More on Tactics and Joy

Yesterday I observed another joyful and productive market day, and managed to stay in the joy place the whole day, and stop myself from dwelling on things that were not in that realm. It was great but I did stumble into a few of the current minefields of drama.

The triangulating gets more evident as I look into it and I can see that it has been happening for a really long time...the past few years anyway. Stories are told, drama is created, people are hurt and offended and in some cases driven away. All of it benefits the narcissists and mean people and creates loss as an end product. 

Studying the narcissism is fascinating and important, to get why the market is being divided up, distracted from our pressing issues like overspending and overstaffing, and why older and wiser members are being sidelined and manipulated. Newer members are easier to attract to the in-crowd, pleased to be noticed and supported. Problematic people are portrayed as being leaders of factions, such as "So-and-so and her minions" which I heard yesterday. Minions means fighting and conflict is distracting. 

When you agree or disagree with someone, you don't necessarily join their faction. All of our members are really independent thinkers with their own experiences and perspectives, and dividing us up does not benefit us or the organization, it only benefits the power structure. It erodes the viability of the organization. A good management would never promote division, it would strive for unity and find ways to build community. Sadly the way we are currently being led is to unify against our common enemy, the X-tians who disrupted our May 17th market, while our true problems are coming from within.

Turns out they came because of a regional conference of that type of extremists and we have no reason to believe they will come more frequently (only twice in 2024) and they aren't targeting only us. So the current effort to amass resources we don't have, including paid staff time and the energy of volunteers, to fight them, is a distraction. We have bigger issues right now, like financial accountability, the distress of members being targeted, and the psychological issues that are destroying our community through the drama and lies being created.

The attempt to make everyone adhere to a company line is something I have to explore in my own past as well as what is happening now and recently. That old Duty of Loyalty asks the Board and Officers to support whatever the org has decided, so when a person disagrees with that decision, it does ask you to set aside that disagreement. But it does not go so far as to control and manage what is said and done by everyone in the org. Many of us noticed we did not have an avenue to disagree with things, not only Board decisions but other issues and concerns. We found we suffered retaliation or targeted discipline if we had a different opinion. A lot of people walked away over that. I even know of some less-than-ethical actions designed to keep the company line dominant over dissent. Way less than ethical. 

And this encouragement to make our concerns about the proselytizing public is causing misinformation. One letter to the Weekly said the disturbance was happening every week, when it has happened once in two months. Another letter was the kind of righteous defense of the market I remember having written in the past, a kind of "I know it all" response to difficulty that doesn't sound balanced for the whole community, but kind of a Market First proclamation that sounds entitled and arrogant. And it wasn't even truthful for all of us, as my sales did not stop, and I am guessing many members in other parts of the market also continued to sell well. I think that was because we insisted in not giving in to the bullying, but remained in our businesslike, focused customer service mode and were still friendly and calm. We didn't engage with the bullies.

And that is the thing I keep telling myself over and over. You can't engage with bullies and narcissists with the hope of defeating them, as it just makes their motivation to dominate you stronger. As I have said before, I am just not going to allow bullies into my sphere. They can do all of their triangulating, ruin my reputation, misunderstand me, and all that they do, but I will have my joy, peace, and make the end of my productive years work for me. You can work against them, but you don't do it by feeding into their narratives and allowing them to always set the stage to drama.

I will somehow continue the service and responsibility for the organization that has been my duty of loyalty all 50 of these years. Loyalty is not to the people in power, it is to the values and the vision that got us here and sustains us. I was told that I enjoy more privilege than anyone at the market, which stunned me as an example of how I am being misinterpreted. I have worked hard for all of these years to make sure I did not have privilege, that I always gave more than I received, that I always held the highest ethics and sense of responsibility that I was capable of, and promoted member equity. I know that was widely respected and treasured by a lot of members, although it may be destroyed now. I did not do it perfectly. I had to learn how, and of course I did make mistakes. I promoted that company line and wrote those impassioned defenses and sometimes I suppose my trust was misplaced and my statements were untrue, or at minimum, dismissive of other people's experiences. I'm still learning.

So in a way, I am enjoying this new period of observation from the outside and seeing if I can understand what is really going on, the patterns, the intentions, and the preventable mistakes. There is no shortage of things to reflect upon. Yesterday included some very authentic conversations with my neighbors and customers, and I learned a lot. Being in Raven's old space has a spiritual value that I may not have recognized fully. A visitor told me how Raven would dispel negative energy by transforming it, quietly and powerfully with his shakers and his intentions. I am sure he had to do that with me sometimes even! I remember how it felt to talk about my dilemmas with him. He always could point out the ways for me to move the emotions to more positive ones, and he did it without judgement, half the time without me even noticing. I really miss Raven in Raven's corner. I'm thrilled to be holding that physical space, but going forward I will try harder to hold that spiritual and emotional space. Maybe I need a shaker.

