The Offseason Dilemmas

It's so pleasant to have Saturdays without Market for a stretch. I treasure the Fridays and Sundays around these Saturdays as well. After so many years without conventional weekends it's just fun to do what other people do...clean house, do yardwork, start weird projects from the never-ending list. Get three or four-day weekends every week if I want. Be a writer and a Jell-O artist. Stay out of the shop completely. 

This past Saturday the 13th was what would have been my Dad's 100th birthday. He only stuck around until 46, so he's been gone for over 50 years, but still, you only get one real dad in most cases. I've mostly made peace with that part of my past, because some of the things I like best about myself came from him. He had a lot of curiosity about making things...wanted to try them out and see what kinds of problems there were to solve. He had a workshop in the basement and I spent a lot of time just watching him and probably asking a lot of questions, or maybe being intimidated into silence. I learned how to saw, for instance, by remembering the way it sounded when I tried it as an adult. He didn't teach me how to use tools. We weren't exactly close but I did model myself after things that were "boy things" in the 1950s. I had three sisters so this was partly just to carve out a different path for myself than what was available to young women then. It was basically limited to service to others, men mostly...you could be a wife, a teacher, or a nurse. Lower status jobs were in retail and clerks, like file clerks. You could be a secretary. He didn't offer any Dad guidance as he was sexist himself and had no idea how to mentor girls. I liked science so decided to study medical technology which I might have liked okay, but I really thought I should study to be a doctor. At some point in college I veered off into a whole new path which led to Eugene, Saturday Market, and who I am today, so I'm glad I did not study to be a doctor, but I did have to do it all without much adult guidance.Consequently I did not know how to offer my wonderful son, whose 34th birthday was yesterday, much adult guidance, but like me he was good at self-education and managed pretty well to become a good person and a productive worker.

What I am is often a Secretary, because I love words and reading and writing and being precise. These Secretary positions are ones of responsibility and the title is misleading, but that's usually my role in whatever groups I am in. Even for the Jell-O Art Show, for which I am an elected Queen, I take notes at the meetings and send them out to keep us all on track with our wild ideas. It's controlling the narrative, but I like doing it and get a lot of ideas in the process. Formal meeting minutes are less fun, but everything about the Jell-O Show is informal and really fun, almost all of the time, so I'm happy to be in the Jell-O Art season once more.

We're cooking up some silliness for this year. Writing the script for the performance and making the sets is so much fun for me I am a bit blind about collaborating. Working in consensus is a continuous challenge in all parts of life...it is always easier to be controlling and make things the way you are sure is best. The deeper you are into it, and the more you have invested in your vision, the harder it is to allow other people equal participation. It has gotten easier as I have learned the strengths of my collaborators...they bring skills that complement yours and all are needed, even the ones that slow down the process and raise objections. I've had my scripts thrown down on the floor and thoroughly rejected. Naturally it stung but it was a lesson in simplification and absolutely the rewritten script was far more successful and usable. It was important to see that person as someone who could cut through politeness and say what needed to be said, and important for me not to be personally invested in my golden words. Each person has their style of giving input and sometimes it is hard or annoying or distressing but it's worth the struggle to find what a friend once called the pearl in everyone.

That has taken me about three decades of sharing my writing to learn, and really what I've learned is to suspend my reaction until I get a chance to process the initial feelings and get to the point, which is to create better writing. It's part of me to react emotionally, to feel oversensitive or humiliated or unappreciated or insulted, but when I put that into my journal instead of saying it out loud, I avoid burdening other people with my irrational or unhelpful emotions. That's part of the NVC training or RC practice that has had lasting value. People speaking their own positions clearly depends on your ability to hear them and whenever you shut down your ability to listen non-judgmentally, you shut down any forward improvement or movement for everyone. Which is not fair and is not collaborative. It's like brainstorming, which you do open-heartedly without evaluating, and improv, where you say "Yes, and..." and never No. Hardly ever. I watch a lot of "Whose Line is it Anyway" and the ease with which Wayne Brady and the other more subtle improvisors pick up and run with things, bringing themselves along but not dominating, is eternally fascinating to me. It's an important skill in a lot of areas. Watching Key and Peele is also super and I wish they had done that show longer than they did.

