When I was a Radical

I got to thinking that I never told my son about where my politics and life choices came from. I was born in 1950, in the time when the Great War was over, the men came back, evil was defeated, and everyone set about having conventional, safe lives. Lots of kids were born, and in Delaware where I was, parents wanted good schools, back yards with swing sets, and they worked for DuPont. We lived in a couple of small duplexes in different parts of downtown, and when I was six we moved to the suburbs, according to plan. Where I lived was almost the country, with a big backyard, and we wandered all over the place, always safe, free to explore the world. I was the second of four girls, and the tomboy, spending most of my time in a big willow tree with a book, or in the woods. I thought I had a happy childhood, did well in school, took piano lessons, cut the grass. We went sailing on the weekends. When I was twelve a brother was born, which gave me the chance to learn how to nurture a little, and anyway we all did a lot of the domestic work together, singing while we did the dishes. We had fruit trees and gardens, snow in the winter, all idyllic..

Except it wasn't, as my parents drank and my dad developed a depression problem. He was unpredictable and we were always afraid of him. I learned to dissociate when things got tense. I escaped in various ways, mostly reading, sailing by myself, taking my frustrations out on my younger siblings by teasing and other devious behaviors. But still, an obedient and good little girl; Brownies, Girl Scouts, folk dancing, all A's, a little chubby, plenty of friends. Singing, piano, art. I had a bad first grade art teacher who damaged me a lot but I still made a lot of things and loved it. We went to Catholic School a little, but that went bad. Dad was an athiest of sorts, and Mom raised us Catholic to please her mom, a Nebraska farmer. Catholics get a lot of damage, but all that is another post. My Dad was a chemical engineer, and did lots of things in his basement workshop, including making nylon, distilling brandy, and turning metal. I'm actually a lot like him, enjoying trying to make all kinds of things just to see how it is done, and seeing if I can do it.

When I was thirteen the President, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated, followed by Martin Luther King Jr. and then in 1968, Bobby Kennedy. It's hard to describe how disillusioned and shocked we all were. I must have been politically aware because I knew about the Civil Rights movement, but I wouldn't say I cared much about any of it. My family dynamics were compelling and I was thinking about myself as most adolescents do. Kennedy was our president though, the first Catholic, young and handsome. They called it Camelot. It was mythical. The death was dramatic and the rituals powerful. There's no way to forget it.

In junior high and high school I was one of the smart kids, popular but awkward. I had buck teeth because my parents prioritized other things. I had a great English teacher who taught me I was a writer. I liked student government, and our high school was new so I got to help write constitutions for the student council and the cheerleaders.  My best friend was a cheerleader so I was too, but I quit over an argument about whether or not we should have both blue and white shirts under our letter sweaters. I honestly felt that I couldn't afford both shirts, which wasn't true, but I had learned to think of my family as poor in a rich community. That came from my Dad, who was the son of an alcoholic and had his own traumatic childhood. I guess we were all very status conscious, and there were a lot of wealthy people in my school. We read Time Magazine, and my parents had some wealthy friends who were role models, probably introducing us to the New Yorker. Delaware is a wealthy state, and the whole east coast is still about status and wealth, with the conformism that comes with that. I had a boyfriend a year older, and at some point I convinced him to have sex. It was something I wanted from the books I'd been reading. Sex was power and I used it that way. 

College was expected, but when it came time to apply the trauma was showing. Dad suggested I go to Purdue where he had gone, as I could get a scholarship. I got $100. It seemed very expensive, but my parents were able to pay for both me and my older sister, with our summer jobs and the babysitting and things we had always done for money. We got 35 cents an hour to babysit. I was used to doing a lot of work and expected to, and I worked hard at Purdue, but was in over my head. I was studying to be a medical technologist, maybe because I wanted to be a doctor but knew that was out of my reach. Girls really were programmed to get married as a primary goal, and have a job while you waited to meet Prince Charming. We all thought that was our path. We all dressed in sweater and skirt sets and little flats that had to be the right kind. My clothes were mostly homemade to stretch our budget, as I continued to feel poor. Indiana was a hick place with kids that I couldn't relate to, and I was extremely lonely and unhappy.

I thought transferring to a school closer to home would help, and landed at American U in Washington DC. It was kind of a party school but I was in with medical and dental students and lived in a house with a group of assorted people who shared a kitchen in the basement. I shared a room with a girl who was the daughter of lawyers, from Connecticut. One day at school I went to a film, The War Game. It was about nuclear war and how it developed, and I remember the repeated refrain that it was "perfectly safe." I was completely shocked to see how the public was deceived, and was immediately radicalized. We had grown up with drills where we huddled under our desks, as if that would have saved us. I felt that everything about my world had changed. I completely lost my faith in authority, my own safety, and my future.The innocence that was eroded by the Kennedy assassination was now gone completely. When that happens, you don't get it back. I'll never trust authority.

This was in 1969. I had loved the Beach Boys and the Beatles and knew a little about the social changes of the sixties but nothing about pot or hippies or the Dead or any of that. I stopped wearing a bra (women had burned their bras in front of the Miss America pageant on the boardwalk at Atlantic City) and started wearing the same jeans and wool sweater every day. No more fashion for me. My roommate must have introduced me to Democratic politics, and I was reading things. The anti-war movement was already happening at my school, and I got involved in it very quickly. I went to all the demonstrations. I knew now that nothing the government said was true, that Kennedy had been shot by conspiracy, and our country was morally bankrupt. They told us we would find out what happened to Kennedy in 50 years, but that has now come and gone and we didn't find out, did we. I suppose I thought that was the one thing that would be true.

The Vietnam War was extremely painful for people my age. The draft was a lottery and took thousands and thousands of young kids, truly cannon fodder, and it was the first war that was shown on the nightly news: atrocities and suffering with your dinner. Everything was shocking and unjust and the popular movement to end it was powerful and hopeful. Standing in the streets with 500,000 other ordinary people was astounding. I learned about Dylan and Joan Baez, folk music, and inevitably, started smoking pot. Jefferson Airplane, the Who, the Stones, the Dead, Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young all fed our passions and described our dreams, and it united us. There had never been such a large group of people of the same age, a population bump that gave us a lot of social power. We made the most of it.

All of the liberation movements were starting as an extension of the Civil Rights movement of the sixties. My roommate's father and brother were involved in the defense of the Chicago Eight. These men were our heroes when they were accused of conspiracy to riot after a demonstration at the Democratic Convention in 1968. I got to meet them, and some of the Black Panthers, through my roommate. We got to serve drinks to them at a party in Connecticut. I was still naive and immature, but I could see that there were ways to fight the government and the power of the people was real. The deck was stacked against the people but when there was unity, it couldn't be overcome. (This all went away for decades through Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes, and although Jimmy Carter was authentic he didn't have power, and the hope didn't come back until Obama. That was why he was such a phenomenon, because he rekindled that for my generation. Of course I was too cynical to really believe in him fully.)

