Move Along

Okay! We wrapped up the Park Blocks season and said our fond goodbyes to selling outdoors for awhile. It's so different at Holiday Market; a whole new set of problems. Yesterday was not rainy, not cold, and there was a decent member and customer turnout. People even came who had not been at the Market before. I gave out lots of HM postcards and told my potential customers that I'd have a lot more choices there in the hat array. I will have a lot more, though I will try hard to limit myself so my booth isn't so packed there isn't room to see anything.

I still struggle with all the difficult things, but I feel a lot better than I did last time I wrote as the pattern played out and things smoothed over again. I thought about deleting the last post as people worried about me, and that wasn't my intention, but clearly I was still in the pattern when I wrote it and when the storm ends there is always regret, apology and depression about being unable to really change significantly. Damage is there, although having that does give more understanding and compassion about the damage in others. It's easy enough to see but not easy to deal with, to counter or assist or support those suffering from it.

I wish I could tell young people to be more careful, that injuries sometimes don't really heal the way we think they will. My foot continues to hurt so much at night after standing all day on concrete that I simply can't walk on it. It hurts the next day too. It's hard to deal with pain, so I get how it is for people with much more serious pain than I have. You want escape, you want relief, you want to go back in time and not do that to yourself, and you want to fix the pain you have caused others. Not much you can really do. You keep moving and hope for the best. You do the little things as they present themselves. You try to stay positive and not "present with your damage" as everyone has their own piece and really they don't want to hear about yours, at least not in detail. Yesterday both Raven and I got trapped by several individuals who don't seem to see themselves getting in the way of our sales and the work we are there to do. I rescued him twice by letting the people know we needed to focus on our jobs and stop chatting. I tried to get out of the conversation I got trapped in and finally the guy said something about how he was talking my ear off. I let him know that yes, he was, and I hope he was able to stop doing that to others. I doubt he was. He had a huge need to talk about his passionately held opinions. I'll be avoiding him in the future. It makes me wonder how much of social anxiety is caused by a lack of skill in turning off someone's enthusiasm in a way that doesn't hurt them. Maybe we're just as afraid of hurting others as we are of getting hurt ourselves.

But enough of that painful stuff and on to more fun and warmth as the winter sets in. Just being able to work indoors more is a relief as I have plenty to do. There are a couple of outdoor projects I still have to finish this week and my leaf delivery from the city will probably come. Loading in to the HM is a huge day on Friday and by next Monday I will want to have nothing on my list except cooking for Thanksgiving. I feel a little grim about the workload. I feel a little old about how much my life seems limited by work. I've been turning work down...trying hard to say no to things that add to the list. I want to get to the happy positive place but the words aren't coming. Maybe pie will help.

We do have a lovely Market family potluck on Friday at 6:00, in the middle of setup, so maybe I can get some warm fuzzy feelings from that. Maybe today I will do less. I have to finish a library book that is due, and maybe I will allow myself to do that today. I need a nicer boss. I don't like complaining but something is making me do it, something more than habit and something connected with pain. Maybe I can focus my need to work harder on working harder to have ease and fun and let go of some of the drive of the 40-year-old and think about some of the joys of being 65 instead. We'll see. Maybe I'll cook up one of the beautiful squashes I got from the farmers' side of the street and test my recipe for dairy-free pumpkin flan. I think eating less pie crust will allow me to eat more pie. Pie might be the key to my happiness this week. I hope you all find the keys to yours.

Keeper of the Common Good

I was "a fucking wedding cake, okay?"

Let's see, how to write about a problem I'm having in abstract terms, following the thought process I went through last night and pretty much all day yesterday? It's all tied in with other Market issues that I've been chewing on for the last few weeks and which have prevented me from wanting to write here. It's psychological stuff that is strong enough for a therapy session, so I want to use the tools I have and the process of counseling to get to the crux of it without going into the details.

I use journaling every day to put things into a concrete format for me. Something about forming coherent sentences gets me to frame my thoughts into useable chunks that I can examine both in and out of context to find the truth in there. Yesterday I also walked into the Empathy tent and used it for the first time. I thought I did what most people probably do: go in and try a little to get someone else to fix my problem for me.

The listeners were great. All of my fellow vendor listeners were great, too; no one fixed my problem. No one even gave me any advice. The listeners in the empathy tent did one thing only and that was listen in a very engaged way, allowing me to talk freely and at length without interruption, and then reflect back with anything that stuck out as a complete emotion they could describe. I remember the woman (sorry I was too upset to ask her name) saying "It sounds like you need some support." That's right, I answered, my mind searching for what kind of support I wanted and from whom. I sorted through a couple of possibilities, knowing that it was my problem and getting support that amounted to fixing it for me was not a good solution though that might have been available (like calling security or management to take it on as their problem too.)

I only spent about five minutes in there and another ten minutes maybe, complaining to friends about it, but those short intervals helped me to look at the problem within the context of my day. I was upset when I should have been focusing on my work, there in my workplace. I should have been engaging with customers and showing my products I had worked so hard to bring and display attractively, and on the next level it was time for me to get my afternoon coffee which I indulge in only on Market days and highly value as one of those rituals that matter. My cup was in the booth and my booth was full of the problem of the moment, symbolically telling me that my place was in my booth and this problem was displacing me from the day I wanted to be having.

So the listener said, "It sounds like the day is hard enough without this added on." If I had been in a therapist's office that would have been the moment I would have cried and elaborated on how hard my day was at the Market, the twelve hours, the rain, the 75 pounds of sand I have to bring on rainy days, the way I had to bend policy to get my booth to fit in the space now that we are not allowed to put anything in the fountain (one of my corners is in the fountain, which used to work okay with one leg of the canopy in the moat.) But I didn't want to add to my problems by crying in public, and I didn't want to add more caffeine to the mix either, knowing that would not calm me down and it might contribute to me saying things I couldn't take back. So I didn't just go get my coffee. I hung around other vendors until the situation had played out for about twenty or thirty minutes and then I checked in on it again.

I was angry, but didn't want to admit an emotion that strong, so I diffused it to words like annoyed and disappointed but really I was shocked and my gut was churning with anxiety and anger. I couldn't see it until that evening when I was getting soaked unloading my trailer thinking my rambling after-Market thoughts, but my particular type of PTSD was triggered and I was about as vulnerable and at emotional risk as I get these days. Which you might not even notice except my frown keeps coming back. I've gotten a lot better at putting the hormones on hold until they dissipate and I can deal with the underlying issues. That's called self-control. I used to get X's on my report card on it in the early days.

All day people were saying, "I hope the rain holds off until 5:30," or assigning other times when  it would be okay with them if it rained. I don't get finished being outdoors with my stuff until 7:00 at the earliest, so I would merely reflect on how our experiences differ and not say anything. I had my rain gear on. I don't like to one-up with hardships. I'm well aware that everyone has some hardship which is far more weighty than mine. I'm in a great position in my life in many ways, and it seems like whining to mention that I went to the dentist at 8:00 am for an expensive crown the day before, or I had a bowl of ripe tomatoes I would be forced to deal with on my day off...or that I had spent hours on Friday trying to get a stray traumatized cat out of my shop...I really don't have hardships like many people have hardships right now. Getting soaked while unloading at the end of the 12-hour day is just part of my life. I try pretty hard not to be constantly complaining just for something to talk about. So I didn't want to complain, and on any given Saturday I try to remember that. But it was the last day of October and a harder day than those lovely summer ones when the problems are mostly things like remembering to stay in the shade. Plus my foot hurt.

