalty to our mutual survival. It's still stressful every week as it seems impossible that someone there isn't unwell and inevitable that someone will get Covid. But so far, so good.

The masks are selling and I got into making a nice full inventory, with pretty colors and lots of choices. Too many, I suppose, as usual. I get a bit obsessed with choices and it overwhelms some people. Others have to look at everything and find the perfect one. It's working well so far and I can relax a bit about my own stock and start working on some custom ones in the works. Going to be a busy month.

Spending a lot of money on my teeth...didn't realize a lot of savings go into that in old age. Everything is really expensive, and I'm just in the root canal stage. I'm grateful I have pretty strong teeth and no extractions yet. Glad the other parts of my body are doing fairly well. Aging is no joke.

Thanks to everyone for the support over the last year, the weirdest one ever. I've learned a lot. I enjoy learning new perspectives and finding areas to explore more and I'm feeling good about the upcoming quiet offseason when I plan to read a lot and maybe really do the archives project. 

Did a lot of house maintenance outside this fall and nothing is too broken at the moment. Always too much to do but that's the way it is. Grateful for meaningful work. 

Good job democrats. We didn't quite get the moral victory we wanted but some of it feels good enough for now. Just keep working.

Gear Up, Moms.

Full of discomfort and anxiety...getting in touch with my fragility. I feel the compulsion to work through it or I wont be able to sustain the work that is before me. Right now I can't even finish up Facebook and get to printing the big pile of shirts I set out for today.

While I work I think, sometimes obsessively, about the things I would say or do if I weren't working, writing blog posts and having conversations in my mind while my hands are too busy to do anything else. I spent Sunday immersed in catching up on OCF volunteer work, typing minutes and letters and thinking hard about the conversations we've been having.

And in the evening I watch livestreams of Portland, emotionally joining the Wall of Moms to protect my kid and the kids of all of us, who are now on the line as we were in the 70s. My PTSD is running high, and I want to be of use, but my emotions are all over the place and my impulse is to hide and be quiet.

Saturday at Market there were too many people for me. I'm not ready to resume the normal flow of commerce and community. I did okay as the day progressed to the quiet that comes at three...it slows down then and I welcome that. But I heard some drums from the west and up 8th the traffic was stopped and a protest came through. This one was "Speak Up and Dribble" (the reference to a pro basketball player being told not to speak out months ago) and featured kids and adults dribbling basketballs down the street.

The structure of these protests now is cars in front, cars behind, and people on bikes and walking keeping the perimeter safe. There were yellow t-shirts identifying the particular mini-movement of the moment. I grabbed my sign and stood on the curb and joined the chanting. I started to tear up right away. I held my sign higher and yelled louder, grateful to hide my trembling chin behind my mask.

Everyone stopped at the center of 8th and Oak and they dribbled for 8 minutes and 45 seconds while we held up our arms. I can't actually do that with my left arm but I gripped my sign and did my best. It was a very, very long time. I had moved to the corner with a small cohort of my fellows and saw others of us in the street, and I assume the Market stopped, as I left my booth completely and didn't even think about it. The immersion into the long moment was compelling.

This was really my first in-person chance to worship the 8:45 as it deserves to be observed. I wept the whole damn time. At the end we took a knee. There was an ebullience, but I was full-on triggered and after it ended I waded right into the crowd to give a donation. I didn't even think about how close to everyone I was until the person I found to donate to hugged me...one of the maybe three times I have been touched in over six months. The first intentional touch. It didn't fully scare me until later that night, but it scared me good. A hug of gratitude.

As I returned to my corner I noticed things...a man in the protectors had a sidearm. He emanated safety and peace, though. A drunk person approached me, too close, to ask about my sign, did I really believe there was white supremacy in the US? At least I had no trouble answering him. I said yes, absolutely, that the country was founded on it, and if he didn't think so, he needed to read some history. He was slow but I felt that he wanted to argue, but was a little cowed by me. I decided to go back to my booth, so stepped back, and then I noticed that on my left was one of the guys who had been biking the perimeter. He had been watching that drunk guy, and was there to be my back-up if I needed one. Again, I sensed his presence as calm, safe, deliberately watchful and protective. This touched me in a new way.

I cry now to realize how hard everyone works at these protests to stay safe. The masks, the cars, the people in black or in shirts, all are there to keep us safe to speak (and dribble.) It helped me stop crying and finish the day. Typically my triggered episodes last a few days, with an aftermath of shame and weakness, and this was no exception. But as usual I try to keep operating and thus instead of a real rest day that I needed, I spent 8 or 9 hours immersed in OCF. At least I got caught up. I had to defend myself against my bully, but she really has no power over me now. She is so clearly against the flow of history and the moment that she has no real power over anyone.

Then Monday, instead of watching the City Council public forum on the Park Blocks, I virtually went to the Diversity Work Assembly. This was after printing about 250 shirts and folding them, which took all day in the heat. I got a notepad and started jotting down my emotions in a running stream on the right as I took notes on things I might want to remember to report on to my fellow crafters. I didn't identify any boothpeople in the assembly except two Board members but I may have not known them, and there were people from booths that aren't craft booths, such as White Bird. But I felt like I was out there representing and that scared me. I didn't want to be wrong and I didn't want to be right.

One thing I have learned about identifying racism is that once I see something as racist, I don't really go back to thinking it is okay. I want justice. I have a lot of work to do that BIPOC people have learned all too well, about patience and breaking big things into smaller pieces, about bringing people along and meeting them where they are, about making the changes workable by addressing what is possible now, what the goal is, and how to take it in steps so it will stick.