The student movement increased in seriousness and in 1969 and 1970 it was peaking. My little sister and I were attacked by mounted police that came at us from behind the Washington Monument. We ran for our lives. I was teargassed on campus, in what felt like a battle. Earth Day happened for the first time in April, and the US illegally invaded Cambodia. In the space of two weeks in May, 1970, four students were killed by the National Guard at Kent State, Ohio,(May 3), more were shot at Jackson State (May 14) , University students all over the country went on strike (May 6), I turned 20 (May 5), and my father committed suicide (May 16).

The world changed color for me. It was as if everything was the same but my eyes, and no one could tell. It seems impossible now that the juxtaposition was that close, that I felt the possibility of my own death by my government, and then the floor dropped out of my life. Things started to be bizarre and stayed that way for the next decade as I struggled to fit myself into the world somehow. I find it fascinating that here in Eugene, Saturday Market started at that very same time (May 9).

About fifteen years of brave and foolish deeds crammed into the next five years that someday I will relate, and in 1975 I got to Eugene. Here I found my counterculture and my community. Saturday Market, the Radar Angels, and Country Fair became the life I wanted and could build upon. Mike and I met in 1981, my son John was born in 1990, and then I began my inner journey to heal my trauma and learn to be a mother.
That is another long story that can be told, but these were the things that got me here, made me who I am, and opened me to the family and home that I built. Any questions?

Public Relations Spins Me

The fog isn't lifting for the promised sunny day. That means no laundry for me, not really a big deal but inconvenient. I realized it has been about ten years since I got rid of my clothes dryer, so that gives some perspective on whether or not I can live without it. I haven't resorted to the laundromat yet although when my foot was broken I did let a few people do my laundry for me. (Keep that in mind as a way to help people in medical crises...easy to do and while somewhat intimate, it's not as hard as lots of other ways to help.) But I can't make the sun come out, only wait for it. There's no use at getting mad at the weather-spokespeople either. Patience and steadiness is all I can apply, and optimism may or may not be rewarded.

I feel burned out on city government-watching. It's educational for my work with my own organizations: how scripted discussions sometimes are, because they are in the public eye and are being recorded, how wild the wide array of public opinions can be, how mistakes are constantly made because it is so hard to see the big picture when looking at the small details. I really don't like the opinions of developers and republicans, and they really don't like mine. I try for transparency in my own words and actions but I can't maintain the perfect balance of wisdom over fear and get my needs met and goals furthered, particularly when I am not clear on those goals and fears and in reaction mode. I keep reminding myself that this is not a crisis.

I have a long history here, but not much real inside engagement in most cases. Observing and standing back are ways to keep a distance and avoid responsibility. This has been super apparent to me with my lack of willingness to weigh in on the OCF cultural appropriation debate, the current discussions in the city over Park Blocks/ Kesey issues, and others. I'd like to sit back and see what develops, but how this plays out over time is that my voice is not heard and I haven't done my part in making sure my needs are met. Sometimes you have to wade in and be a part of the messiness, or so I keep advising myself.

I applaud those who have the courage and skills to articulate the way their positions are actually bigger than just their own needs-assessments, the way the decisions should be guided to meet the real needs of most of the people. That of course is the stated aim of most politicians, but close observations expose the self-interest and manipulations of those who don't really see the common people and don't really have a clue about what would really benefit them. They need their feet held to the fire, as I do, reminders of why we do what we are supposed to be doing and why it is important to make the effort.

Developers of our city properties are fairly easily understood: they want to profit, and use as little of their own resources to do that, to maximize the profit and minimize the loss, clear money management tactics that don't include much about the quality of life and needs of others. They usually don't want to build places for old ladies and young seekers to live during life transitions, but of course those are huge needs that I see the opportunity to address. We need places to sit and places to feel safe and the young seekers need support while they figure out how to make their way. They don't care that putting a building in that tiny little alley on Broadway will take away my safest access to my workplace downtown. It's so far off their radar I hesitate to bring it up. I'll have to accommodate, and I have a long history of being adaptable and resilient, so I'm okay, but not happy about that building project. It seems a stupid use of resources and a money grab in the shortsighted quest for a piece of a track meet that might not even make it downtown. But whatever. I don't expect that anyone but me really cares about whether or not I can safely navigate with a bike cart. However, if I thought that all bike carts would be unusable downtown, I'd speak loudly...but I won't know if that is a possibility until the PR spinning stops and the construction site fences go up. Then it will be too late.

We need to support what is working and not destroy it in the rush to do something new and shiny. Reining back the visionaries and novelty-seekers is necessary to a degree, but to use the same metaphor, we don't want to hamstring those fast-movers. The tech community downtown is seen as the fast horse that is going to win some race and people who think of themselves as winners want to back the winning team in any race. So it seems to makes sense to get those people what they need if possible, and they want fast internet and nice apartments downtown, so a lot of energy is being directed their way. If a few low-level bikers are inconvenienced, well, that's too bad, but there may be a bandaid for that. Let's see the wound first, they might say. In other words, let's not operate from your fears, but if you could provide some compelling force, like a million dollars, that might help.

Early 1970's, Saturday Market

With the farmers, there are also young enthusiastic entrepreneurs and more mature money people who see that building a storefront so they can sell every day would be cool, especially if someone else would pay for it since it is out of reach of even the collective efforts of the farmers. They have to invest in their own properties and crops, and marketing takes a lower priority. Yet they have to sell, and the roadside stand or weekly appearance at a little market doesn't satisfy their bigger needs. They've turned to the city and county and dangled the proverbial (and real) carrot of money for everyone, interesting the development community and committing them to a PR effort to sell their concept. It's not a concept that history would support, but that was then and this is now. As long as they don't try to take down Saturday Market in the process, I can't stand in the way.

I'm really burned out on PR. Maybe it's just the post-Xmas and Super Bowl residual effect, but every time I see that 100-year Farmer's Market spin I get angry. For the record, going indoors year round killed the farmers market in 1959. Killed it. Read the book Market Days

if you doubt me. In 1970, in making our Saturday Market, we included farmers and set it back on its feet. Saturday Market visionaries, while investing in our own way to market our crafts and the products of our lifetime investment in art, realized that the food producers were the exact same type of self-employed entrepreneurs that we were, and we helped them gain the strength of membership to re-establish the Farmers Market. After ten years they wanted to branch off, and we gave them our blessing and continued to support them as they struggled, sharing an office and helping train their managers, as well as continuing to do the lion's share of providing health and safety amenities like bathrooms and garbage disposal, as well as promotions and governmental interface. The city pushed them from place to place, and it was soon established that the only way they could thrive is in close conjunction with our own members as we gathered together for mutual benefit. Saturday Market largely gets the credit for Farmer's Market success during the years of 1970-2005 or so, from my perspective. But their PR did not mention that, and in fact, buried us a little in the dust of their re-invention. We brushed it off, but it isn't the first time they disregarded our needs in their rush to get their own needs met. I'll stop with that, but there are lots of other subjects in that file. Complaining about it has no purpose at this point. I'm always hopeful and have sold at the Tuesday Market next to the farmers quite successfully and hope they know that I am a supportive partner as long as I am a respected one.

