Getting back to Life as Usual

Post-Fair exhaustion was long-lasting this year, as everything I took out there came back damp and I spent the rest of the week hauling everything out into the sun to get dried out. Happily it was sunny and I got it all (okay, mostly) done. I managed to organize enough for Market and had a record day, again. My sales are up so much this year I keep thinking the bubble will break, but for whatever reason I am having a lot of success. Some might say after 41 years of Market I have figured it out, but a lot is just luck. Apparently my hats have become a Fair "thing" in that people come to get one every year and kids have it on their list too, and lots of young people at Market have found something they want to buy, supplementing the tourists who are always delighted to find useful bags and gifts for men and dog-sitters and items low-priced and easy to pack. That makes me so grateful I cannot even express it. I raised the price of the hand-colored hats and people didn't even blink. I think the items I offer are so clearly not the mall-wear that is available, the craft community is really reaping the rewards of the homogenization of commodities. People want real things. We have them.

Today is my first rest day and there are still lots of things on my list. I'm not really resting. I have one set of minutes to type which is why I am here procrastinating and ordering my thoughts. I am about to actually take a vacation to a family reunion back east and that will be a good test of my resting capabilities. Generally I am not good at it, but I plan to leave my laptop at home and not even look online. Should be great!

I felt that the theme of Fair was that everything good had a barb to it, every rose a thorn, if you will. My sales were over-the-top good, but I am liquidating my clothing lines so selling it all off at cost, more or less. Some things were sold for less than I paid for them, but keeping them for several years already devalues them so all I can do about it is learn to spend and work smarter for the future. I don't transition very well; I tend to overproduce when things are good and then end up carrying that excess for way too long. I finally took the kids shirts this year after two years and most of my kids shirts' customers didn't find them. The bargain baskets are hidden and not really accessible, and much of what is in there isn't desirable unless you are a 2X or just need a clean shirt no matter how it fits or looks.  But women's longsleeves are gone now and the other types of clothing greatly reduced in volume. I am thinking of not taking any of it to Holiday Market at all, which would be quite a change. Nothing but hats and bags, which will of course fill the space and might allow a bit more room for people.

I don't like being the seller of cheap shirts so it will be a relief when all of it is finally gone but it will take another Fair at least. I reprinted the unofficial logo shirts like the Geezer and they sold astonishingly well on the one day I had them out, so rather than reprinting them for the last time, I will probably do it again. I hold on too long to everything, and am constantly nostalgic for shirts from the past, having a hard time letting go of even the Fish Tie shirts first sold in 1984. Clearly I am finished printing that stuff. I am finished printing a lot of things. Next big step will be to reclaim the screens so there is no way to print them again.

My body clearly told me I can not continue to overwork that hard every year. The barb in the good sales was the pains and suffering. I don't want a life that insists on painkillers and leads to surgeries. I want to use this great sales year to finance somehow a less-successful sales year in the future when I can dial in only what really works and jettison some of what only kind-of works. I have to stay so focused for the several months before the Fair that everything else has to yield, including relationships and social activities, and I know nobody knows how that really works for me. I really have zero time for anything but work from about March to now, every year. Every day. My few hours in the evenings that I would watch TV or read were mostly enforced by the fact that my body refused to allow anything productive, either my foot too tender to walk or my arm numb and protesting. My denial of these pains is a sometimes startling lack of concern for my future and my present. I know I'm not the only one who deals like this, but I'm the only one in my life who is going to pay for it, in some unknown way that I really must start to calculate. Working on that.

So the biggest barb was that I neglected one of the relationships that facilitated my work the most, and I'm guessing it's ruined now. It had been troublesome for awhile but I guess neither of us was willing to break it until forced. We can try taking out the OCF piece and see what is left, if we can find a way to talk to each other again. It will eventually settle out I suppose, but I feel like the thing I need to learn is not to push these things to destruction but to address them before they explode. The avoidance process ends this way often enough. The overworking leads to the avoidance. I see my responsibility in it, and the ways I am programmed to follow that course, but that doesn't help much. Changing behavior patterns is so hard! I'm going to need all that community support that is so available in my Fair Family.

Fair Family is so real and full, but it doesn't come easy and it has to be flexible. Just wanting everything to stay the same doesn't work, and we reflected a lot on all of the years we had our little kids running around in their wings and fantasies, how we raised our families and ourselves in that loving and safe atmosphere. There really is no anger out there, or rather, all emotions are worked out in the woods. The evolution of our thinking as a collective group has most certainly created an alternative that we recognize. We bring our best selves out there, open and trusting, trying our best to love and hope. It fails when our damage and our pains get in the way and make us selfish, forgetting the proportions and perspectives we must keep in mind. No one is in less pain than I am, permanently, meaning, all lives carry unimaginable pain, distress, and worry, and we're all fairly equal in that. You don't know mine and I don't know yours and we just have to remember to be kind and caring and allow that while we might be one in a million, there are a million just like us. We have to continue to work to find joy and we can't give up. We have to say the hard things and then lighten our hearts. We have to stop complaining so much too.

The rain was a challenge that just proved we can handle it. I did a good job with tarps with lots of help and also relearned a few things about tarps and lots of help. We might have been a little hard on the neighbors but were also very helpful and it seemed like we got along great with the new people on one side and the village and everyone around. It seemed to go very well in the most rainy year ever, so now we know that not everything has to be a disaster. Happy people came. Mud was minimized. We got to leave on Monday.