Because the big thing, that we have to address in my world, is that the Booth Rep System is exclusive. Call it racist if that doesn't confuse the issue, but the word "succession", when people use it, gets a visceral reaction. Giving property to your kids is elitist. Not everyone has the privilege we old members have created for ourselves within the structure of Fair Family. It is ringing hollow for me right now and I know I have to dial it back and work through it to some practical path that will work for the thousands of people who will be shocked and appalled and fight like hell to keep what they have.

We will say we have earned it. We will defend the hippie credo and how inclusive it has always been and how hard we have worked and how much we have spent. We will identify our ownership but not how that prevents the ownership of someone else. It will take some people the rest of their lives to deal with the emotions that are coming to be processed due to the moment we are in. I'm no exception. I don't want to do the things I know I should.

When I put myself out front, just twice, I didn't say everything, though I felt I said too much. We old lady crafters have a way of making things about us, centering ourselves, and I did that, to my embarassment. I did some other subtly racist things, like wanting to please people and wanting to seem like one of the good ones. I saw myself looking toward some of the BIPOC people I know or am acquainted with, for approval or help. I forgot to write my emotions down on the right side of my paper and was soon trembling and re-traumatized and so I'm doing this today instead of using the cooler hours for work. This is work. This is compelling work. There will always be shirts to print. (Maybe...)

We will have a lot to do. I am feeling my fragility and need to be building my strength. My bully is at it again, trying to oppose progress and paint things in the worst light imaginable, and fighting her has gotten so old, so tiring. I'm grateful for the physical space and isolation to feel safe, but my fucking neighbors who are hoaxers keep invading my space, using my driveway, walking on my sidewalk, making me fear my own front yard. I need something, some counseling, some real rest, some real space, and should probably go out in nature and sit. I should probably not force myself to work.

Dear world, I knew it would get harder to survive as we near the brink, of climate disaster, of constitutional ruin, of the apocalype that some are trying to create. My eternal optimism isn't going to be enough to get me through this. My previous ability to escape isn't working any more. I just find more to be accountable for, more people to reassure, more reasons to fight and reasons to be afraid. I dont know how to feel safe, don't know how I ever did.

This weekend I admitted that what happens to the Park Blocks is peripheral to me now. Something I put countless hours into over the last two years is something I don't even care about now. I watched the City Council after the 3 1/2 hour workshop. It was another hour and a half. It was inconclusive, and no one spoke for Market. I wanted to and heard my absence, but I have nothing to say. Fix the concrete. Help the farmers or don't. Take away all the parking and add some bike lanes, whatever. I have lost my drive to make it work for me or anyone else. I don't feel involved.

After saying we could not miss a single selling day or lose a single member, we missed ten weeks and have lost dozens of members. Now people are starting to die in our circle. Now things are getting critical in a life changing way. Now I face real loss. What I have built could die too.

Now is when I find there is no reassurance, no support that will help, really. This will all take the strength of legions, all working singly from home to make something completely ephemeral, real. It has always been that way, of course, when creating the future. We have never had certainty and we never will. We were always completely at risk and at risk of losing the glamour we spun over it all.

That veil is off. The shit is real. But the Moms arrived. We have, and are, the Moms. Gear up!

Back in the House, No Escaping Ourselves

It wasn't easy to break isolation to sell at Market. I still don't know if it was the right thing to do, but of course finding the right choice out of the many these days is exceedingly complicated. My loyalty to the survival of the Market pushed me to risk my own...I bought in a little to the idea that it was safer out there than I imagined it to be. I gambled.

It was a good day...just being back in the routine was strengthening, and seeing people I love was overwhelming. I think now that I didn't really look at anyone. I am not easy with eye contact anyway but I don't remember a single person's eyes. It's strange to notice that, when all we see of each other is our eyes now. I guess I was trying to keep emotional distance. I sense people...I feel their presence with all my little tendrils of consciousness but I don't really look at them when we are close. I feel somehow that should disqualify me from being a good person but people seem to forgive it. Maybe they are just as busy not looking at me.

Many things were as normal...Willy and I trading stories and forgiving each other for repeating ourselves. Watching each other's booths, running over to the farm as we call it. Cherries and polenta and tamales and plants and all the things I was out of, and a few more. Farmers on the Butterfly looked good. I thought it was pretty functional, much more so than it could have been with some of the other solutions to their space problems. The parade happened as I scrambled to get set up. I had to wait in line for a space...but I was number one with all my points, so I got Raven's space.

I set up sort of skewed with my back to the fountain to widen the aisle and I liked it, of course missing him a lot. Having the parade without him was a little hard...but they all managed. I got interviewed by the RG during set-up which was rough as always, since there is so much to do to be ready by ten. I wasn't. My plan was to have a table as a barrier so no one would touch anything and before I got that set up a guy came and touched all the hats...he wasn't wearing a mask and he was in my space! He said he had used hand sanitizer but I was completely freaked out and didn't find the wherewithal to tell him my rules...so felt like I had immediately blown my safety plan.

It took a long time to recover from that. My set-up wasn't that functional with all my stock in tubs that were underfoot and disorganized immediately. I quickly put bungies all around the legs of the popup to create a safe space inside just for me. People seemed able to view the items and I would put them out on the table for them to choose the one they wanted. It was awkward but not terrible. I sold a good amount of hats but almost no bags. People need to get closer to the bags. People want to try on the hats. I sort of tried to pressure them to only try one on if they really intended to buy it, but that was not my style and I don't know if I'll do that next time. I might just put the tried-on ones in a tub to quarantine. Or I might give up the notion that cloth items are not safe.