Saturday Market is still essentially the same membership nonprofit as we began to be in 1970, in structure. We buy in, we operate together, meeting in public, selling in public, and working together to keep ourselves strong. Indeed, we have thrived, and continued to bring in young entrepreneurs and every kind of artist and producer as we worked. A couple of us were here in the beginning (I arrived in 1975, and retained membership since then) but mostly people have come and gone and put in their efforts as long as they wanted to. We've had good years and bad years but are stable and self-sufficient, and indeed that is our micro/macro style. We put our money together and meet our own needs. After decades of being dismissed and even reviled, we are still creating a completely magical and beloved event weekly, and in the last decade or two this has been recognized. But it seems that to be counted as part of solutions, we have to buy some PR like what the farmers have done. We have to let people know that our makeup is about 20% old, 30% new, and 50% every combination possible in the middle. Every Saturday is a new and different variation. That's our reality, and we won't have to lie to show that as a strength. We have to remind people how easy it is to find your bootstraps in our system, and how many have used us as a springboard and a way to be a productive citizen. We're so woven into the business fabric of Eugene that apparently we are now invisible. So we go to the meetings and listen for encouragement.

I'm not excited to do a pitch to some unknown audience. I see that the farmers organization spun a lie about their origin that has become the public truth, and basing things on a lie cannot be a good course of action. Yet all PR does exactly that...more mildly put, it spins a glamour that shows what the organization wants to show, and the truth isn't relevant. So now everyone thinks the farmers are the venerable 100-year old producers and Saturday Market is irrelevant. I'm angry about that, but of course many of the farmers are people I love, so what is done in their name is not something I can really fight, at least not publicly. My willingness to do some PR of our own is born out of necessity, but it isn't natural to me. We have the opportunity to highlight our good and true strengths and spin anything that isn't working as well...but it's a big job and not only do I not want to do it, I don't trust the process. If faced with the advice to put out a similar lie, I will balk. So I don't expect that I will be that helpful to the process, and am thinking to step back from leadership, at least in that area.

But I am one of the leaders, and stepping back will hurt us. I am one of the articulators, someone who has seen decades of our efforts, and while I wouldn't say I am essential, there are certainly people counting on me. As I mentally stepped back, I thought of what I could do that would help the big-picture, root-cause sorts of issues and in the process protect my interests. I recognized that I can support the progressive parts of our governments, and be sure to elect representatives who will speak for me, and if I can, supply them with the kind of helpful information that will help meet my needs.

So Bernie or Hillary, someone from the left side for sure. I don't want either of them to trash the other in the process of competing. That's easy and I don't feel much need to get involved. Down a level, find other progressive candidates for more local offices and support them. I already told the Lucy Vinis campaign that I support her for Mayor. I love having a woman for Mayor and I think Kitty Piercy has done a wonderful, amazing job at keeping positive while so many tons of criticism have been thrown at her. I think the progressives on the City Council are doing pretty well (in my limited observation) at holding the line against the clearly self-interested among them. I trust the hearts of most of the people sitting up there trying to make good decisions for the common good, and I think they are wading through the PR fairly well in most cases. But we'll need more progressives, most importantly for Ward One, right there in the center of it all. My ward.
I'm not running, but someone needs to!

I don't think I will like the decisions they make about Kesey Plaza and the Park Blocks, but I see the progressives weighing the public passion against the private profit motives and I see them protecting what they can of the will of the people. I sympathize with their positions, juggling so many needs and interest groups. I'm tired of watching though. If this were the Super Bowl, I'd be at the Kareng Fund Art Bingo event instead, just as I was yesterday.

The fog is lifting, so I started the washer. Things may get partly dry this late in the day but they'll be clean. I'm still unsure if I'm going to the City Council meeting tonight, but I found a little bit of energy to do it. I don't have to stay for the whole thing, but listening to them and trying to add some positive energy to their efforts will benefit me and the city public, so I guess I can give up one additional evening. I have a wild little plan to execute, as some comic relief...and as a gift to our Mayor. I think it could be a sweet gesture in the midst of a bunch of angry contention. I'm scared to do it, but that's a good sign that it's important to do. And yes indeed, it involves Jell-O Art. No one can bring that but me.

Research Continues

After I got back from my research at the Oregon Historical Society, I still had questions but no real leads left. I checked out newspapers.com and found some fantastic details that both encouraged me and made me stop and think. On the Vaughan front, I found the news articles about F.G. buying a dairy in July of 1900. He bought an existing dairy called Barett's which apparently gave him "one of the finest herds of Jersey cows in this county." There may be county records of the sale to find. There were several ads, beginning in 1906, which show F.G. selling the cows, one "splendid Jersey" at a time. He sold them "fresh" which I think means that they had given birth and were full of milk, and if he was no longer selling much milk himself that would make sense. I'm guessing that he was a tired old farmer and when the government started demanding more inspections and procedures for insuring clean milk, he gave it up. These old pioneers were determined and hard-working people, and he was in almost 70 when he bought the dairy. Land disposal would have been on his mind, providing for his remaining years and his children.

In one paper I found an article about TB in milk and the resulting killing of exposed dairy cows in the Portland area, so I suspect that at that time there was a push for legislation and government control of  that disease vector, and that may have contributed to him ending his dairy at about that time. The only previous evidence of it was the recollection by Grace Bowers that she grew up on the dairy, and she would have been about twelve in 1900 so that all fits nicely together. I have records of property Vaughan owned throughout his lifetime and probably can track fairly accurately the lots he bought and sold and used as pasture for the cows. He then, to my theory, let the dairy operation go when the city limits changed, his properties were no longer practical for livestock, and he and his family turned to hauling buildings to the Van Buren and 12th Street lots and remodeling them to sell, or selling the lots to others to build on. At any rate, by 1916 when my board was signed, the dairy was probably all the way  gone.

As far as the Huddleston and Davis families go, I found out details about several siblings but when I got to the articles about the various lawsuits involving Samantha Huddleston, things got sad. I think she lived too long. Her son died about a year before she did, and it seems that Margaret Bilyeu, Lark's wife, was involved in helping her settle her estate, and was in fact the executor. Lark had crossed the plains with the Vaughans in 1847 and had been the lawyer for both the Vaughan and Huddleston families in many land transactions and lawsuits. I don't have the complete picture yet (and may never) but he was a young man when they all met and a lifelong friend and associate as many of the pioneers were. It seems that to suffer such a hard journey together was a bonding as would be expected. I believe that FG so admired Lark Bilyeu that he named one of his sons after him (Bilyeu Vaughan,the name on my board) and although Lark himself died shortly before Samantha did, Margaret Bilyeu no doubt felt responsible for helping Samantha for many reasons. Perhaps the most compelling was that she needed help.

