Lost Opportunities and Erosion

Again, you are welcome to share these essays but please do not post on any social media. I do not give my permission for that. 

 Market news does not stop in the offseason, though many of us take some distance and do other things It was a small Board packet with not much in it, but two things exploded off the page for me. First was a brutal takedown of a member who, to my knowledge, did not violate a single policy, but acted as a whistleblower and the exact kind of person needed in times of deception. She became the scapegoat for her efforts and is now not only banned for five years, but is not even allowed to speak to Board members or staff, or attend any meetings or market functions. That overreach is stunning for a person who as far as I know was a member in good standing. Looks like they rewrote the Code of Conduct a bit to include people who speak about the market on social media, where as far as I know, free speech rights do still extend. Not only were there no real charges, she was also not notified of this action and not given any form of appeal or chance to speak for herself. This was not the fair and reasonable process as specified in all of our policies regarding membership. 

But it was done, and now the precedent has been set to ban members without violations of policy, an outrageous step that belies what is said in our preamble to our bylaws, our traditional inclusivity, and the boundaries of good sense. People have got to be free to disagree with the Board. When an officer said "Shouldn't we get the right to control who serves with us?" I knew we were in trouble. No, you don't have that right. The members elect who serves. Kicking someone off the Board is bad, but taking their membership and access to being able to make a living is extreme. It's shocking. I served with many people I might have wished would stay home and not participate...but that is part of the challenge of being in a service position in a membership organization. You learn skills. You don't learn more control and dominance techniques and restrict the flow of true information. We're all business owners who have the right to do our duty of care for our organization. 

The second thing is that 2024 was revised to show not the rumored $30,000 overspending, but instead, $70,864. That overspending was covered but the same practices this year will result in the same situation. At the beginning of the offseason period, there was $10,000, but if I remember correctly, staffing during the three months of no income costs about $84,000. So at the end of the fourth quarter for market (our fiscal year goes April to April,) there will be some amount of deficit, which is overspending and financial mismanagement to a degree never seen in this organization before. The savings were never touched, even all through the pandemic, but now they are halved or worse. The insurance picture (three employees have 100% of their health insurance costs covered) was not changed due to tantrums by the lead professional, despite that no org like ours can afford that cost. 

Operating in the red for two years is unacceptable. Yet, cost cutting is not on the agenda. No officers seem distressed by the reality of a bankruptcy direction of operations, while others of us are losing sleep on the regular. Another walloping fee increase will result in a loss of members who are forced out by the high cost of joining linked with the reality that new members may come for weeks or months without successfully getting a space to sell and balance that $85 starting cost for membership. When you lose a member, you lose all of the income from that member, all of the fees, weekly, monthly, and in the future. It could be thousands. Plus it gets around that joining the market is not a good deal for members, and we go into a decline. We're there...the count only looked like we lost 8 members but sadly we can not really trust details reported now. We get lied to about everything. 

There is a campaign to close the market after Halloween, which means three lost selling days for members that won't come back. Selling at farmers is given as an alternative, but it is not the same experience, by far. You don't get to choose your space at the farmers market. Your hours are 9-2, and some of our members are not  permitted to sell their (for instance plant growers who are not certified.) So our own guidelines are not in force over there. Our food booths can't sell with the farmers, and we ceed the community gathering role to them, to our detriment. We make ourselves non-essential to the community. Poor future planning. If we closed on every day that we might not make much money, that would be every rainy day, every day with an early football game, and the weekend of OCF. So will those be next? Is our message to the community that we are only open if we can make money to some unpublished standard? That their need to gather and have the market experience does not matter to us? And for members who cannot get into or afford Holiday Market, you're just not on our radar? We have never operated that way and don't need to now.