Group process is tough. Allowing that everyone's ideas may be as good as yours is not natural to a lot of smart people. Being controlling is always tempting, but striving for consensus in an honest way nearly always results in decisions and policies that will stand the test of time. It is tempting to manipulate the process in the set-up, to only present the desired outcomes to be considered, to shut down divergence, and to push others along until they agree with you. It's insulting and dismissive to them...and they notice. Enough of it and you will be worked around...people will disregard your desire for power. I've been involved with membership orgs and group process long enough to see many examples of mistakes in power-sharing. We need a lot of types of people to really be inclusive. I'm currently reading a book about Radical Inclusion, because I recognize that I tend to include people I am comfortable with or already agree with on a lot of things, and that is not a true consensus-seeking process. I don't respect it when I witness it and when I engage in it, I don't like watching myself either. I get the tingling of warnings that something is being sacrificed for my comfort or that of other leaders.

Yesterday I dragged myself down to the Park Blocks to measure for some changes that must be made to fix the issues brought about by the additions of the stormwater catchments. We lost a lot of spaces and have to find more to replace them, or consider more radical changes like additional selling spaces, like in the streets or surrounding spaces that won't feel directly connected to the whole. We know people don't like being separated from whatever they think is the center of it all...the stage and food court for most people, but for me, the fountain and its plaza space. I've known for years now that the City wants to remove that fountain and replace it with an in-ground splash pad, which I have gotten used to imagining, with many reservations. The designs we worked with include benches for parents watching their kids play, of course, which look good on paper but impact our booths. The space I use to keep my bike and trailer safe is also going to disappear when the fountain does. I will be challenged to bring those into my 8x8, as there is not safe storage elsewhere for something that irreplaceable. I'm prepared to do that. So I'm able to not bring my self-protection up when we start discussing possibilities, and I even tried to stay off this Map Task Force, because I do not have to be there for every activity and decision the Market makes...I can't be, and need other people to pull the heavy weight as much as they will, as I am aging out and need to and want to. There were a couple too many of us yesterday and it wasn't consensus-based in the least. You can't keep people from creative visualization when they know they are good at it, so there was just a constant buzz of new ideas when really our task was to measure the spaces, not make decisions. But decisions were made. I didn't enjoy it and left as soon as I could. I just can't be involved in every decision the organization makes. I will do my agonizing in my journal and try to find a path to that duty of loyalty which requires me to support them. Whatever resentment comes up is my problem to keep to myself and make go away. It is not my organization to control...it is my organization to participate in. It won't always be on my ideal terms.

But it turns out that I am the only person left with a complete grasp of the remodel plans and how hard we worked to preserve certain elements of our autonomy and survival and fortunately, I documented everything about that four-year, now 8-year process. It started with the public market proposal and the study that the New York-based Project for Public Spaces consultants did for the city. This was brutal, and began with a thorough media campaign to trash downtown, which was in bad shape. The biggest difference between then and now is that it was all in the RG multiple times, the lead-in, the foreshadowing, the discussion, various opinions from the citizens and experts, and the conclusions and results. Now we see none of that, and that is one reason we absolutely need the Eugene Weekly to come back and help us with this more hidden phase we are entering now. I have albums of news articles that we still need and don't have. I have other albums of emails that I have printed out and will never supply the whole picture, as texts and in-person meetings are rarely documented and decisions are not always inclusive or collaborative. Efficiency has taken away some of that. Fortunately the City is rarely efficient and is required to do a lot of public statement before they move on anything. The challenge is finding out where they are doing that, keeping up with them, and being there to respond. I spent some hours reviewing City Council agendas since I stopped listening to every meeting and public forum but I am going to have to pay more attention to all of that, because the people who do, often speak in ways I would like to counter or correct with real information instead of self-interested speculation.

The money that was ready to do the Park Block remodel was about half of what was needed, and right before the pandemic had its effects, that money was pooled with the farmers' money to get their block built. The land swap, the demolishing, moving the farmers for two seasons to 5th St, and now making the pavilion work have all sucked up a ton of resources. Saturday Market was ignored and shelved, and we were kind of happy about most of that, except that the dangers of the lack of maintenance on our safety increased. We asked for concrete repair and we actually do need a bigger food court that can accommodate mobile kitchens, and we need a better stage, and so do all of the other park users. The Pavilion has terrible acoustics (those are expensive) and is not very usable by smaller groups who prefer to be outside anyway. All the gravel surfaces are hard to use. It's working pretty well for farmers' market and met some goals, but not all of the goals for the what was called Town Square and now doesn't really have a name except Downtown. It looks like the City is proceeding with implementing some of the parts of the vision that included the two southern blocks. We got the curbless streets, partially, and will get more of that this season, and likely for the next five or so years.