Meanwhile things I care very much about, the Market, the Farmers, the City and how it works, have been ignored but other people paid attention while I was too busy. It's better for me to take a little distance from it and let the process flow sometimes, let other people's opinions rise to the top without my influence, which can be limiting sometimes. I want to try to step back from some of my volunteering, just some small steps for now, but mostly to relax and have more time to be creative and to pursue some of my other goals. I guess I'm happy to have too much to do, on some levels. Some of it is overwhelming and it's better if I don't look too closely at it. Most of it just has its time of importance and then has to wait on the shelf for that time to cycle around again. I took two tubs of Jell-O out there and didn't wear a single piece (granted, misty rain is not the best for those things) and I didn't even wear any earrings or frou-frou. I barely changed clothes to be honest, except the inner layers. All I did was work, with one notable sauna. (Pro tip: the best time to seriously sauna is between noon and three.)

I had the goal to see every craft booth so I sped around the various loops and tried to view it all, discovering much of interest but spending no time really exploring it. I bought three little things. I saw no shows unless they came to me, which a couple did! Thanks to the Radar Angels and Steel Wool and thanks to the never-ending promenade of people around and around the loops. I think that is what I miss the most, the lively mix of people passing by my front door on their way to dinner or a shower or whatever they were going to. I love the feel of that evening stroll that is what people do in small towns all over the world: you go out with your loved ones and walk around seeing everyone in town. That is where the relationships are begun, when you see each other acting naturally, being real, sharing life, in your context. That is really wonderful and why I like to camp out there. Sleeping isn't easy, but meals are everywhere, and having a cozy home to retreat to with a place to make a cup of coffee and sit and talk with family is the gold of the Fair for me. I guess that is the next challenge, to contemplate how to protect and sustain that and not lose it.

I'm a worker, and though I talk about wanting to retire, it really just means changing my work to fit my aging. I'm not going to be one to sit around. I'm an Elder, but I don't want to give up what I do for Fair. It's a common dilemma for crafters. It's going to be a big topic in our Craft Committee discussions this year. How to tighten up and loosen up at the same time is the challenge for Fair. We have to fill our individual needs in the context of our collective ones. It takes a lot of thought and a lot of working together with all kinds of people, with the goal of bringing all of us along. I am very hopeful, in fact, convinced, that we can do it. So many of us have made this part of our lives, one of the strongest parts. We're in it, and going to stay in it.

So even with all the shit that comes with that, it's what we're made of. Maybe part of my role is to get to work on that 50th anniversary interpretation of the peach. It won't be long. I'm going to want to be there, and I might as well admit I'm going to work my right livelihood magic on it at the same time. Because Fair, and Market, are me and I am them. There's no separating that now, and there probably never was.

When It Rains

Artist was Sally Bogardus

A big part of being self-employed is having constant faith in yourself, and that is maybe the hardest part. In it's simplest form, what keeps you going is the income coming in, which to a craftsperson, means sales. People liking the products, complimenting them (and you), and being drawn to them is great, and you're thankful, but if they don't buy one, all that praise isn't enough. And sales seem like the part that is the farthest out of your control, as well. While people do respond to a sales pitch, lots of us in search of an honest life can't really bear the spiel and the repetition of it and the feeling of manipulating someone into opening their wallet. I personally take such a lowkey approach it is sometimes painful when I don't "close" the sale. I do believe it is more about showing an interest in the person more than the sale, though...the most successful people I observe genuinely like the visitors and don't see them all as customers or not customers. They engage with people, are curious about them, and are honestly friendly. Many sales are made just because the potential customer decides they like you and want to support you by buying your product. It's a dance you do that is sometimes graceful and to my mind the trick is to find a groove there that you do genuinely enjoy.

I have a bit of a persona when I am on the blocks. I'm myself, but I am "on" as a person who will promote my product as well as assist the visitor in having a good day at Market. If they are having fun, they might not buy my things, but they will surely buy someone's, and if the Market has a good day that is good for me. After depending on Saturday Market for a good portion of my survival for 41 years, I can't separate my welfare from that of the Market community. I want us all to do well.

So last week was hard, about as hard as it gets. Showers turned to a downpour that wouldn't quit, and there were zero people walking the flooded aisles. Going out for coffee meant coming back wet. The camraderie was high but that doesn't pay the fees. My sales ended up being only about a fifth of those of the previous Saturdays, which were all great for me as summer appeared to have set in and the aisles were full of happy people. The biggest heartbreak was watching the hopeful new members who generally have inadequate tents and don't know all the tricks to keeping your products from getting ruined and your hopes from getting completely drowned. One young woman near me left after about 20 minutes it seemed. She was in what I consider one of the best spaces in the Market but something drastic must have convinced her to bail. I didn't even get a chance to look at her wares, and since my habit is to buy something if I can to support these people starting out, I felt bad for her. Let's hope she tries again. It looked like she had screenprinted work that was highly detailed and I wanted to talk shop and welcome her to the community.

A different rainy day. I won the haiku contest.

