Carving out a Moment

 Sunday morning has always been my favorite time for writing here, and it has been many months since I have felt like I was having a real day off with enough mental space to do that. It seems today is the day. I doubt I can corral all of my many topics into something coherent, since so much has happened and continues. It's the last day of the Lane County Fair, so I'm looking forward to getting my neighborhood back although the impacts have not been intolerable for the last few years...except the shootings. There was one Friday night, on the other side of the Fairgrounds from me, but still, so concerning. That and the clearbag policy probably has something to do with the lessened popularity of the event. I don't care to go anymore.

At Market our staff recently went through an Active Shooter training and our emergency plans are being updated, but being vulnerable on the Park Blocks is nothing new...I remember the end of one Tuesday Market when a young woman was threatening to shoot us. I have a tendency to dismiss these things over which I have no control, to the point of dissociating and just working to get to safety while pretending everything is normal. Obviously normal has changed, and as I age the vulnerability just increases in every way. On Friday I was walking home and someone across the street was giving CPR, with the EMTs a couple of blocks away still. I started crying and was reminded of how useless I can be in emergencies. I'm probably a great candidate for training as it would increase my skills and confidence in being helpful. I knew crossing the street to repeat the questions of others would not be useful but if I had CPR capabilities or Narcan I might have been able to support the other helpers. It pains me to not be helpful as my normal mode is trying to make myself responsible for every solution to every problem and I have to actively counsel myself about the many things that are just not my job.

I have a lot of jobs, and people tend to come to me for help, but I am also in a phase where I am not being consulted and included in solution-making processes, both as a result of my age and my edge of burnout which I've been experiencing for some time. My Mom dying made me instantly older and I recognized the quite short time I have left in this lifespan. I don't want to shelve all of my ambitions to creative work that uses my skills in more important ways than taking minutes at meetings but I am still attached to being useful and keeping a valuable public record is important work to me. But I have books to write that aren't getting easier to write. I vividly remember trying to help Mom finish her book when her capability to do that was greatly diminished. She tried very hard and did well but we had to abandon the finished ending we had planned and when I tried to get her to write an acknowledgement of my role as editor for clarity, she couldn't do it. I had to let a lot of things go to get it published, which I am most certainly glad I did, but the letting go was painful for us both I think. By the end of her life she had mostly forgotten she had written the book, although she reread it when she could still read and pronounced it pretty good. And then it was history and then she became history too. As will I.

So I need to get cracking. Getting the archives out of my living room would be so freeing and I am moving that much higher on my priority list. Sadly I am still doing catch-up from May and June as I was so busy with OCF work and still have a lot of it to do. My efforts to be efficient to carve out a trip back east were successful. I had enough time to get organized to move out to the OCF site and solve all the attendant difficulties with that, and I actually enjoyed the trip east as well which was always up in the air. It was very valuable to be with my family and the only part I really regret was not taking my son which I would have done if I hadn't been too stressed to communicate better with him. I'm pained that he was not there. Next time we'll do better.

OCF...so many things. There was truly a breakdown of the communication systems for the craft sector and I feel some responsibility for that. My goal in volunteering on Craft Committee and on monitoring the Board has always been to increase mutual understanding of the needs and perspectives of all of the interest groups and I feel like petitions and comments at the Board meeting show that artisans, even members of the committee, do not know what the channels are to get their needs met in the system. Granted, the disappointing nature of the main problems we had was extreme and much more affecting than in the past. We had zero promotion as artisans, we had the worst internet service since I told Charlie Ruff what Square was and how retailing had changed and was the first to bring admin attention to the issue. There were some simple solutions that could have been communicated, like creating a hotspot in your own booth for your own access. I could even have borrowed one from the library if I had known to do that. I personally can do fine with the cash economy and doubt I lost very many sales as my most expensive product is $30, but others were heartbroken as the petition showed. It didn't have to be that bad. And some simple information-sharing would have greatly helped, but we lost big parts of our communication systems with the electronic interfaces. 

It's ironic that putting everything online and posting things on the .net site would be worse than sending paper packets of multiple sheets to each booth rep but the transition was just not communicated early enough and well enough, and it wasn't the fault of any volunteers, all of who were working so damn hard to get it all done. Mostly it did get done, but with a maximum of frustration instead of greater ease as it could have been experienced. To go from people registering us for multiple weeks in person at Saturday Market to everyone doing everything themselves online, even with multiple reminders and email links, has just not been a successful transition yet. Maybe next year. And the lack of promotions and visible appreciation and presence of the 800 fine artisans was connected in many ways to this transition, which is cultural and organizational and just very difficult for our particular in-person and vulnerable culture.