It is super hard to work on all of those problems at once. Everytime the FSP comes up at City Council, it is obvious there that no one on the council or staff knows a thing about Saturday Market and no one knows how to find anything out. We have gone through too many managers in the last decade to seem approachable, though they are gradually learning that we have an engaged manager now. However, I am still the person who brings the history and continuity, and because I do that as a volunteer, it is just not respected. I'm hoping that archiving the materials, which actually go back to the 2000s, will help. It helped a little during the remodel...at least they attempted to show that we had history, although it was generally incorrect, like the whole thing of the farmers being 100 years old. They became LCFM in 1979, after the Saturday Market revived them, but nobody really wants to hear me tell that story again. It's not that important right now, like the story of how 5th St. got started with hiring our manager and taking 75 of our best artisans over to make an indoor space that ultimately got gobbled up by Obieland. He has all the power now and he has tried to marginalize us the whole time, rather successfully in fact.

But now we seem to have the ear of some City staff and we may be entering a new phase of being understood and respected. The present power structure within our organization is doing well with building relationships but I would not characterize them as inclusive. I'm concerned but don't have much power to do anything about it. As an old lady from the past I am not often listened to with real openness, though as I turn out to be right I regain respect. I know our membership. I know just how annoying and self-interested we tend to be, and how that presents to bigger entities like the City. They deal with that kind of energy in everything they do, and have their work-arounds, which I have seen in their naked forms and have learned to accept as inevitable. Yes, they do public engagement, but it is scripted for their desired outcomes and it gets ugly when the people try to change the course of development. These times are the worst for that...corporate power is not honest and the battles are dire...witness NWNG, student housing, and the 5th St Market District and its connection to the Riverfront, which was supposed to be the 8th Avenue Willamette to Willamette Great Street program. Won't ever be now. It's all about what 5th St. wants.

And since Obie hates us, there's no way we will find a relocation solution that will work for us when the big parts of the remodel happen. We saw our season flounder with the 8th St and Oak and Park Street construction all summer. It was harsh and took so much staff time, policies that had to be tossed together and a loss of cohesion in our membership as self-interest prevailed. We know that our honor system of payment is often not enough to motivate fair payments when people feel their situation is not fair. So we know we didn't get honest fees from everyone. Some of us made big donations. My personal merch program donated over $2000 to the general expenses and I am not the only person who gave or bought equipment or gave excessive volunteer time. That's what we do when we're needed. But for people to give, they need to really feel a part of all of it. The reasons why they may not feel included are many and complex, but we need to figure out how to motivate people. Inclusion, where they get to speak for themselves, is essential.

I've always fought against fines and punitive policies because they drive people further away. As an org we seem to be going closer to that territory, as OCF has as well. I quit volunteering for OCF as I knew my voice would never be heard in the present atmosphere, and that is a relief for me to stop flailing. Now I will choose to comply or quit. I never want to be in that position with Saturday Market, and don't plan to be. It is my retirement plan, my sustenance, and my key to the future survival of my little world. I owe it to my history and my survival to keep trying, to learn how to increase our inclusivity and fight against our tendency to tighten things up when it gets hard. We used to be able to craft a lot of individual solutions for our very individual concerns, but we may not be able to continue to do that in a world that is less honorable and more life-threatening. Fighting the tightening up is hard to envision and hard to do. No one wants to hear about fears and will dismiss what presents as fear. That is always the first defense used against little old ladies. It's my job now to reframe concerns as logical and visionary rather than trying to protect what we have known. After so many years of that with the city, I am not sure how much I can continue to learn better ways to do that. I'm annoyed that I have to. 

But that's today. It's my day off. Maybe tomorrow I will get back into problem-solving. Really what I should do today is make some Jell-O. It always works. Also there are sticks to pick up. I'm super tempted to take my saw around the corner and help the neighbor who has a tree blocking the sidewalk. It's a street tree, so the city is responsible, and I am not, but it needs to be dealt with. Probably not by a little old lady from around the corner. I want to do it though. 

Irony is Not Dead

 Not amusing to hear the narcissist speak about supporting orgs started in the 70s which struggle with things like embezzlement. 

Give back the money.

Still work, just different work

 I was so relieved at the end of Holiday Market, where I masked almost all of the time. It seemed to me that people were grateful for that rather than avoiding me...I'd say about 20% of the population both internal and external was masking. I know I felt safer. I had one quickly suppressed sore throat episode and got exposed to Covid, but I didn't get sick. I felt safer on Xmas Eve, and didn't mask much that day. I tried not to hug anyone but I did a little. It's emotional to end a season on a holiday that is kind of fraught for me, although I weathered the emotions well I thought.

 When I went on the 27th to load out, I didn't mask, and also went downtown to the library and grocery that day, masked inside. About six days later, not having seen a single human, I came down with what I think was RSV. I didn't have a fever, just a lot of congestion which caused a cough. It has lasted a week and isn't quite over. I tested negative for Covid twice.