So while I had some self-doubt that I was over-sensitive, the situation was really not workable and I did need some support. I also knew it was my problem and I had to deal with it. The other people weren't seeing the problem. I was shocked and dismayed by that, as I had thought I had made myself clear (I was saying, "about thirty times," to the listeners) and I was hurt and perplexed that my concerns were repeatedly dismissed. I wasn't sure why I had to repeat myself so many times with the same information, the same logical points, the same declarations of what I thought were clearly described emotions, and make the same agreements only to find them dismissed the next week. "You sound like it feels frustrating," and some sympathetic looks and pats on the arm were helpful but to cut to the chase it was clear I was going to have that same discussion again, still somehow hoping it would finish this recurring issue.

So I kind of did, as it couldn't really be avoided (my fall-back tactic for difficulty). I made my same arguments and talked about my feelings with the people involved, but it went south. I'm going to hold the juicy stuff for now because it's intensely personal and off the subject of this post, but I will say that the insight did come to me in the rain that night as I was putting things out to dry and thinking about eating a bowl of heirloom popcorn for dinner. I usually bring home dinner, and I was planning to that day, but that was another way my day was changed by the hour in the middle when I had to respond to the situation imposed on me. I didn't get to control my schedule or my actions or my plans for the day, which isn't that surprising in the context of a day spent in a public park on Halloween in the rain, but that was really the crux of the problem: control.

I've studied control tactics a lot. I am extremely sensitive to controlling people. Lots of blocks in areas of my life are dominated by irrational, controlling people trying to impose their will on aspects of my life that I want my own control over. That's a simplistic view of how things operate: sometimes people are in charge of things and sometimes they want to be, and sometimes they use tactics that are skilled but less than fair and just. Some people manipulate, and they generally have a structure around that to soften it, put it in a more-or-less supported cultural context so they can get their way. At the one extreme is the person who murders women and children he thinks are his possessions to dispose of. This happened this week and happens all the damn time and is a big black dangerous hole for me that I try not to look into. It's a terrifying mindset.  That wasn't happening, but it was lurking.

There is a range of lesser behaviors that stem from that entitled and powerful position and rarely do I really have to deal personally with the life-and-death levels, but frequently I have to deal personally with people who take advantage of flexibility to impose their will. I go to meetings where people come and rant about some personal problem that they think ought to dominate the group process until they are satisfied somehow. I get emails where fearful people try to block group process because they aren't in charge of it and don't want to admit they don't have anything useful to add. I see people try to manipulate others to love them, take care of them, give them something they haven't earned, or just give them attention. Being on the sidewalk with my creations puts me in a very vulnerable position to view these manipulations and there is always some portion of potential or actual customers who try to do those things. They want the best of my work but they want a discount on the price. They want to dominate my attention while they pretend to choose something, but then they make an excuse to walk away without buying. Some of it is innocent, and some of it is calculated. Sometimes I can laugh and go along with it to a degree, but sometimes I get thrown right off my feet by it.

So yesterday I was thrown off my feet, and the person who was doing that was was using the controller language and tactics. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't recognize it, but that is the complier making excuses and part of the pattern. I think Halloween was definitely part of the picture in that I was feeling that thinner veil, when these predators and controllers of the past were lurking, coupled with the oppressive weather and my deep concern for everyone out in it and how hard their lives were. I had a long chat at the end of the day with someone I know who is living on the streets and will probably be there the rest of his life. I know emotional issues are trivial compared to life and death issues and the whole reason I am giving you this long version is my way of taking a counseling session in an indirect way. Maybe it was the position of my Kareng Fund letter in the Weekly below Sue Sierralupe talking about Occupy Medical. Yes, we do a good thing giving money to craftspeople in crisis, but Sue gets in close proximity with people in great pain and saves their lives. I admire her so much, and anyone who can do that deep caring work. Way more than I can do! People do what they can, but some try a lot harder than others are willing to, and I'm not sure I measure up at all.

But despite all of the surrounding ugly and horrifying truth of the day and the deeper levels of the problem, the insight I had is that I spend a lot of time thinking about and acting within my self-appointed role as keeper of the common good. I tend to the Market community and my OCF community and my Kareng Fund community and my Radar Angels community and my own family and neighbors and I am generally compelled by the underlying impulse to take care of all the people. I want to be one of the ones who gives and not one of the ones who takes. I want to be one of the very large group of people who have the energy and thoughtfulness and abundance in their lives to take care of others and make their lives easier. Though my efforts are minimal compared to Occupy Medical, we're on the same team.

I work to expand that and do more of it, and I work to counter my own selfishness and neediness and set those aside for the general common good. Of course as a human I have a limited capacity for that and need to be refilled with the goodness of others and the caring pats and looks that help me, but I am continually wishing that other people would tend the common good and am constantly shocked and dismayed when they don't. And I think the key to why that particular situation yesterday was so hard was that the other people did actually also believe that they were tending the common good. They were giving what they had to give and it confused them that it wasn't well-received.

The visitors to Market and the customers see what they are adding, so very apparent yesterday with all the costumes and families with little kids who brought them there where we gave treats. The entertainers bring their music to give it. The farmers lay out their abundance to share, and the concept of money is a facilitator that is a bit outside the intention of the tending, but it colors it in a problematic way.

The people who live in the park everyday see it as home. They are reluctantly willing to vacate while we use it, and we feel a certain level of priority for our use because we rent the space. We use money to control it. We expect a return for that, which is roughly translated to sales, but we also expect control of the space for our narrow purpose. We resent the people who pass through with their dogs in violation of our rules, and we really resent the groups of people who talk loudly and with profanities about their highs and pursuits of them in our space while we are using it. When they settle in on "our" benches we call Security. We feel that we should get to say who uses our space and how, so we have our raft of regulations and guidelines to enforce that. It seems right to us, but obviously not to other users of the space.

Others who also consider themselves part of our community don't see the difference between those who pay and those who don't. The people who sell at FSP see themselves as part of the Market while we see them as parasites. Though we pay the lion's share of the costs of managing the garbage and bodily wastes of all the people who use the space, (me, with my fees) the ones who use the facilities don't see the difference between paying for it and not. The farmers come over to use our bathrooms and our recycling, and the drummers feel like they bring something to add that is as highly valued as my dollars that I earn and use to make it happen the next week. All of the visitors probably expect some gratitude from me for what they brought. I am grateful, but it's not a simple exchange.

So we are all involved in creating the commons, and there is a dangerous and slippery slope where those who pay for it feel more involved or more privileged than those who are just using the benefits of it. It's a subtle difference that is not really apparent, but it's a different mindset. While I see my 8x8 as a space I pay for and thus get the right to control, how far does it extend? I'm paying for the whole four-block area in one sense, and if I were paying to park I'd probably extend that zone to the parking garages too. I feel that, but it's invisible to everyone else. I allow myself to feel an ownership and position of tender that I think is more powerful than someone's ownership and position who does not pay those fees.