We must consider the source, but in the lawsuit over Samantha's estate brought by one of Iantha's sons, William Castleman, he said that Samantha had been ill for many years, was so weakened that she was mentally unable to have a coherent conversation, and was incapable of making her will. She had apparently had a falling-out with her brother Melancthon, whom she had previously put in charge of her properties. While this may or may not have been true, the suit did not change the will, which left the bulk of her estate to the Children's Home in Corvallis. The article put that value at $55,000 but others said $20,000. There may be more I haven't found, but it's a sad story no matter what, so I don't know quite how to handle it. Descendants may not know the particulars, as it's not the kind of family story often told, and it isn't a very honorable last word on someone who lived in Eugene for almost 80 of its earliest years.

But it could explain a few things, such as the dearth of photographs. Samantha could have suffered from dementia or some other debilitating illness, and it could indeed have lasted for many years. The other big lawsuit, one brought twice by her son's Henry's wife in 1917 and 1918, accused her and her brother MM of undue influence over Henry causing him to divorce his wife after seven years of marriage. They apparently accused her of being after the family money, and she sued for $20,000. She was given some type of settlement but the case did not go forward as she had no proof, and it was likely that the social position of the Davis family influenced the judge that the suit did not have merit. Henry, 63 at the time of the divorce, was 32 years older than his wife, Evelyn, and it seems both sides accused the other of wicked and malicious treatment. We can't know from a newspaper article who was right, but life tells us that both sides probably had some legitimate complaints. There are a couple of small articles about property on 8th St., which I will write more about when I figure out the nuances. There was apparently some resistance to paying some city taxes for improvements on land that was once county and became city land. That could have been more neglect to keep up with business that proof of some ill feelings...again, we can't know.

It's still a mystery to me why our local history says little about these families, except for the fact that most history is carried forward by proud descendants and the artifacts they saved. The recent exhibit at the Lane County Historical Museum is about early doctors in the area and fails to mention Mother Davis, the ministering angel, most likely because there is little in the historical record about her. My studies are important but will likely remain incomplete, though I hope to write a few articles with what I do know. It's an interesting question to me why more wasn't written about them, but it might just be unlucky coincidence caused by the early deaths of the men and the personalities of the women, which of course is complete speculation on my part fueled by little facts found here and there.

I will go and review the Huddleston collection at UO again soon. It's really in the little tiny details that the story will be found. My current theory is that Margaret Bilyeu put together the collection in Samantha's last days, and what was donated was meant to tell a story without making actual statements. The letters and bills and excerpts from Huddleston's diary, the artifacts such as the US Grant campaign ribbon, and such objects point to political and personal opinions about the important subjects of the era. I can theorize a lot about what they all did and why, and at least for myself paint a relatively factual portrait of this family and those lives. Whether or not that will be historically useful or interesting enough to publish isn't quite clear yet. I get discouraged but then I read more and find that these ordinary stories are useful and interesting in themselves, and when placed in context still have lessons for us to learn about our town and how it grew.

Portland Research

Lycurgus, Catherine and Melancthon in 1852

Made it to Portland, specifically to the Oregon Historical Society which had some artifacts I wanted to see. If there are more, I didn't find them, but there were two items that contained some great secrets. The medical bag that belonged to Catherine Sluyter Davis was really worn out, languishing in storage, foxed with white on the dark brown leather. The strap that held it closed was in need of repair, the handle had split open to reveal that it was a simple leather-covered wire, and the whole showed decades of use. This indicates to me that it was Mother Davis's ("the ministering angel") original bag that she brought from home and never replaced with a newer one. Inside it was, sadly, empty, but there were eight loops built to hold bottles and it was overall quite small. I didn't think to measure it but I'd guess it was maybe 10" by 8" by 6", not including the handle. It was compact, as you would expect for someone traveling by foot and by horseback. If she had more instruments they could have been carried separately, but it's unlikely she had much more than a spoon and a cup, perhaps. She wasn't actually trained as a doctor, because as a woman in the 1830's that wouldn't have been likely, but I've read that she was trained by a brother-in-law in nursing. Medical science in those days relied on herbal remedies and she would no doubt have collected and processed many types of plant material from her farm and the woods and fields, and bought the items that were available at the time for pain and infection. I'll have to research that. I think of her as someone who prepared meticulously for the trip west and was prepared to live independently of society, a pragmatist despite her origins of wealth in New York. I read somewhere that one of her sisters married Alexander Hamilton but I haven't checked out that rumor yet. In the photos she looks very determined, always, as if she had to be strong and unassailable as the family matriarch.

Her coverlet was not a quilt, as I suspected, but a woven coverlet in the fashion of the time, and she had to have brought it with her from the east. She could have woven it, but in any case she had embroidered her initials in one corner, just a C and an S, indicating that she acquired it before her marriage in 1831. If she embroidered a date, it wasn't still there, but there was a smaller part of maybe a zero hidden under the facing that had been sewed on to enable hanging the cover. The edges and even parts of the body of it were very worn. No doubt it got heavy use in the overland trip, and was on her bed for most of her life. She died in 1898, and I'd expect that she had made or bought finer coverings in that time, so at some point it was put into storage or given to a relative who hung it on the wall. I don't know when the Historical Society received it or from whom. One of the staff people promised to look and see if there were any more details in the records.

In the Museum itself was an excellent Oregon History exhibit which was full of fascinating detail. In fact I saw an identical coverlet inside their wagon replica scene. It makes sense that these would have lasted much longer than quilts, as they would have been washed less often and prized more. The internet indicated that sometimes weavers traveled through making these for hire, but a professionally-made one would probably have had a woven label in the corner. I thought that the blue yarn seemed positively to be wool, which was dyed with indigo at the time, quite deeply, and wasn't faded. The natural yarn might well have included flax for a different type of yarn that might have added strength or some other aspect to the mix. I know they grew flax both back east and here in Oregon.

The files on Lycurgus and Iantha were very disappointing, almost empty, but there was a long typewritten letter from Merritt Davis that shed a little light on a few things. Apparently Catherine never charged for her medical services. There was a little more of her history as a child, when she moved from NY to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. These areas were the frontier in those days and as Quakers it is likely they moved to get away from slavery and it's politics, and to live undisturbed, and were farmers by necessity although they were well educated. Benjamin served as one of the first judges of the Lane County Court system. Racism was a very real force in the westward expansion and Oregon has a rich history of white privilege and it helps to untangle what each group might have been thinking. I know from the Huddleston effects that someone voted for Grant, so we expect that they were not racists themselves (within the narrow confines of white thinking at the time) and we know from the family stories that the children had native playmates in their early days in Eugene and presumably believed in some level of equality. So I speculate that they attempted to honor an inclusive view of humanity although there were no doubt many ways they lived that would not gain approval today.