There are certainly tricks to rainy Markets and they are often essential. Raven and I put up a little gutter between our popups to channel the water that leaks through between them, (thanks for it, Teresa!) and we bungie our booths together for a tight fit. I put up two sides arranged to shelter my trailer and tubs out back and keep my bike somewhat dry, and I open and close the one on the south side to display my product when the drops do stop. I bring a lot less and pull it all in away from the sides so the inside of the booth is more crowded but most things stay dry. I still have to open all my tubs when I get home and spread out the damp cotton bags and hats, which just absorb from the air. I bring an empty tub for all of the stuff that really does get wet so it doesn't mix in with the merely damp. The booth and sides and most everything else have to be dried out in the next few days so they won't mildew, and my weight bags are still wet almost a week later. That was a lot of rain.

It won't be that bad this week, but I'll still have to go through all the extra steps for the one or two showers we will probably get. I have my racks on wheels and I can move them in and out as the weather changes, and there are a few other things we do to keep selling no matter what. I always go. I have a rule about it, and am convinced that a constant presence promotes sales. People think about purchases during the week and sometimes months later, so perhaps almost all the lookers really are customers and many consider themselves friends. I am grateful to all of them for giving me the information I need to keep going, to keep changing, and to keep trying to make something someone wants so that I can pay my bills. The forty-one years seem like the blink of an eye sometimes but I still remember things people said in the beginning.

Things like "who would buy these?" That was my own mom who asked. If I see it as an encouragement to assess my customer base and its needs, the question is helpful instead of critical. (Of course in the beginning it was sad.) There is no shortage of friendly advice about what I should make and what would sell like hotcakes, but I really trust my sense of it now and know my choices are based on solid experience and an intuitive understanding of my town and my craft. Not all of my choices are good. I invested in many, many things that never sold as planned, mostly in the clothing arena. I finally gave up on fashion and am selling off all of the clothing to stick with bags and hats. I still quail everytime I see those digitally printed multicolor polyester hats with the flat brims that people are wearing now. Lots of people still wear ballcaps, but that could stop at any point, leaving me with a fully-stocked room of devalued products that I would have to sell off below cost in some cases. I've given boxes and boxes of stuff away.

When my sales start to fall off, I always question my choices and my products, but one appreciative person can buoy me. One amused guy who reads all the hats gets my approval even if he doesn't buy one. A person who buys two is my buddy (except of course I rarely remember them a few months down the road.) I like to give away at least one tote bag a week to someone who needs a bag or buys something in a delighted way, and boy howdy do people like to get something for free. They want to feel special. Every person wants to feel special, I think.

So if you are new or doubting your path or tired of your work (I came in to do this instead of printing a couple piles of hats and bags, though I am going right back out there to do it) just give yourself a bit of a pep talk and put off quitting to see if your faith can be restored. I still love working for myself after all these years and even the boring printing is better than the thought of driving off to work inside some building for the benefit of someone else. I feel more secure doing this than depending on someone to take care of me as I age. I will continue to modify and someday probably have to quit printing but I hope I will never have to quit the Market.

I get tired of it. I have to convince myself to go sometimes, and sometimes I really don't enjoy every minute. I have so many emotions down there that are tough to process, even with my protective persona who lets me hide a little. I'm happier with silence at home, gardening and reading, thinking, doing the work of keeping a life running. I'm incredibly lucky, though, to have these two days a week to stand next to what I make and trade it to people for dollars and smiles. I owe my life to my community and to Saturday Market (and Tuesday Market) and OCF.

I made it work, but without the support of my fellow craftspeople and all of the people who collect and use our art, it wouldn't. That is why I go to meetings, pitch in to solve problems, deal with difficult people and tough questions, and try to guard and nurture my organizations for their longterm thriving. It's way bigger than me filling my needs. It's quite profoundly satisfying to see all of these quirky and self-centered people coming together in fruitful and progressive ways to set the downtown stage every weekend and to create, out of nothing, this event of such incredible value to so many. None of the little problems are big enough to derail it, and so far, in all these years, none of my huge fears have really gotten much traction when these people applied themselves to working through them.

Morning rituals

It can be hard, it can be discouragingly wet, and windy, and not profitable, and painful, and scary. Facebook reminded me today that four years ago I was down to one crutch and paying a young guy to bike my trailer to and from the Market, plus depending heavily on a very few people to haul me around until I could walk again. I was not an easy person to help, and I am still amazed how much a few people were willing to take care of me (Deb Schussler stands out, and there were others who helped me despite the hardship it created for them.) When it comes to caring that way for other people I fail miserably (working on that though.) People are kind and they usually err on the side of caring too much rather than not enough. Witness the political situation now, bare evidence that people want things to be better for each other.

This was a joke, but this is how I am. Some of my friends were very alarmed.

The connecting is worth doing. I will definitely watch for that young person who left last week and give the belated encouragement she needed. The sun will come back out! The tourists haven't even really gotten here yet, and the fruit season is just beginning. It's going to be summer! We will all get rich! Or anyway we will all feel rich, as we luxuriate in the sun and feel the breezes and enjoy the waters of the wonderful place we live. I hope that is true for you, even if it represents just a moment of satisfaction in an otherwise rough week. I hope you have your ways of renewing your faith and making your meaningful contribution.

I'll go do that printing now. The sooner I get it done the sooner I can get back to the new Louise Erdrich book I am reading, LaRose. So good. So worth waiting for. Lots of things are like that, so keep the faith.