It can't be that simple but it puts me into a spin about it all. How much do I really control and how hard do I fight for that? Can I extend it outside my 8x8 and if so, how far? That is why we have four hour meetings. We've had forty-five years of discussions of this very issue translated into many facets and forms. The recent internal issues were really about that: how far should one person's control go before it becomes violence against someone else?

It disingenuous to call everything violence that isn't peacemaking, but hurt is hurt and part of the tending is protecting others from hurt on any level. I am on this earth to make life more wonderful for everyone I touch, not the opposite. I'm not here to challenge you or force you to improve or coerce you to do what I want you to do. I'm not here to sell you something you don't want. I'm not here to solve your problems and I really don't want to be creating your problems. It's a lot of work to avoid creating problems for other people, but that is part of what I do. I want to keep my 8x8 clean and leave it better for my use of it. I want respect for that.

I want respect for my space and my purposes, and I am willing to extend that same respect for you if you will stick to the agreements we have made. If you are not sure if we agree, we might not. We might need to have a four-hour meeting about it. I'll try to hear you in the meeting, but I do not want to do that on Saturday when I am already working as hard as I can to do what I went downtown to do. It's a lot. It might look like selling hats to you but I am sheltering and nurturing a sweet and precious space for about a thousand people (at least) to be vulnerable and safe at the same time. I need to feel a balance there, to have a balance in my life and a feeling of control and safety about my choices and around my heart.

So yeah, it's about a lot of other things, a bigger question, as the discussion reveals each time we have it. I don't concede equal rights to my space. I have a lot going on in there. I'm in charge.

It reminds me of something that stuck hard in my mind when I was trying to move into a relationship with someone. We were sitting in my kitchen which was full of stuff that looked like clutter but was really about four crafts in progress at once, as well as headquarters for a house remodel and a single parenting of a teenage boy. I had a lot of things on my refrigerator held on by a lot of magnets. This person started taking things off my refrigerator and putting them in the trash.

In my confused state I merely took them out and put them in a box and tried to explain that I liked a lot of visual stimulus and that might look like clutter. I continued with trying to have the relationship but really it was over at that point whether or not I knew it. Don't like my refrigerator decor? Bye. My refrigerator, my kitchen.

Control. We all try to have it, but we don't all try to use it. There's a line that should not be crossed. Lots of lines, constantly being redrawn invisibly, but like a grid of shifting permissions and consents. Don't diminish me, don't dismiss me and don't come into my sphere with your violent intent. Damnit. Definitely don't do that on a Saturday. That is when I am my most vulnerable, but that is also when I am at my most powerful. I have stood there for forty years now, and I know what it is all about. I know what is right and wrong about Market. I might not know what to do in the moment, but my gut feelings are fully developed in my role as craftsperson-superwoman-tender-and-keeper. You are lucky to have me, so don't mess it up.

Don't be selfish in the most open, non-selfish community gathering in the known universe. It's about giving down there, not taking. I wish there were a way to convey that more strongly than giving things away to little kids, but that was one good way. I thank all those wonderful parents who brought their darlings to me yesterday so that I could do that in a concrete way. Thanks too to Sue Theolass and Sue Hunnel who both made special trips to bring me little beeswax candles and cool beads on strings so that I could give away handmade treasures. I am especially grateful to one Mom who saw the wrinkled brow of her little daughter when I gave her a candle and said "Don't eat it!" The mom raved over the beeswax, the smell of it, and promised to tell her daughter all about the bees who made it. So much more precious than a fun-sized Snickers. That's the way I want it to be. I really hope a lot of people want that too.

Assumptions and Agreements

Of course I am being forced to think about violence again as we all are if we use media and I find myself in the "numbed to it" category. I don't want to read the life stories and see the photos and especially don't want to hear the underpaid spokesmodels of the TV news ask people how they are feeling. Irrelevant and crappy! Yet violence is there as the subtext of modern life, levels of it present for me in just about all of the subjects I was journaling about this morning.

I notice the mention of the frustrated sense of belonging that is projected onto those disturbed enough to act out violently. There was a guy at the Market yesterday who was loudly being weird...asking everyone for a Sharpie and talking nonsense as he was moved to the perimeter by the constant pressure of the security guys. I wondered if I should give him my Sharpie to prove to him that I was listening. I didn't think that through, knowing I would probably not get the Sharpie back, but forgetting that the $2 or whatever I paid would be of much less value to me than the inclusive act might be to him. But I didn't want to include him in my world. He was stepping on my plans for the day, to quietly sell my goods, and he was scaring me with his lack of consent to the agreements of my community so I wasn't sure what he might do with my black magic marker.

Early attempt, 1985

I make stuff up, and have declared that on my shirt many times. I couldn't find the one upon which I screened a little Saturday Market basket over the word "up" so it neatly said "I make stuff." I dredged up a few of the other Market shirts I've made over the many years instead. I hope they illustrate how hard it is to describe or encapsulate Saturday Market. I've never been able to do it more successfully than "I make stuff." That's what we do, then we gather together to try to sell it to people. Seems simple until you add a few hundred and then thousands of people into the equation. As Beth used to say, "Welcome to my world." Things inside my eddy may be fairly calm, but all over the Market and surrounding blocks randomness is occuring and people are doing and feeling things about which I have not an inkling.

 I've been thinking a lot about unspoken and unwritten agreements and assumptions and how we tend to operate from them without noticing. I've been told several times lately that I am speaking as if everyone thought like I think, and even I can notice how sometimes I can be pontifical ( and not enlightened  Francis-y) and self-righteous. One of the OCF Board candidates (Terry Baxter) quoted someone as saying "Every community looks like a club from the outside; every club looks like a community from the inside." I found that extremely relevant to situations of anger and defensiveness. When people feel excluded they aren't usually happy to go. They generally are hurt, and feel the lack of justice, fairness, due process, or some such framing that left them on the outside when they wanted to be on the inside. Even when the distancing is unintentional or just hesitation like me with my Sharpie, it can come off as rejection and the less confidant tend to take the most offense. Sometimes a cascade of exclusion occurs: a closing of ranks, trauma-bonding of those most affected, or lots of complaints from lots of people tangentially affected by various aspects of the issue that have varying degrees of even being related to the main issue. Gossip happens, private or secretive discussions ensue, and a general feeling of being unsafe or simply fearful is put in place of the previously happy coexistence of the affected group. If that guy had been allowed to continue roaming the Market with his aberrant behavior, he had the potential of setting off that kind of cascade: angry customers and vendors whose plans were disturbed, fearful parents and children, accusations of kitty abuse (he had a cat in a carrier that he was telling to come out and fight...) and the calling of higher authorities. The Security people did what they do to remove him from our midst, and I assume he took his behavior to some different groups and gatherings to see if he could get his needs met, though they were far more complicated than his need for a black magic marker.

Front of Magic shirt.

I engaged in a mediation session this week, my first, and while all of the content is confidential, I can talk a little about the process. The first thing that warmed my heart was that the mediator at the Center for Dialogue and Resolution said that like Saturday Market, their group had roots in the counter-culture of the late 1960's-early 1970's. As a staunch advocate that the hippies were right, I was encouraged by this. Some of the values I learned during that time have served me well in life and I try to promote them. I also assume other people know them and operate by them, which is of course one of the flaws in my life that I continue to work on. I am often shocked by the mainstream world that doesn't get what I see as simple stuff. It made me want to think and write about some of the assumptions I carry about how Saturday Market (and to a degree, OCF) functions as an organization.