Iantha and her husband Phillip F. Castleman left a few letters behind in the UO Special Collections and one, from P.F. to Samantha shows that most of the family did not approve of him or Iantha's marriage. In Iantha's obituary there is a line I hadn't seen: "Mrs. Castleman for years had been a great sufferer. A devoted wife, mother and friend, she bore with patience and fortitude affliction as it gathered around her, dying as she had lived in quiet resignation." We know some of what she suffered, as she had a brief marriage from 1850 to 1853 to George W. Evans, who died leaving her with two children. There is a letter to her mother describing how she struggled to keep half of the land grant property for her children, though her father-in-law took her husband's half in exchange for supporting her children. Apparently he did a poor job of it, and her father went to court in Lane County to be appointed guardian. He won, but a few years later she married Castleman and appealed to get them back. It seems so impossible that you wouldn't by law own your own children, but even letting women get their name on the deed for their half of the land grants was quite revolutionary in those times. You had to petition the court to keep your kids if your husband died, not to mention all of your property. I'll write more about that sometime.

At any rate, you rarely read anything that revealing in an obit, and the photos of her do seem to echo this. I still did not find any photos of Samantha, so she remains a mystery with only the one supposed photo of her in 1858. I'm just sure there have to be some, just not labeled, although it could have been the case that she refused. As Castleman was the first photographer, as well as the first sawmill owner, and later enlisted to go fight Indians, I imagine that she was part of the family who did not like him, and it could have soured her on photographs. She seems like she had firm convictions. His letter petitioned for her friendship, though we have no indication that she extended it.

There are still so many mysteries keeping me interested. I am determined to find more, and there are a few more newspapers to locate and I can take another look at the Huddleston collection now that I know more. I believe I read somewhere that they passed through the Whitman mission a few days before the "massacre" when the missionaries were killed. There's are two or three stories about encounters with natives that make me think that while the Davis family was strongly nonviolent, but were definitely in danger of dying several times. At one point Benjamin convinced some potential attackers that a small stove in the wagon was a cannon, and saved the whole wagon train. Other members of their group did kill people on their way here, but there are no reports of anyone in the family being violent except Castleman, and he was grievously wounded in his service. I'll need to pin down a few more details before I write much about him. Because he had so many accomplishments it may be that he didn't stick with anything long, and that is why his photos are lost. On the other hand, they may be in the hands of his descendants and not lost at all. Wish I knew.

So, I got a few tantalizing details of these lives and a photo of Lemuel, the one who lived in Newport. He has a very pleasant appearance, and to me he resembles Samantha. Sure wish we had a photo of Benjamin himself. I imagine he was a very important force in their lives, as well as in Lane County in those early days, and really should not be forgotten.

I also learned a little about Melancthon M. Davis, whose house in Eugene is still right there on Jefferson, that he was one of the first to bring Japanese oysters to the Newport area, and he still owned extensive oyster beds when he died. That helps explain a few of the references to fisheries I read earlier. A couple of the brothers went to the coast when it opened up to whites (more sad stories for natives) and profited from fishing and ferries and the shellfish in the first exploitations of that area. Money was certainly part of their story. Tax records show that Samantha paid a lot of them, and indeed when Benjamin died after only a decade here, his wealth had increased from the 75 cents he arrived with to over $12,000 in property, livestock and possessions. Samantha left over $20,000 to the children's home, as she had no living descendants, and only nieces and nephews that she must have felt were well provided for.

So that was it, for Portland archives, as far as I know. I'll keep looking but I may have found what there is to find. The good news is that in preparing for the trip I organized all of the people-oriented research and now have a much better idea of what I do know and where to find it. I have a few small leads to follow still and will continue to sift through what I have to put together stories. The Lane County Historical society is having an exhibit right now about early medicine and I'll bet I can get some ideas on what potions Catherine might have had in that bag. I'm also watching the PBS series Mercy Street which is about nursing during the Civil War, extremely relevant history. I'm loving all the details about what people wore, and how they moved around. Those hoopskirted dresses caused a lot of accidents, it seems. I'm grateful for sweatpants and birkenstocks today!





 

Winter's Passages

Darn, people in my community keep dying. Rest in peace, Peg Morton, Mike Mortemore, Pamela Raynor, and all those we've lost and not forgotten. Sometimes it is a shock, sometimes more like a soft passing and a kind of relief that their suffering is over, but loss is loss and grieving is important. I really will miss Mike especially for his gentle sweetness, and wish I had given him a lot more of my attention. I guess if any lessons can be taken it is to give our attention more generously while we can, and be more aware that our time will come, and so will everyone's.

My dad's 92nd birthday would have been on Wednesday had he not departed 46 years ago, when I was 20. He has now been dead the same number of years he was alive, a strange symmetry that strikes me as important. The twenty that I knew him were packed with my growing up, seeking his love and approval, trying to get him to hold my hand. I have one photo where he is, quite poignant. Naturally I didn't stop seeking his love and approval after he died, that just shifted into other forms, much more complicated ones. Of course he is still with me, as our parents always are, grown into our responses and our very neural pathways. Running some of my self through the filter of having had him as my model for what men were made of has illuminated much over the years, and seeing my son grow up has shown how much I transmitted long after my father was gone. Humans are so very complicated. I'm so grateful to still have my Mom, who is turning 90 next week. Her filters have been more useful, or at least more functional, to run my thoughts through. She is dependable, good and kind, thoughtful and generous, and completely inspiring about passing gracefully through life.

I don't seem to have had a lot of awareness of life passages as I went through them, always in a kind of assumption that what is now will stay that way, which is of course completely false. Most of "what is" changes radically and often. In my twenties, the 70's, a lot of my life was just reaction. Losing my dad as I was entering the big world was jarring, made so much more complex by the political milieu of the anti-war movement that turned into the peace movement and earth day and the liberation movements and made me what I am today. I was filled with a bravado then that rarely surfaces now. That arrogance of our twenties that makes us think we not only can fix the world, but we must, pleases me now when I see it in our young people. It happens more in the teens, but lasts longer perhaps. Quite a few of the people who spoke at the City Council meeting last Monday were full of passion, and some of them were my age. They had settled on an issue, maybe just for the evening, but they picked something they cared deeply about and spoke to it. The resolution against the TPP and the climate change ordinance are small steps toward environmental and political sanity, but they are steps to take and we are all lucky that people are pushing for them, whether we recognize the benefits or not.