I never hear anything about cost cutting. Those color coded envelopes to solve a problem created by the narcissist, resulting in the same practices she tried to throw out? Spending that did not need to happen. The extra security forces hired for a day the streets were supposed to be closed to traffic, which was not cancelled when the city cancelled the Hallowe'en event in part, because of weather? We paid for that, and I'd argue that it was never needed. What will happen this year, when we are assured that there will be protests through and maybe in our space? Community activists have already heard that our staff does not want protestors during our selling day. Taking the stance of commerce over free speech is a big mistake. We never made any statement during the pandemic movement for Black Lives Matter, the erosion of DEI...we pretend we are not political. So our silence complies. Even though we are in the center of town, pretending to be essential. A very mixed message indeed.

Members are trying. The Budget Committee continues to do the work the lead professional is supposed to be doing, tracking the financial picture to stay out ahead of the challenges and recommend sensible practices to balance the realities. It seems the sensible solutions don't get supported. Raising fees has a cost, a nuanced and complex cost over time. Members leave when their needs are not honored and responded to, when things tighten up so compassion can't be extended. Members are our customers, but we are harrassed and bullied and thrown out if we ask uncomfortable questions. 

People are walking away from the lying and some are devastated. I spoke with a former staff person and learned that I had believed a raft of lies at that time, used to demonize people who were honestly trying to do what was right. It was before I realized how much I was being used to serve the ends the narcissist had planned. People do not enjoy being used. 

Stripping out the legal and moral responsibilities of the officers to get people to serve in those positions is so transparently ill-advised that I cringe just thinking about it. Will they throw up their hands when the money is gone and dissolve the assets, let the market die? For the pleasure and benefit of one person? To shore up someone who will lie to us, refuse to do her job, and then weaponize her incompetence is shameful and a dereliction of duty. Serving as an officer at a time of deception and corruption is a personal risk not many people would take. Trying to pretend that is not the situation to get someone to take on the responsibility is criminal in itself. How many of the currently serving Board members were told it would involve one meeting for two hours a month? Most, I imagine. They were surely not told they would have to untangle this toxic mess, protect the vulnerable members and take hard actions for the solvency of the market itself.

Manager searches are not easy, but they are rather simple. Attracting candidates gets harder as the community finds out for themselves how clunky and broken things are. Hiring and firing for purely practical reasons can be done without drama, with honor, and there is plenty of precedent and resource for doing that. The market needs a professional manager with financial management and personnel skills, someone with honesty and integrity and compassion and empathy. The first document is the Ideal Candidate profile, not that complicated. I'd expand to put in some things about integrity and honesty. But if this had been applied for this last hire? We wouldn't be here today like this. Go read that transcript of the KLCC interview again. Cognitive dissonance? Don't pretend everything is okay.

 

 

Ideal Candidate

1. Experience in Non-profit organizations: Has designed, implemented programs to accomplish goals and policies established by a board. Has created and maintained , in accordance with Board policy, Administrative, Operations and personnel policy manuals and other key organizational documents.

2. Financial management: Has developed an annual budget in consultation with a treasurer and board. Has experience with payroll, tax liabilities, and other financial, insurance and contractual obligations.

3. Personnel management: Has recruited, oriented, supervised and evaluated personnel.

3. Community Liaison: Has experience working with City, county governments, arts/crafts groups, downtown associations, etc.

3. Operations: Has experience purchasing and maintaining equipment.

3. Computer literacy: Knows QuickBooks Pro, MC Office, and MS access

7. People Skills: Has experience working with persons from a variety of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, and ability to demonstrate cultural competency. Employs oral and written communication skills, including skill in listening, conflict resolution, confidentiality, and applying a sense of humor appropriately.

    8.  Event Planning: Has participated in management of events, including experience with craft, retail and food industries. 

Keep On

 

It's getting harder, as we were warned by observers of how authoritarians work. On the macro scale, we are being challenged in every way to step up, do more, stand firm. I vividly remember the moment in my early activism when we discussed not going to protests without gas masks, and the way the Kent and Jackson State killings shocked us as college students when we realized they would kill us. Of course at the time my awareness of the even greater world patterns of oppression was slim and I was naive, but things that happened at that time were so traumatic that I still puzzle over them and how they changed my life. It's not possible to go on living as if that stuff didn't happen, though of course I did try. 