Back of 25th Anniversary shirt, 1994 or 1995

I think we are founded upon and promote equality. We each get an 8x8 space. We each pay the $10 plus 10%. This is not completely true for changes we've made like adding the 4x4s, which pay $5 plus 10%, and the food vendors, who are asked to contribute more to reflect the services they need and the higher potential income they attract. But generally we are all viewed by the organization as equals, with equal rights, responsibilities, access and opportunity. This state of balance is carefully tended, but often gives rise to disputes and accusations that some are "more equal" than others, when access to parking, decision-making, or other issues comes up. Assertive people can dominate the more docile, and people who have been volunteering a long time sometimes are more familiar with the workings and can have an easier time getting their needs met because of that knowledge. They know whom to ask what specific question to get a helpful answer. I'm guessing you can think of an example of this, particularly with an organization that is as large as OCF. If you ask on Facebook for someone to add you to a crew (I saw a recent request for the "Art Crew") you will likely get silence and no one willing to start to craft for you what will be a long answer. Go read the guidelines. If it isn't spelled out, read the members' website. Ask a dozen people and see if you get fewer than a dozen answers. It is easy to see why a complicated entity like a membership organization fails to enthusiastically welcome each person who knocks on the meeting room door. It's open, but you have to bring some things in with you.

If you come down to sell with me on the Park Blocks, as an individual I will be nice to you, but I have my own set of rules you could violate since there is no way to explain them all to you. I have a thing about musicians who use plastic containers to collect donations or otherwise show me they aren't putting any effort into their presentation. I will usually give them a hat instead of a dollar.  If they don't get the hint I kind of punish them by withholding my dollars. I'm not saying it's right, but I expect something of people who come to use the space I'm renting for their own purposes. At least put on a good show!

 Fortunately for me I don't bring a car so I don't have to engage much in the parking struggles, but for some of us with well-established routines, if you park in "my" parking space at the time I want it, I am capable of coming out of my tired and anxious mindspace to be angry with you. I might be in the habit of bending the policy to meet my needs and I won't enjoy you innocently pointing that out. Mostly at the beginning and end of the day we are stressed and have lots of details to juggle and we just want things to flow smoothly. It doesn't take much to innocently or selfishly disrupt the routines of everybody else in the neighborhood. Parking is just one part of the unspoken net of agreements: each neighborhood has probably established a workable sequence of use for the limited spots and people are more or less flexible about it. As a group we try hard to use signs and encouragement to get people to think of others but there are constants like people shopping at Farmers' Market (which opens at 9:00) and the shuffling of spaces that cause pretty continual potentially unpleasant interactions. Agreements around that get a little wambly, like "that is okay for that person since he gets out fast and opens up the space for everyone else but it isn't okay for you" and "he gets mean so we just let him do his thing" and other less-than-fair but fairly functional agreements. I'm not saying it's fair practice. The agreement that we all stay open until exactly 5:00 pm is related to that. Some people just don't. I tend to frown at them, but when it is my turn to have to try to get somewhere in a short time frame I might bend that policy too. It's a guideline, not a rule, right? We all are capable of rationalizing our choices about the many agreements and policies.

The thing with hawking comes up a lot, especially with products that make a noise or smell. Those have been recent issues that came up with a somewhat violent (I have a broad definition of violent) process, partly due, I believe, to some unwritten and unspoken agreements. If we are all equal in our 8x8s, it's the practice that you don't let the sleeve of your dress that you hung out front hang over into your neighbor's display space. There are probably about as many adjustments to those agreements as there are neighbor relationships. I made myself a rule when I moved into the space next to the shakers that I would not get annoyed at the sounds of the rattles or the little kids who have to try each one, or the way Raven plays along with whatever music we are hearing. That was already in place when I moved there, and I couldn't find a way that it hurt me. The same with Willy's drums. If someone is playing too loud or long, I know Willy will get a handle on it as I know him to be thoughtful of the neighbors over how much he wants to sell a drum. I trust him to take care of me. I willingly acceded to a bit of compromise of my equality (not much right to quiet in a public space) and made some agreements of my own, like keeping my bike and trailer in the space behind David and Cheryl's, space they might have wanted to use themselves, and using the open space next to me to project out a little with my tote bags, telling myself that putting my promotional Saturday Market materials out there (I sell the SM totes and give away postcards and maps) will help balance the use of that extra few inches. In all of these examples workable compromises were crafted with those immediately affected but I certainly didn't ask everyone if it was okay with them if I made those choices. That's pretty hard to do with the changing landscape down there and I'm not sure what I would do if there was violent disagreement. Most of the violent disagreement has the immediate result of one of the parties absenting themselves from the Market for some period of time, willingly or not. Selling privileges/rights are conditional. See page 8 of the Member Information Handbook.

Last attempt, not sure when, but I don't think I ever put them on sale

Trust is huge. There are as many as 300 artisans, hundreds of support people and staff, and thousands of customers and people-watchers trying to enjoy the same time and place together. That's not even the full size of our community, because we have an international public and everyone who has ever enjoyed Market feels a part of that. We even have people who make it a point to seek out Saturday Market just to experience it. So really we all ought to be thinking of all of these people with our actions and words, and that puts me as a participating individual right at the bottom of any hierarchy or flowchart you might want to draw about the community. Each individual has all the rights and all the responsibilities to that group experience. In the moment we vendors often feel the most vulnerable but we're solidly members of the club. Imagine how it feels to be a hesitant person coming for the first visit. We can be a scary place if you don't understand that safety is a really high priority for the organization, especially if you think that the FSP is part of our monitored area. Shit happens over there and on the surrounding blocks that is not under Saturday Market control. That marker guy (and people's dogs, friends, and second cousins from Oklahoma)--- not all that controllable.

Yet of course I am paying to be there. I am contracting for a certain set of services and conditions and it hurts me in the wallet when those are compromised. So my rights were maybe a half-step above the magic marker guy. He needed friends with pens; I needed and expected a lot of other things. It also lends a tone to my acceptance of the selling activities on the County land across the street at the Farmer's Market and the Courthouse Plaza. I love the farmers as they bring me food and customers and color and a connection I find vital. We generally share the same agreements, with a few sticky areas that lie in the background, but we have a long history and tend to support each other. I don't feel a lot of support from the Free Speech Plaza attendees, although I am one who likes the heartbeat of the drums.

I resent the Courthouse Plaza activities (with the exception of the drum circle) and really wish the County would step up and deal with it. We had to have millions of dollars of liability insurance to just have our 10x10 Info Booth there (we've moved it) and no one there is accepting any responsibility whatsoever that I can see. I have to admire a friend of mine who went over there last week to make his peace with it. He recognized his resentment and anger and thought he had better get to know what was really going on there.

Of course what he found was a more human experience than he had wanted when he thought he could dismiss them. We kind of see our younger selves in some people, when we were just starting out as craftspeople, desperate for sales, inexpert in our offerings, trying hard to find a place, broke and sometimes somewhat broken. There's a bit of a community over there, something more than random people taking advantage of a free zone. Saturday Market doesn't allow everything to be sold; we have strict guidelines about handmade and maker/seller issues, so some people are there because we exclude them. They want to be with us and that's as close as they can get. Some people are simply opportunists and don't want the responsibilities of our club. But few of them are bad people and mostly they are not out to hurt us. They mostly don't think about us and out needs, being focused on their own needs. They might end up joining us when they get the money together to advance their artistry and step up to our level of selling. They might be willing, or are already working within our agreements. It isn't any one thing.