People seemed to feel so much safer than I did. Probably 25% of them did not have masks or didn't keep them on. It does hurt your ears to wear one all day...I tried a few different ways and it was never great. Plus it was rainy and kind of cold so I was just a dumpy old white lady and nothing glamorous. Lots of people visited and some parts of the day were slow and most were fast.

I brought my sign and hung it up, saying "Stop Police Brutality, End White Supremacy." I knew I was risking virtue signaling but I had to have a sign. The protest didn't come, but it was the right thing to do. I didn't see many reactions (because I never look at people...) but I did hear one white lady harrumphing about it. I didn't confront her though I wanted to say, "What? You think we should keep white supremacy?" No one else said much or anything about it. I didn't really do it to open any dialogues, just to make it clear that at least one person at Saturday Market was working on her stuff. At least to make a statement. It's not all just selling things in my Market world.

I am working on my stuff. I squirmed through 13th tonight and will make myself uncomfortable a lot more. I am wondering what level I can go to that is more than watching a movie and trying to integrate new knowledge into what I already know. There is an overwhelming amount of new knowledge, and yet, not that much. It's kind of simple at core. Do I honor the humanity of every other person and fight for justice for black people right now? Hell yeah, no question. Can I stay in it for the long haul? That's a given. I am not going anywhere near complacency.

The questions are deeper. How have I bought into colonialism? I know I was really uneasy about helping shut down the drug dealing on my street, and it played out badly. A young black man was caught up in it. I tried to protect him some, but not as much as I would do today after watching 13th. I feel extremely terrible that he will be in the prison system. I wonder if I would rather have talked the neighbors into tolerating the dealing. We probably weren't in danger, just inconvenienced, and it didn't occur to us that the white guy who is really the guilty one would gaslight the cops and not be busted as well. It should have occured to me. I wonder if I should wade in deeper and if it would be worse if I did. He wasn't innocent...but I didn't protect him either. I actually feel quite sick about it. I'm not quite a Karen, but I sure am an old white lady. I think we did it wrong.

So now at minimum I have to fight harder for better policing. For sure we have some racist cops here and for sure if he goes to prison there will be racism there. I will have to make amends somehow. I don't even know his name, it all happened so fast. Maybe I will talk to my neighbors about it. They are very compassionate people and maybe they can help me figure something out. Sure brings it home.

So, vulnerable, getting down deep into my sins and regrets, feeling the weight of the time and the reality we can't ignore. We aren't safe, and we are a danger to each other. We all have weapons with which we can accidentally kill. We can't really save ourselves and we can't save each other, we just can't be too careful. I never want to leave the house again. I'm guilty, and I'm stupid, and I'm being fooled most of the time. And then there is politics, and Facebook, and the collapse of the republic. I feel like there is no future. It's fairly devastating. So getting up and moving forward is difficult, to put it mildly. I don't want to do anything though I managed to wash dishes. I stayed awake and didn't stay in bed. I didn't fix anything today. 

But I will. I will push myself to go to Market again and do better. Try to look into someone's eyes. Try not to repeat myself. Try harder to forgive, and above all, to learn. Try harder. It's a life and death time. We're all on the edge. Any one of us could fall off, so we had better take a step back and reconsider. Reconsider everything we thought we knew. And keep working. Work deep. Then deeper.

Up all the Time

Power is in the people. They're sharing it around, so generously, and it's hurting out there, but not as much. I've been obsessed and triggered with the news, with the simultaneous uprising of the loving people and the crumbling of the corrupt and hating power structure. They are moving apart in the most possible opposite directions.

He says dominate, and the people sit down and ignore him and get to work. Down at the protest tonight, some truth came out. They have been marching all day, for days, losing track of time. I watch as much as I can. They walk for miles and miles, repeating themselves into openness. If you say it enough, you start to understand a little bit. "Say his name: George Floyd!" Say her name: Breonna Taylor! Say their names: Too many!

Enough is right. These kids can't get enough. I remember it so well, fifty years ago now, when it was me in the streets, me sitting at the table with actual Black Panther Party members, me at a party in Westport with the Chicago Eight. And I was a little white college girl, just starting to learn, and when they told me how to help, to organize, to be powerful, I knew I could not. It was all I could do to be there at all. I was only there because my roommate's father was their lawyer, and worked with their other lawyer, Charles Garry. Those were the most powerful people in the world right then, in the world of trying to make justice in the stacked system that was falling on them, and on all of us, and in the world of social revolution.

I wasn't up to the challenge, but I tried my best to keep up. She and I decided to go to New Haven, all the way from our college in DC, because that was where it was going to happen. The student  strike was about to be called, and we decided to go see it for ourselves. it was dark, and foreboding and grim. By that time, we'd been teargassed on our campus for yelling at Melvin Laird as he drove by daily on his way to engage in killing the young men of our generation. We yelled loud from what we thought was safety. It hurt to be gassed, and I remember walking around in the back of the crowd one of the times, telling people to get out if they didn't want to be sprayed. I didn't want any innocent people to get caught up in our serious business. I didn't know enough to be a medic or anything truly helpful. I only knew what it felt like to be caught up in something dangerous when you were innocent. We were shocked that the police could come on our campus and gas us.

We went to lots of demonstrations, from the first Moratorium, when all we did was stand still, crushed in a huge crowd blocking the street. We didn't hear Pete Seeger or Joan Baez but we all sang together. We noticed how it was all ages, all nationalities, all of us in the street. We all wanted the war to end, we wanted peace, we wanted justice, and we wanted with all our hearts to be part of making the world better. Once I took my little sister, who must have been fourteen if I was twenty, to a big march. We were just walking around when a phlanx of cops on horses came out from behind the Washington Monument, swinging clubs, and we ran like hell. We walked all the way home, miles and miles. We wer scared that time, but a lot of the transgression was fun. The Yippies were crazy, and we ended that goddamn war, after a few years of relentless protesting. We gae up our lives for it, but until Kent State we didn't really think they would kill us. That was then.