I ran to the woods and wrote and worked on getting through winters of snow and cold that made me cry, worked on skills related to clothing and food, tried to find safety in community that I was not ready to handle. All the personal revolutions at the time added up to a sea change that wrote the history of the next decades, but I had stopped participating with my body. I see in retrospect that I had to, and I'm grateful that people helped me do that. I was not built to be much of a warrior, except in intellectual ways and a willingness to keep learning and finding ways to push society forward, however small.

There were a lot of us hippies doing that then, once the Vietnam war effectively ended and some criminals went to jail. A deep cynicism was embedded, and it took the next few decades for me to put thoughts together and find ways to proceed with the overwhelming challenges of having to support myself in some kind of coherent way. Lucky for me, I ended up in Eugene and found Saturday Market, then only six years old and still being put together as well. I stumbled in and found ways I could be myself, and then pitch in and help. The arson fire of 1982 and misspending of the mid-80s galvanized a group of us to take responsibility for the collective survival of the precious community effort of the smart people who created the market.

 I learned useful skills, like taking meeting minutes, and chairing meetings, and consensus-building group decision-making. I met a lot of people I've now known for 50 years, and many are still in my life. I found ways to create the safety I needed and with help, took advantage of that period in this town where resources were abundant and creativity was high. I chose the life of an artist and writer and hung out with the other artists and writers, who were kind and appreciative and supported my growth and education. I had a baby at 39, kind of at the last minute for me, and that got me into the real therapy that got me to today. None of it was easy though a lot of it was joyful. 

There was damage in my life, like there is for many, right from the beginning, much of which I did not understand as I lacked the framing. It took people outside of me to point out some helpful ways to work through doubts and misinformed attitudes and it was not in any way a perfect process. I would not say I was successful at a lot of what I envisioned for myself, but without the visions, I would not be here, like this.

I have gotten a lot of advice in the last few weeks to focus on self-preservation and "be nice and quiet" and some of it came in familiarly disturbing ways. I have known a lot of narcissists and bullies. As a codependent empath, I am a favorite target: it's easy to manipulate me. I know how to control immediate reactions and I recognize the processes, but I get caught up in fascination and the naive idea that I can make it stop, and have to, for all of us. And the reactions have to take their course, most times.

Obviously on the macro stage, I cannot do all that is being asked for. I will boycott and strike, and I can work within what others are doing, and keep trying, which for me is mostly education. I spend a lot of time reading about racism, white supremacy culture, and trying to find a way to see that in myself and change it, even make reparations. You might think this is not the immediate problem but it is the most giant part of it. I regularly look at the 15 tenets and pick one to work on, currently the Right to Comfort. 

It's cold, so cold, but I have a lot to do so bundled up, I'm working. I wanted to get out ahead of the production season and took advantage of the sun to dye the full range of bandanas I use, plus print up all of my current designs to be ready for the first half of the season, including OCF. I printed a lot of hats, too, though it was harder to do with cold hands and I'm taking a break from that now. I'm clearing out space for what I know is coming, as well as I can, but I'm not comfortable and I know most people are not. Those who are, are questioning it, by the thousands, maybe millions. We are watching Minnesota and seeing all the ways we know we would or would not put our lives on the line like that. We want others to do it, but we, for our various self-protective reasons, might not.  

We will give money, we will do what we can, and we will continue to witness, but this macro problem is huge. We feel naive, we feel unfit to rise to this challenge, and we know this is the way the future will set itself in place, without our consent, without our ability to fix it. We'll carve out some concessions debated by people with some power to manifest them, but we will not win the climate emergency and the coming health emergencies being put in place by the power structure, even as brilliant solutions are crafted and gain traction. It's not going to be a straight line to something we can live with. Some things are ruined.

I went to see Urinetown yesterday thanks to a friend and on the way there, we were some of the people who got very close to a fatal accident, seeing an unresponsive person getting CPR a few feet away from us. My friend, who has witnessed several deaths, looked away and started this technique she told me she has learned, overlaying an amusing memory over a traumatic one right away to keep it from deeply embedding. Something to try to learn that might help me be more brave. We had a great day together and it helped me not get derailed by the brutal reality of intentional or accidental death, with its unbalanced consequences, the end of life for the victims and the aftermath for everyone else.