We have some unspoken agreements, and a handbook full of written ones, which all members are asked to read and agree to. The handbook spells out a lot of things that shouldn't be in question or cause disagreement, including a Code of Ethics and Conduct. It offers the seed of dispute resolution and explains that Market operates on the honor system. Honor the system by learning what it is, participating in its refinement by serving on the policy-creating bodies of the Board and Committee structure, and then follow the policies: that's what's implied. Members are clearly asked to do these things and contract with their membership payment that they will. We've gotten that far. No one but members probably even knows about the Handbook and all of that policy written by dozens or hundreds of people over the years.

With those who are not members, we are asked to be patient and human. That is a big part of our challenge in trying to do our business by renting the public park. We're not in a vacuum. We have to respond to the needs of the marker guy and the guy selling across the street without a permit. It isn't a formula for an easy day and is part of the exhaustion we can feel on Sunday morning when some things did not go well the day before. Each individual who enters our club wants to be a part of it on their own terms. It is when we allow the boundaries of our club to be fluid and accepting that we truly act as a community. Individuals come and go, but the basket is always full and keeps getting bigger. We must coexist and we must invest the time and thought that takes. The elegant solutions will not be found unless everyone brings their piece of the truth and is willing to speak it, whether with words or behavior, whether with silent assent or sometimes violent disagreement.That's the stuff of human interaction and of constantly building and protecting community. We're doing it so the club will continue. To the members, it is our lives in the balance.

It's never the same club meeting twice, never the same community gathering. Each week brings high and low points while we learn how to live and work together. Each time we look at our actions and thoughts in light of our written and unwritten agreements, we get a little closer to the world we want to live in. We're creating it all the time. It's a good thing we're so good at being creative.

The Light is Changing

I'm not such a big fan of Fall. I've probably mentioned that before. It's mostly because I don't like to be cold and love to be hot, and the seasons aren't going to support that for awhile, except for these September and now October afternoons. Of course it's pretty pointless to fret about the weather and the way the earth is tilting. It might be more productive to learn to adapt to it and find things to enjoy about it.

So I get out the longjohns and turtlenecks and I even turned the heat on once. I can still open the house up at the end of the day and get the hot air in so I'm still pretty happy. I like all the nature things that happen, except the dying leaves part, though they're interesting and beautiful. A big grey squirrel is trying to move into my yard or my block, and it's interesting watching the little resident squirrels try to keep it out. I dislike how the squirrels eat all my food (strawberries, raspberries, apples, pears, filberts, everything but the tomatoes) but they can be amusing. The towhees are back and I think I heard a varied thrush. I love my yard even though it is way too small.

My world is kind of small I guess. I think that is a result of trying to create safety and a measure of control for my own comfort: emotional control and financial safety and physical safety. It's essential but I sense that it can take over sometimes as I fear things more: aging, health conditions, random stuff that could happen but actually probably won't. Fear might be more of a habit than a response. Fear of the unknown...but isn't everything unknown, at least to a degree? Turn anxiety into curiosity. I wonder if the squirrels will switch nests and maybe move away? Could happen.

I am going to be singing at the Lennon Birthday Show, with the Slug Queen and the Radar Angels. I totally love the singing part. Rehearsal tonight was beautiful, lots of wonderful harmony and it's easy to love songs by the Beatles, particularly John Lennon. He has been a hero to me for a long time, and Yoko is too, for her courage and strength. It is always fun to sing that music, and there is so much of it. I'm really thinking a lot of my brother-in-law Mike and my sisters and Mom and all the many times we sang Beatles songs. We used to sing Blackbird a lot, sweetly. Mike is in a band called the Buntles and he probably knows all the lyrics to all of the songs. I wish I had him to practice with. We have one more rehearsal and are not all the way sure what songs we will do. Across the Universe for sure, with all those poetic lyrics, which has been fun to learn. We are also going to do Can't Buy Me Love which is lively and we'll probably have to get together some choreography with it. Who knows what the third song will be? I hope it is one I already know or I'll be singing along with YouTube a lot next week. The show is October 10th, on a Saturday, so it won't be easy to manage that day. I can do it though. I know I want to, and Indi told me tonight that the apprehension and stage fright really never go away, so there's no point in letting them keep me from the stage.

I need a costume plan to settle me down. Seventies mod psychedelic hippie Radar Angel. Sounds easy except that I have nothing suitable. I might though, put away in the clothing I've saved because I couldn't let go of it. I don't have my patched bellbottoms, too bad. Don't know where they went. They probably rotted. I must have something. If not, it is a good season to be putting a costume together, and that is something I enjoy that might balance the fears. Balancing the fears with fun is a good strategy. We were talking tonight about being 97 and still dressing up and performing skits. I can totally see that, so I had better keep this going and really get good at it.

Better keep working at balancing the fears with curiosity and openness to the good parts of the unknown. If everything were known it would be terribly boring. I like thinking of every moment as a new one that has never happened and won't happen again, but the mundane takes over a lot of that time. There's not much different about doing the dishes, or printing more of the things I have printed before. The moments run together and then the season is changing again and another year is added onto all of our ages. It goes fast and there isn't time for everything. It's hard to fit in all of the important things, whatever they are.

Sometimes the most important thing is sitting on the deck in the golden afternoon light. Sometimes it is going to a meeting to tend to other important things. Sometimes it is going to bed to be ready for the challenges of tomorrow. But there is a show on about the beginnings of Pilchuck glass studio in the 70's and now I have to watch it. I guess I'll sleep when it gets colder.

Empathy

I find myself extremely delighted (I feel delight!) that at the exact time when I find the most people I know feeling overwhelmed and distressed, an Empathy Tent is opened down at the Saturday Market! If there were ever a perfect solution for a difficult problem, this is it. My only wish is that it would be so well-used that it would be open and staffed every week and made a permanent, essential part of the Market.

Long ago there was a booth called The Lucy Booth where advice was offered for 5 cents. Evolution of counseling and human interactions has made advice a quantity a bit less useful, but the real activity that went on then and is going on now was, and is, listening. Simple focus and compassionate listening to a person with a problem (or several problems) is known to be far more effective than many other calming techniques. It matters a lot that someone cares.

Mark Roberts, who had the vision and energy to start the Empathy Tent, is a longtime practitioner of careful and compassionate listening. His older brother suffered from polio which he did not allow to stop him from engaging fully in life and he set an inspiring example of overcoming obstacles and encouraging others to do the same. Mark took up the challenge to move obstacles with personal power, and by engaging others who share the goals of improving our lives for a happier world, he has opened many avenues for people to help themselves find workable solutions to whatever they face. Obstacles are problems with solutions. Steps can be replaced with ramps, door handles with automatic openers, walls can be fitted with doors. It takes will and it takes action, and all of it starts with defining needs and working to solve problems, one step at a time.