The chronology is a little confused in my mind, because right then, as if the world crumbling wasn't bad enough, my dad killed himself. My emotions weren't regulated at that age, so I can't separate the various traumas, which of course were already in place from the things that happened at home before his suicide, and from being away at college all alone, and from all the ways a 20 year old girl wakes up. The political part helped, I think, though it came with the hippie movement, the sexual revolution, and women's liberation all of it at once. The late sixties and early seventies were, on the scale of traumatic times, over the top. Maybe a lot like it is now.

Kent State was May 4, my 20th was the next day, and Dad's death was May 17th, 1970. I was on strike, visiting friends at Purdue, where I had gone the year before. I transferred to AU in DC in the fall of 69, and immediately had my political awakening and huge life change internally, just beginning the decade or so of reeling and careening that landed me here in Eugene in March of 1976. There was a lifetime packed into those years. I remember them vividly. I was traumatized the whole time, but the hippie life saved me. I went to the woods in Colorado as Nixon fell, and with the help of kind people and other more thoughtless ones, learned a lot of what I would need when I finally landed here.

I left DC politics behind, not living up to the expectations of David Hilliard, though I don't suppose he really thought more than a few seconds about what I might do for the movement. But I did pursue a life of working for peace and justice, and equality, and fearless emotional exploration. Trauma will do that to you.

My favorite reading has always been narrative nonfiction. I will read the rape stories, the confessions, I will watch all the videos. I want to see the true emotions. I want to know the motivations, the thought processes, the decisions that got people to their moments of truth, of strength, or of despair. I don't want it as fiction, I want the real thing. That is the way I am fearless. But I'm no good in person with that stuff.

I went downtown to the bank and Kiva today, one of only about three times I have been out in the last three months. I nearly cried several times. Masked up, I know I looked hungrily at people. I wanted to walk through Kesey and see what was to be seen, if anything, but I stayed away. I saw it last night on the livestream. I watched the young people walk all over town and end up there. The movement wanted to go to the jail to cheer up those who had been arrested, but they decided to celebrate instead. They danced and drummed. No doubt they got high. I switched over to the livestream from DC, watched the park get cleared for the Bible photo op, watched Colbert and Fallon as they respectfully drew out W. Kamau Bell, Leslie Jones, Keisha Lance Bottoms, Keegan Michael Key, watched how these white guys asked for the real. Seth let Amber speak first. She told her stories. Her way speaks to me, her unflinching honesty, her ability to find laughter and humbleness in it.

I counseled someone in emails who was having a racist reaction but didn't know it. I was too easy on her, but she still didn't accept what I told her, to just listen, to put her fears where they belonged and let someone else take the emotional stage. She didn't get it. She hadn't been watching, reading, or listening. That doesn't make me great, it just makes me obsessed, but I have to lose my own racism, that I know, that is the first and best thing I can do. I'm working as hard as I can at it.

Even as obsessed as I am, what I want more than what the movement is asking for, is for it to take down this regime. Those aims are connected, but I admit I was missing the focus. I'm getting it a little better, the urgency of this wound, the absolute limit people have reached. I certainly can only feel the edges of it. As someone feeling targeted and disposable by the regime, as far as coronavirus goes, I got it a little at first, but there's a lot more for me to feel yet. I honor those who are willing to speak.

Tonight, sitting in front of the jail, the white kids had to listen. The black kids yelled and cried and spoke softly and asked and demanded and let out their disgust with us. We deserved it. If I had been there I would have been hanging my head. If anyone started to argue, they were shouted down. The white kids sat or took a knee, the black people stood. It was honorable. It was a much better education than those kids would have gotten in the last months of senior year. It was real.

I'm so glad people shared it with people like me, stuck at home, chicken and trying to stay alive and not get sick. I was lucky to see and hear it. I honor those who cared to share it. I have hope for us, white people. If we work really hard, we might be able to help someone. We might be able to deserve to know these people who are rising. They leave us far behind.

What Wasn't Imagined

This one blog post from last February keeps getting read. It has over 524 readers now, more every day. It is a mystery to me why that one. I can't figure out who's reading it...a hundred people in Japan. The rest mostly in the US. Almost all the hits have come from Facebook. The rest of my posts rarely get over 50 readers.

I did post it twice, since it talked a little about some bullying I was experiencing, and also defended some committee work I was doing that was being criticized as power hunger. I don't seek power. I seek lots of other things, mostly sense of belonging and understanding and honesty and peace. But the bullies just say whatever they see in themselves, about you.

So maybe it got caught up in some FB algorithm. No one shared it, and it had hardly any comments. It was pretty long, so I'm going to say not every "read" of it was a complete one. I might have grabbed readers with the title, which was "Oh, these times." Strangely enough, it was before these times. It was pre-coronavirus.

At that time we had never considered that we wouldn't have a 51st Fair, or a Market Opening Day, or so, so many of the other things we aren't having. We were living in an innocence that we won't have again. We knew things were bad, terrible, in lots of other ways, but we did not imagine we would lose so much, so fast.

My bully hasn't been silenced, but she lost her credibility, as most do, at the same time, building mine. I learned to not react and to just keep working, and I got stronger. I was even more determined to deepen my experience with my organizations, because her behavior was so counter to what I had seen from nearly everyone else in those groups. Everyone else in my circles got warmer, and my ability to feel it grew.

