With the Farmers

 It was so interesting selling with the farmers and talking with them about our relationship. First, I had another superb selling day, as many people from the community, people here for the Ducks game, and farmers themselves shopped my hats and tote bags. Many of them discovered me for the first time, and everyone was full of thoughtful compliments and appreciation. The absolutely stellar weather didn't hurt. (Except I never knew what a glare that building creates on a sunny day! Good thing I had a hat.)

Looking over at the Park Blocks, just across from where I have stood for thousands of market days, I saw it as a well-loved park and not as "my" home, broadening out my view. A person was set up on the East Block, with an array of things, and a flute he kept noodling on for attention or from boredom, not sure. He got little attention, though there were still booths in the FSP and the drum circle was in good form. A lot of people rested on the benches, strolled through, or played with their kids around the fountain (which was off.) Last week there was a flock of turkeys. A lot goes away when the market is closed.

 I spoke with many people who find it somewhat overwhelming to cruise the craft market after buying their weekly produce and breads, or walking to their cars with the bags that they need to stop carrying asap and then needing motivation to come back. Those who do shop there are either intentional, looking for specific things, or what might be called a craft shopper, people who just enjoy crafts and seeing what people have thought to make. Craft appreciators. But probably the majority come across the street to visit their friends.

It makes me realize that to be successful on any given Saturday, we have to have more than one type of selling going on. A practical item like a tote bag or a hat on a sunny or rainy day works really well, which of course I already knew, but I learned more about some of the people who walk slowly and browse, and don't seem to be rushing off to other places. They enjoy the whole experience: the meandering paths we like about the southern blocks, the spontaneity of the day being different every week, the ever-amazing enticement of what we all imagine and create. They find that type of thing at the farmers' market as well, so when we are blended like we were the last two weeks, they are quite happy and it helps with their disappointment that the "fun stuff" is gone. There were no buskers this week or last week! I guess the perception is that the crowds are too thin to make it pay. But they were needed.

So everything we provide, the prepared food, the seating, the entertainment, the variety, and the color and life, is what they want. All of it. They want to see their friends if they are local, have interesting conversations if they are not, and do all the things people find available at community gatherings like ours. They want to touch creative lives and connect with them, find the juiciness in life, and they like to spread it to their families and friends. Of course this awareness is not new, and I've been writing about it a long time, but since the two markets separated over the past decades, I felt that not enough of us had the multiple layers of relationships we get by actually supporting each other. I spend a  good amount of my income yesterday, buying plants, bread, meat, pears, many of the things I have searched out over the season as what I need and want across the street. And I know many of us do that, but I was surprised a little at how much support we are actually getting from the farmers. Someone wrote a lovely essay about crafters in their customer newsletter. We've been building on that support thanks to Sonia and maybe next year there will be more openness to cooperative selling opportunities, depending on the priorities of the new ED farmers are hoping to hire. I really hope people speak up for that to them as they get settled in. It may not seem as important as it is. I don't want our November markets to be cancelled. I personally don't want to sell in February or March, but it would certainly be mutually beneficial if the opportunity were open for those who do want to. Everyone benefits when all the types of selling are happening.

I heard one of their staffers say they started in 1919, which of course is false, but I can see why they repeat that, as it gives them legitimacy and a stronger legacy, but I hope I get another chance to share their archives with them someday. I think it would strengthen their legacy and our community if they acknowledge our shared roots. It was such an important part of what Lotte wanted to establish here. The previous farmers had moved inside a building and lost their market in 1959, so there was a solid 11-year gap where there was no farmers' market downtown. They began again within the Saturday Market in 1970, and there were a lot of ins and outs about that shared history, which I documented and lived within, and made my contributions to as well. So I want it to matter, real history, but I get why they don't prioritize it as the truth. They are hard-working individualized strivers like we are, and it's just not our habit to remind everyone how connected we are. 

But as in the greater effort to dismantle the white supremacist power structure in the US, people are stressing that individualism is a lie, and working for the common good, for justice and for each other is a much stronger and more real legacy of humanity everywhere. Showing up for each other, even when it is scary, fighting the separations. Time to let the lies go and do this life together, despite the messiness of it and the amount of discomfort it requires to restructure how you think about things. Many, many people in our community and everywhere are working on this together, and I have faith that the wheels are turning. But it's hard to wait, and to watch all the collateral damage as it is happening. And I know I won't live long enough to really see America change all that much. 