As a person with a highly developed visual ability and a lot of pattern recognition, it occurred to me that I have a vivid memory of my Dad's body and the events of his death, even though I was a thousand miles away at the time. It was May 1970, right after Kent State, during the Student Strike. I was in college in Washington DC but we'd left town for a break from all of the intensity. When I research the events of that time, I cannot even believe how many things were going on right then. It feels like that now.

So yeah, to reflect on all the advice to me to protect myself and not engage with things I get damaged by, to ease into my Right to Comfort, is cognitively so dissonant. I don't think those who advised me really grasped the circumstances of my microcosm. I spent the last 50 years building something precious and unbelievably useful with some very fine and brilliant people. We worked around those who were not as able, brought them along when we could, and tried to find others who could help. It was always inclusive, always with justice and right livelihood in mind, always imbued by what we felt were the highest aspirations of the hippie, artist, and creative cultures. We worked hard. The last years from 2015 to now have been the hardest. We did many hard things all along!

But the relentless dismantling of our work has been devastating, and there is just no way I can stop caring about it, both because it is my living and because it is one of my co-creations. I have a responsibility to the others I worked with, as well as everyone who has come along, and has needed the market and the ways we can help marginalized people who need our support. I work for the members, as I always have, leading from the middle and respecting the abilities and contributions of all of us at once. Group process depends on equality: equal strength, equal cooperation, equal benefits. 

Favoritism, bullying, domination and control tactics...none of these were built into our org and when we experienced them, we worked together to limit them and make them irrelevant. It has never been easy, and for someone like me, there is an equal amount of time working at tasks and reflecting on the best ways to do them, the most respectful ways to work together, the responsibility we had to honor the legacy we were given, and the most ideal visions for the future of this way of life we need and want.

I did not start the Kareng Fund, but was asked to serve a few years after others did. I was happy to bring my skills and until this year, it was all positive. I still cannot accept that anyone would attack this tiny nonprofit, but the undermining of it has been ongoing since this narcissist was hired. The subtle things led to the blatant events at the end of December and I see how the Fund is also an easy target for people who don't understand or value what we built. I hope it was shocking for observers to see that, but I know the result will be more tangible: a loss of support. There will be rationalizations. Some of what will hurt is my effectiveness was diminished. Processing the incidents took away time I could have spent applying for grants, writing promotional posts, thinking of ways to expand our worth and protect our recipients. We may need to further separate ourselves from the market where we have accessed our most support. Previous market managers gave careful thought to how they could support and expand the fund. This one does the opposite.

And that is just a little side issue to the undermining of the whole deal. We are losing members, and the overspending and subsequent fee increases will drive away more, people who need the market, people who planned to have continuing access to it for their survival as they age. These small tragedies will likely not rise to the surface of  community consciousness, but I heard one tale yesterday, and expect to hear more. No one should have to say they just couldn't afford the fees to join this year. The market is for the members. When fees are high, there are supposed to be solutions, built in, that will support those who need help. Sending people to the KF for their fees is something we had to stop, as the Fund does not have that kind of resources. Maybe it could, if there were more mutual support. Instead, there is a push to institute online payments...won't that end the envelope rounding up that supplied a constant slow feed to the Fund? We asked for a donation button on the website, and there is a redirect to our website, but there are other ways to support the fund which may or may not be promoted. We'll see what the real effects of the bullying will be. 

The undermining of my reputation, the erasing of my history of support, and the attempts to silence me have cut the ties to the kind of information I was always able to provide from our history that guided us through some of the recurring situations we've experienced. I'm not the only person who has experienced this; it's up to a dozen or more now. I won't be bullied. As long as bullies are supported, I won't be engaging. I'm not going to fix this situation I tried to prevent and I won't stop witnessing. It's the very small sacrifice I can make, the sacrifice of my personal safety for the progress of the members who are more able to work out the solutions. The microcosm may be looking trivial in the light of the macrocosm, but like the production of Urinetown and the Jell-O Art Show, artists and writers and performers have to play with their strengths and take the long view of what must be kept alive for the common good. Today was my day to write the script for the Jell-O performance, and I wrote this instead. 

