When Things Look Terrible, the Sun Still Comes Out Eventually

Yes, I waded back into the Members site as I decided I couldn't let someone bullying me take my voice. Since I have been constantly bullied for at least ten years I don't know why I still expect to not have it directed at me. It's a trauma thing...I keep thinking the trauma is in the past and connected with only a few individuals, but in reality I think it is a fact of life that people will bully me.

I was once told by someone trying to be kind, in his way, that I "wore humiliation." It was shocking but I've grown to accept that I am easy to humiliate, very trusting, and always expect positive experiences. So, not very realistic. I prefer to retain that trust and naivete, but it leaves me vulnerable. I don't really want to harden myself at this point in my life, but the world is just so harsh right now. I find myself feeling that I will die in a prison and all hope is lost...this is just a high degree of empathy for the people in El Salvador whose crime was having tattoos or not-white enough skin, and I am safe from that here in my kitchen, but I still feel that death sentence. I'm wondering how people without my privilege handle it without just actually dying. I feel like my heart would just stop if that happened to me.

That's a pretty extreme degree of fear, so I guess the news is working on me. I've chosen to sell on Saturday instead of rallying, despite the fact that it probably won't be a good sales day. I haven't really had any income since December (except my SS, and I'm afraid to look and see if I'm still getting it, and Jell-O shirts, which were break-even.) But I have money...I'm afraid I won't continue to have it, but I'm not broke. I'll still be triggered all day I expect, and glared at by people who don't like me, but I have been unpopular at Market before and it usually wears off over the season.

I do still have that deep loyalty to Market, despite hating everything that has transpired in the last year or two, and most of the people making those things happen. It's not particularly rational, just feelings. That's one reason I've tried to stay out of it, as I can't add anything helpful, it seems. I tried being a moderating influence but got roundly trashed for that, so I won't do that again. I know some people appreciated it, but that didn't really matter, the bullies still won. Most of the little progress made in the last few months will likely be unraveled at the Board meeting and possibly a bigger mess created. I don't know why anyone would want to volunteer if they got a clear view of all of the nuanced campaigns that are being waged in this power struggle. Anyone just trying to be helpful or maintain justice will be swept away in the deluge of false narratives and high emotions, or at least that is my prediction.

It's possible some justice will prevail, and I know a few people will fight for that, but it's gone off into the deep end and probably will flounder around for more months. I'm not planning to engage with any of it. I have a big order of shirts coming in Thursday and will just see if I can physically handle that and selling every Saturday, and whatever I can do to assist in the political world situation, which is far more threatening than the messy problems of Market. 

I'm going to turn 75 in the midst of everything, and I doubt I will want to celebrate. Maybe I'll sit on the deck in the sun if I can. For some reason of his own my son is not communicating, and I miss him, but that is up to him and whatever he needs. I don't feel close to anyone right now, which is okay, but when people talk about community and how important it will be, I get anxious. I don't trust anyone to care about me...this is the effect of bullying old people. They descend into isolation and start believing they are worthless and in the way.

I know on some level I am fighting that...I shared a Jell-O Art post today and I still have to write that glowing post about the other artists and the gallery show itself, which I do hope to do. I still have this place to write what I want and it doesn't really matter if no one reads it, I feel better when I write. I know I have a couple of readers who do love me, and that warms me up, so I can keep trying to articulate things and sort through my perspectives to make things make sense.

I'm sure it's true that action is healing so I'll so what I can. I plan to make a sign for Saturday if I can think of something that won't be added to the list of why other market members hate me, and I will probably give away or sell cheaply some bandanas and hats for people walking through before or after the rally. I wanted to make something political but I can't feel inspired with all the dysfunction pressing on me. Words seem weak. I'm guessing I will feel better after Market, though, once I prove to myself that I can do it and people want me there. Even when I feel bad I know that is still true.

Guessing I am not the only depressed person today. I suppose I would want to encourage them, so i should encourage myself. I'll get out in the shop. Having a full inventory always makes me feel satisfied. My wrist seems fine, or anyway my hands are not any more stiff than they were before I broke it. The sun coming out in a couple of days will help, and it won't rain on Saturday, so I don't have to agonize about that. As Vi would say, All will be well. I'm sure she still says that now and again.

 

It doesn't matter if you like her, it matters how well she can do the job

Had a great day yesterday, enjoying my last free Saturday for the next 9 months. I printed some bandanas, mixed inks for my upcoming big printing job, and wandered around my yard weeding and picking up sticks from all that windy weather. I stayed offline and let go of the distaste for being bullied that always threatens to overwhelm me, and prevented that from happening this time.

There's a groundswell of support for the "beloved" GM like what happened last time. I tried to moderate this emotional approach to what was a practical solution but apparently not a lot of people know the reality I experienced...at least those people are not emoting on Facey, so it seems unbalanced. I mean, I was gaslighted, manipulated, dismissed, and disregarded in various ways as an officer and longstanding, well-respected volunteer by this GM. I was volunteer of the year in 2023! All forgotten now.