The first step is figuring out the need driving the distress and the empathy of a caring listener can be so helpful in figuring out what the underlying need is. Humans can complicate their experiences and layer distresses very effectively, masking their real needs and putting up their own walls to stand between them and getting what they need. We all experience the subtle ways we get in our own way. Often we can't see through the distress to identify what are feelings, misconceptions, assumptions, or denial of what is really bothering us. There are a multitude of ways we can confuse our issues and overwhelm ourselves, making logical choices and actions really hard to find.

The compassionate listener doesn't tell us what to do or what we are feeling or thinking. In my experience, a good listener might reflect what she is hearing or what appears to be the presenting emotion, or just offer a kind look or word to encourage me to go further with my presentation of what's wrong. I am the one who has to feel my emotions, sort them out, and figure out what action I can take to fix my problem. I'm not helpless and don't like the feeling of helplessness, so I don't generally ask for help. I might start to act out my distress: withdraw, get angry at some frustration, take out my frustration on someone else in some altercation that I am drawn into seemingly without my intention. It's easy to take a further step to blame whatever or whomever got caught up in my acting-out. None of these actions bring real relief and can be very distracting.

Years of experience have taught me a few things to listen for to help me see I am irrationally acting out instead of feeling my actual feelings. I might fall into some negative "cognitive errors" (lots of online sources outline these in further detail. I linked to one but haven't really read it...just a place to start.) These are common ways of thinking that take us further away from the problem-solving and into the distress. For me they are commonly control fallacies like thinking I am the one who has to fix the problem, and I can't, or catastrophizing (the Market will die because of this!). I do lots of other things like making things into black-and-white dichotomies that don't have any nuances, (polarized thinking) or magnifying the negative without remembering the positive (filtering). These ways of thinking are easy to fall into and culturally available and supported, particularly if you watch television. All the sit-coms and soap operas display actors falling into these avenues of error and we might see these actors as role models. It seems okay to freak out and do things and then apologize or pick up the pieces. We call it "losing it" or "blowing off steam" and it isn't even seen as violence but we are taught we are helpless to change that pattern and that it is "hard-wired" and helpful. Increasingly we witness people taking their stress out on others and it is so harmful and destructive. Often people just walk away shaking their heads, unable to respond. We aren't taught more boring, productive ways to solve problems from sources such as TV. In fact, these events are juicy and entertaining and often make the news. You don't generally see news stories about people who engage in warm problem-solving interactions that de-escalate the distress and calm the participants so they can think clearly.

But through people like Marshall Rosenberg and countless others we can be introduced to way more productive ways to make life easier and more productive without so much of the stress and distress brought about by our thinking errors and assumptions. It's really rare that someone is out to get you. The post-office clerk or the grocery checker isn't doing or saying things to mess up your life, they are doing their work within the confines of their job situation and they might be as unhappy as you are on that particular day. You might display behavior that pushes them into their own stress reactions. It's your job to get the skills to keep your stress and issues from hurting other people. To do that job you have to do some work.

Whether you do that work in years of private therapy, in a discussion group, or in your chair with a book or the internet, the information is out there for you to learn the skills and there are lots of people who are willing to support you while you learn to practice it. Just reading about it doesn't make you able to use the skills in the situations where you need them the most. Generally, I have found, I need some other human to listen to me and hold the space for me to hear myself. I can (most times now) hear my assumptions surface and my illogical thoughts without much prompting, partly because I am an artist and my brain is trained to look at problems from lots of different angles while I try to figure out the creative solutions. Emotional problems are simply a different, more nebulous set of challenges than artistic problems, and if you don't have the skills it will be like a jeweler trying to build a rack without the woodworking tools to make it easy. I've done lots of things with bad tools and then redone them with the right tools and been amazed at the difference.

When you try to  hang a door or even change out the lockset with a dull chisel you will probably split the frame and make a messy hole around the lock, as well as mis-align the parts so the door won't close well. I have several doors in that condition, as I built this house with few skills and learned as I went. The last time I did it I was much better at it than the first time. I got better tools, learned why they need to be sharp, and was better able to use them in the proper ways to get a more finished result. Emotional issues are similar. While yelling and driving someone away may solve the immediate problem of the irritation you are feeling around them, it shifts some of your irritation to them, to people who had to watch you yell at them, and on down the line. They might take that stress you handed them and take it out on someone else. Most people are really good at personalization, taking everything that happens and thinking it is mostly about them. It is easy to set off a chain of negative thoughts in them, thinking about the things they should have done, the ways they should have defended themselves, taken control of the situation, or taking on the hurt and feeling like an inadequate person in some way, internalizing the conflict to hurt themselves.

If you could have taken your frustration to a listener and worked through it to let go of it, you could have addressed the actual problem with the other person, if there was one. You could have owned your frustration, felt the irritation as something you were believing in (not an actual fact like the temperature), and faced the issue as something that could be eased. Many of us are not in the habit of owning our feelings. Even the simple language of talking about feelings can be improved. I read a great article about phrasing yesterday: the subtle difference you feel when you say something in these three ways: I am delighted; I am feeling delighted; I feel delight. The first two created a little distance from the feeling (delight) and the third connects you to the emotion in your body and is a clear declaration of your experience. If you substitute "frustrated and frustration" into the sentences it is a little more clear. What Vika Miller says in her blog is: The first phrase ("I'm delighted/frustrated") uses English in a way that says something has been done to us, and that our experience is static or ongoing. I AM [fill in the blank] says that I'm this way all the time; it labels me and tells my brain that this experience is all there is. Both of these slow or stop the flow of Life energy ...

The second phrase ("I'm feeling delighted/frustrated") lets go of this labeling, this linguistic permanence, and acknowledges that what we're experiencing is a momentary experience, rather than what we ARE. But, it still suggests that something has been done to us.  The first one allows more energy to flow, while the second one still limits that flow somewhat...

The third phrase ("I'm feeling delight/frustration") focuses our attention on the present-moment experience arising within us, allowing all the Life energy to flow freely.

Her point is mostly that the language that we use really matters in the ways we communicate and process our emotions. These may seem like very subtle fine points but I wanted to show how the basic owning of one's emotions can help greatly in communicating and solving human-interaction problems.

Trying to find a way to control the forces that act on us might seem like our job and might seem overwhelming, but most of the ways we have learned to exert control in our society are by oppressing someone else. Most of the things we encounter cannot be controlled. Most of them have to be dealt with more creatively than that. Thanks to the internet and to the wise people in our community, we have lots of ways to start thinking about these more elegant solutions and our response to the complications of our lives. What we say and do is important, and when we are next to each other on Saturdays, in the state of vulnerability that we open ourselves to each week putting our creations on display, we are all at risk of hurting ourselves and each other if we cannot stay in our most loving human state. I'm not saying it's easy; far from it. I have to talk myself through something every week that could derail me and send me into negative thinking. I use the good listeners in my neighborhood and my friend group to help me regain my rational thoughts and not go further into my irrational assumptions. I talk to Mark, as I am lucky enough to be a friend of his and he is very generous with himself.

If I am stuck in my booth with no neighbors I'm comfortable with, and the pressure of thinking I have to be there to serve my customers above all, I can go off the rails. I see it in someone every week. Some of us are more fragile than others, more or less grounded, more or less clear in a particular moment or time. Autumn stresses me and I don't like to be cold. I worry about the declining sales on the days with the early football games. I worry about lots of things. But worrying is focusing on an outcome I don't want, so I try to use the skills I've gained to redirect my worrier warrior. I can't control the weather or the football schedule or the customer or my neighbors or much of anything besides my response. That I can, with support
, learn to control. If I do that imperfectly, I am a human being. I don't really believe in perfection.