But we who are working on it can keep going in that direction and reaffirm our connections, so I am grateful and happy that I have that opportunity every Saturday. It matters that the market is there. It's better when both sides of the street are full.  

But it isn't about how many booths there are. It's simply about the people who put up those booths and stand in them. The soul of the market is us, the makers, the ones who show up to sell or buy, to stroll or just pass through. The community members are people who bring the meaning to all that we do. Poor Fred brought down his shaker for the second week in a row, searching in vain for the weekly parade, just wanting to say Happy Thanksgiving to as many people as he could. His people just weren't there, and nobody told him. 

It was so disappointing to see the Weekly centerfold of an empty HM map of numbers. Nothing about us, just an ad for a website bought with out hard-earned savings, that isn't even complete, and a list of the "fashion days" which are just a little diversion for people who like costumes. There was no soul in that very expensive ad the members paid for. It was an indulgence of ego for the narcissist and those she supports, and a show of the complete lack of professionalism in our current organization. It was a cold shoulder to all of us who built and maintained this market so it would be here in the present instead of in an archive. They didn't even proofread it after spending all that money. And this is the first appearance of our corporate sponsors, something I do not think the members got to vote on. 

Yeah, we need professional promotions. Yeah, we need professional management. And boy, do we need heart and soul. Stripping it out is going to hurt us for a long long time. I'm glad I still know where and how to find it.

Turns out the Park Blocks season was not over after all

 I had such a good day selling with the Farmers yesterday. Maybe because my usual space on the West block looks over at them, I shop there a lot, every week, and I have friendships over there, some going back decades. They're such solid and friendly people, those farmers and their employees. Growing food and plants for the community is a very righteous way to make a living. I admire them. I guess because Mom grew up on a Nebraska farm, and made our backyard into a tiny Delaware farm, I have always felt like I belonged with the farmers.  

Sure, their prices are high, but the fruit and veggies I get over there are just peak quality and so gratifying to eat. I try to just not look at food prices, as it is pretty much the only type of thing I consume, so I can afford to pay more for organic, healthier food and it has paid off in my life. I was quite able to stand there all day and be the last one to leave (too many conversations...) and enjoy the sunset on my way home. Farmers starts an hour earlier, at 9:00, so I had to leave here by 6:30 am and it was cold and foggy pretty much all day, but I was finished by 5:30 pm and made a ton of money. 

My sales were at the level of an excellent summer day. I had many customers who rarely come across the street, because once they get all their food they are weighted down and not that interested in browsing the craft booths, but also many brand new customers and plenty of returning ones. Lots of people did miss the craft market, the hot foods and the music and fun of the Saturday Market. It was a surprise to most that it was not there. I think it was a huge mistake, and I am glad I opted for the challenge of crossing the street. 

It's different in lots of ways. You are assigned a booth space, instead of getting to choose, and somehow I got the best one, in my opinion, and I think location matters more over there. People don't tend to wander around seeing everything except at the final hour when those groups of roving young people did show up to delightfully choose their hats. Despite the obvious need for bags I didn't sell that many. 

Cost wise, it was way cheaper. Instead of the $100 I would have paid, I paid $45, of which market got $20, so that's $80 bucks less for market. And I had no opportunity to donate to the Kareng Fund, so they lost out a little too (though of course I will make that up at HM.) However, I would have paid that $45 no matter what I sold, so if I hadn't done well it would have maybe been expensive. I don't think the booths on Park Street did that well, out of the main flow of shoppers. I might find that out next week if I get shuffled over there. I wish it were a more viable option to sell there every week but they just don't have enough room, and Tuesdays, while better than they used to be, are probably not going to be what I want. Maybe, though. 

It was such a relief to be free of the hostility I get from my market neighborhood now that I have been labeled and dismissed by a lot of people who were fine with me when I was being used. I didn't get to make any new products or work on my business for all the time the narcissist has been in power...but now I can, and I am much happier as well. I don't need those people who only liked me when I was useful to them...I'm still mad about it as it made me look back at all my years of service and wonder what life would have been like if I had prioritized myself instead of giving so much. It's the downside of being a dedicated volunteer...that you are also subject to being exploited if you are not careful about how your loyalties are assigned. It was always a pleasure to be on teams with people who had ethics and really cared about the common good, and I am happy to have experienced that. It's hard to let go of it, since I'm such a worker and have so many useful skills, but I'm getting more used to it as time goes by. 