Really what we are undergoing is a shift from being taken care of to taking care of ourselves and as we're (many of us) shifting in the opposite direction personally as we age, it's a generational clash and a complicated dance where needs are just not being communicated and met. I am not the kind of person who wants a lot of help, but the systems before were set up to be easy for artists who are maybe not managers and now artists must also be good managers of the myriad aspects of small businesses. Lots of extra phone calls and efforts were made to bring people along who didn't get things and the lower numbers of volunteers willing to overwork has made this impossible. So anyone who doesn't self-manage is just not succeeding. And people in management and volunteer positions don't necessarily understand how hard artisans work to make Fair happen. Not only do we need to bring a viable retail shop with all of those fixtures and requirements, but we have to bring our survival systems and our teams of helpers and the time frame is very tight. I have to be there on Tuesday to get it all set up, and this year required three trips to site before that. I now think I will need to lobby for and begin shifting load-out to Tuesday from Monday which is of course prohibited and not supported. Bathroom access, water, garbage service, and food is all stopped earlier on Monday than I can even exit.

A big part of that is getting a vehicle into my space on Monday. This has been hard for many years and previous strategies have evolved into moving my car closer while trying to avoid the long lines of people with their air-conditioning on, waiting in lines for literally hours. I am not willing to wait in those lines. I couldn't get in until after 4 pm and my car overheated on the way home so I had to stop three times. The truck that had my stock and fixtures had similar issues so it was evening by the time I even had my stock stowed indoors. The upside was that I had time on site to really break down my camp and was able to put off my clean-up trip until my car is ready for it. Staying over Monday night would be so much less stressful and safe. We're all so tired on Monday. It's really dangerous.

And cuturally, as crafters at OCF, we have to make an adjustment toward more participation in the systems that support us, which is of course another primary goal for me. The year that we had all the mud (2009?) I sat there with my pile of packed, wet shirts until Tuesday, as they would not let my driver come in, and he was angry and had other plans that didn't include another two-hour delay on Tuesday morning as Charlie and Steve surveyed the roads in their golf cart while we digested the promises we'd heard on Monday. My operation is big out there...almost equivalent to a food booth, but I was not recognized as a bigger business and after some reflection post-Fair, I realized that even after 40 or so quite visible years, I wasn't known, and that was my fault. So I became a volunteer, taking minutes for a few different committees until I landed on Craft Committee and made myself truly useful. 

I'm still not all that known, but now at least I understand a lot more about the structure of the bureaucracy and the convoluted ways things work in the organization. This is of course a blessing and a curse, as I often know whom to ask and also whom to "blame." I try not to throw blame and definitely not shame but some things are being inadequately done by people who are getting paid well to do better. I need them to do better. I'm wanting to hold people more accountable and make fewer excuses for them. 

Knowing as much as I do about the Board and staff, I suffer from horror at what has developed. A person whom I have witnessed committing crimes is still in power and perhaps increasingly so, and I don't see this playing out well. It has already destroyed so much, and caused so many good people to walk away. I do know how hard it is to take toxic people out of power, but having done so more than once, I know it has to be done. It requires a lot of personal sacrifice and days and weeks of agonizing and strategy and a steadfast conviction of the facts and one's own values. I'm still there for it, but with such a large organization as OCF it is very damaging and hard to maintain. The part I am willing and able to take in it is small. I would much prefer to work on some of the issues that I have hope of easing, such as the communicating with crafters part as we try to shift the culture into a more giving one from an entitled one. 

Fortunately I find the crafter population mostly receptive and intelligent about the solutions and we are making slow but significant progress. The  resistance to change is built into the systems more than it is the people, I'm finding. Hardly any of us is ready for fast change, but most of us are ready to work on the incremental change that seems to be the most viable path. Education can be gratifying and it's just a big, tough challenge when so many thousands of people are involved. The backsliding and loss of progress is just part of being an activist and I try to remind myself that everything I do is a lifetime task...I will do my part and that is what I can do. Or...I can retire and leave it to others...but that doesn't seem to be my style.

So OCF the event is almost put away, and OCF the lifework resumes. Saturday Market is in pretty good shape in contrast, after the many crises of the past couple of years. We are in construction hell with the tearing up of 8th Street, but that will have an end in a month or so and we'll get the benefits of it. I think we can hang on for the duration. There is a cost...but my sales are still good and I still manage to motivate myself to show up. Having the Wellsprings X-tians show up yesterday again was a shock and chaotic despair moment, but we survived it and will again. The city and county really mismanaged the FSP thing once more so that got worse, but I long ago resigned myself to just enduring it without hope of solutions. I'm pretty high on endurance points. This will be important for the next couple of decades, as it becomes more challenging on so many fronts.

I hope I can endure. I feel resilient, and almost rested, as long as I get my Sundays off and can recharge in silence. I love summer so am just happy to be here, even though I can't get my house below 78 degrees. It could be worse. True, a lot of my happiness today is because I went to the library on Friday and got four books I really want to read, and today is reading day. I got food yesterday, I watched a youtube about how to fix my car. I have money. I have people who care about me. 

I just remembered that one of the traditions of my youth was eating popcorn on Sunday mornings, so I think I might make some. I can do anything I want today. I don't have to do anything I don't want to today. I'm so lucky to have carved that out in this world. One day can be very precious, and all the more so when it is summer.