I got shuffled into the delusional and pushy "elders" category, and my resentment of that doesn't matter. One of the former Board members made two or three personal, bullying comments and went off on me on her post, insisting that I didn't know anything and should not be trying to moderate. And you know what? No one asked me to do it, and with that kind of treatment, she turns out to be right...I can silence myself and did. I deleted my posts and almost all of my comments and removed my presence from the discussion. No one seems to have been willing to defend me or have noticed that I pulled away. Maybe they think someone else did it. 

It allowed me to take my life back and stop trying to give to an organization that clearly no longer values my contributions. It makes me sad, but is no longer as devastating as it was when the GM set it in motion for me. Her disregard, keeping me from doing my responsible duties as an officer, left me out of crucial decisions and prevented my input to the point where I was not valued by the majority, or even the Board itself. This disregard of the older members to favor the younger is not really the way of the world, but it became the way of the market under the Mean Girls and their accomplices.

I remember when I first started realizing how manipulative she is, way back at the beginning. As Board Chair at the time, she did nothing to prevent the terrible hire of an obviously incompetent man over a competent woman, which they were pushed to do for the wrong reasons by the head of the hiring committee. She heard all of my reasoning of what a disaster was about to happen and if I hadn't intervened right away to document what he was doing and not doing in order to get him out fast, that would not have happened. I was not loved for that, but I was right. Then I was working almost fulltime to help get the office back together, I was making Board packets, pulling policies out of the archives to replace the computer that failed, and in general propping things up with a mighty effort with a lot of other volunteers during a busy time when I had to neglect my own business to do that. And the narrative was spun that she saved us single-handedly and my contributions were erased. But I don't care to promote myself so I just allowed that to happen.

Then there was the question of whether or not to close on the second week of November, the week before Holiday Market started. It had never been a big moneymaker for the market, though it was a giant day for me and others of us who sold. I would sell a thousand dollars worth to people who loved he outdoor market and would miss it. I paid a percentage on that, of course, so it benefitted market in a way it wouldn't when I made the sales at HM (if I did.) Anyway, she decided to do a survey but the paper she distributed was framed overwhelmingly that if you didn't vote to close, clearly you didn't support or even care for staff. As a person who has always cared for staff, actively, I was really offended by that framing. Of course the vote passed to eliminate a selling day, without regard for the public, who had no say, and the many people who did benefit from us being open. And I think, now that it is an established practice (it was promised to be for one year only...) it has impacted October negatively as people shifted their weeks off to do HM prep from November into October. Whatever. The point is, that it was shocking that we would be manipulated like that by a GM.

I wrote a complaint and spoke with her about it. She didn't even see what she had done as manipulation. Other experiences like that she bragged about, her skills as "massaging" and "bringing people along" as she called her coercive, bullying tactics that she uses to get her way. We saw quite a lot of that at HM this year, but if you don't experience it yourself, apparently you don't believe it is happening, even though I am not the only person who has raised the alarm. So one of the reasons that she was fired is that instead of the negotiating skills we need to make arrangements with people like the farmers, the fire marshal, the fairgrounds, and the city, we have had someone who has been "massaging" them, which has included flirting, stonewalling, using them as an excuse to cover her getting her own agenda arranged, and terminating members who don't work well with her or resent being manipulated. Many of them are no longer with the market. 

I also used to represent the members and support the staff by being a partner in dealing with city issues, particularly through my Downtown Development Task Force, which evolved to be an email list with weekly updates to inform members what was happening and what to expect on a Saturday. She stopped including me in meetings with the city or construction people, stopped sending me their details, took me out of the loops so that when I did email the members, it was incomplete or inaccurate and became impossible. I realized my integrity and usefulness to the membership was not going to be protected if I continued trying to work with her on that, and I stopped. A lot of members depended on me to keep them informed in an honest way but when I saw how she treated the city managers I was unable to be honest with the members. Nobody really remembers that service I performed for about a decade until she derailed it. 

Despite having several years now to learn how to manage expenditures and income, she has not mastered financial management or reporting. She leaned so heavily on a former assistant manager and two Treasurers, to cover her inability to be a responsible financial manager, that they all quit and we are now quite a lot in the red and have to figure out how to make up that loss and prevent more of it. It was overstaffing, but no one was laid off, there was no effort to fix it while she was the GM. It was her job to do it. The current budget submitted for approval was erroneous and inadequate and sent back to the Budget Committee, who are volunteers, to try again. 

