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.