So what I'm saying is hurrah for the Empathy Tent, and I want to encourage everyone to stop in there for a moment or several. Use this terrific resource Mark and his associates are kind enough to provide us when we need it so much. Use the available resources. Learn more: Oregon Network for Compassionate Communication. Read more, think more, even feel your feelings more. Don't think you have to tough things out like a pioneer or a buccaneer. We live in an age of abundant resources. Give yourself the gift of empathy. Take care of yourself, and that will make life more wonderful for all of us. I pledge to do my best to do the same.

IMHO

Okay, I have to say something to my 30 loyal readers. This is my own opinion and no official thing, and I will restrict my sources to the Eugene Weekly Biz Beat and pretend I know nothing else about the soap fragrance issue. I'm the Secretary of the Market, but this is not a blog by the Secretary of the Market. This is an essay from the little old lady on Medicare who prints tote bags and hats with a little squeegee in my cramped little shop. As you might have read in my post from yesterday, I have probably come down to 8th and Oak to sell about a thousand times. That gives me about the same selling rights and advantages as the person who comes for the first time. We are a community that seeks equality. Not just for us, the ones who pay fees, but for the people who come down to do yoga on the lawn, to drum over there in the wild and free zone, or just to watch other people doing those things. We are free and we are open, 10-5, Rain or Shine. And thus it has been since 1970.

I've sold at the Market for 40 years. I've sat on the Board, taken thousands of hours of minutes of that body and various committees, served on a few Task Forces, study groups, but mostly I have stood in my 8x8 and observed the place. It's the Community Gathering Place. It's what the commons used to be, since that no longer exists in the modern town of practically everywhere. Pretty much anyone can come down there and do pretty much anything they want, but over the forty years the people who gather to oversee and nurture the Saturday Market have had to place a few limits on the commons when we are using them. Renting them, to be correct. We made a few rules. Not everyone follows them, of course.

Above all, the health and safety of every person who steps on the block is our concern, and not because liability insurance exists, but because it is right. Everyone from the newest babies to the practically ephemeral comes to our Market. Each person is under my protection, the protection of the community I am a part of. I choose to pay my fees and set up my wares and my (not at all "makeshift") business, and I make agreements when I do that. I agree to our Code of Conduct, and to all of the spoken and unspoken agreements of a polite and cooperative society.

So when I get hurt or mad I take care of it. I get counselling or check things out with my neighbors and friends and that is how I right my own ship and keep my relationship with the Saturday Market clean. I'm writing this with a bit of passion and normally I might not publish it right away, but since I made such a strong disclaimer I think I will just throw it out there. I might hang onto my hurt for awhile or I might see the error of my ways, but I have learned (imperfectly) to take responsibility for my own behavior and my thoughts. I expect that of everyone else too, though it is a lot to expect. So again, these are my thoughts, one little old lady in a town of what, 120,000? One voice.

I know people live in that park when I am not renting my little square. I know they must be worse off than me because I have a roof over my head when I go home. I have a car to move into if it gets that bad. I don't like it when those other park users make my life harder by leaving their waste and garbage in my space, but if I am the leader of the Market I ask the city to rent some porta-potties for the people who need them. Our Market spends a ton of money renting multiple ones for Saturdays, and I pay for that. I want my customers, my friends, and my fellow humans to be safe from disease and if possible, discomfort as well. It doesn't take that much thought to provide basic services. Wash your hands. If you run a newspaper, how about not putting in a headline about human waste being found at the Market? That hurt, but if Eugene is anything it is pretty sensible and that one didn't cause as much harm as we feared. People knew that the problem wasn't confined to that location, but was a worldwide problem. Everybody poops.

If I can't eat dairy (which is increasingly true, personally) I don't demand that every booth serve a dairy-free  alternative for me, but I do take my money to support those who do. If they're people I can ask, I get a dish without cheese. If it's wheat, I get a gluten-free crepe or muffin or whatever I need. I don't think that is my right, necessarily, but in a community it is great when we see each others' needs and try to fill them. I find many, many instances of my special needs being important considerations for other people, and vice-versa. I don't use PVC-based ink in my products, because the people who make the PVC die from it. I'm not going to contribute to that if I can help it. Everybody ought to be able to find a job that doesn't kill them, everybody ought to feel like they belong to a society that sees them and hears them.

Of course I know a lot of people after all this time, and I wouldn't keep coming back if my needs didn't get met. I've learned to ask instead of demand, but when it comes to something like my health or safety, I keep asking until I feel safe. Did you know we are a smoke-free market? It's our workplace. Did you know dogs sometimes pee on our booth corners and our weight bags? That's one reason we don't allow pets. Another is that some little people and not-so-little people are afraid of dogs. It's easy enough to ask that people don't bring animals to the Market. Those food booths are restaurants, and they like it clean. In all forty years I have never been sickened by anything at Market, with the exception of the behavior of people who don't seem to know how to live in community. You may love your dog, but love them at home, if you don't mind.

I don't have a single problem with the Weekly coverage of the issue except that it shouldn't have been there. It's not "surprising" that empathetic ears were found at a meeting and a decision was still made that didn't let someone win and someone else lose. Listening is the first skill we learn to practice in group work. The organizations I love the most work within a consensus-seeking practice. That means everyone gets to listen to the concerns of everyone else, and then a solution to whatever problem or situation can be found that will be the most fair to the most people. Nobody gets dismissed, nobody is accused of following a fad or getting on a bandwagon. Pet rocks were a fad. Feeling the Bern is a bandwagon. Chemical Sensitivity is a medical condition that probably should be classified as a disability. Nobody in a consensus-seeking model is going to succeed by dismissing the health and safety concerns of someone else. I think the people of Eugene must know that, because nobody wrote a letter in response to the really surprising statement of last week's column.

I would have loved to have written a response to the Biz Beat article of last week or the one today, but I can't and won't, because I am committed to the consensus-seeking process that is the Saturday Market policy. The Standards Committee is going to take another look at the Scents policy to see if anything was overlooked, is open to misinterpretation, or if undue hardship will be placed on any individual by another. In the commons we have equal rights, in the Market we are equals. Everybody is honored, everybody gets to have their say, open their booth for business, and sell the creations that please them if they can  find people willing to buy. It's really that simple. Process is our policy and we have a lot of meetings, and some of them are long and not that fun. Still, a commitment to process, transparency and fairness has brought us a long way. Remember when the city hated us? It wasn't that long ago. We earned respect because we try to do the right thing. We take our time, we really care about it, and we work hard.

If you think you can stereotype the Saturday Market member, I am here to tell you that you can't. The incubator and start-up opportunity that we participate in is open to everyone, from the ex-Marine with PTSD from Vietnam to the ex-corporate CEO who now just wants to make wood carvings in his garage. If you make it by hand, you are welcome to try to fit yourself into our basket.

The thing is, the basket is big and thousands fit. We all have to get along. Nobody is allowed to kick a hole in it and let the love leak out. At least they are not without attending a goodly number of meetings and learning how to live in it with the rest of us. With all the many thousands of people who have sold, attended, and loved or hated the Market all these years, nobody has managed to kick a hole in the basket yet.