Mother's Day Weekend

Tough day yesterday. Sales were great, and even though the day is long, from getting up at 5:00 am to usually getting home and unloaded at about 7:30 pm, it's usually manageable and I'm used to it and happy to be that strong. Standing on concrete, even on my little rug, is really hard on my right foot, the one I broke. I have a lot more sympathy for people in pain now and when I see someone limping with obviously sore feet, I can relate to how that forms the expression on your face and the resilience for all other things. I need to be more diligent about taking my vitamins and anti-inflammatories and figure out some better strategies. My friend tells me that walking in place would be better than just standing, and I am aware that I often put my weight on my right side instead of standing on both feet...just a bad 66-year-old habit.

About ten blocks from home the trailer began to get very heavy...unbelievably so, and sure enough, I had a flat tire. This was well after 6:30 and on a quiet stretch of 12th St., but I still got a little adrenal. What do you do when your entire Saturday Market set-up is sitting by the curb, impossible to secure, and you need to make a new plan? I could have done better, but it worked out. Two young guys were skateboarding in a driveway, so I asked them if they would watch it for me, and hobbled home to get my car.

As I ran/walked down the street, I almost went back, because in my haste I had not bothered to lock my bike or trailer...first clue that I was not thinking well. I had quickly evaluated that I could only lock one of them anyway, and the load with the sticks on top and tomato plants and really super flat tire was barely moveable and would hardly look worth unloading, even for the valuable trailer. Yet I put all my trust in these two young strangers and for the ten or fifteen minutes it took me, they had a lot of responsibility. If I had come back to a pile of nothing or tubs or a trailer without a bike, I would have had no one to blame but myself. It was a little shocking in a way. If I had been thinking clearly I would have ridden the bike home and just left the trailer, locked. Guess I was a bit in panic mode, good to observe for the future. Next time I should stop, sit for a minute, and think it through to minimize risk.

But I had spent the previous evening out on the corner of my street watching the protest and scene at the Trump speech at the Fairgrounds, and I felt like I knew my town and my neighborhood well. These young men were just enjoying the summerlike evening out in front of a group house that I had passed a zillion times and I knew many people on the block and all along 12th had seen me go by. Maybe not these two, but some of their housemates, the woman across the street with all the cats, and that guy down the block who seems to do the maintenance and security for the whole block, had noticed me. I see him out all the time surveying his domain, picking up litter or cutting grass or just assessing. He was most likely aware. He had told me once that my tires were low, and although he used to mutter things I thought were complaints about me, these days he usually said a cheerful good morning when he saw me go by. I trundle down that street twice a day, twice a week. If it's anything like my block, everyone knows far more about me and my life than I think.

Needless to say, when I got back all was intact and I gave them some of my riches to buy some pizza or something and refused their offers of help. The load doesn't even really fit in my car, which is an amazing thing, and I ended up leaving the car there while I rode the empty trailer home on the flat rather than try to pile it on top of the Toyota. I will need to get it fixed tomorrow to get back on the road Tuesday, though I suppose I could use my car...just really don't want to. I;m glad I had the car as a fallback, since I really didn't want to call anyone for a rescue, but unloading and loading a few more times was way over the top for a day's workload. I finished at 8:30 pm and still had to eat and treat my foot pain (I slather it with pain cream and green salve and it's generally fine the next day.)

Thus I fell asleep in my chair, missing SNL, and slept until almost ten this morning, dreaming about a baby I accidentally killed and lost (it was made out of some green clay and it wasn't my fault, I swear.) Mother's Day usually makes me go over my best and worst parenting moments and my assessment is pretty harsh overall. Part of the reason we have the Hallmark holiday is, to my mind, to say all is forgiven. No mother does it all right, especially in her secret thoughts where there has to be at least a smidgen of resentment or selfish wishes to be free of responsibility. Mothering is a long day every day for a couple of decades, and sometimes more. I feel successful in that I don't really have to worry about my precious and wonderful child (who has no equal to my mind, as per the mothering code.) I turned 66 this week. It is unlikely that I will see his end (god I hope I don't) and he is married and launched and mostly I get to just celebrate his successes and give him help with what he needs if he asks. I've had a long and quiet separation period and I'm fortunate in that I like being and living alone so I miss him but don't long for his return to my home so much. I'd love to share more time, of course, but I think I've adjusted fairly well.

The downside of these Hallmark holidays is all the comparing we do, thanks to advertising. My ideal relationship with him would be more like those commercials...I'd have more kids, too, which in reality would likely have not worked out as well as the TV version does. I didn't have any abortions, thanks be, but if I had been less lucky and started out earlier to be a Mom, things would have been way different. By 39 when I did get pregnant (on purpose) I had had some time to work on some of my psychological challenges, and was ready to focus on a child. I got to be more devoted than I would have at a younger age. I didn't pass on much trauma or drama, though of course there was some, and his perspective is different from mine for sure.