She has spent so much of her time coercing and attempting to "bring along" members who, in her reality, need "consequences" for their behaviors, that she doesn't get all of her work done. She makes procedure, and sometimes policy changes without communicating them to anyone, outside of the committees she manipulates to create what reality she wants. She gives them limited information and they do not reach out to the membership, so things are changed that potentially have debilitating effects on members. The Standards guideline change that you can have your membership terminated on the basis of four anonymous complaints is one. There are no details about the complaints, whether they can be all from one member, from staff, for one problem or many, just a clear ability of the committee or staff to terminate the membership. Those who have been victims of this new policy, which went by the Board with little discussion, are either gone or intimidated into silence for fear of getting that fourth complaint. She's not beloved to those people. 

And of course there was the nepotism of hiring her daughter and assisting her to be a fulltime employee, which was just questionable, and the false narratives that are now being pitched as real. All staff have been affected by the messiness of having personal family relationships in the workplace, and they have little opportunity to express that. I asked the Personnel Committee to try to meet with them so they'd have an opportunity to give some safe input, but I don't know if that happened. I know in the evaluation process she got some really negative evals, but I don't know if that was part of the Board's decision, or glossed over as the mean members.

One false narrative is that the Board and members don't care about the staff...just false. Another is that mean members have driven away all the employees and Board who have moved on, also not true. We have a lot of strong members who don't have good negotiating skills also, some bullies, and it has been hard to address, but when it comes from the top executive, it becomes the current reality. Now we seem to have a convoluted mess with bullies all around trying to get their demands met instead of working together to solve problems like discouraged and disempowered volunteers and our financial crisis, which no one is talking about on the Facey except one person who is being ignored. It doesn't help that she is one of the bullies and "elders" who are being sidelined by the other bullies. I have never found myself in the same category as she is and we've never agreed on anything in my memory, so it feels pretty ironic that we're kind of on the same side. She doesn't share my inability to deal with bullying though, so I hope she will be able to use those "skills" in the upcoming battle.

Because it looks like another battle is inevitable and will likely become public as the members go rogue and do what they think is best. I hope the press has the wisdom to stay out of it. Some people think it should be public...but that will be a horrifying embarrassment if the Board has to reveal all of the reasons they needed to mover her out of the position. She was never, and is not now, the professional manager we need and deserve. She created this mess with her lack of ability to support the Board, her asking them to manage things she was incapable of mangling, and her terrible way of prioritizing drama over the work in her job description. I am going to do myself a favor and stay all the way out of the meeting and whatever punishing the members think they should give to their elected Board. I kind of do want to point out to them that under the protocol she established, none of them would be able to present anything unless they submitted it in writing last Wednesday.

No one wants to hear about how these things happened before, even the recent battle that happened in 2021 when we had to let other terrible managers go. The mob attacked the Board, two of which were brand new members at their first meeting, and the mob was wrong, and the Board was right. Even some of the people who were in on it then have not seen how this is the same thing. Those managers were also well-liked, but that is just beside the point. We're a business. You either can have someone who is liked or have someone who is really going to do a good job, and sometimes they can also be liked...but one thing is more important than the other.

I only get a small number of readers now and I won't make the mistake of sharing this with any members this time. It is obvious that it no longer matters what I think, despite my long experience, my knowledge of how good managers do the job (I mean, I filled out evals for over 15 years, every year,) and all of the background issues that are not being addressed. Why do the members feel in the dark? Management failed to communicate. So many ways they could have been brought in to help with the financial situation before it became dire...selling more often, donating, fundraising. So many volunteers could have been more effective with real support from management instead of attempts to limit their participation, power, and contributions to solutions. There was so much missing from this manager. I hope people will speak up who experienced this, and know that we deserved better than someone who could charm a lot of people into supporting her and not holding her to a higher standard.

It's messy as can be now. Lots of people are chiming in to trash the working volunteers. I don't know how they think more volunteers will come forward in that atmosphere. I certainly won't. 

Communication with our membership is so important we are seeing how this is playing out right now. A few loud voices are steering a recall campaign against a new Board member who brought forward these reasons why we are being mismanaged, and her supporters are feeling silenced or not inclined to face the mob which will be out in force at the Board meeting. So many people are fighting for her that the Board may be forced to either break confidentiality to give detailed reasons, which will unnecessarily embarrass everyone concerned, or they will stick to their confidentiality and other people will yell at each other for awhile. Nobody will say that community building was one thing she also failed to do. We are as split up as can be, and everyone thinks that firing her was the worst thing that ever happened to the market. No one wants to hear how far from the truth that is. Not from me, anyway. But of course me removing myself makes them more sure they are right. Hard times.

 

Managing Distress

Doing Facebook calming duty is burning me right out. I am inclined to go back to not volunteering, so I can work, and feel peace. I don't know why people can't manage their emotions. I mean, I do know. It takes a lot of learning, as my generation wasn't taught as many skills as kids are mostly taught now. And they are scared. There's a lot of fear right now. Maybe I lost some credibility when I put on that golden wig last weekend. (that's a joke...)