Now that my body is letting me know that my productive days will come to an inevitable end, I'm working harder than ever to get things in better shape in every way. It's hard to accept limits but your body is something you can't dismiss. I've been having a blast cutting down trees and buying new perennials and shrubs so that my yard will require less maintenance. I got an elderberry and am planning some new areas where filberts had taken over. I collected all the neighborhood leaves as usual and will be spreading those around with my beloved hay fork that I got from Virgil Cortwright years ago. It's such a pleasure to use it. I keep it in the kitchen. He even told me the very tree it was from, a white oak in Daniel's OCF booth, the booth that was rumored to have an underground hideout for his friends to escape the sweep in. It's masterful and I doubt it would be easy to find another these days. 

 It's another golden day and those leaves are calling for me. I love spending Sundays outside and even though it is kind of cold, I'm going to keep at it. I plan to make grape arbors with the filbert poles I cut, and will never run out of projects, only time. 

Sunday Essays

 

I just remembered that once Holiday Market starts I lose my Sunday day off for a month...Mondays just don't land the same as a day off. But I hope I will still find time to write. I need it. There's always a vast amount to write about that goes in my journals but I don't have to compose within any kind of structure there so this is about the most useful way I keep my skills in practice these days. I haven't felt interested in writing fiction in a long time, and maybe won't renew that interest. I've always been more drawn to the various types of narrative nonfiction and I never have enough time to explore it. 

My latest obsession is taking out trees like filberts that have volunteered in my yard and are demanding my control...I'm sawing them down. It's not hard, and I use hand tools, but there are some stumps like the big holly I took down a couple years ago that do kind of need a chainsaw. Lower priority. Yesterday I bought an elderberry which is exciting, for this one space that used to be dominated by the holly. 

Taking out the filberts so I can maintain my yard independently is fun for me, planning ahead for when I can't do it all myself. I love yardwork. It is the way I process my emotions...the air beckons me, the birds have learned to accept my wanderings through their feeding grounds, and the squirrels jump around in an amusing way when I scare them. Even burying the smelly dead possum was fun for me.

Yesterday, the last market on the Park Blocks this season, was lovely. My neighbor and I warmly said our appreciations to each other and gave gifts...we got a little wet but that didn't matter a lot. I will have to unpack everything and dry it out again, but I have to repack to have a lighter load for the next two weeks selling with the farmers, so that's fine. I'm hoping for decent weather over there so I don't have to take the popup and weights. Guess we'll see about that. 

The wonderful chats I had with many of my friends were sadly offset by a couple of disturbing ones...one of my friends told me the exact same things about six times, so her cognitive loss is getting much worse. I will refresh my knowledge about how to speak to people in that position with the highest respect for what they are experiencing. I think there are several good tactics to handle it so they don't get more confused or isolated. She's beyond the stage of helpful conversations, and now just needs support. I feel for her so much. This is one of the terrifying things about aging that we try hard to deny and pretend about. 

Reconnected in  a delightful way with one of my buddies from the old days. I told him this vivid dream I had about him decades ago, that in his basement was a river, a deep, living one with rocks and moss and everything, and I was envious. In my dream language at the time I identified his house as his relationship, and I was still searching for that kind of a relationship at the time...so we got to talking about our lives in detail and his was astonishing. He writes, too, so I'm looking forward to reading some of that. He's smart, fearless and strong...just what I need in friends right now. So that made me happy and that kind of thing is emblematic of the slower days at the market...we have time to be ourselves outside of our sales personas and connect.

Sales were low for me. I don't think most of Eugene realized it was our last week, as everyone is so focused on HM. I personally vastly prefer the Park Blocks markets to the indoor ones. My income indoors has stalled at the same level for the past four years, and although my outdoor income is down, I think that is because of things like early football games, poor promotions and of course, our current mismanagement which is just killing our market. We're looking at another fee increase to cover her overspending and the high costs to carry out her selfish goals. Every fee increase loses members. We feel that as a message that we don't matter. 