Having my birthday so close to Mother's Day always brings up a lot for me, self-assessment, thinking about the short balance of my years, my work and health challenges, my plan (more like a lack of one) for a realistic transition to the end. It won't be nearly as graceful as my 90-year-old Mom's plan, but you never know. I've learned so amazingly much from her, and continue to. I've depended on her as my rock of security for all of this time. Things have definitely shifted and now I'm more depended upon in some ways, but Mom has always given me what I needed even when I didn't ask. Love doesn't describe the gifts: my ability to trust that people are good and worthy of trust, my willingness to work hard and keep working, my great love for the natural world and all that is in it, my intelligence and compassion. She gave me the gift of siblings and the large family that we enjoy. She told me that I could have a child, and that if anything happened she would be my back-up. She always has a supportive thing to say whenever I am worried or anxious, pointing out that I have always managed so far, and have what it takes.

Mothers are so essential to us it is easy to take them for granted. It's almost a compliment to be trusted to be okay with whatever we get in return, and keep giving the love. It's not love that depends on proof or is conditional to what we get. That kid was a part of my body for a long time, and not very far from it for a longer one. He's a miracle I got to participate in. That's so much more profound and larger than love. I'm just filled with gratitude that I got to be there for that, and without my own Mom, I would probably have been too scared to try it. I'm glad I sent her a card and we're about to have our weekly phone chat. I'm glad I got tickets for us all to be together in July. Moms are it. We are special. I feel lucky to be in the club.

A Regular Workday

The Weekly didn't print my letter or respond to my email, and I'm relieved. I spoke out of frustration and not out of the highest ground as far as really contributing useful energy goes. I brought out some of the other complaints and maybe that is good for a few seconds of commiseration but really, we have to keep working slowly and positively toward being in the world we are in downtown.

There won't be an end to frustration and disillusionment in the world as it gets more crowded and full of things we don't like or are afraid of...and I as an aging woman am just going to have to get tougher and more resilient or suffer more. I saw a post about people that tied long life to the ability to stand and sit crosslegged on the ground without assistance...tried it and was humbled. I couldn't get up without using my hands, and sadly don't think my foot will allow it. But I am determined to keep working on it to see just what power I do have over my damaged foot. Up that ante to keep working on seeing what power I have over all my damage...lots to do!

I have a giant pile of purple shirts to print today and that makes me smile. Wish all my Prince collection wasn't on cassettes I can't play now. Listening to the posted songs makes me feel like they appealed to me most in those times because it was then...my goals and interests were different and my energy was fueled by that funky beat. Some of them seem simple almost, compared to the electronic layers we are more accustomed to today. As everything around us becomes more complex, is it even possible for us to continue to try to simplify? Does that amount to putting our heads in the sand?

Full of questions to chew on, it's the perfect time for me to chain myself to my squeegee for the next five hours. I hope lots of people are filled with hope and purpose by Bernie Sanders' visit. Every step toward a better world is the step we need to make now. Keep walking in the right direction. I'll keep working.

FSP but Deeper

I missed the mark with my post about the FSP, but it took a bike ride along the river (to the dentist, but whatever) to figure out what was wrong. I got all the defensive complaining out, which isn't very helpful, and didn't keep going to strike those other heart strings that get more to the reality of the world we are living in.

Saturday Market is a throwback to the hippie days in many ways, and people like me want us to stay close to our roots for some good reasons. Like I said, we see ourselves over across the street: disillusioned with the dominant paradigm, determined to have a more authentic life, wanting to make it with our own efforts and not have to be under anyone's thumb. It was a hell of a lot easier in the 1970's to carry those feelings into right livelihood, a hell of a lot cheaper, and there were more of us with a clearer ethic to create the space for it.

Now we've taken up the space with decades of effort and we have made our compromises. We wanted to be close to the land so we bought when you could get property for cheap and we worked on it ourselves when the permit requirements and building codes were more forgiving. We worked on our cars because you could, and we embraced organic agriculture because it seemed like the obvious improvement. We were way more innocent than you get to be now, and indeed some of the political struggles now are exactly what we went through. It pains me greatly to know that my son's friends and other Bernie supporters are probably going to have to go through the same disbelief and cynical grief when the political machine makes its moves. We can hope, for change, but those who see deeply can see that improvements are glacial and hard won and the revolution gets co-opted so it can be televised and you still are left with making your own way in this world.

And now it's uglier and the peace and love generation is tired and mostly has bought into comfort. We think we haven't but there's a big difference between me in my 600-sq-ft house and someone in a tent by the river. I have safety and don't get harassed, and I have community that is sort of respected. People new to town might not realize that Saturday Market has had to fight hard for the respect and success we enjoy today and it isn't necessarily widespread. There are plans afoot that might drive us right off where we stand and we might not be able to do a thing about us. We hope not, and we're not without resources, so we stand a good chance of keeping what we have created, but there's never any guarantee.

So what I didn't get to is why someone like me, a radical cynical iconoclast, would be so loyal and defensive about my organization. It isn't just habit. For one thing, we are, a lot of us, people who would not fit into the establishment with a shoehorn, nor would we be willing to fit in. I don't speak for everyone, and my habit of saying "we" is probably grating to many ears in the community of artists. Some of us are not hippies and never were and find many of our pot references and silliness completely irritating. We draw from all of the area, people outside Eugene and people outside the counter-culture. We are now fairly solidly the culture. We buy all those things listed in the last post and we follow all of those rules because we decided we were going to include people who didn't necessarily share our politics and we certainly wanted to attract customers who were from all walks of life, from all over the world. We collectively despair and embrace our rainbows and our reputation and there is not a ton of agreement about anything, really, when it comes to the Market. Come to any of our meetings and see that we gather and do our best to create a balance that will sustain us, and it is certainly not perfect.