Emotional damage persists and most of us tend to spread it without reflecting on reasons we might not want to escalate things, especially when we are angry. It's hard for me still to feel my stomach clenching up and my hands beginning to tremble. I mostly have learned not to immediately type something on social media, but my first reaction is to write things down, which I do here if I think they might be useful, or just in my journal if they are less organized and need more sorting out.

What I am trying to do on the Facey is try to point out some ways to move forward. A lot of people are hearing part of the story or only hearing it from people who are also mad, and in a community like ours you always  know someone who is hurting from what has happened. You generally gravitate toward the ones you care about the most, without necessarily knowing how things might actually be different from what you believe. I know I am only seeing part of the picture myself, so I'm trying to be careful.

One thing we are not addressing, and won't, is the underlying emotional landscape filled with people who are or were being misled, whether that is intentional or innocent. There are false narratives. I just pointed one out, after someone declared that the Board doesn't care about the staff and the staff knows it. That is called the member/staff divide and it does not exist. All of our members care deeply about our staff, and depend on them for all of the ways we work together to generate the income we all use to live on. Not all of our members know many of the staff, as our interactions don't always get personal. There is likely some reluctance to engage on both sides, for all kinds of reasons, but we gladly earn the money to pay them, we like to pay them well, and we are grateful to them for all that they do. 

Another of the false narratives is that there is some bad person out to ruin what we have built together. That is simply not possible. We never have a situation where everyone agrees, and we have plenty of stubborn people who insist on thinking for themselves, and will stand up for justice and truth. We actually react quite uniformly to manipulation and deceit, and sometimes that is one of the things simmering under the surface that is driving what is more diplomatically phrased. Most of us can recognize power trips and gaslighting and excuses and while we might not seem to react, we check that box in our minds and take future action carefully. We have people among us who use bullying tactics. We all need to learn more about how to identify and counter them.

And we tend to see everything down on the Park Blocks and in the LEC. We might not talk about it or let on, but we are observant. We spend all day looking closely at our customers and other members so we can refine our own actions to make ourselves more successful. When someone is doing well, we see if there is something they are doing that we can try. When they aren't, we usually have an opinion about why. And we talk to each other. We all have our networks.

So there is the public version, which is what I am trying to preserve on the Facey, and there are the many private versions, which we share in our networks. We all know things that we can't really say out loud without causing a fight. 

We're actually arguing about bullying now...it's centered on one of the Board members, mostly, who is assertive and has made a big impact by calling out some of the loose and unfortunate things that we were doing on the Board level and in general, but in my case, and others, we were bullied by the GM and some of the people aligned with her. They would deny it is bullying...this is known as DARVO, which is deny and reverse victim and offender. People like me who have trauma in our backgrounds have a broader identification of bullying than others. For me the gaslighting and manipulation with charm kinds of things are more triggering...I'm easy to manipulate so it happens rather often. Coercion, slipping things by me, setting me up...I identify these as bullying tactics while other people just use them as a way to get their needs met. For me, the toxicity was coming from the top.

The way the Committees were being used to exclude and terminate members, and keep them from actually doing things as members, was offensive. I saw more than one person be pushed out for the comfort of the people I started calling the Mean Girls. I saw a lot of control tactics being used, a lot of dismissiveness, and heard a lot of discriminatory language and just mean comments coming from a few people. I felt dismissed and disregarded rather frequently, or just bypassed and prevented from making the contributions I had formerly been welcomed to make. I'm sure this would be denied so it isn't useful to fight about it at this point. I just don't want to see a controlling, manipulative person in power again. 

We'll see how that goes. Interpretation of bullying is very personal and confusing to most people. Generally correcting a bully requires some type of assertion that also looks and feels like bullying. It's a real skill set to draw boundaries in a calm and nonviolent way, particularly with people who see calm as passive and angry as positive. For that reason I am unlikely to attend the Board meeting. 

I had to call it out, actually, the last time we had a staff transition that was unpopular. One of the people we fired/let resign manipulated a bunch of people to come and fight the Board to save his job...they were gaslit to misinterpret the Board's actions, and then he broke confidentiality to accuse the Board of things to which they could not respond without breaking confidentiality themselves. Some did. it was super difficult to calm down the crowd and convince them we would be okay, and I finally just called it bullying and inappropriate in the board room and the managers stalked out and proceeded to do some really shady actions, that we didn't find out until later. We naively extended them some kindnesses while they were essentially sabotaging our office, as we found out the next day, but it was all set aside so we could get up and running for the market in two days. We couldn't get into our database due to those actions, so we had to wing it for two weeks, but we did it, and put things back together, and righted our ship. It took a lot of volunteers and some really long hours.

