Break's Over

 I started back to serious work yesterday...I have a lot to do right now. It's good enough weather to put tote bags outside in the sun so I'll be doing that today, and I have a lot of hats to print as well. Supply of those has dried up some, and gotten more expensive, as expected with this volatile economy. One of the four color options I use has been eliminated, and I'm not sure how I will deal with that. And I'm steadily running out of bags.

Taking a break from thinking and writing about market helped, though I don't feel like any of the situations I was writing about has changed. Mostly I feel that my perspective is not wanted, and I will keep it to myself. Let the Board and officers do what they think is best. Underneath that is that I have no idea what they are doing until some minutes are published, without bothering someone to tell me what happened at the meeting. I don't want to engage enough to do that, really. It's a lot more peaceful and quiet out here without thinking that every word I write is targeted for some reaction to shut me up.

I have lots of other emotional territories to explore that are also meaningful to me, and important to my life. My dreams have been rich. I'm reading books that bring up questions and sometimes supply answers. I'm avoiding social media. I started another blog and the quiet in there is so refreshing I may not share it with anyone. I hope my friends know that I'm fine and still thinking about them and our shared concerns, but just have to step back and live in a less mean world than I have been.

Which is hard to do! It's gotten sick and dispiriting out there, even while there's hope that the overreach is bringing comebacks. I'm keeping my activism quiet too, though that is unsettling. I have to do what is possible for me, which might not be what you want from me.

It's weird promoting Jell-O Art at such a time, since to most people it seems so trivial and silly, but art is one of the important vehicles we have to change the world and Jell-O is deeper than you might think. Permission to be silly and enjoy parts of life even in serious times is important. We got an extra week as the gallery put the show date back to March 28th, which will work better for me and some of the group. Probably not for everyone who already made plans. 

Be well. Do what you need to do to use this offseason from the selling part of our jobs well, as it goes by fast. Stay warm, but play outside. Watch the winter birds and keep feeding them even when the squirrels eat everything first. Take care of your health. 

You don't really have to eat Jell-O, in case you are confused by that. I don't see it as food anymore, though as a food-like substance, it brings fascination. It's fake though. Like so many things.

I've been making fences and grape arbors with my filbert poles. They don't photograph well but I'm loving the way they look in the yard. I hope this will make my grape crops happier and more abundant this year. 

 

 

 

Where I Am

 Just briefly today, I'm deeply grieving an old and dear friend so other things fade to subjects I can't fully address. Obviously the murder of Renee Good is taking the hearts of the world over today, as it should, despite it being so metaphoric and compromised by so many cultural details. Much is being said by others and I hope this becomes a watershed moment for the US public and stops the momentum that has been so disturbing, strengthening the momentum of the resistance.

I started writing my thoughts in a different location. The stalking of this blog for drama has felt debilitating and even though I have possibly helpful and maybe inspiring things to say, I'm so far keeping them to myself which feels like the right thing for me. I wrote nonstop yesterday from 9:00 until 3:00, not intentionally, just had a lot to explore. I journal every day, but this stuff goes deeper. 

True to form I had an empathetic response to the bullying and I'll just say this: I learned a new concept, just new to me, the shame spiral. It's what happens when we feel shamed, and it's the same type of reaction that people have to learn to control and adapt to, the same kind of response to treatment that we don't feel we deserve. Empathy doesn't change what happened, but it helps us move forward if we apply it carefully while still acknowledging damage, intent and all of the rest of what is going on.

I'm exploring this in the context of losing my friend and it's bringing up many areas of emotion that make me vulnerable to more bullying so I can't help you all figure this one out, not now anyway. Go on your facebook page and look for it. Everything we learn about our psychology and our human responses to confusion and oppression is useful right now, so if you have the capacity, do more research and see how we can help each other deal with these complex and rough times. 

The one thing we have to do is be here, present for our community, and my complex thoughts about how to do that and still maintain safety are my struggle, like yours are for you. I'm going to do my work, and I expect to keep growing and working through this life, with you or despite you. 

I'll be back. Be well. Make some Jell-O.

Think

 

Illusion and Delusion

 I know I said in the last post that I would not link to the KLCC interview because I didn't want you to have to read it...but I've come to realize that everyone needs to hear what it is there. It's shocking in several ways. https://www.klcc.org/podcast/klccs-oregon-rainmakers/2025-12-30/klccs-oregon-rainmakers-eugenes-saturday-and-holiday-markets 

The confabulation about the Kareng Fund/Caring Fund is one thing. (We are in the process of transitioning the spelling to Caring Fund so people can find it more pronounceable.) What she wrote compromises our legality and operational confidentiality. She never got a grant. We never had an essay contest. She does not know our history and has in fact done several things to diminish us, which I have documented in a different location. No one connected with Saturday Market or living as an artisan in Oregon should find it acceptable to undermine the work of the Fund. We have given away $11,200 JUST in 2025. We did not bring in that much and much of our money comes from a few extremely generous donors who are dedicated to helping others. We are extremely careful to stick to the training we got from Center for Nonprofit Law and the highest ethics possible, and to be attacked in any form is just reprehensible. That our SM staff would support the FB page attack was beyond the pale, but for her to speak falsely about the Fund to KLCC was criminal. 

She also said in her Caring Fund story that the GM gave her confidential information about the process that no GM would have had access to, or given out, so it makes them look bad, as well as the market. That is not how the KF does business. She has told me questionable things about her own interactions with the KF, given out other confidential information, and does not respect any of what the Fund has done or is doing. There are rumors that donations intended for the KF have not reached the Fund. Her microagressions toward the Fund have been worked around but they remain part of the problem of trying to raise funds as a nonprofit at this difficult time. The KF is the safety net for the most fragile of market members, as the market is supposed to be the safety net for all of us. Don't you question why anyone would work against it? Have you met the members of the KF Board? Talked to anyone who has been helped? 