We are a community that is not competitive. It's hard to imagine, but when you set up next to someone who makes the same thing you do, you are going to talk shop and admire each other's work, most likely. You will meet some of the most incredible masters of their art and you will meet people who are just making their first crafts and have no idea what they want to do with their lives. We have a full range of artists from beginning to end. If more screenprinters join and we become the go-to place for t-shirts, that makes me happy. If we have so many jewelers that each one is challenged to make work like no one else is making, bravo! The way we all work together to raise the artistry level of the Market is constantly inspiring.

We don't jury. When you come in with your items for screening, the committee members want to know if you make them, if you make something that is safe and durable so the buyer will get good value, and if you take the raw materials and create something handmade. We don't care if it is ugly or won't sell or shows your lack of skill or your mastery...if you make it, it works for Standards. That is not to say that the guidelines haven't been refined over the years. Some of them might seem picky, but the members of the committee will be happy to explain the purposes of those things and give you tips on how you might be able to modify or add to your product to meet the guidelines. It is almost always a very supportive process. We all want to welcome new artists, especially young ones, and although it seems intimidating in concept, the process is quite welcoming. Sit through the orientation and you will find out so many things about the community and how you can be part of it...it is inclusive and open.

We prioritize member and customer services. The info booth will handle credit cards for you, will give your info to people when you are not there if you like, and will help people find your booth with even the most vague of descriptions. Our staff tries hard to get to know each vendor and what they need and desire, as far as that can go. If you have disabilities or money issues you can be accommodated. It is the least corporate business in town when it comes to how you will be treated as a member. Understanding the membership structure can take awhile and you might think it is complicated, but we work by consensus still, and make decisions by getting as many stakeholders as possible around the table and listening to them all until a good decision can be made. It isn't perfect, of course, and meetings sometimes run long and emotions run high. When it is working well, it's a very beautiful process and you could be an important part of it.

We're not all about the money. We are so not all about the money. Our nonprofit status means we try to end up even at the end of the year...we pay federal taxes. We have savings, though not enough to survive a super wet and cold year, or a real disaster. We try to pay a decent wage. Our recent fee increase was to comply with the federal and state guidelines for the minimum wage and overtime reform. You can believe that raising the fees was one of the hardest processes we went through in years. That $10 plus 10% was practically sacred, but we want our employees to like working with us, to feel valued, and to be able to get what they need. We pay for health insurance. We even have a crisis-relief fund, the Kareng Fund, started and maintained by members to help other artists. It recently broadened its scope to include all self-employed, low-income artists in Oregon (suffering a career-threatening crisis.) We really care about people, our people, the people who come to us, and the people in our town. We actually care a lot about the people across the street.

I didn't make that point at all, and I apologize. I stopped short of saying that when I see people trying to express themselves over there, I want them to know what I know and have what I have: the opportunity to thrive. I have found that opportunity in the Saturday Market. It has totally worked for me, and I plan to keep it working for me for the rest of my life. This is a profound gift that sometimes I think I do not deserve, something of inestimable value. My Mom even said it: "I'm just glad you found Eugene." Subtext being that I would not be me the way I am in any other place, and that is because of my counter-culture, because of the Saturday Market. I want that for everyone who wants it.

So my defensive response was sadly lacking and although I said some things that might have needed to be said, I did not extend the warm invitation to those who don't know about us as we really are to come across the street and join us. We deliver the customers and we support you while you find your niche. We are open to you and that is one of our most important ethics. We get it that we are not for everyone, but if you are able to try us out, we want you to do it. We're not the bad guys. We are trying to make it just like you are.

Let's do it together. Those drums beat for everyone.

Narrative Nonfiction

Reading Ariel Gore (The End of Eve) makes me want to shout some truth. Reading her and Mary Karr (The Art of Memoir) at the same time makes me want to tell everything. All of it, right down to the smallest details, no matter what the consequences. Of course, I'm not them. My most interesting drama at the moment is mostly not about me, really, so it isn't my stories to tell. So telling the truth about it is not something I can do. I would at best be telling other people what I think about them, and at worst, be completely denying my part in what surrounds my life but is not what I generally think of as my life.

It's fascinating to me (and I guess what I mean by divine tension) that emotions can be so complexly contradictory and layered, so much so that trying to get to "the bottom" of them is a mire of trying and most likely not having a "there" to get to. At my writing group we were talking about mystery, and how you are advised to leave some in your writing, not to tease but mostly to give the reader something of their own to chew on, to not wrap the package up all enticingly and then go ahead and open it yourself. I'm thinking a lot about expectations, how deep they run, and how we can almost not avoid them, or avoid suffering from them. They're not realistic, but some of us (and by that I mean me) have developed a practice of avoiding even having them, not being willing to endure the disappointment. It's got euphemisms: going with the flow, making the observation "it is what it is," and for me it has grown to be a set of behaviors with which I just don't set myself up for disappointment. I enjoy what I do get, and try not to see it as a meager portion of all that life has to offer.