So far, this is nothing like how bad that was. This is relatively orderly and I don't think there is any sabotage, hopefully, except for a nasty FB post to break the confidentiality and get the members all upset. It prevented the Board from framing things in a positive and legally responsible manner, which is still brewing on the site, so this is day two of me trying to spin things to let's fix it mode, which is getting a little more complicated. There are definitely a couple of people whom I will be trying to avoid in the future. 

But also, the good people are coming out and offering to help and I think things are going to survive the turmoil. I think it had to happen, judging by the number of members in my network who are relieved and ready for this change. As I recall it took a season or so for the atmosphere to settle the last time...the crimes were not addressed, the people involved went on to get their second chances, and only a few of us were forever changed. This could settle down faster once people are reassured that it is okay and once we get the manager we imagine. Let's hope we get that person. The uglier it gets, the less likely it will be that someone will want to step into it, so there's that concern. I wish I knew how to make that point to the people who are angry. They're angry at me now, for trying. 

Oh well. Comes with the territory. The people in my network get me. That's enough for now. 

Later: Actually after reading some hateful and humiliating comments directed to me I deleted my posts and comments. I'm back to not volunteering. They can figure it out for themselves. I'll provide archives when asked but that is it.  

Now this is the next day and I feel like I made the right decision. It's like I was never there. People call for calm are trashed, and there's a recall petition and a hope that the GM will be reinstated. A much bigger mess than expected...but for my self preservation I will have to stay out of it. I'm beyond hoping or trying to make it be the market I have given my life to support. It's not my market, and a lifetime of giving does not guarantee a thing, not even gratitude. Lesson learned. 

Don't Make it Drama

 I reviewed the Market's draft budget last night though I didn't feel ready to go to Board meetings again yet. I found it confusing and inadequate. I know the Budget Committee members know how to put one together so I am making the assumption that they are no longer doing the GM's job but letting her make the effort she has been supposed to have been making for the last two-plus years. She has not learned enough, for whatever reasons, to keep us financially solvent. Apparently we are about $40,000 in the red, though that is not an official figure. No one has actually made any official statements from the Board yet.

However, someone broke the confidentiality of the Executive Session that was held after the meeting, to announce on Facebook (on the semi-private Members page) that the GM was fired. They did not share the reasons, but in an anonymous post they scapegoated one of the diligent Board members who has been making an effort to hold leaders to account. In case you forgot, I resigned from leadership last August, although just giving up the Secretary position did not make me not a leader.

I took myself off as Admin of the FB group last December, which left four staff as admins, and at some point the new Secretary was made an admin, but she took it upon herself, after resigning her position last night, to break confidentiality too in what seemed to be an official post, except that it was not neutral, as an admin post should be. Despite my vow to stay out of volunteering, I went in to moderate, see if I could dampen the drama and quiet some fears, and have now been monitoring it for let's see, 3 hours last night and 6 so far today. I had work to do but I am not doing it. I am volunteering for the market, again. 

That comes with lots of dismissal and a bit of bullying, and a bit of praise here and there, and has been somewhat effective, but at my personal cost. I did not sleep much last night. I'm fighting anxiety and the only saving grace is that I was not in the board room trying to help make the very hard decisions that had to be made. The breaking of confidentiality and the resignations to support friendships were not professional responses to the situation and now people are dividing off and imagining that it would be possible to invite the GM back. I'm embarrassed for my organization. 

It seems we've been badly managed for so long that people don't remember what good management looks like. Some of us do. It looks like a job description (which can be found in the Policies document, I believe) which is filled by a person who can handle all of the tasks in the time frame available. Who can prioritize the things that keep the organization solidly on track. Financial accountability is right up at the top of the priorities. It's the members' money...we make it with our work while we make our livings. We pay the fees, which have to be fair and sustainable. We want the budget to be followed. If there is a shortage, we want that to be identified and rectified before it gets too big to fix. The budget shortfall should not be surprising. The fact that it is due to overstaffing should have been addressed by fewer staff. It's not that difficult for someone who is a professional manager. You do what has to be done, and you do it professionally, without drama, without pain if you can. You use your skills.

It's not a personal situation, it's a business situation. Making it all about loving someone or even liking them is a messy, inappropriate use of emotions in what has to be a practical set of solutions. The missing skills have had to be filled in by volunteers, other hired people, or left unaddressed. Member complaints have been high. Members have life situations, business concerns, and all types of complex needs, but they can't dominate the job and they have to be handled well. We are independent business owners. Some of us are very experienced and skilled. It is not required that we like the manager, just that we have confidence that they can do the job, are doing the job, and are working to make the organization thrive. 

That just wasn't happening, and there were a host of member problems that were created and not managed well, in my direct observation. I'm not going to list any...they are now in the past, and hopefully solutions have been or will be found. We have to move forward and do better. 