Then in our thirties and forties we tend to do our important life stuff, finding partners, having children, choosing a career. Without a lot of reflection I did what I was compelled to do, but I was 39 when I finally had my son, and although I had a well-established business at the time and a nine-year partnership, I had no idea that the motherhood piece was going to push the other two out the window. The relationship didn't have what it took to raise a child, I soon discovered, and within it the things I needed to fix in myself were not going to get fixed. I had to strike out on my own emotionally, with just enough resources to focus on my own healing and stay just a small step ahead of my son's needs. I did a lot of things inadequately during those years, but some things went very well and both my son and I did thoroughly enjoy his childhood. I took on the whole business without a partner and that has suited me well, and I got the house, which I took almost two decades to rebuild and have found my place solidly and with lots of love to surround me.

People I see in those decades now seem like I was, fairly overwhelmed with just the practical and necessary details of living and nurturing a family, but also full of energy to get the details of the outside world to line up better with our visions of what we want for the next few decades, and what we want for our children. Somehow the energy and vision survive the mountain of work for many people and I truly admire those I see in those middle decades, especially those who take the time to volunteer and join with others in creating community. They seem to be getting a lot done, even if some of it is change I don't like so much.

When we hit our fifties, some of us late bloomers flounder a little, and I made some attempts at partnership and intimacy and then gave it up for art. I decided to put my energies into what was working and let go of what was not. By my sixties I had re-established my strong connection with Saturday Market, had opened up new relations with OCF, and was the Queen of Jell-O Art at 62, me with my shattered heel and the long recovery from that. I mention it because it still hurts today, as I was out in the yard yesterday pruning trees and enjoying the winter mildness and I guess I did too much. For an old person.

And today is a Saturday in the offseason, one of the richest of days. I've been burning Sue's beeswax candles lately to keep the suffering and dying in mind, to add some life to the dim light of the season. I'm planning to type some minutes from one of the plethora of meetings I had last week and the week before, and clean house, watch birds at the suet. Stay warm and dry. Eat the delicious food. Play with my Jell-O.

I'll be turning sixty-six this spring (not until May) but that is somehow more significant than 65. Maybe because nothing happens, it's just another year of aging and another year of caution. Someone told me (thanks a lot) that 66 is when our health really starts to go. Of course I don't believe that and am going to keep using my Mom for inspiration as she is still healthy at 90 and mostly because she is still active.

I reposted the photo of me with my cart on the Park Blocks because it looks so strong and able, yet so determinedly original. Yes I am an old woman who wears carhartts and rides along with a towering array of Rubbermaid, looking unusual at best and wacky at my worst. It has gotten increasingly harder to navigate with the cart, not to ride it, just to interface with downtown. Raven told me he no longer walks his cart on Broadway because people would actually try to take his peaches (they would ask first, but he isn't one to say no that often) as he passed. He stopped using his bike for various reasons but I don't think I'll have the option of walking my stuff as many do. It's too far. Maybe us old people can get together and rent some storage downtown for our fixtures and the heavy things like the weight bags and thus prolong our ability to come to Market. I can maybe go back to my car if I can't ride. It would cause other problems and isn't my first choice, but it's a semblance of a plan. I have never been good at planning ahead, at least in the long term. I'm pretty good at organizing and planning a little ahead, those forms of control fantasies, but as a child of the fifties I have never felt that the world would really let me grow unmolested to old age. I'm a bit too aware of politics and the environment to feel safe out of my bubble.

I need the bubble of safety and comfort I pretend to live in. It's warm, dry and pretty with all the Jell-O and things I've created and collected. I get a lot of strength from my home base. I don't really want to go to other places like cities where so much is happening all at once. I don't really like to think about Eugene with a half-million people, all shiny and high-tech and moving so fast a bike cart can't get around. One good thing about some of these young urbanites, though, they don't really depend on cars so much. They want to live downtown so they can walk to work. A lot of their energy is going to benefit me, but it's so interesting to think back to my earlier decades and the way society was acting then in contrast to now.

Catherine Sluyter Davis

I finally get why our parents were so scared by the hippies. Part of it was just worrying about our safely and the long direction of our lives. Once our minds were opened, how would we face the day-to-day? We learned, and they relaxed and learned to value us again, but I know I have felt similar anxiety for my son's generation and how they will get the skills to thrive, as it seems much harder now. Cars cost what houses used to cost, houses cost what only rich people used to have. Certainly everything is faster, which sometimes can be a relief because any errors we make are also soon swept away by the next challenge or amusing meme. When you see interviews with people who made it to 103 or are in the last legs of their lives, they always seem to have a calm and ancient view of it all. Sure, we pass through, but individually we are not nearly as important as we feel. We're one of us, but we're lower case. I find that comforting now that my days of making big impacts are likely over.

This week I do get to go to a big city, Portland, to do some more research on the people I am studying in relation to my house. I will get to see a few items that Catherine S. Davis owned. A visiting card with her picture will surely be something she touched. She's 63 in the photo. There's an amazing quilt that she made and I'm curious to see if she used a sewing machine and when in her life they think she made it. It's a cool Dutch-looking blue and white style. Her family was Dutch, an affluent family from New York, the Sluyters. She was a Quaker, so I want to see evidence of that. I do have something I found in the earliest probate journals of Lane County, a list of the items in her husband's estate when he died in 1858. They had only been here a decade, and they didn't have a huge amount. As a woman she did not actually possess any of it, except for the part of their Donation Land Claim that was in her name. She got to keep whatever the court agreed she could keep, so she sold the fancy chairs and kept the plain ones. She probably moved in with her daughter, Samantha Huddleston, soon after, as her land was on River Road, close in, and in 1861 and 62 there were terrible, widespread floods that must have covered much of her land. Anyway, I hope to find out more about her.

The Holy Grail piece I will get to see and touch will be her medical bag. I don't dare hope it will still be filled with the instruments and tools she used to save many lives and attend many births and deaths in the early days of our area. She arrived in 1847 and was the closest we had to a doctor here for many years. She was famous for riding her fast horse to help anyone, day or night, and she must have been incredibly strong. I will no doubt be inspired to write a lot about her after seeing her possessions. I'm thrilled.I'm one of the few people who is still interested in her, outside of her descendants. I found one who was really instrumental in my research and told me about the objects, which are not listed in the catalog of the Oregon Historical Society. I also hope they find a few more unlisted things to show me. I got my own research all organized to show them and I hope they are interested in it. For some reason bringing this long-gone person to life has given me a really compelling aspect to my own life, even though she was not directly connected to my house which was what got me started looking. Stay tuned for that.

Be well, my readers. Grieve well. There's a lot of life still out there for us and I for one am grateful for it on this rainy Saturday.

A Century of Progress

Howard Frank Bowers, Jan. 10th, 1916

This week was so super challenging I felt anxious for the first time in weeks. Generally in the off-season of the Market I feel a sweet and gentle winter retreat, just as if I lived in some snow-covered cabin far away from town. But I live downtown. In a town that is rapidly becoming a city. Have I mentioned that I struggle with development? This week I had five meetings in two days and so many things came at me my head is still spinning.