I settle, I suppose, and fail to risk enough to get what a lot of people cling tightly to, mostly other people. That's what Ariel and Mary write about, their abusive and outrageous parents, the damage that set them to becoming, the challenges to which they rose, their failures, their choices. They reveal their porous boundaries, but also their fearlessness, their counter-intuitive capacity for vulnerability, what made them cry, what cried in silence inside their heads when they didn't apologize or deferred from taking all the space they deserve. They wrote down most of what they thought and said and did, and made it a good story with spaces and mysteries and the right amount of satisfaction for the reader, for me. But they published the written account of it, the filtered story that came through their damage to our eyes. They put it there for us, but probably they wrote it for themselves, mostly. Because it was fun, and it felt good to use skills, and the stories, or the messages in them, were worth telling.

I stopped just before the end of Ariel's tale of her dying mother. I have to save it for a little while, after being able to do little else but read the book in the last 24 hours. It's far too short, for a book this important, this fulfilling. It is also a good idea for me to step away when I get this excited about relationships and people, particularly damaged people. I start to resonate loudly, start to get all about me, start to, I guess, (sigh,) get triggered by my own damage into my own drama. I invariably feel compelled to write. My advice to myself is to keep it in my journal, but it feels braver to put it here, where 30 or 220 (that's my alltime high so far) people read it, and where it had better not be a lie, and it had better not be too real. This isn't my journal, it isn't my Book of Secrets where I used to write really awful thoughts, ones I really never wanted anyone to know I was thinking, but just couldn't stop having until I wrote them down. If I put it on Facebook it's public even, like a zine I drop off at the library with my heart's address right on it.

I suppose that is what draws me so powerfully to these writers. They put out all this damaging evidence for me, of what crushes people to bits and ruins their lives, and they wave a flag over it, a kind of bravery flag. They make that intentional connection to the universal, and they make it clearly, and then they walk away and you are left thinking to yourself, well, there go all my excuses. There really is nothing but this present moment when I decide what my life is about. I decide what I feel, what I have, what I have just gotten or lost, and how much that matters.

That can feel harsh, confronting all of that wasted time and knowing that I will continue to waste time. Life's getting shorter and shorter. My life isn't really exactly what I want it to be. I could do more, say more, write more, think more clearly, try harder, and I know I won't really do better. I've already decided on the low-stress path. Maybe I've made the right choice, maybe there is no right choice. Maybe it is always a mire, and if you don't lose your boots or fall over, that's the best you can expect. I'm finishing this a week or two after I did finish the Ariel Gore and the Mary Karr books, and am on to other reading, somewhat less passionate. More choices, more excuses. No answers. We all just keep going, because it might be really cool what happens around the bend. We might find an even better book and get even more inspired. We might even put up three posts in three hours. Life is for sure, surprising.

Because to everyone else, what matters so much to me, doesn't matter. They have their own essentials, their damage and their moments. They get up every morning and drink coffee or don't, check email or not, write in their journal or not, and go out and do their work, the work they have decided to make the substance of their lives. It doesn't make them happy or unhappy; they do that. At every turn, we each decide if it is a most beautiful of days or if all that sunshine makes us a little stressed that we aren't out in it doing something remarkable.

All the time, I think maybe I'm doing it wrong, life. I am so happy to be unhooked from the world of desire to have a partner, to be loved in an intimate relationship, to have a lot of family demands on me. I have probably substituted my organizations and my work for those things...the Jell-O Show was my birthday party, and the weekly Market is my church service or maybe my family dinner. Country Fair is my ecstatic trip to an exotic land where I pretend that I don't work my ass off for a solid week and try to catch a sweet life moment as the dusk gathers or in the morning when that thrush sings.

As long as those sublimations and substitutions are in place, I feel fine. It can't be all that wrong. Anyway, there's no judge. Just the mire and the nice sheen on it that makes it look so pretty in the morning.

Crafts are my Culture

Edit: This is a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago and couldn't finish for some reason. Maybe it was just too soon to bring up cultural appropriation again, even in a new light. 

My Saturday Market season was launched a week late, and after so many decades, I know what to expect: completely surprising details in a fairly routine pattern. Much had changed over the winter, so there were missing craftspeople, and new ones, recognizable customers and ones from out of town, laughs and hugs and bad jokes and the constant drumbeat interspersed with refrains from the buskers on the corners and wherever they thought they had a space.

It looked like there might be big changes at the Courthouse Plaza as the sellers over there were finally hearing that there is a difference between commerce and free speech, but it looks like nothing will indeed change. Apparently those doing commerce were going to be required to pay for the appropriate permits and insurance requirements that Saturday Market has been paying for for almost five decades, but the prospect of litigation or violence reared up and the pressure went down. It's hard to be against free speech. No one wants to be in that position, certainly not Saturday Market or the City of Eugene.

It's odd to observe them and be taken back to my own early days when I was making anything I could think of that might sell, so that I could live from my own craft. I don't think I was looking for something for nothing but in those days you could sell at Saturday Market for $3.50 a day, so those zero days weren't quite so expensive. But using that structure to grow within was certainly beneficial for me and I don't see how resistance to it makes that much sense, even with our new fee structure and the process it takes to get a really great space. It does make it hard if you aren't handcrafting what you want to sell. We aren't a flea market.