Some leaders have stepped aside, and others will step in. Also, doesn't have to be dramatic. You do your part if you have the energy needed, and you do your best. You work with whomever else is in the room, no matter what you think about them, their style, their skills, or whatever you think. You work together for the common good. You set aside your less productive emotions and do the work. You can have boundaries, you can enter and exit at will...you are a volunteer. 

There is a world of difference between you and someone making twice as much as you have probably ever made, in  the amount of duties, the amount of stress, the number of skills needed. It is just not comparable. We need a professional manager to run our complex, deeply cultural and extremely important organization. That is really all that is happening right now. We will find a manager more suited to our current needs. 

No drama. No intrigue. No need to air every grievance or go back over every mistake or perceived error. You won't know all of what happened. You don't actually need to know. You want to know, sure. Drama is very attractive and even addictive to some people. But personnel issues are confidential. That protects your employees, keeps them safe so they can move on, and it protects your leaders and volunteers so they can continue to work for your common good.

It just isn't that complicated. Try not to make it worse than it needs to be.

Just Deserts

 I decided to put this same post in both of my blogs tonight. I don't have all that many readers, and they all might as well know that there really aren't two separate parts of me, but rather lots of parts, all operating at the same time.

Hello, it's me. I can't sleep. I noticed, when I got up after trying to sleep for a few hours, that the lights are on in my neighbor's house, as well. I imagine there are many who cannot sleep and this isn't something new, of course. But it is dark out in the world, much darker than I, for one, am used to.

I'm not naive. I've been a radical thinker from an early age, and I pay attention. I care about justice. I care about things that are life-affirming, both concrete and abstract things, and these are some times when it is impossible to rest easy. I knew the future would not be pretty, but I did fail to prepare for how fast and how hard it would come down on us.

I have this little thing I do, that I've done for almost 40 years, called the Jell-O Art Show. I write about it in my other blog, Gelatinaceae, which gets a lot more readers than this one does, because it is about art, and joy. Jell-O Art is a particularly joyful art form, silly, beautiful, awkward, glorious, and many times, jiggly and slippery and super uncooperative. It's the reason I call myself an artist, when in my profession I am a crafter, a production worker, a screenprinter and not all that skilled of one, despite doing it for my whole working life. I'm self-taught, so I'm just a worker. I like work and I am diligent, and I've done well with it in a limited and sustainable way.

But Jell-O Art is different. Producing and being in the Jell-O Art show engages all of me. Over the years I learned how to be an artist, how to imagine and conceptualize, how to find the deeper levels, how to put my whole self in and shake myself about. Every year I spend the three winter months of January through March working more or less full time on the Jell-O Art Show. Not only do I work out some kind of personal piece, which is an expression of something about my life or self, but I have been lucky enough to work with a very dear group of people called the Radar Angels. 

The individual Angels have come and go, and while there are still a few of us from the beginning in the late 70s and early 80s, it's an ever-changing group. We work in a process that is purely collaborative, with everyone pooling their talents to make something out of what we all bring. We brainstorm for a few weeks about what we want our show to be about. We throw out tons of ideas, and gradually we coalesce into something we all agree we want to say, using parody songs and a type of melodrama that is generally only a little bit serious. 

You can go to my other blog for about 15 or so years of what that has been about. In 2012 I was crowned as the Queen of Jell-O Art in recognition of how seriously I take Jell-O, and how important it is to me, and that just fueled this deeper appreciation I have for it and brought me into the role of bringing that passion and creative force to the public in the form of the show.

Now I generally write the bones of the script, which we develop together, and we choose the songs to fit and write our lines and pick our characters and figure out our costumes and I make a lot of the props and set pieces and we all work for the last few weeks to pull it all together to present it. This Saturday is when we will be doing it. 

Because these times have been so dark, and we are all of a mind about them, we did something we have always made ourselves avoid for the most part: we got political. We had to. Three of us even decided to play a few of the current archvillains of our times. We chose three out of the many, many that we could have chosen, and for each of us, it is not easy to do. We don't want to come on stage as racists, nazis, psychopaths and evil men. We don't even want to play men! This year in a weird twist, all of our actors are women, and all of our characters are men. At least they start out as men.

One of the themes we wanted to work on was gender...we wanted to explore honoring multiple genders and the fluidity of them, to have a world where that was open for people to be free about it, and make out statement of acceptance of it, but as the show developed we kind of stopped thinking about it. We just acted like people...as if gender didn't even exist. It just occurred to me tonight that we did that. It's a metaphor really, that if there was that openness (WHICH THERE IS!) everyone would live like that.

So that's operating. And in coming on stage, generally, we Angels feel loved. Our audience is the best. They always approve of whatever we do, our mostly amateur singing and presentation, our ridiculous costumes, our dumb jokes and sometimes stale humor. Our obvious theme is always Jell-O saves the world, no matter how much we try to say something else. It just comes out like that. 