Most people are so tender right now, so wounded, and having to fight hard for that peace and even
stability. I keep filling out the forms for financial assistance, though none has come. My income disappeared, rather completely and abruptly, but I am good at hunkering down so I just stopped spending money. I asked my insurance agent to reduce my bills. I got out my earthquake supplies and started eating up my surplus. I haven't gone out.

Friday I went out for the first time in probably six or eight weeks. I've lost track. I biked to the bank with my stimulus check and the one little bit of income I have gotten, from a dozen hats I printed for a client. He overpaid me, in fact, for his Professional Curmudgeon hats, which he likes to do since he's so delighted to have them. He and his buddies have started a little club, worldwide now, of these guys who get invited to join and they get certificates and the hat and some other ritual objects. They have earned the right to be not just ordinary curmudgeons. And like many true curmudgeons, they are all delightful old guys and not really grouchy, just kind of particular about things. They've learned to treasure it in themselves, and each other.

Learning to treasure things, and each other, is what we are doing really hard right now. Things we already loved, now are filled with our passion and our grief. We don't know if we'll get them back. It seems impossible that we will hug, or even shake hands again. We don't expect to sit shoulder to shoulder in a crowd, or wipe away someone's tears or the stray crumb on their cheek, or push the errant lock from their forehead. We long for our people, our children and even our past lovers. We hope beyond hope that they don't die, that we don't die, from all this.

Some people have just floored me with their ability to care. I've been taken under a wing or two. I'm being thought of, being planned for. It heartens me so much that neighbors will buy my groceries and that my organizations are trying to find work for me. I am afraid, so they protect me.

The OCF community did not drop into despair and depression like I did. They, the visionaries, rose up, it seems immediately, to start moving, together, to restore. To take the values we have built on, and build something new with them. We are going to have a celebration, in virtual space, that is going to amaze. We are going to have things to buy and give and keep and fondle. We are going to build back up, and bring as many along as possible in the doing.

It makes me cry to feel it. It seems such a marvel I turn it over and over in my mind. It builds in me, a desire to join in, to think of more I can do, to be inspired. I feel cared for. I feel hopeful. It is such a fragile, hesitant feeling, and every day it grows.

Like that mysterious post, more people sign on each day. A budget meeting today had two pages of faces, all listening and following, all leaving reassured. We have visionaries. Together, we stepped up. I can hardly wait to feel more of it.

I sent a letter out yesterday, one that I had written in March, to someone I had to make amends with. I had bullied her when we were kids, and it took getting bullied to make me do the hard work to find that in myself, to identify the emotions, both ways, and admit my crimes. I don't think she will welcome the letter, but she's already angry with me so this probably won't make things worse, at least not forever. I tried to use as much consent and empathy as I could find myself capable of. No doubt it will be inadequate, since I am still learning. But I took the step I had time to contemplate, and desire.

In the mystery post, I talked about how we make policy in my organizations, ideally. That really was the meat of the post, though it came at the end and isn't likely the motivator for the readers. However, to me, that's what pleases me the most about the five hundred people. They get to see something that comes from ideals and values, that tries. Something that aspires, and inspires, just one of the ways the community has built what is so unutterably gorgeous now. What is so precious, what is so inestimably ephemeral and light-filled, what is coming to land in our laps.

Something we feared we had lost. Something we will give everything to get back. Something we need.

And if you have a clue who is reading that one post, and why, do let me know. I could try to write another.

Stay safe. There are still dragons, ones we haven't tamed.

Happy Birthday, Saturday Market

I wrote a piece for the Weekly, but they didn't use it. Oh well, I wasn't really using those two days anyway. I'll just drop it here for all of you. The long version. The short version was easier to read and better writing, but I'm in the mood to put the whole thing in, regardless of the rules it breaks.

They could've at least announced the Watch Party. Yeah, I got denied by unemployment too. Spending the day in the garden.

For the Weekly

This Saturday, May 9, 2020, will mark the 50^th Anniversary of the Eugene Saturday Market, the oldest continually operating weekly craft market in the US. Close observers will notice that Saturday Market is not there in the familiar central location of the downtown Park Blocks. But even though Coronavirus has postponed the Market season, there is no hiding the real Saturday Market: the community.

Each rain-or-shine Saturday event─and over 50 years, that counts up to between 1500 and 2000 open days─is a surprisingly different day from any other. The combination of artisans who occupy those several hundred booth spaces is similar, but a special flavor that includes not only the weather, but the concoction of idiosyncrasies, charms, and spicy creations of thousands of people, acting in synch to present a different dish. That satisfying meal won’t be easily destroyed even if the virus turns this season into the nightmare we all dread.

But we’ve weathered storms before. While opening on the first Saturday in April seems constant, there were years in the beginning when there was no assurance for the members that selling would happen. Bad weather or lack of money brought uncertainty, so many years began on the first weekend in May. The second season, 1971, the Market did not open until June 19th, as it had outgrown the mall location and negotiations with the county commissioners took extra time. That season could have been brief: the commissioners pulled the plug at the end of August. They feared a hippie scene developing on the Courthouse Plaza, and didn’t want it there. The community, in its dramatic way, put on black armbands and mounted a protest and ensuing negotiations eventually resulted in a continued season, but on the Butterfly Lot.

Each year there are between 500 and 800 members, with enthusiastic new ones appearing while some old ones move on to other endeavors. Thousands of businesses have started at the Market. Scratch any local family history and you will find a member or two. In their shops, kitchens and living rooms, your favorite crafters are still making their crafts. Some have turned to mask-making and are giving away or selling hundreds of finely sewn face protection. Many of the food artisans are planning strategies for take-out when we are able to enter a transition period of essential sales as the Lane County Farmers Market is doing now.

