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.