We need more people in our membership to wake up and be willing to get involved, and even with that it will take some years to reconstruct the type of thriving success we had in 2019. We even did well in 2020 and 2021 due to community support, but the lack of skills in our management has squandered that in so many ways. There is no disagreeing with the power structure, without retaliation and closing of access. Every time I write an email to the Board members I get punished by restriction of my access, and this last time I got bullied for writing this blog, by someone who hasn't read it, and says she never will. My email was about letting them know I had finished up the 2019 archives and wanted them all to take a look. She was kind of brutal, and I wrote her privately that it was wildly inappropriate and deeply disturbing to bring up my writing this in the context of my archiving, which I take seriously in a professional way. I've been a writer all my life, and in here for 15 years, so it was way out of context but she has learned that I am someone who only complains and is negative, something that has been constructed out of nothing to take away my joy and voice in the market community. Trashing the reputation of anyone who complains is an activity of quite a few of the leaders, who take the information dished out as truth, as they are seemingly unable to apply critical thinking to what they are told by the management. When criticism happens to them, they punch down.

I've not had an easy adjustment to this false portrayal of who I am, but her letter was kind of illuminating because she and I were friends...I even printed for her for a couple of years to help her get her business started, and even though it didn't go perfectly, she wouldn't have had as much success without my help. And she has asked for archival info many times and I've always given her very useful info. But some unknown people have told her things about me that she has not bothered to verify herself, so I let her know that it's acceptable that she doesn't want to know me as I am, but I won't be interacting with her after that putdown. That's likely to be inconvenient for her.

I also blocked several people on Facebook even though that is a bit meaningless, just a gesture. I'm on the verge of leaving FB anyway. A lot of the bullying is done on there, by people who consider themselves leaders, and by the regular bullies, and I'm not up for any more bullying, period.

The narcissist violated my boundaries yesterday when I let another staff member know I was not speaking to the narcissist. I don't think the other staff person knew what to do with that, so she probably just reported it more or less as I said it. The narcissist came right over and said she only had one thing to say, that she has never had a problem with me, and was ready if I wanted to talk, or if I wanted another staff member to mediate, and had this very sad innocent victim face. I mean, when someone just said they won't be speaking to you, how is it you go right to them and speak? Super controlling. 

And this is from the person who just last week trolled me with her costume as the Wicked Witch with a Flying Monkey (I hope it was expensive) and was delighted when it caught my attention and overheard chortling about it. She was joined by another "leader" who went as "The Board Chair's Wife" and also went out of her way to make sure I noticed. Trolling the members is bullying the members and it's just one of the items on my now four page list of unprofessional behaviors. Trolling is not leadership. 

Trying to gatekeep my free speech, deny my free access to the market leaders, those are not healthy actions from a manager, and in fact they're appalling. I know her enablers don't see that side of her, nor the other members of her mean gang, and until her control tactics are turned on them, most members don't even believe it is possible. It has taken some people several years to believe me. So much easier to trash the messenger. Fortunately I'm not the only messenger and others are much more brave than me.

And I'm human. I try to limit the abuse that I don't have room in my now short life for, but it isn't going away any time soon so I am also not allowing my joy and satisfaction to be destroyed by it. The truth will come out...facts don't lie. Eventually the archives will show it all, which I suppose is why they are all so determined to make me give up my work on them. I've been told more than once that the archives belong in the office so all members can access them, but before I started organizing it, no one could access them. So I will not let these temporary leaders steal what belongs to history. They can lie, misrepresent and try to control, but I will continue to simply tell the truth as I see it and let the facts speak for themselves. If I could finish the project today I would, even though no one to my knowledge has accessed any of the archives but one person who also tried to bully me to turn them over. When I refused and told him not to write about me, he did anyway, in an insulting way, so that isn't going to engage my cooperation.

I could hand them over, but it would be a small tragedy for the organization and for the future, and for the city as well. When I finish them I will. It is not my desire to keep any of it from anyone, as I think the warts and mistakes should also speak for themselves as history. I think it is a crime to try to change history to enable control and domination. I actually don't trust that they are that safe in the office. (Visualize a photo of the Mar a Lago bathroom with stacks of office boxes.)

Watching market follow the macrocosm down the aisles of authoritarianism is frightening, but we also have our inflatable frogs and if the narcissist is the Wicked Witch, it is good to remember she was destroyed by a common bucket of water. I guess she thinks I am Dorothy, but I have to keep in mind that I am actually Glinda in this warped scenario. I'm in this shiny bubble of kindness and truth, but when people come out for me, I just fly away in it. You can't take my glitter. I am shiny in my natural state. 

And now I will rake leaves and get that day off. I hope all is well in your world, or if not, you find the means to make it so. In times of crisis, community is what saves us. We know how to do good. We know how to be kind. We know how to rise above. We are naturally shiny.