The organization itself spent the last year upgrading their website services to include a new member portal (eugenesaturdaymarket.org) which is gradually populating with photos and profiles of current members, and a Facebook Online Marketplace (https://www.facebook.com/groups/eugenesaturdaymarketmakergroup/) now has more than 1200 participating artists and shoppers. Many continuing efforts such as a virtual flip-page version of the guidebook and video interviews on Instagram and other sites on the internet are out there for you to find. Nothing has stopped for the membership of the Market except the actual hand-to-hand transactions that are where the artist meets with the appreciator on common ground.

In 1969 and 1970, when the first group of craftspeople gathered, choosing potter Lotte Streisinger as their spokesperson, the craft renaissance of the alternative culture was in its infancy. The ancient traditions of hand-crafting and bringing products to the central marketplace seemed to be subsiding in the decades of the 1950s and 60s as commercial production and suburban living dominated the retail landscape, but actually the opposite flow of energy was building. Activists and humanists were looking for truth and value in authentic lifestyles and artifacts, expanding from the Arts and Crafts movement of the earlier part of the 20^th century. With the added stressor of the Vietnam war and government scandals, a culture to counter what seemed phony and plastic appealed to a broad spectrum of Americans.

Lotte wasn’t a hippie, and neither were most of her friends; they were serious artists who needed a way to make a living from what they wanted to spend their time doing. Galleries were few and exclusive, and selling locally was much easier than trying to appeal to urban buyers in far-off cities.

As soon as the Market began, it turned out that there were many buyers for the varied products brought downtown. By Christmas of the first year in a narrow alley location by the Overpark, there were 200 sellers and an enthusiastic community of buyers.

The wide-ranging Saturday Market history is full of challenges endured and handled, some occurring repeatedly and others hard to believe. There were dogs and give-away kitties, inappropriate buskers, oddities like too many nails left in the parking spaces, and of course an arson fire in 1982. Not everyone brought joy and cooperation to the marketplace. Many times the interface between the micro-business owners and the established landowners, bureaucracies and enforcement agencies had to be hand-crafted as well. How to sell food in a festival setting was new for the temporary restaurants. Lane County had to work out the relationship of landlord, health inspector, and collaborator with City of Eugene government and the police department and the iconoclasts of the time. The Market’s archived letters and records of public meetings show difficulties in perception and articulation as the new animal of an open market developed itself and worked out its operating rules. Many of those remain constant from the beginning, such as the Maker is the Seller, and an ongoing effort has to be made to adapt to new conditions. The founders didn’t imagine 3-D printers.

Always it was about individuals bringing themselves into a group process. A little-remembered movement for consensus-based decision-making formed the early market governance, and meetings of hundreds of highly invested participants were regularly held. Over time the structure evolved into a representative volunteer board of members, sometimes including people who did not sell but brought needed skills. At present there is a nine-person board, and a staff of about twenty people in various full- and part-time roles. When you see the event, you likely don’t notice the set-up crew, who start at 4:00 in the morning and finish after dark. You don’t see all of the office staff and the support staff of accountants, graphic designers, and ad consultants who are also part of the essential structure. It’s a goal to have the event look like magic.

You wouldn’t know about the dozen volunteer committees ranging from the all-important Budget Committee to the Sustainability Committee who had big plans for Earth Day 2020. The Standards Committee meets twice a month to screen new members and work out the details of the exacting guidelines that cover the multitude of craft categories and items. There are task forces and small groups to create the guidebooks and other promotional opportunities, to work with the City on the Town Square project and other initiatives. A core group of about thirty volunteers works alongside the staff to build into the event the richness of the tapestry that shows itself to you every week.

And then there is you, the person who comes down to the Market as a regular or as a new attendee. Each time you come you play a part in the tableau and there are waves of variety in how that is done. Kids dress up in their fairy wings and garlands, carrying their savings or stuffed animals, throwing pennies into the fountain. Locals with special t-shirts, come to be identified and cool. Kitty ears and wolf tails join the all-black spiked jackets and heavy jeans and tiny little skirts. Tourists come to see it all. Shy or bold, people want to be seen as they are, or as they wish to be; to belong.

Some sold in the past or want to sell in the future, they want to see what’s new or what they reminisce about. The history displays spurred many tales of archaic products, or classic crafts of their day: the wrap-around pants, the macrame, the candle holders of stained glass. Where else can you find the finest tie-dye or the most personal jewelry, made as if just for you? Where else can you look into the eyes of the person who dreamed it?

Best of all, it’s where you come to announce yourself and re-orient your life. When you are engaged, or married, or when you graduate, you stroll the aisles to reward yourself with a ring or dessert. Your favorite food calls you to Opening Day or you come every week to try the newest special. The most

tender life-passage conversations take place at the Market, when a person comes for the first time without their lost partner, or their matured child who just flew from the nest. In the year of 9-ll, which happened right before the start of an otherwise normal Tuesday Farmers’ Market, Mayor Jim Torrey wanted to cancel Saturday’s activities as well as the Eugene Celebration scheduled for that weekend. The legendary Beth Little was not only the general manager of the Saturday Market at that time, but also the chair of the Eugene Celebration board. She carefully helped guide Mayor Torrey in the realization that if only the Friday night party were turned into a vigil for the community to grieve, the normal activities of the Saturday and Sunday in downtown would be an important part of the healing process.