Caring about the Kareng Fund.

 Last week at market we had a great morning, just full of joy. There were many people from the Big 10 track meet, all new to market and fun to interact with. We also had a lot of people who were just being themselves, their sometimes weird and unconventional selves. Happy to be in a safe place where they could express whatever they wanted to express, they were also delighted with us, happy to be in a safe place expressing ourselves with our art.

 It was blissful. The predicted rain was just a few drops, hardly noticeable. Sales were great. Then the group of people I call the X-tians showed up with their horrible signs and loud proselytizing and started calling us all sinners who needed their version of fascist purity and moral rules that were what they would insist on imposing on us whether we gave our consent or not.

I'm just far enough away I can mostly ignore it, but it brought a nasty chaos that was more widespread. No one felt very safe. We all felt stressed. It didn't ruin my day, but it contributed to a lot of distress I had already been feeling after finding out some things I hadn't known were also being imposed on me, and others. Bullying from our own management on our members has been escalating. A lot of members are still not aware of it, but many of us have been targets.

Why on earth the management would want to battle with the members is the overlying question. It seems to be a huge difference in values and vision for the organization layered into a very poor skill set at the top. We just don't have professional and skilled management right now.

It adds stress to my Friday night and Saturday morning, but I was very successful this week at setting it aside and continuing to have the market life and experience I have always had and still insist on having. I have noticed an extreme division in the membership though. Some of us are no longer friends, and we no longer support each other. It's feeling tragic to me. We can't even manage to just work alongside each other, without nasty tactics by the people I call the mean girls, and a shit ton of avoidance.

I don't know where that will end. Damage is being done that will last. My post on the Kareng Fund on the members' page is being noticeably shunned...so people won't support the Kareng Fund? Can that be true? I'm shocked. How can that be happening? That is so much bigger than me, or any one of us. We have given over $120,000 in grants to artisans in crisis. What's not to support? And who is leading that effort to disenfranchise us? 

I sincerely hope that tomorrow I will find out that this is not at all true. I have been avoiding that members' page, since it blew up in the coup and I felt trashed, but the KF has nothing to do with that. I'm sorry I posted, and extra sorry I went back and looked at it. I hate Facebook for breaking into the peace I found this week.

I'm going to work on convincing myself all is well and try to recreate last week's joyful morning tomorrow. It used to be like that for me every week. I feel like I have lost so much in just the last two years, after a lifetime of giving, a lifetime of holding things together as unselfishly as I could. 

I didn't actually lose it. It was destroyed. I hope I can let this go. It's heartbreaking. 

I had fun today making these really pretty tote bags. I made too many, as it was going well and I was enjoying printing for a change. 

Edit: there seemed to be plenty of support for the KF today. Lots of people gave items for prizes and we generated some promotion for the Bingo event. A million thanks to Alex for giving up his day to setting up a collection station and giving out bags to the members for their donations. I also seem to still have plenty of friends. Grateful for that.

 

 

Triangulating

 I'm sure people are getting tired of my focus on narcissists but when you are being bullied and targeted, it takes a lot of your time and emotional energy, so it keeps coming up. One thing I discovered recently was that I was being used by the narcissists to bully someone else.

Triangulating is when the bullying is done indirectly, through a third person. What's happening for me, is someone is paying close attention to things I say, changing them to be disparaging, and making sure they are passed on to another vulnerable person. This is probably happening in more than one way. The only way you find out about these things is when the victims get together and air the issues that have been manufactured to be between them.

This used to happen in my family in a fairly benign way...siblings would go to Mom with their complaints and she would obligingly try to fix them for us. We were just trying to be safe with each other and didn't realize we were doing it, but my brother called it out and once we saw it we tried to stop. It took awhile, as it is easier when you are challenged about confronting personal issues like so many of us are. If you don't feel safe, it seems easier to be indirect and this allows things to build up until the misconceptions can really damage the relationships. But my brother works hard at clean communication and he helped us figure it out and stop using Mom. I, for one, was grateful. We don't get born knowing these kinds of things...it takes work, patience, and self-awareness.

I'm a lot better in writing than I am in speaking in person, and most people aren't, so things often go quite far without being addressed in my life. When a mean person inserts themself to misrepresent things, it gets built up to be relationship destroying. Mom was pretty innocent and nice, and our issues were just little sibling insecurities mostly, but the issues don't have to be big and important for people to feel hurt and treated badly. The bully likes it when it hurts, so they have no problem using actual words you said to hurt someone you had no intention of hurting. They just leave out the parts where you said things that were reasonable or forgiving and understanding.