My respiratory distress is always linked to particular foods for me, dairy and citrus, and I did push the limits of that around Xmas, because everything has butter in it and I love satsumas too. So it got kind of bad, not restricting my breathing or anything, just gross mucus and a lot of coughing and sneezing. I believe it was a virus and it has almost gone away. I figure I got it from touching something downtown...door handles, whatever. RSV persists on surfaces for a few hours but it was also possible it was some other virus. I have isolated and taken care of myself but it wasn't fun and I still can barely eat anything without reacting to it. It will be a long time before I have any dairy. I put all the cookies and things in the freezer.

So not a fun start on vacation time but the upside was I didn't really do any work to speak of for the last several weeks. Right now I am obsessed with sorting through papers that I've saved for various reasons and books I am most likely not going to read. Books go to the Little Free Libraries and papers are just recycled or saved in smaller units for a little longer. 

I'm a lot better at letting things go but recognizing the feelings of loss that come with that. I'm wrapping up my OCF volunteer experience and letting go of being an insider on the issues and gossip. I always like to know what is going on with everyone but I figure over time I will probably hear the important stories, and it's too many people to keep track of anyway. Lots of things I might rather not know. I worked really hard at increasing communication for members of OCF, particularly crafters, but as I went through my records I felt like there will be no net gain over time for the time I spent and things I put in place. My work will be erased or supplanted by the efforts of others, some well-meaning and some not, and that's just the way it goes. OCF is giant and never stays the same, whether that is good or bad overall...it's not possible for one person to have much real effect on any part of it. 

I'm proud of my efforts and glad I tried but also relieved and happy to be out of the way of it now. I don't feel obligated to respond to anyone or monitor any FB (except for Negative Shit) or lead or even follow. I was just an observer and complainer for a long time and while I may try not to be a complainer I will still be an astute observer of all of the ways of a membership organization and can do that from somewhat of a distance. I'm disciplining myself to care a lot less about it all. At some point I will stop watching the Board meetings, maybe soon. 

As for Saturday Market and the Kareng Fund, not leaving. I was named Volunteer of the Year, 

which generated a lot of nice compliments and appreciation from my fellow members and staff, so that felt very good and I'm proud of my efforts and what is at this point, kind of a legacy. I still have a lot to do there, not the least of it being the archives, which I think about all the time but have not really gotten to. I'm using being sick as an excuse. I will get a big chunk of it done though, as I realized I don't have to take notes on the materials from the last few years in detail, as I have all the Board packets and documents saved in electronic form, and the newsletters are posted on the website. So I will likely drop back into 2019, which is nearly finished, and move to the present before I go back into the old stuff. Soon.

I feel like I am running out of time to get every part of my life in order for the inevitable end of my ability to do this kind of work. If I'm going to write any books I can't just put it off that much longer. I doubt I will write any fiction. I had a period of that and will collect all of it in a form I can access easily if I want to go back and edit it, which would be needed. A friend gave me a copy of a story I had written about her 20 years ago, about an incident that was meaningful for us both, and she was still moved to tears by it, but frankly, it left me kind of cold. It was over-the-top emotional and dramatic. I am absolutely no longer that person so it gave me insight into why I got a lot of confusing reaction to my writing back then, and to some of my actions as well, so it set of a period of self-examining with a different perspective than I've had before.

Last night I went through things I'd saved from John's school career and it was actually pretty depressing for me. In many ways I was not a good parent. I was self-involved and had a lot of work to do both to keep us alive and well and to process my own issues, so I was not emotionally nurturing in the ways I would see as important now. He was on his own to a large degree and I can see that in his behaviors and attitudes...at the time I wasn't able to do it any other way I suppose. I think I saw it as letting him have the freedom to develop as a person but more guidance and structure would have really helped. Single-parenting has some definite drawbacks. He had good teachers some of the time and he responded to that, but by high school they didn't have much time or ability to influence him and neither did I. I was present, volunteering and working at school, but I think that made it worse for him as home wasn't different enough to be a sanctuary and he experienced me as part of the system. When he quit he wouldn't even discuss it. Our struggles were harsh.