But this time, Jell-O is a very weak weapon against the world. We are coming on stage to be hated, the three of us who are playing the billionaires. Really hated. We hate ourselves even. Yet we will sing and dance and pretend at the end that we are transformed and we hope to leave the audience feeling loved and ourselves, at least as the people we really are, back to feeling loved.

There is not any hope that the characters will be loved, no matter how much they are transformed, because no, they will not get what they deserve, they will not be stopped or even aware of our little play and our sad and profound comedy. We will have our little moments of joy, our escape, but it will not be fully satisfying when we walk off the stage and back into the dark world we are living through.

That's life I suppose. As an old person, when I look back at the brief times when things were going well and the culture was opening and affirming, it was never that for everyone. Black people were still being killed by the police and racists, different people of all kinds were still being othered, poor people were still being starved and caused to suffer and being deprived of their humanity. It has never been a pretty world, except of course for the birds and trees and flowing waters and incredible kindnesses and soft hearts and all that everyone attempts to create and hold sacred for themselves and each other.

It's enough to keep you up late every night, isn't it? It's enough to make you dissolve in wonder for your whole life, and then when you get old, like I have, it's enough to make you weep for the wasted moments and lost opportunities and very short time left to have some more. 

This is my late night Jell-O Art world, friends. Maybe I can sleep now. Maybe I have had enough, for now. I am pretty sure the light will come back in the morning, for me to work some more. I will never lose hope.

Dang

 Well, it finally came out that Market may be in pretty large red budget territory. This is exactly why we always hired with financial management right at the top of our ideal candidate qualities. This, sadly, is something I saw coming and warned people about.

Back in the 80s, we went for a couple of years without a Treasurer, which is a volunteer position that needs some expertise. When we got one, he told us we were $25,000 in the red, which back then, was huge. The manager team at the time threw up their hands and said they were just not that good with the money part. They'd been overspending.

So we all pitched in, cut the entertainment and promotions budgets in half, fired the GM, and kept the AM for continuity. We had fundraisers, we put together a cookbook of market recipes, we sought donations and grants, and we did that for a couple of years. We did end up firing that AM later as well, but for other reasons, and she had hired a financially smart AM by then, who despite being deceived when hired, said she would give us a year and got our budget back on track. That was when we instituted a membership fee, (only $5 at the time) and I'm guessing we also raised whatever other fees we could, but that was in a recession and after a devastating fire in which we lost nearly all of our accumulated infrastructure, and in a time when the weather was terrible and member numbers were falling. 

One of the things that helped us was moving to the Park Blocks, but right now our options are more limited. We got some improvements there over the winter but they also took away the coverings that had been helpful to the people whose spaces were under them, so probably no net gain there this time.

No one resigned from the Board back then, as far as I know, and I was Chair, so it was really hard. I was in my early 20s and didn't know much. People helped me learn, and I made some mistakes, but I rose to the challenge with the others and pulled in whatever friends and acquaintances I had in the community. Everybody helped.

Obviously with four people resigning from the Board and all new officers as well (except our overwhelmed but excellent Vice Chair who is in the burnout stage at the end of her 3-year commitment) we have a new, inexperienced team of leaders and they will need a lot of help. It's that kind of an opportunity to fix some of the things that caused this.

It's not personal, but we have to fire the GM who failed to do the financial management we needed. For whatever reasons, it's on her. And, we can't afford two office assistants and never could. Time to fix that mistake as well. So we will go from 6 in the office to 3. Make the AM the interim GM and do a hiring process with financial accountability at the top of the list again. Cut the entertainment and promotions budgets, cut whatever can be cut. Since we just had fee increases, do not make the mistake of putting this on the members, who did not cause the problem. Many of us are struggling and that is going to continue with this crazy economic situation the government is putting us into. It's on the members to fix it, so we need encouragement and care and support in order to do that.

However, it is really important to do this in the least dramatic way possible. Offer to let the GM resign rather than being fired, and avoid publicly trashing anyone who participated in the lack of oversight or whatever happened. Volunteers were never supposed to be in full charge of the spending, and giving the raises and promotions that happened was done without full disclosure because the spending was not being properly tracked at the management level. It was not the job of volunteers. They did their best. The budget was sound, except for the things that couldn't be planned for, like weather, the effect of dropping the November markets (fewer members now sell in October) and the dissatisfaction that drove away members and volunteers because of other aspects of management.

Obviously it is time to stop trying to kick members out or punish them for whatever...just stop. We will have to pull together hard to get through this. Do not take money out of savings to fix this hole and go on thinking we can do business as usual. This will be viewed as corrupt and will do more damage.

I have said many times that I have retired from volunteering and I absolutely need to stick to that. I know getting back in now will perpetuate the concept that a few strong people will fix things and keep us going and that is just a sacrifice of our personal lives and I just will not and can not do that at my age. I am so sorry. It is very hard for me to say no when there is a need. 