That wisdom of the heart was emblematic of how our community works, through the gathering in our center, with its dependable consistency and authentic, wholistic vulnerability. It was hard to think about investment and retail in such a fraught moment when three thousand had died and life had radically altered for the nation. We are certainly at such a moment on this 50^th Anniversary day when our event will not be happening in the Town Square. We can’t gather.

But we are gathering in a different sense, collecting our values and our passions and patting them into a new shape, gently and gradually as we see what will be possible and what will be important. All of us, the person coming downtown for their first time and the one coming for the thousandth, want to be there, and want to celebrate together. Happily, at a Facebook Watch Party we will watch a 1973 film never widely shown, made by filmmaker Ron Finne with grants from City Room Tax funds and The Oregon Arts Commission. You can watch with us at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_gpmkg2dCI . It shows an innocent young Market in a time that sweetens memory. Join us on Saturday!

The 50^th Season activities in 2019 included highlighting Legacy Performers, craft demonstrations, special history displays and an expanded Founders’ Day, with photo documentation on the website. Our Facebook posts and our Weekly articles are a step apart from our operating reality. It seems a far step at this writing, when no Opening Day is set. The big party was cancelled, but the bigger party is in the planning stages. Creative people from the Saturday Market, the Oregon Country Fair, and the other legacy organizations which include the Wow Hall, White Bird, and many others, have carried forward the work of the visionary founders of Saturday Market. Archives have been opened and polished and when the streets open again, whenever that is, we will all emerge and even if we can’t hug, we will embrace what we have built.

And you will be there, goddess willing and the creek don’t rise. What was built will simply resume, piece by piece or in an explosion of wonderful, intact and as before, constantly changing. No day will be like any other, but the threads of the tapestry have not unraveled. That shimmering glamour over our town just can’t be torn. Smooth as charmeuse, ephemeral as chiffon, slubby as raw silk, we will all, adorned in our Market treasures and with bells on, step on back to 8^th and Oak and we will have our gathering. We won’t settle for anything less. See you when it is safe.

The Fifth Saturday

It has to be said: of the five Saturdays we have missed Market, only one was a nice day. Not that rain would have stopped me from going, but I have been happy enough to have stayed home, in that small sense. I misplaced my alarm clock awhile back and slept until 8:30, which is kind of late for me but becoming more regular. And now it is about the time I would be heading over to the food court to get a second cup of coffee which I only did on Market days to get me through to finishing (at like 7:30 pm) so I'm making one now. I wonder how many booths would have flipped in those gusty winds from the northwest we had as the front rolled in. We could have trauma-bonded one more time. I have been through so many weather events in the Park Blocks. The day in the 70s when it rained like 5 inches. Or maybe it was just one inch, but it poured copiously and constantly on the nine of us who were trying to figure out how to pack up without getting completely drenched. I made paper things at the time, in a flimsy little booth carried on a bike cart.The day it snowed on April 21st, just a few years ago. The day an earthquake happened and I missed it...if only I had looked at the fountain, right next to me, I'd have seen something new.

I think that was my 1977 calendar, with stenciled cards.

As with all decisions these days, I carefully consider it: should I use an extra filter and coffee, or will that cause me to run out? I have plenty of most things but I'm craving the things I don't have. Things it's embarrassing to ask someone to get for me, and things that aren't really motivating enough to order for delivery or suit up and go out for. My upcoming birthday is putting pressure on my normal deprivation issues. Will I have enough? Psychologically this of course translates to will I be enough? Will it matter to anyone to mark my special day? Is it really that special? Do I really need a fresh pineapple and a mango? I am considering buying myself a Sweet Life tiramisu. The whole thing. I found some Lactaid in my cupboard so I wouldn't get that sick. I got my stimulus check so I can order anything I want. I'm talking myself out of it though.

I hardly extend myself for most other people's birthdays. Sometimes I try harder than others. I know how it feels to have one and to be remembered, but I have to be forgiving and also not attached. Mom remembered, bless her heart, and of course she has never missed one. She was five days early, on about the day she would have made me a card or in the deep past, sent a present or a check. I feel very lucky she remembered the month. Starting to really see the memory decline in personal ways, hard. I know how lucky I am to have had her so intact for 70 birthdays. I never take it for granted that she will be here for the next. I don't even take it for granted that I will be, really.

With braces, right before Fibergraphics happened in 1984, or a year or two later.

I've descended into a comfortable but warped place, where I'm strangely glad when the safe time is extended, when the virus spreads, since that makes this seem worthwhile. Of course I don't want anyone to get it or to die. I don't feel like I've really sacrificed, just haven't made a lot of money I would have made, but I also didn't have to do all that work I would have done. My reading pile is diminishing nicely. My list of excuses for not being productive has gotten much longer: I'm grieving, I'm "working" on "other things" and I have to make food and do the dishes. Comfort food.

I checked on my stores, only six jars of tomatoes left, but a couple dozen applesauce and pears. I can make applesauce cake and probably will. I had a box of vegan white cheddar macaroni that I made last night...it was like box food but nice and smooth and filling, and had that unknown satisfaction factor that I needed.

Could be 1983, with Maude and Celeste. The zebra print was one of my first shirts.

I should have been writing hard trying to make the most of the Saturday Market birthday energy but just couldn't manage anything more than one article that I doubt will be printed. I got it down from 2000 words to 900 and it was tight and not a bad sentiment, but the whole premise feels weak to me now. Like my birthday, will people really care about it? And then when it is over, won't it just be over? I get cynical about the strength of my life in the Market...sure I have done it more than just about anything else in my life, but wasn't that just part habit and part self-serving labor and gratification? Do I really love it all that much?