I can track his anti-progress as he developed a personality and resistance to the systems, which both of his parents transmitted to him somewhat unknowingly...I mean, I can't get behind the systems without my own resistance so I wasn't selling him on it properly. Once I realized that math and science achievers were going to get channeled into oppressive militaristic channels, most likely, I wasn't as willing to push him into that, though I did support his interests and tried to get him the resources. We were poor, though, so I had to ask for help and that might have kept him out of some things. I don't think he got to go to computer camp and even Culture Jam refused us a scholarship because people thought I could afford it...I did afford it, but it was hard. People didn't see the truth of what looked like financial security because I looked like a successful crafter and we had that big business for awhile (which left me with little but debt, which I kept private as it was embarrassing.) I got $200 a month in child support. I was remodeling a house for us so he could have a room that wasn't on the way to the bathroom. I had to work multiple jobs and that meant all the time. I still feel misunderstood with my poverty consciousness. Getting something like dementia or a disability terrifies me. I won't even buy myself a new vacuum cleaner or consume much of anything outside of food.

 I couldn't get him private music lessons when he might have responded...things like that. We didn't socialize with people with money and resources. He didn't have much privilege, which is kind of a good thing in retrospect, but he internalized being poor and lost his enthusiasm for trying somehow. Somehow he found out that extra effort would not be rewarded and wasn't worth it. I'm sure being poor was hard on him. I got all of his toys at Goodwill. Health care was a nightmare...I would put off taking him to the doctor in a way that shames me no end now. Poverty is serious, and people you know are suffering from it. Fortunately at this point, I am not, really...my hard work paid off, but that doesn't mean I will ever feel safe in this world.

No doubt I am missing a lot by just looking at these school-related artifacts but he didn't give me a lot else to get to know him with. I didn't know how to draw him out, and he didn't share a lot of himself with me. We were right on top of each other in our little house and I was working on the other house from when he was 5 to 16...my goal was to give him a room with a door on it that he could lock and he never did get that. As a builder I was self-taught as I am with everything and there was something about the way I hung his bedroom door that made it not close properly. So even after he got some real private space, it wasn't enough. I was always there, which I suppose is why he learned to close me out. 

I was 39 when he was born, which was good and not so good, as my forties and fifties were full of some radical self-improvement and it was clunky. I was in therapy, co-counseling, learned NVC (kind of) and spent a ton of time writing, going to meetings, and having my very necessary adult growth spurt. I left him pretty stranded when he was a teenager, and his Dad was even less help. He survived it, and had good friends, but it was a lot less than I would have wished for him. It's not something he wants to talk about yet, though I keep expecting that part. I know I went through it with my own pretty self-absorbed parents. My dad abandoned us when I was 20 (suicide) and my Mom was always distracted with having too many kids and too much work to do. I felt loved, and my son feels loved, but there were things I blamed them for and for which they were guilty. So I expect him to have some resentment and blame. I think that is not something he will want to address unless he becomes a parent and starts to pick it apart...which I don't think he is planning. I try not to feel like that is my fault. It's hard to imagine anyone not feeling reluctant to reproduce in this world, though someone did tell me once that the reason they could do it was that they believed in life. 

I believe in life, because the natural world is something I pay a lot of attention to, but I am not sure how much I believe in love. I am a-romantic and can't really get into anything celebrating those areas of human interaction. I participate on some levels but I do not gush and that story reminded me of how far I have gone away from all of that. I regret pursuing whatever I was pursuing in my fifties when I was on OK Cupid and trying to get this one guy to be with me. I'm grateful to him for refusing me, as painful as it was. I learned a lot from just that and he pointed me toward many useful resources that did help me. I suppose I had to go through that. But I wish I had spent that energy being a better mom of a teenager. His needs should have been what I was thinking about (I was...) and his future should have been more in my goals list. I guess regrets are important to, so we can do better, but today sucks.

Not that much I can do to fix it, but I am a very supportive mother of a 34-year old, within the limits we are fenced into now. His birthday is coming up. As always it is bittersweet, as all the holidays are, when I compare my life to the mainstream lives online and TV (I know, don't do that) and I try in various ways to do better with him. I will keep trying with whatever good time we have left, and I will try very, very hard to not burden him with my aging self. So I will not text him my feelings about his report cards and all the things I did wrong. I'm telling you few people who enjoy my drama and bullshit for whatever reasons...I'm glad you get something out of it and I carefully don't really want to know who all of you are, for the most part. I'm writing this for me, because as I found out when I was in my thirties, and am still finding out, I am a flawed and selfish person. Not the only one, but it's not something I can really hide. I'm glad people can appreciate me anyway, even though what I do is hide it with hard work. I will work hard for the common good. I will work hard. I will work hard for you, albeit tangentially. I know how to work hard.

I don't know how to not work hard, but once I sort all of these papers, maybe I can work on that. (*bitter laughter*) Happy New Year!

As a follow-up, now that I have gone through all of the school papers, I found out there were some good years when things went just right, and all along I did have a lot of involvement, whether that was really good or bad. I just had to pull back sometimes. It's forgivable.  Here's a photo from kindergarten.