I will now redirect my passion to further explore how the silly and thoughtful forum of art can be used to elevate. For more serious subjects, try working on those 15 tenets by reading other writers, like here: https://60kandbelow.substack.com/p/for-white-bodied-people-who-feel?r=18jj9q&triedRedirect=true or nearly any writer of color out there. Do what you can, and keep doing it. You have the gratitude of the world.

January

 Sinking into home and the winter work has been mostly lovely and I'm gradually finishing all the tasks on my long list. It's mostly the same list as I always have, but some things are bigger projects than others and have to wait. I almost rebuilt my back steps but lacked one piece of wood so convinced myself to wait for summer. Front steps need rebuilding too.

This sunny weather, although cold, has been useful as I decided to dye and print bandanas now, so every evening I do a dye load (30 bandanas, in the washer) and every day I hang them out in the sun and they get mostly dry, then come in the house to finish. Laundry is the same in the winter...pick a sunny day, put it out there, move it around to catch all the available sun, and then bring it in and hang it on all the cabinet doors until it is dry. It has been maybe 20 years without a clothes dryer now and I have done well without it. Electric heat is expensive enough without sending it all outside through a vent. 

Days like today the sun isn't quite hot enough to get me out there...it's not consistent and I don't have room inside for a lot of racks with drying bandanas. I've been doing a lot of hats, too. Prices went up so I got a lot of stock in and have been gradually printing it all for summer. My bags are almost used up. That will be interesting...I don't plan to start buying commercial bags. I've been spoiled with these custom-made ones, as the quality is much higher, but the sewing company retired (well-deserved) and I mostly have used up the pleated kind, though I still will have the smaller flat ones for at least this year. Bags are heavy, so this is somewhat intentional as well, and partly why I started the bandanas.

I'm enjoying the solitude although the Jell-O Art troupe is meeting weekly so I still have plenty of social interaction and more things to do. I need to focus on catching up with the Jell-O Art blog (Gelatinaceae) as I never really finished last year with a summary post or two, and I do plan to. Maybe today! Meanwhile I made some of these boingies, which are fun to play with and will make into something on down the line. Mostly Jell-O Art is confined to this offseason of January, February and March, and after the show on March 28th I mostly put it away for a year, unless something else comes up. One year we did the parade in September, when it was going to be our 30th year (2018) and now we are getting closer to 40. But no parade for me now that it is a Saturday night. Though you never know!

 I call these things boingies because they are reactive when you hold them by one end...fun to play with or stick on a hat (poking hazard....) You make them by putting the gelatin in a pie plate and cutting a strip out in a circular fashion...for more info, go read my Jell-O blog. I mostly needed to make something, so I decided to just have fun while awaiting other ideas.

Even though the sun is out, I am going over there to write now...we have practice tonight so I have to immerse today, and even sing a song or two. It's still early for us, so no urgency, but we really want to do a better job this year and practice more diligently. It will be worth it (hope so anyway.)

I've been watching TV shows from the 50s as research and I have to say, after having "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all..." thrown at me twice lately, I remember the source of that, and it was Thumper the rabbit in the film Bambi. This was classic 50s Disney with the dead mother (all of his films had that) and the threats to the poor innocent deer all designed to make him a man before his time. Thumper was supposed to be the sensible, though cowardly and easily intimidated character, and none of the characters in Disney movies appealed to me as role models, though I was as influenced as any kid by the indoctrination of that Disney culture. There was that Hero's Journey, but it was not a great time to be a girl or woman and that's a big part of the evolving we had to do to get from the 50s to now. I discarded "nice" in my twenties. It means nothing. I am all for compassion, kindness, support and uplifting, but nice for its own sake is just a sugar cookie that will kill you. So those people who thought they might make me feel something did not make me feel like being nicer. 

But confrontation is so stressful, and there are so many bigger things happening in our world that need more attention than the internal politics of messiness.  

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.