Cooler days, more silence

What seems to be evident this week is the lost opportunities we are experiencing because of the absence of information and communication between the power structure and the membership. For instance, LCFM is advertising that SM members are co-selling with them at the Night Market this Thursday night. Yet there has been nothing in our newsletters, it's not on the market calendar, and no one has offered the sales opportunity to our membership. Or, possibly, it has been offered to some portion of our membership based on their proximity to the inner circle? I don't know. I expect if I asked staff about it directly I would find out that I could sell there, if there is time to attend a farmers' market orientation. I don't know anything about it personally, and I am not planning on selling there, I just think in a better situation we would have heard about this and all had an equal chance to participate. 

I guess there will be skating inside the pavilion so spaces are no doubt limited, but then announce that, and take the first however many applicants in some type of order, point order or "first come/ first served." Maybe that was done, and I just didn't hear about it. I suppose it could have been in the Admin report that none of us got unless we attended the Board meeting.

There has been no official response to a discussion of adding back in the November 8th Market  so we don't have two weeks off between the PB and HM. I saw a quick ad repeating the November 1st last outdoor market, so I take that as a NO. A good management would recognize the member interest in having a sales day, our only paydays, and find a way to make it happen. Instead we got someone with no authority speaking up to tell us that we as members could organize and fund a plan to make it happen and submit that to management. Which they could just say no to. We as members already are organized and have a plan, which is selling on the Park Blocks every Saturday rain or shine until HM starts. But management decided that we can't have that.

I see from the HM schedule that we got extended loading hours which are of course welcome but will be needed since our entire load-in plan was jettisoned last year and we will get a new, untried plan that sounds really problematic to me. Adding open hours for load-in costs us money, of course, unless they are minimally staffed which I am guessing is not going to be possible with this new load-in plan, which sounds like it will involve a lot of staff control. So we go from doing something ourselves, which we were always fine with and great at accomplishing, to paying staff to control the process, something we did not ask for and do not need. But it's job security for someone.

I got no response so far to my letter to the Board, well, one response thanking me for stating the obvious but none in the mode of solutions. I have patience. I know how reluctant Board members always are in responding to individual concerns, as they can't speak for the group and don't want to give false assurances that solutions will be found. I am aware that a lot of Board members don't know me personally and don't remember that I was Volunteer of the Year for 2023. It was the quietest announcement ever when it was awarded at the tail end of the Annual Meeting that year. There was no photo...I had to ask for one to be taken. No flowers or anything, no celebration of it, but that was okay with me really. I have never volunteered for the recognition. There were never any photos shared of the merch I made and sold and donated to the market with, either. Four years and no promotion. I've now given most of it away. 

Obviously I am not all settled about how to make contributions to the common good at this point. I still enjoy the market day, which is pretty hard to spoil, and which is why we are still apparently thriving on the surface. It didn't really rain, was just kind of showery for the first hour or so, but market wasn't all the way full. Next week is the State Fair and we will lose a few members to that, and to hot weather, but we are still getting a lot of tourists from everywhere. It should be a good fall depending on how the football games are scheduled. And the weather of course. People want to move here. 

The cool weather has been delightful. I'm going to get started on the painting any day now...after I finish up the OCF stuff I am still putting away. I really want to get into the neighborhood research again after seeing inside the next-door walls when she had the siding removed. There were the wide boards just like in my house! They were horizontal on the outside instead of vertical, but there was this cool curved something and lath and plaster and knob-and-tube traces as well as the old fir boards. I think the house might be closer to the age of mine than I thought, so I want to look at the maps again and see what I can find out that I had missed before. Maybe I can research the original owners of it a little more. 

Gotta do something with all these apples first though. So many apples.