Tomorrow is the 100th birthday of my house, or at least the signature of two men who signed a board that I found in the wall of my house, and I may say more about that. This little 60x90 property has seen a lot of change in that century, to be sure. In 1916 the houses around me were also new, or new-ish. There's one that was in place since a few decades earlier, and this one is actually much older too, I think. My current theory is that it was hauled here from a nearby farm and fixed up
, but I know that at least two on my corner were built new in that year or right about then. Reconstructing the history is almost as hard as reconstructing the parts as they need it.

I lamented already about the neighbor's fence and it is effectively finished now. I thought to post an "after" shot to balance this before one but really it is too heartbreaking. This photo shows my two houses and the neighbors a few years ago before it changed hands.

My rebuilt house on the right.

My house before I rebuilt it

It looks not at all the same next door today, and now that open space between us and all the many plants are gone. There is a cedar-lined box with a dirt parking space at the back and somehow I will have to adjust. They took out a weedy Bigleaf Maple that was under the utility pole, which pretty much had to happen, though I had pruned it all these years and liked using the branches of it. I saved quite a few of those branches but in the process of scouring the space of any life the overzealous builder-guy actually removed all of the raspberry supports from my five foot strip garden along the side of my shop, as well as the old boards from my OCF booth that I was using to walk on, and a holly log I wanted. Nobody asked me if I wanted help "cleaning" my side yard. I was livid and still am upset, although I recognize that he was probably thinking he was being helpful to the old lady next door (yes, me) and to be fair I was not home that day to ask. I somehow hadn't conveyed the fact that I am not the type of old lady who likes "help" and that I actually wanted those boards right where they were. It is actually a bit miraculous that they didn't level the strip all the way up to the street and take out everything. Maybe I intervened just in time. Once a road, a road forever.

There's another section across in front of that car, now.

But that is probably going to happen anyway. They will next take out the ash that is right next to their house (that crooked one that curves over their roof) and they will take off that bumpout that is the only remaining piece of the century-old exterior and build something there, which will reduce the rest of the easement to a muddy trail they'll use for construction right next to my pear trees. I have to be prepared to just stay serene and adjust to each change even though they seem so invasive to me. Just because I have taken care of their yard for three decades for a succession of renters who didn't, I have no real claim to the space. They are trying to be kind to me as I thrash around with my sense of loss.
You can't really stand in the way of improvements, can you?

So this is on top of the gleeful development plans for the little corner of downtown where I have my other home, the Park Blocks where I spend so much time selling. There will be a building squeezed into that alley just south of the west block, the one I use to enter and exit the Market with my bike cart. I'll need a new route. That I guess I can handle although I hope there will not be any blocked streets or alleys during the construction phase, a vain hope I know. It's going to be inconvenient at minimum and then Kesey Square will also be removed. I know that's a done deal. I know how developers and builders work all too well. They like clean, clear spaces to work with every old thing tossed in the dumpster. The remodel of the house next door was mild compared to what will happen around the Park Blocks. But it is another thing over which I have absolutely no control. At least they listen to my concerns about my garden and my own yard (except for stealing my boards) and respond to some of it. Downtown developers are not going to care what I think.

Me shortly after we bought the place in 1989

Which is not going to stop me from trying to think it. I'm writing a group letter to the city right now trying to articulate Market's concerns for the Park Blocks and Kesey. Mostly we feel that the loss of open space in Kesey will compromise the remaining open space and hurt our use of it. It's hard to separate the projection of our fears from useful ways we can participate and get our needs met. My strategy is pretty much to articulate the fears and then try to link them to city goals and the Master Plan for the Park Blocks, which actually honors Saturday Market quite thoroughly in its visions, and then take most of the fears out of the letter so they can't use that as a way to dismiss our concerns. Our job may just be to get them to tell us before they toss those visions to be replaced by those of the developers, who have a very different idea of what Eugene needs or they wouldn't ask for loans and muptes and waivers and all the things they do to maximize their take and pass their costs on to us, the people.

I feel that people like me are being pushed aside because we don't want to fight against change, that we tend to just feel helpless and resentful in the face of the takers. When they started this fence project next door I clearly told them what the map said about the seven-foot easement but the builder complimented my "pretty hair" while I tried to convince him to scale back his plans. They were hoping to put that fence right on my line, which is, thankfully, right in the center of my pear trees and runs right through my blackcaps and raspberries. I've pulled my plants back really far out of the easement over the last two years, but the fence would have been so oppressive as to kill all of my plants. So I did get a huge concession when they located the fence on their side, in fact, way inside their property line. If they hadn't put in the parking space it wouldn't look as bad. I guess it is the change from jungle to scoured wasteland that upsets me. Fortunately plants will grow and I can make it okay back there in a couple of seasons. Downtown, once the open space goes, it won't be back.

Interior of the old place, pretty untouched since the 1940's. 

 

 

So, whatevs. Fears are generally not realized in quite the negativity that they are generated. Maybe the new building in the downtown alley will greatly improve my access to and from the Market. Speaking up now could help that cause. All things are possible. My house has been here a hundred years, and if Grace Bowers and Tillie Van Harken could see what I have done to it they probably would demonize me too. Those kitchen cabinets were hand-built by somebody and me using the wood to hand-build mine doesn't really bring them back.

I know I gave this house another fifty years at least by all the work I did on it over the last twenty. If I could go back I might make different choices. It doesn't really matter in the big giant picture, does it? Responding to change is something we do every day and cultivating some grace around it is the challenge of all of us, especially old people like me. It isn't going to stop. Fortunately, I have a lot of tools to work through it. One of the best is satire and I got the best little movie in my head last night about the Jell-O Art Show possibilities. Think of The Wiz and sing along as we "Move Kesey down, Kesey down the ro-oad,". Stay tuned.

Consensus-seeking Process

The year has turned and my organizations will be meeting this week to set our course for 2016. I had planned to give a quick presentation of the process used by the Saturday Market at our meetings, so looked back for blogs I had written about it in the past. I know I repeat myself...but I couldn't find one. I must have touched upon it but not as the main subject.

I did see that many of my past posts were quite long and this is the type of thing that can get that way. Even though forty years of history is fairly short in the big picture, these last forty years of my membership in Saturday Market have formed my life and how I work, so this is actually a big and critical piece of it.

Membership organizations are rare and particular in that the pressure to "think like a business" is always there as we measure ourselves against the increasingly competitive business world and think that perhaps we should be more corporate and less personal. I would say that most of the time this pressure comes to our table, it has not been thoughtful about who we are and how our community works together to meet our mutual goals. Sure, when it comes to promotions we need a social-media presence and our image is important, and we do have a primary goal of staying solvent, with as many vendors as possible making money so they will remain members and keep the organization on its feet. However, we are about much more than making money and I would say it is not even our primary goal.