Next, she said that the city has not been supportive of the market through all the decades, and used a cartoon from 1971 to assert that. The staff person who got that as a "present," must have felt insulted, to start. She is dead wrong about the city and has no basis for her assertion. They have supported us in many ways over the decades and if she had even glanced at the archives or listened to me or any of the past managers about it, she would never say such a thing about our landlord, our municipality, and the good people who work for the city. To claim that she changed this relationship is so arrogant. I witnessed her manipulating city staff and surely some of them have given her a wide berth as her knowledge and abilities to manage us are so poor that they are no improvement over the times we have had to make staff transitions and our leadership reverted to members and everyone adjusted. She knows nothing about any of those times. 

She actually says two things about past managers that are ethically compromised, though we have no reason to believe they are true. A GM demanding that she run for the Board is fraught. The Board is the boss of the GM. One of the things she has done repeatedly is interfered with the elections, something widely observed, with the result that with over 300 members in the halls for this past election Dec. 13th and 14th, only 48 voted. So for her to assert that a past GM did so is likely projection, but if it is true, she didn't do them any favors. The bylaws clearly state that the Secretary is in charge of the elections, and the policy states that staff is not to be involved. 

Lastly, she downright admits that she walked into the office and took the job of GM. She took advantage of a power vaccuum, did not do her duties as a Board Chair to manage the issues, and set things up in a somewhat long game to get that salary and benefits. She engineered the salary increase, sat idle while the Board attempted to rehire, and manipulated the leaders to believe that she could do the job. I did not sit on the Personnel Committee, but to my knowledge she had no resume, no relevant experience, and was not qualified to fill the requirements of the job description. The Board at the time took what looked like the easy way out, and we have been paying for that ever since, while she strips out our assets, destroys our committees and drives away volunteers. I spoke up, believe me, but her campaign to undermine my voice was well underway and the other leaders did not listen to me. 

In her own words: "And it was such a wonderful community that I was like, I have to get involved. And then I became a vendor. So then when I was a vendor for a number of years, the general manager at the time just came up to me and said, Okay, so I'm gonna need your candidate statement by next Wednesday. And I go, What are you talking about? And she said, It's time for you to be on the board. Is that how this works? Like we take turns? And she said, Well, I just need your candidate statement. So, you know, I turned one in, and then I got elected. I was on the board for about three years, and as board chair, we had a staffing kind of complete turnaround, right? So after COVID, it's like everybody left, and that was really crazy. We had a brand new hire and a part time office assistant left in the office. And so I said, Well, I was Board Chair, I guess I have to go in. I have keys, right? So I just started running the thing. And then we tried to hire a couple different people. We did hire somebody, and it just didn't work out. It wasn't a good fit. And so the board got together and said, Well, you just do it, you know? I said, I'll do it temporary till we can find somebody. And then, you know, I just took it, but that meant I had to be off the board. I had to no longer sell. But it's a beautiful organization. It's a great community. And I am happy to do it." 

Her level of favoritism shows broadly in the interview. She guides the journalist around to her friends and feeds him false impressions of what is really going on at Holiday Market. Like her Annual Meeting presentation, this bears no resemblance to the reality of what most members are actually experiencing. 

It is galling to read. I'm embarrassed for KLCC that they sent a new reporter to interview someone who should have shown professionalism and skills to promote the community and market but just lied and referenced her non-accomplishments and rode on the work of past volunteers and staff. It is transparently a failure of leadership that she is still employed.  

If you have been reading back you can see that most of what she says that is positive about the market and community has been lifted from the writing I've been doing here. "Keeping everyone in the basket," is an attitude from one of our best managers that I brought forward when she attempted over two years to terminate the memberships of two of our most prominent and successful food booth owners. When she speaks about Pad Thai she conveniently doesn't mention that she has been harassing its owner for two years, treats him with contempt, and tries to neutralize his words and actions in several ways, from altering the minutes of the committee he serves on, to going around the guidelines to find ways to make his experience more difficult. Instead of setting those members up to thrive, which should be her primary duty, she is attempting to destroy their businesses and take their voices away. So yeah, she is not about keeping people in the basket. 

I'm sure tired of writing about this person, the narcissist. I'm tired of trying to get people to see these completely evident patterns of sociopathic and destructive behavior. I want the members who can to pick an issue, one that they think is important enough to their future to protect for all of us, and do their part. I cannot keep making the sacrifices for the org that people have been happy to watch me make. Was it enough to see me called an evil nasty woman right in the middle of Holiday Market as I was ignoring my potential customers to do the task of giving away the baskets in the raffle? Was it enough to see the staff "likes" on a bullying post for which I was told I deserved the bullying? 

Is it enough to hear KLCC being gaslighted and the city misrepresented in a post that will be on their website virtually forever? Can you really still say this is not about you? 

Don't just listen to me. Ask for her resume. Ask for an audit of even one part of her job performance. Using her job description, make an analysis of what parts she is actually doing, as one of her greatest skills is getting other people to do her job. What does she do to earn that prime salary? Ask about how our savings have dwindled to a third, and why. Ask yourself where your information is coming from, if you are even getting any. Finally it is clear to me why she is trying to derail the archives project...she does not want you to know the real history. She does not want you to know what is really happening with the market. 

The thing about narcissists is that their power is an illusion, but they know how to line people up to support them and protect them from accountability. Those people are enablers. I will admit to being misled in the past, but I am clear about it now. She's so confident in her illusory power, that she just admits it all in that interview. 

Just compare that to the interview you would have been proud to read. Compare the treatment you have received and seen others receive to what support to thrive would look like. Compare the outreach to what outreach would really look like. What partners do we really have? It is an illusion.