One of the issues recently was that I found it not ideal to be referred to as an elder, with the associated idea that elders might not be around long, so you ought to appreciate them while they are here. Not intended to be insulting, but to people my age, death is a very different reality, along with the end of our productive years, our health complications, and the many things that make us retire or suffer crises we are not in control of. So in my work life, especially when OCF elders are actually retired people, which I most definitely am not, I would like a better term for me. I posted on FB about it and a lot of people agreed with me. It isn't a compliment but younger people think they are honoring us...not their fault. So I did complain, but also spent a lot of time trying to think of better terms so I could suggest them to the person who had said the thing. I didn't come up with much...it's so common to use elder, and meant to honor, so what works better? I kind of settled on asking to be focused on for my work, not my age. But I never went to the person who had said it to suggest the correction, because time had passed, it wasn't that important, and again, it's common. It was actually a refreshing change for the older ones among us to even be noticed, with all the usual emphasis in our culture on the new and young.

But they heard through the triangulation that I had been offended (actually I was amused, and not offended) and had held it against them as a criticism, which I really had not. It was said, I mentioned it briefly, but it didn't seem like something worth taking any further. And they were hurt. We may have cleared it up when she told me I should always bring criticism to her directly, and I said that I would have, if it had been important enough to me and I had a constructive suggestion. 

It wasn't a big deal but it revealed a pattern, that other things I had said were transmitted in that same way, so things added up for her. She then had an issue with me that was in the way of our working together, and thankfully she did bring that up when I didn't express any of my issues when we had a meeting where I could have. I rarely do bring up issues like that, particularly when it is connected with someone's job, so I didn't even have any to discuss. I assume that everyone is doing their job as well as they can, and I cut people a lot of slack and let them do it. I'll work around them if I need to, or avoid them if I have to. But I am generally not out to change people or their behavior, as I do not want people trying to do that to me. But she did have issues with me, so we emailed about them, and each got to give our perspective, which worked for me and I hope did for her. I tried to make my apologies not have those added clauses of excuses and reversals that apologies so often include.

Anyway, that was not the biggest issue of my week but I thought I would try to remember the triangulating tactic so I could watch more closely for it. Apparently I am not as safe to use my free speech as I would like to be. When there are mean people around, it is important to be careful, so the hurt doesn't spread as far as it wants to.

 In other news, I went to the lane County History Museum and connected with the Curator of Collections in a fun way. They had a little collection of early Market history which I loved to see, though it was mostly not new info for me, and I also viewed a great scrapbook by Donna Fogelstrom on the beginnings of 5th St Public Market, which I had never researched and it had a lot I didn't know. We talked a little about my other historical passions and I will have to go back soon as they have a great reading room now where the gift shop was, with a lot of things I want to look in. I so love research. I think I missed my calling and should have been an academic. I guess being a writer is close. It would have been a loss for the world if I hadn't made all those t-shirts too, I suppose. But I might have to do a post about what I learned there...right after I do that wrap-up of the Jell-O Art Show that is so overdue.

Rainy market tomorrow, first one of the season! Could be pretty wet. I got out the weight bags and booth sides and the whole deal and am planning to rough it, because it is usually kind of fun and people still buy hats. Plus, it's my job and I like to do it. Even though my week was a bit less than productive, I still have the most important day of it, so I'm ready. Let it rain!

Bad bones in a Good Bag

 The title is something that came in a conversation at Market yesterday. A customer came in carrying two very large jawbones in a paper bag and bought one of my nicest bags to carry them in. He was just a delightful person and when we came up with that phrase collaboratively he said welcome to his world, that it would make a good band name. It is of course poetry, with the kind of deep multi-level meaning that I love and crave, and really made my day. Our conversation was too brief, but the phrase will live on. Not really going to work for a hat, but kind of describes my present condition, as I am turning 75 tomorrow.

My bones are actually only Bad in the good sense, as I am strong and only falling apart in a not too noticeable way, rather well-preserved for the present. I even feel happy most of the time, if I get enough time in the garden or reading and am not consumed by work and worry. Ending my volunteer positions with both OCF and Saturday Market has been instrumental in reducing my stress and it is still being revealed to me how internally devastating it has been to end my reliable and extremely giving support to especially the Saturday Market. Devastating to my idealism and what I thought I had founded my life upon, but rewarding in taking back my time and allowing me to focus it on my own life, which needs work that only I can do.