I know I do, or I wouldn't be distancing so hard from it this week. That's what I do when the caring becomes overwhelming. I try to escape, try not to be responsible, try to pretend it doesn't matter. I've avoided countless funerals by telling myself I wasn't that close to the person and they won't care now anyway. Not that I'm thinking about death all the time, but I am. Waiting for that pendulum to swing, that scythe to fall. I have pressure in my chest. It's the only symptom, and it isn't more than anxiety, I don't think. I haven't been outside of my yard more than to the corner in many weeks. I doubt anyone dropped off the virus on my porch...though they could have.

My neighbors finally got busted for whatever they were dealing...it wasn't too serious, no one dragged off that I could see, and no guns were drawn. I watched from my window, so couldn't tell much. Things were quiet around there but I doubt things will change a lot. Their garbage is still uncollected and their lawn is unmown. The part we share is full of weeds but I don't like being in it since they are not socially distancing. I wear a mask, but it still feels creepy.

Have the family zoom to push me out of my cave a little today. Call with Mom tomorrow, another zoom on Monday, one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, then one on Friday. More than I want, for sure, way more. I'm skipping Tuesday Market, though it starts on Tuesday. I am allowed to sell, but wasn't wanting to work on my birthday, of course, and I thought about how it might be to sell there.

I could probably arrange some of my bags and hats so that people could take them from the racks without my help, hand me a credit card, and stay a few feet away kind of. While my bags aren't strictly essential, most stores still allow them and people might want gifts...or to support me perhaps. But I won't get my prime spot, most likely, since all the booths have to be more widely spaced, so I'd probably be facing Oak Street, watching cars drive by. I could buy things...if people will take cash. My bank accounts are thin but I still have cash. No unemployment has come through...and if I start selling again, will I get kicked off unemployment before I even get any? I guess not, but no one knows how that will work.

I also don't feel safe standing outside in the public space all day. I don't feel safe traveling through it even. None of my neighbors, or anyone walking by, is wearing a mask anymore. The campaign to "open the economy" is working...people are giving in to feeling tired of being sensible and caring for others. They want their cake. I want cake, but I am still scared. I just want to stay home still.

Arguably, I need to get out...it would be good for me. I am in a little too deep with all this time to myself. It's thre natural contraction of my social life that was already happening, but times ten. Or a hundred. There are so many things I don't want to resume. I think about retirement...how that works for people. I wish I could manage it. Perhaps I will see how little I can live on in the coming months. I know I can be a meager consumer and I can talk myself out of so many things. Some might be harder than others.

That's it, nothing much to say. All of the zooms are like that too. Today I think I might ride my stationary bike while we meet since I have so little to say. I could mute myself and just watch the others. Last week we got to watch my brother's new wallpaper going up and I learned a few tricks on how to do that well. Not going to wallpaper, but I like to know how.

Every single day I say to myself that I'll work on those archives today. Maybe this will be the day.

Tree Love

Well, this happened. It filled my heart and I even put on a mask and went out to take a photo. Earth Day! I remember the first one, in DC. I was there, and was changed. Now I live next door to this...probably a hundred years old. I think about the people who probably planted it, to shade their cows. 

Finally cried. Took a bottle of cider and a writing project. I wrote the project sober, two times, and got that feeling afterward...that euphoria that something powerful happened. It's why writers keep at it. You sit down for several hours, completely focused, and you don't look up until that last paragraph happens, and then the feeling comes over you and your life is meaningful. For five minutes, anyway.

If you are smart you don't send it to anyone, but you fondle it. You wait until the next day and then you edit it, reminding yourself how stupid you are, how making yourself that vulnerable is such a terrible mistake. You send it to your writing group. If you are lucky, they know what to do. Some edit, and send you a document you don't open. Others just praise. That's what you need, encouragement. You just opened a vein. It's kind of a terrifying image, but yes, you tapped into your heart. Everyone benefits, mostly you.

It's dramatic. It's emotional beyond the limit most people are willing to go. But it's the job of a writer, of an artist. That is why people love you. Sure, they love you when you don't do it, but it''s what you can bring, and when you bring it, they want it.

I was surprised at myself, that I hadn't accessed that grief. Not accessing it is bad for you. I had pains...like in my lungs, kinda. I was kind of inviting death. I was not fighting it, I was wanting to hurt. Because this fucking hurts, missing out on everything we love. I haven't lost people yet, all the way, but I have lost everything I do...all of my gatherings, all of my jobs. It's massive in that there's no end in sight. Right as we think our hard work of staying home will pay off, everyone starts talking second wave.

DAMNIT! Every one of us has that neighbor...they aren't helping. They don't care about us. And then all the ones who are helping! Everyone offers to shop for me. I can't stand feeling this cared for. I can't stand having six zooms a week. I just want my life back.

I wrote for hours, I edited a long, long article. I plan to submit it to the Weekly, as a gift, and I hope they take it. Unlike my usual process, I love it and think it is brilliant (wait until morning...) I want to give what I have to give.

And then I sat on the deck in the afternoon sun and wept. Hard. There were chickadees and jays. The apple tree and orange/peach Mollis azalea were glorious. The neighbors were thoughtless and I hate them. I rode the stationary bike. I thought about getting even drunker. I thought getting drunk was a big mistake. I cried and cried.

Then I came in and got the perfect message on my email. I figured out dinner. I turned on the news. I thought of someone I wanted to reach out to, who lost her husband a year ago. I think I am sad. She must be way beyond sad. I still want to cry some more.

But I will watch a movie or something. Actually I will go through a million photos of Saturday Market for the article. They are amazing. Thank you so much to people who took photos.

Fifty years, and now what? No one knows. Maybe we'll be luckier than  we think. Maybe it's meaningful.