Now that the discussion of cultural appropriation is deepening and people are looking more carefully at how words and images matter and what needs protecting, I'm bringing up the discussion of handcrafting again. (Not that I've dropped it.) If you've been listening to the larger culture you now know that everything from commercial beer to fast-food tacos to kayaking is being described as a craft or hand-crafted. If a person's hands were involved, that designation is being applied. It obscures what I consider the artisanal practices that have been carried from the most ancient times, of some person taking a raw material and making it into something useful and beautiful from the work of their own imagination and skillful application of simple hand tools and techniques.

This definition doesn't include stuffing a taco or patting a burger into a round shape. Those are cooking skills and that's not what handcrafting is. There can be artisanal foods, of course, but unless one person is putting their own creativity into it, those foods aren't qualified for this distinction. For instance, Dana mixes up his cake with his own recipe, takes it out of the oven at the right time and frosts it. I'm sure he makes it look easy and can make a lot of them but he still does it himself, with his hands and because he wants to. So that is a hand-crafted food. If he bought the cake and just frosted it, the significant contribution of his frosting would have to outweigh the commercial material of the cake. Food isn't the best example of this, but it makes the point that we draw some lines that divide the products we sell at Saturday Market from the products for sale everywhere else.

It's easier to see with a product like a wool hat, for instance. The artist selects the wool, creates the pattern of color and design, knits the hat, blocks it, finishes it, displays it and sells it. She stands there and can easily say "I made this," without a shred of ambiguity. Most of our crafts are like this, dishes made from raw clay, paintings made from a blank canvas, prints made from a silkscreen process with the artist holding the squeegee. Not that there aren't some gray areas.

T-shirts and other screenprinted items have always presented a dilemma because they are commonly commercially made items. Saturday Market has dealt with this by calling the t-shirt a blank canvas, and requiring that any commercially made items be simple and generic so that the artistic contribution has outweighed the item. You couldn't sell a white t-shirt without an image, but if you applied the image with a craft technique, you could. You could also dye it, but you couldn't send it out to someone else to be dyed, even in a color you chose, because the requirement is that you have your hands and heart involved right on the piece you are selling. The Maker and the Seller are the same person. It's a narrow definition and many people currently selling things under the mantle of hand-crafted are in zones that are even more gray than the t-shirt one. I do my own screenprinting, but some artists don't, and some send their art to a business that provides them with a digitally printed image made with a printing machine (a fancy copier/computer) that is a step removed from their watercolor painting or original image. This has been allowed, but it pushes over the line and those in the world of Standards and jurying have worked over these lines with questions that are hard to answer. Now that we have 3-D imaging, where does the line get drawn with reproductions? It's a constant discussion in meetings. It's very hard to dial things back.

At Saturday Market, because we sell every week and have meetings every month, a lot of the fine lines get redrawn and adjusted over time, but we can still have an artist who cuts a coin with a little saw selling next to one who cuts a similar image with a computer-controlled laser. It's not ideal, and the technologies keep coming. Invariably the use of technology provides the opportunity to have multiple images or objects made at a lower cost per piece, with less artist labor involved, and thus less of a hand-crafted component. I know over time I stopped being accepted into craft fairs with my screenprinted shirts. They began to require a handcrafted garment as well as a hand-done application technique. We've been slow to make this change at the Saturday Market, because we are also a business incubator and we like to give a person a chance to get started as an artist. If they need someone to print for them until they can get set up to be a screenprinter as well as an artist, we've allowed that, letting them know that we hope that they will work up to being their own screenprinter as well. Sometimes they do, but other times they go in the direction of getting their images reproduced in even less hand-crafted ways, such as the digital prints. We haven't really been able to satisfactorily address the use of technologies within the limits of our non-juried, open entry marketplace. We'll never run out of subjects to discuss. Sometimes things tighten up, and sometimes they loosen.

We considered requiring those people selling digitally reproduced paintings (called giclee prints) to stretch their own prints on the wooden frames, but it was viewed as harsh to ask painters to be woodworkers, even though everyone is not completely comfortable with products that you can just order, unbox and sell. Your artistic contribution stopped at the original painting. We recognized that you had to make a living, and selling the prints and cards of your images allowed you to have a reasonably priced product. But that border needs constant patrolling.

So to cut to the chase, I challenge OCF people to start thinking carefully about what is sold at our Fair/festival. I doubt many festival-goers even remember that we are a top-quality hand-crafted Art Fair. Erosion of this ethic has come from lots of directions and in lots of subtle ways. Many, many things are sold during the Fair and the weeks around it that are not by any definition hand-crafted. Does this matter? Do we care, as a community, that the hand-crafting artisans are becoming a sideline, a misunderstood and rolled-over part of our landscape? Many of us have done this our whole lives, and founded and nurtured the Market and the Fair to protect a place where we could thrive, out of the commercial mainstream. Do factory-made products threaten us? I say they do. Someone asked me yesterday where they could get one of those cool pleated-fabric sets of wings they saw at Fair. I had to say I am pretty sure those are a commercial product you can find online, not a product of a Fair crafter.I hope I'm wrong about that.

I hope I'm wrong that the craft world is being eroded. I think it does still matter to people that things are handmade by artists you can talk to. I think the success of our two events is testimony to that. But I also think that the culture we participate in is in danger of being rolled over by fast food commercials and co-opting. So just listen carefully when you hear the word craft, and do your part to keep it meaning something different. Craft beer should find a new name. I suppose it is a compliment, right?