I forwarded my job description and thoughts to the person who recently took on the officer position of Secretary and was immediately struck by just how much oversight I had taken on of the organization, and how many gaps it left when I pulled out my support. Most of what I was doing will not be picked up by other volunteers, to the detriment of the what should still be a nonprofit. There was a recent discussion of whether or not we were really a mutual benefit corporation as we have been registering for as many years back as we have existed, I believe. It would be a good research project for someone to look back in the archives and figure out when things changed and how, but as it represents many hours of volunteering for me, I have not embraced it quite yet. Apparently lawyers will be consulted and paid for what I would have gladly done as a volunteer in the past.

Probably it has to be this way now, that volunteers no longer dedicate their lives to building organizations and shepherding them along for decades. People get paid very large amounts of wages to do the work and they should be doing it, as it is critical to the life of the org and the mutual benefit no longer materializes for volunteers. If the staff doesn't do it, it probably won't get done, which gives enormous power to corrupt staff and for which we will suffer the loss of so much.

Now that I am a member of the out-group for criticizing the unprofessional and destructive management we are paying for, my whole daily life at market has changed radically. The in-group people do not speak to me or even greet me, not that I want their attention. They look like a cult from the outside and I suppose I did too when I was an officer only a half year ago. Even though I have been a member for 50 years, my birthday was not listed in the newsletter (I didn't want to see it there anyway, but really, and Teresa's wasn't either.) I don't expect to have a part in Founders Day later this month which I used to pretty much orchestrate myself by hauling archival materials down and spending the day talking about the history. I was featured in last year's zine without my permission or chance to approve the materials, so I hope that isn't repeated. There were other people working for Market at the time I started in 1976, and they can be featured, though most of them are also in the out-group now.

Being erased, even with my own cooperation, is harsh and I have struggled with it. If my only value was all the free and low-cost services I gave, better that I be erased. If my regard was dependent on my unquestioning support of questionable and corrupt management attitudes and procedures, that ship sailed. It used to be regarded as helpful and part of the process when people raised objections so that things could be worked on more to address the reasons, but that is also no longer possible. Anyone who criticizes is soon put into the nasty complainer category and dismissed or punished. Sycophants only with this regime. 

Meanwhile we will continue funding bad management as they spend our savings to cover their lack of skills and misuse of resources, and have little to no say about it. A few people are working hard to hold people accountable but everything is done with the manipulative positive spin that never includes any of the finer points that make these problems so knotty. Things are just left out of the minutes. The four-hour meeting minutes said nothing about what happened in those hours. Stripped out. You had to be there. 

And very few people are in the actual rooms where the dysfunction would be revealed. As with OCF, the diligent volunteers have largely left in disgust leaving the cult members in charge, an erosion which will just continue. There will always be a few warriors but we have never had to deal with a real narcissist before and they have tactics that are just impossible to defeat in normal process. It might take a crisis of magnitude, which of course I do not wish upon us, but is always a possibility. 

We had a good April and the drying of the climate works for us until it won't. When we get high heat or smoke intrusions or other weather catastrophes, we will see how many members are dedicated. When it gets hard, people get selfish. When fees are raised to cover what is needed, it won't be staff who will suffer the deprivation. Not that I want people to suffer...I just want staff to have realistic and solid financial accountability when spending the members' money.

If we are no longer a mutual benefit membership organization, we may suffer a profound change that will destroy what we have built. If we are just stakeholders or shareholders of a corporation, the power of the management is complete. The bylaws will need a rewrite. The culture will be a different culture. This may have already happened. Maybe that is why I had to be pushed out...I was carrying the standard of our member culture that was so precious and important to us. This may be more that just a tax identification issue. I'm trying hard to hold my broken heart pieces together as I figure out how to let go of what I thought my life was founded on and dedicated to. 

But it's my birthday and that is all about me, so I will eat all the treats I bought myself and play outside today and tomorrow and try to inhabit my life with joy, which it contains a lot of when I stop and notice how I feel in my core. I am proud of all I have done in this life, and I'm not finished. There is still refinement to do and maintenance to keep up with and I think I can do this aging process with some amount of grace. We'll see I suppose. Eliminating the bullies and manipulators from my spheres can only help me reach my goals. 

And the sun is out. One Calla Lily has managed to bloom along with tons of other flowers so I can pick my usual kitchen full of beauty and maybe I will open the sparkling wine. Maybe I won't. It's all up to me. You don't need to call me on my day of solitude. I know you love me. Why wouldn't you? I am a delightful bag of wrinkled skin and my bones only hurt in a few places. I'm still solid.

The bag he bought was black with juicy, handpainted peaches on it. So much metaphor for one Saturday.