There are plenty of people who can fix this. Sure it will be hard, but it is not unprecedented. We have always been on a financial edge for all of our existence. We don't want to make it impossible for people to participate while other people get to cruise along. Hardship or opportunity need to be equally shared.

And hardest of all, we need transparency now. Admit mistakes were made, because as James Baldwin said, not everything that is faced can be solved, but nothing can be solved unless it is faced. To get people to care enough to pitch in, it has to be an atmosphere of safety and honesty. No one can be protected or coddled while other people continue to give more than they want to. Just say the truth. Don't make it personal. Don't accept or make excuses. It's not brutal honesty, it's just honesty. It can come with compassion.

If people were hired who didn't have skills, don't do that again. Move forward more sensibly. If, when making a decision, you don't feel right, think again. Make it feel right. When I was Chair, we actually began operating with consensus, so that we had to get everyone on board to make decisions. I'm not saying we can go to real consensus, but make sure we are still in consensus-seeking mode, to avoid bullying or dominant behaviors which are part of what got us to this point.

While this is a crisis, it is not going to kill the organization. There are plenty of options for getting back on solid ground. There are professional managers out there who would love this challenge. We have smart financially savvy members who can lead us back to solvency. We have smart and experienced members who can help us reconstruct strong governance. We can do this. 

Rise up and keep your ethics clean and your hearts open and learn to work strongly together. We are already on the path to fixing this. Trust is going to matter, so do the things needed to build trust. Be firm. Be strong. Give yourselves credit for all the things you have done right and are doing right and as well as you can. Stay positive. 

I'm willing to be a cheering member from the sidelines, it seems. It does really matter that we turn this around. Let's go.

 

Working through

 Of course even as I wrote the post about the Market I was working on the ways I would forgive and move forward through my disappointment to get back to support and love for the organization. I knew it might take awhile but that when I see someone or something needing support, my empathy would be there.

Living with the truth is hard. Much of it is subjective. Rarely is it an absolute. Things that are bad have good wrapped inside somewhere, usually. Mostly people need the chance to learn and to have patience extended to them while they do that. Everyone needs some kind of help.

One of our skilled members came out of retirement and offered to support the Board while they learn how to manage their challenges. I'm pleased that she did, even though I don't have the energy to pitch in and help this time. I don't, and never did, want the organization to fail to right itself. I've been there while we faced, as a group, some awful and discouraging situations. Looking back, I often wanted to not be there, to not be one of the ones capable of doing the work, and to not feel compelled to stick with it.

Something in me never let me walk away before. Maybe it was that people were depending on me, and needed my skills. Maybe it fed my ego or my sense of belonging, probably it fit well with my alignment of productivity with self-esteem. For whatever reasons, I was never able to turn my back and let others carry the load.

I think it is my age that is allowing me to do that now, the knowledge that as I turn 75 I don't have much time left. I have a lot to do with that little bit of time. I haven't written my books, my research isn't organized enough to be useful, and my property and house are getting a little beyond me. I decided I had to prioritize myself. I'm having to remind myself frequently that I made that choice, and I want to honor it. I am not guaranteed the time and capability to accomplish the things on my personal list.

I feel the draw of pitching back in every day. Right now I am overachieving the goals and tasks I set for the Jell-O Art Show, which is a week from Saturday. I'm making it through the list, but it is still long an I may not be able to do all of the things I want to do. I work all day every day on it. It's fun, though exhausting, and I am anxious all of the time. It's not for money. It's all about art, and right now, it is all about saving my life from the excruciating political situation that our evil leaders are putting the world through. 

The grief over setting back our world's peoples to the degree we are seeing is consuming. I won't live long enough to see these many broken promises put back together. It is devastating every day. It will cost lives, probably some close to me. It is so much bigger than anything going on in my microcosm.

In the past it has been my solace that I could keep my smaller world sweet and organized and the dissonance of the larger world didn't have so much discouraging power over me. That is true while I work on Jell-O for 10 more days. But I am not sure what I will do after that. 

I will work, as I still have an overwhelming amount of things on my other lists, and I will try to maintain some joy in there to sustain me. Spring and summer will help. Maybe the political fights will begin to turn in the sunnier directions as well. A lot of people are working on that. I still have hope, and I won't stop hoping.

I hope Market will find a way through this hard time as well. I'll find some ways to support, I expect. I don't want to hurt it more. It's not the hardest time we've had, by far. Some of the changes we will make will bring lasting good, that's certain. I guess what I wanted to come here to say tonight was that I still care, and can feel the forgiveness and compassion coming back. It didn't take as long as I thought it might. As I adjust to my new, non-leader role, I'm planning to forgive myself for what I'm not willing to do, as well as what I've not done as well as I might have. I'm going to forgive all of us. It's the smallest thing to start with, and will make way for the bigger things. Eventually all will be well again. Or well enough.