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.