Our primary goal is living and working in community to meet our mutual goals. Those involve our safety and health, our willingness to belong and work together, our development both personally and as an organization, and the protection of our artisan careers and ability to thrive as craftspeople and artists, as well as the health, safety and personal development of those we hire as staff and to provide services. Making money is an activity that serves those goals. So it would be rare and short-sighted to allow money to be the deciding factor in our process. Vendors who do well don't matter more than those who struggle to sell. People who pay reserve fees aren't more important because they do. "Loving the market" isn't about what you can take home from it, but what you give to it and how you apply your skills to benefit the common good.

The process of seeking consensus is based upon the premise that each person holds a piece of the truth. Nobody's truth is better than someone else's, though one can be more logical, one can be more self-serving, and so on. When all of the pieces are combined a momentary version of the truth is formed that can be useful in that moment or possibly in a longer term. Truths that are more thoughtfully formed and inclusive are generally the most useful and last the longest, but there is no absolute truth when it comes to human relations. It's all conditional. So our truth, embodied in our policies,  needs to speak to our context of being members of an organization working for our common good.

This means that when we make policy, we need to make sure we have asked for and listened to all possible stakeholders and considered the effects of our policy on those who didn't have a voice in the room. In the case of Saturday Market, when we make policy we ought to consider our neighbors, the farmers, our downtown businesses, our park-dwellers, our city and county agencies, our customers, and the general public who connects to us whether or not they attend or spend money. Me making money is not the primary goal of any policy. Me making money in the context of the common good surrounding my 8x8 in the park in the downtown in the city in the county in the state and in the world is not even the primary goal, because we also need to include the fourth dimension of time. Saturday Market needs to make policies that ensure that it will thrive for the next forty-five years or until whenever it does not serve the common good and decides to stop operating. As members we commit to be loyal to that survival and that longterm goal, so we set aside the self-interest of "me making money" and tend all of the other interests as well.

With good process all of those interests will align and the common goals will emerge so good policy can be written. We have years of good policy that has been put together by many individuals working together for the common good, which has mostly been consistent and relatively easy to grasp. Most of us know most of us and when we gather usually things run fairly smoothly because people's needs are being met. Mostly.

Of course new needs surface and new policy issues have to be discussed. We didn't used to have people living in our park during the week when we are not renting it. Now we do. When Occupy moved in a few years ago we were spun into a tizzy because we didn't have a method for dealing with forces who didn't use contracts or people in authority positions to make promises, and we weren't sure our contract to set up on Saturday would be honored. It was, and we learned a lot at the time about even more radical consensus processes than we were using. I credit the Occupy movement with bringing me much sharper understanding of real group process and making me open my mind to a much more inclusive form of decision-making. There is still a lot of useful technique coming from people's movements that can help us make good decisions and it is our responsibility to pay attention to it and bring it into our meeting room and marketplace.

When we make decisions about our space that we rent and the surrounding spaces, we have to struggle with the concept that just because we have a financial contract to use the space one day a week, it isn't our space and we are simply park users, without automatic rights that supercede those of other city residents. If we ignore the needs of those various people, from the people with the shopping carts to the ones who hope to fill their baskets and drive home, we won't be making workable or fair policy. Those who come to spend money and those who don't have any are all our stakeholders, whether we like that or not.

That's a digression though, as talking about the business model of the Farmers would be, so I'll limit this to the more general. LCFM used to be a membership organization like ours, but it has morphed into something else now, a more corporate type of organization. OCF has arguably morphed as well, into more of a festival perhaps and less of an organization set up to serve its members. Long philosophical discussions could be held about both of them and how we intersect or don't, but the point is that we, the members, can change our organization with our policy and our self-interest, so we want to be careful and go slowly so that that fourth dimension doesn't teach us things we should have known and make us lose things we can't get back.

Craftspeople are a throwback to ancient times in how we view our work, using our hearts and hands to create beautiful and useful objects out of raw materials. There is a holiness in that, that we feel and convey and that is one reason we have customers. People recognize the value of that ancient link and want to glimpse or touch or own a piece of it, and many want to participate in it as much as they can. They bring their souls to us and sometimes skills and useful resources but some come to take and don't give back. We want to protect ourselves from the takers while at the same time being wide open to those who want to participate. Members have different definitions of the takers and we joke about particular types of customers and others who don't really see what we're about and blunder through our midst making waves. Sometimes it is not funny. We have our own selfish members who don't see or don't care about the common good and it is part of our job to illustrate that and point out how it can be better served. Thus we make rules about dogs and smoking and health issues and we are often invited to make more rules to further restrict participation in various ways. We are always treading a fine line to balance restrictions with openness.

Often those who are not feeling their needs being addressed get fearful and demanding that their views be validated and actions be taken. It is not easy to strike that balance and feelings can be hurt with any policy. This is where it is critical that the policies be thoughtful and thus defensible. Justice and fairness are powerful concepts that drive a lot of emotion forward. Good policy protects the Board from attacks of prejudicial actions and protects the managers and workers from abuses that they might suffer in the course of doing their jobs. We will always have members who understand rules differently, are defiant and dismissive of certain ones, and we will always have people who don't see or understand the bigger picture. Board members and staff have to stand tall and remind people in crisis that the job is to serve the common good and not just one piece of it.

Everyone in a membership organization operates with self-interest, but knowing that this is built-in can be used as a strength instead of a compromising aspect. We can all learn to set aside our personal needs to think about the needs of everyone. It's a useful life skill and lifts us up out of our base concerns to feel the larger spiritual or emotional issues that are sometimes at play in the most difficult crises and situations. That's one of the challenges in policy-making and the consensus-seeking process serves that very well.

Fortunately, in the organizations I am a member of, the grand majority of members bring a lot of heart and soul to the meeting rooms and events, and we are generally well-tended. None of them suffer much from neglect or members who are purely about self-interest, but probably the opposite it true. Most of us care a lot and that great love is why we feel the problems so deeply.  It's our responsibility to not fall into despair and go away mad when things get messy. Seeking consensus is way messier than what is called "up or down voting" in the code of people who care little about the common good. In good consensus-seeking process, most of the votes are formalities and are "all in favor." The work has been done to find the truths available and set a course that is logical and practical for the longterm. Right before the vote is when you can do the gut-check to see if it feels right. If it doesn't feel right, it is usually worth it to speak up and see if you can identify that feeling. Ask some questions. Will this decision stand for the longterm? Is this the right direction for the organization? Did we consider all of the people who weren't in the room? Are we serving the common good here?

Take the time to do it right and using those hands and hearts just like you would in your kitchen or workshop. You know when you are compromising to serve your short term comforts rather than your bigger goals. Bring your best self to the meetings and try to set aside or articulate your fears so that they won't get in the way. Allow the possibility that you only have a tiny piece of the larger truth, and don't come with your mind made up. You are participating in a process and you are only doing a part. You are not as important as you think, yet you are essential.