So process will continue and people will continue to be heard and to participate in the group to seek consensus and get their needs met. The trust is there. I don't know the outcome, and I don't bother to try to push it or pull it to fit what I want. I say my piece, and I listen to everyone who cares to comment. As Secretary I don't even have a vote, and I like it that way. As the little old lady, I have this virtual soapbox, ironic as that is at the moment. It doesn't stink.

A Thousand Days

Our little Saturday Market neighborhood is friendly, as a rule. We're one of those fairly well-established ones with people who have come for a long time and like to come every week, stay until 5:00, try to follow the rules. We share some of those old-hippie traits like being wary of authority, thinking the hippies were right, not exactly being sports fans...but we do try to be supportive of the home team when everyone around us is dressed in yellow and green and lots of others are in whatever colors the visiting team favors. We certainly appreciate that out-of-towners like to come and experience our Market and are sometimes hauled down there by regulars or home-town hosts who know where the fun is. My booth is a little out of the mainstream in what I like to feel is an eddy, and I suppose I might make more money in another space, but I'm at home in mine. It feels like a fine fabric that unspools from the bolt every week and glimmers in the seasonal sun or dampness in a little different color each time I look.

Raven and I like to keep our sides open to each other so we can watch each other's booths while we run to Farmer's Market or the food court, and we have our sequence of that. He gets his pastry first, then his peaches, then his coffee, and somewhere in there he leads the little parade, and I usually stay in the booth and get all of my stock and signs hung until that is finished and I go off for my second breakfast. All day long we chat and cover each other while the various purchases and discussions are held around the blocks. This week we were enjoying the rituals of thousands of Market days and thought to actually calculate an estimate of how many thousands. It turns out that at thirty years and approximately 33 Markets per year, Raven has probably reached the one-thousand-markets mark!

As this is my fortieth year, I have probably surpassed the mark, but I did spend at least ten years working on my house-building project on weekends instead of selling on Saturdays, so maybe we are at about the same place in time. It's hard to say, though I probably still have all of the receipts up in the attic. I'll be throwing those into the recycling soon I suppose. I've reached the time when I have to seriously abandon some of the good junk I've collected over the years. It's hard to know where to start. I have to admit to myself that maybe I won't make cast paper or sheets of handmade paper anymore, so could let go of the screens and tubs and handy accessories for that craft. Or maybe I won't paint silk, and could sell off the scarves and dyes, or maybe it's my comic book collection I have to get rid of. Something has to go. It seems hard now but like the roof project I'm avoiding, it won't get any easier. Raven and I also commiserate about the decline of our bodies, our spines and our nerves and our various abilities. It has been a relatively gentle decline until recently, but the direction is clear. It's hard to imagine believing that we couldn't trust anyone over 30...that was half a lifetime ago.

He got the shingles, and so did my Mom, and clearly this is something to avoid even harder than I'm avoiding that roof project I was supposed to do this summer. I went for my first Medicare appointment and although I am not old like they expected me to be, I'm going to be fitting into their system with increasing need and denial won't help. After a lifetime feeling like the ant I'm afraid I was more like the grasshopper in effect. My safety net has some really large holes in it.

On Sunday, however, I got to meet with a group of people who represent one of the best aspects of Saturday Market: the Kareng Fund Board. This fund, started by Market members about twelve years ago and funded almost completely by Market members all this time, has in the very recent past stepped up to a more solid legacy by completing the process of becoming a 501c3 non-profit. It was scary at first but we paid for a professional training and once trained, directed ourselves to think bigger. We have a couple of people in our midst who know how to do that. Alex thinks we will give a million dollars in grants. (We have a way to go, but we've given over $25,000 to date!) We expanded our granting to all independent artisans in Oregon who meet our criteria. We started asking for funding.

Our first try was the Rex Foundation, the arm of the Grateful Dead organization set up to help nonprofits thrive. We put together a grant application and asked for, and received, $5000! This will be used to increase the amount we can give from a $750 maximum to an amount more useful to those in crisis. We will also engage in more outreach so more people know about our resource. While we only fund low-income artisans (up to 200% of the poverty level) we wanted to expand our granting outside the Market community. It's not that easy to reach the people who need us.

Saturday Market has always been very kind about keeping the KF under their wing, collecting donations from the payment envelopes and hosting the basket drawings and Auction with Percussive Interludes at the Holiday Market. Many members round up their weekly percentage payments with a few cents or a couple of dollars to the Kareng Fund. It's a very simple way to support our fund, easier than finding the right change to pay the exact ten percent we owe at the end of the sales day. I welcome it, and contribute twice a week with my Tuesday earnings as well. All of those small amounts add up. The fund kind of magically hovers at about the same amount as we have given, although the recent windfall swelled the fund total to over $30,000.

It's time to give more grants! If you know anyone who is struggling with a career-threatening crisis, someone who makes money from their art by participating in some type of arts organization, send them to the Kareng Fund. Our application is online and easy to fill out. The Saturday Market office also accepts applications via our brochure, which should be widely available, but the online process is the easiest and quickest. We don't have a fancy website. We aren't a fancy group. Our potluck brunch featured homegrown tomatoes and homemade muffins. It was very warming to look around the table at this group and recognize the purity of this fund created out of simple goodness and caring for others. There is no politics, no contention, no misunderstanding connected with our mission. We occasionally discuss the nature of "career-threatening" and want to avoid funding chronic need rather than crisis, but we adopted the tagline of "a safety net for artisans." That's what we are, a small part of something sorely needed in our artisan community.

The world seems increasingly un-caring and people undergoing suffering are often on their own, particularly when they have lived the independent and often isolated lives our artist culture fosters. Isolated people often do not know where to turn when they are suddenly the ones with health issues or what I call the "life tax." When your shop is burglarized or your bike stolen, your garage burns down or your partner falls ill, you can feel quite frightened about how you will make things work. Often the self-employed fall through the cracks of government programs, or those not old enough or disabled enough to access senior or other services find no help from the local agencies. They may not have the ability or time to craft the complicated forms to apply for government programs, or trust that asking won't cause some other type of harm to come to them. We don't give a lot, but it might be just enough. We've funded things like water heaters and bus passes, purchases of inventory after a greenhouse freeze or the loss of a shop. We funded many health crises before the advent of Obamacare, and continue to do so. If you need us we want to be there for you.

We will be continuing to ask for your donations and continuing to reach out to those who need us. Don't be afraid to ask. Sure, there may be someone who needs the money more than you, but there is enough for them as well as for you. Don't be too humble to get the help you need, even if it is just the small amount we can give. We want to help. It feels good all around. A huge thank you is due to those who started and continued the work of the fund for so many years, and to all those who gave their nickels and dimes. It's simple and good. It's one step up from passing the hat and neighbor helping neighbor. Help us spread the goodness by asking, giving, and talking about us, especially to those in need. If you know someone with money they want to share, direct them our way or invite them to the auction at the HM. Together we have an impact and we can see the immediate increase in safety, health, and the ability to thrive in those we care about.

And here's to another thousand days selling at Eugene Saturday Market! I may never be rich in dollars, but I am most certainly rich in so many other ways. See you on the Park Blocks.