January

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Break's Over

 I started back to serious work yesterday...I have a lot to do right now. It's good enough weather to put tote bags outside in the sun so I'll be doing that today, and I have a lot of hats to print as well. Supply of those has dried up some, and gotten more expensive, as expected with this volatile economy. One of the four color options I use has been eliminated, and I'm not sure how I will deal with that. And I'm steadily running out of bags.

Taking a break from thinking and writing about market helped, though I don't feel like any of the situations I was writing about has changed. Mostly I feel that my perspective is not wanted, and I will keep it to myself. Let the Board and officers do what they think is best. Underneath that is that I have no idea what they are doing until some minutes are published, without bothering someone to tell me what happened at the meeting. I don't want to engage enough to do that, really. It's a lot more peaceful and quiet out here without thinking that every word I write is targeted for some reaction to shut me up.

I have lots of other emotional territories to explore that are also meaningful to me, and important to my life. My dreams have been rich. I'm reading books that bring up questions and sometimes supply answers. I'm avoiding social media. I started another blog and the quiet in there is so refreshing I may not share it with anyone. I hope my friends know that I'm fine and still thinking about them and our shared concerns, but just have to step back and live in a less mean world than I have been.

Which is hard to do! It's gotten sick and dispiriting out there, even while there's hope that the overreach is bringing comebacks. I'm keeping my activism quiet too, though that is unsettling. I have to do what is possible for me, which might not be what you want from me.

It's weird promoting Jell-O Art at such a time, since to most people it seems so trivial and silly, but art is one of the important vehicles we have to change the world and Jell-O is deeper than you might think. Permission to be silly and enjoy parts of life even in serious times is important. We got an extra week as the gallery put the show date back to March 28th, which will work better for me and some of the group. Probably not for everyone who already made plans. 

Be well. Do what you need to do to use this offseason from the selling part of our jobs well, as it goes by fast. Stay warm, but play outside. Watch the winter birds and keep feeding them even when the squirrels eat everything first. Take care of your health. 

You don't really have to eat Jell-O, in case you are confused by that. I don't see it as food anymore, though as a food-like substance, it brings fascination. It's fake though. Like so many things.

I've been making fences and grape arbors with my filbert poles. They don't photograph well but I'm loving the way they look in the yard. I hope this will make my grape crops happier and more abundant this year. 

 

 

 

Where I Am

 Just briefly today, I'm deeply grieving an old and dear friend so other things fade to subjects I can't fully address. Obviously the murder of Renee Good is taking the hearts of the world over today, as it should, despite it being so metaphoric and compromised by so many cultural details. Much is being said by others and I hope this becomes a watershed moment for the US public and stops the momentum that has been so disturbing, strengthening the momentum of the resistance.

I started writing my thoughts in a different location. The stalking of this blog for drama has felt debilitating and even though I have possibly helpful and maybe inspiring things to say, I'm so far keeping them to myself which feels like the right thing for me. I wrote nonstop yesterday from 9:00 until 3:00, not intentionally, just had a lot to explore. I journal every day, but this stuff goes deeper. 

True to form I had an empathetic response to the bullying and I'll just say this: I learned a new concept, just new to me, the shame spiral. It's what happens when we feel shamed, and it's the same type of reaction that people have to learn to control and adapt to, the same kind of response to treatment that we don't feel we deserve. Empathy doesn't change what happened, but it helps us move forward if we apply it carefully while still acknowledging damage, intent and all of the rest of what is going on.

I'm exploring this in the context of losing my friend and it's bringing up many areas of emotion that make me vulnerable to more bullying so I can't help you all figure this one out, not now anyway. Go on your facebook page and look for it. Everything we learn about our psychology and our human responses to confusion and oppression is useful right now, so if you have the capacity, do more research and see how we can help each other deal with these complex and rough times. 

The one thing we have to do is be here, present for our community, and my complex thoughts about how to do that and still maintain safety are my struggle, like yours are for you. I'm going to do my work, and I expect to keep growing and working through this life, with you or despite you. 

I'll be back. Be well. Make some Jell-O.

Think

 

Illusion and Delusion

 I know I said in the last post that I would not link to the KLCC interview because I didn't want you to have to read it...but I've come to realize that everyone needs to hear what it is there. It's shocking in several ways. https://www.klcc.org/podcast/klccs-oregon-rainmakers/2025-12-30/klccs-oregon-rainmakers-eugenes-saturday-and-holiday-markets 

The confabulation about the Kareng Fund/Caring Fund is one thing. (We are in the process of transitioning the spelling to Caring Fund so people can find it more pronounceable.) What she wrote compromises our legality and operational confidentiality. She never got a grant. We never had an essay contest. She does not know our history and has in fact done several things to diminish us, which I have documented in a different location. No one connected with Saturday Market or living as an artisan in Oregon should find it acceptable to undermine the work of the Fund. We have given away $11,200 JUST in 2025. We did not bring in that much and much of our money comes from a few extremely generous donors who are dedicated to helping others. We are extremely careful to stick to the training we got from Center for Nonprofit Law and the highest ethics possible, and to be attacked in any form is just reprehensible. That our SM staff would support the FB page attack was beyond the pale, but for her to speak falsely about the Fund to KLCC was criminal. 

She also said in her Caring Fund story that the GM gave her confidential information about the process that no GM would have had access to, or given out, so it makes them look bad, as well as the market. That is not how the KF does business. She has told me questionable things about her own interactions with the KF, given out other confidential information, and does not respect any of what the Fund has done or is doing. There are rumors that donations intended for the KF have not reached the Fund. Her microagressions toward the Fund have been worked around but they remain part of the problem of trying to raise funds as a nonprofit at this difficult time. The KF is the safety net for the most fragile of market members, as the market is supposed to be the safety net for all of us. Don't you question why anyone would work against it? Have you met the members of the KF Board? Talked to anyone who has been helped? 

Next, she said that the city has not been supportive of the market through all the decades, and used a cartoon from 1971 to assert that. The staff person who got that as a "present," must have felt insulted, to start. She is dead wrong about the city and has no basis for her assertion. They have supported us in many ways over the decades and if she had even glanced at the archives or listened to me or any of the past managers about it, she would never say such a thing about our landlord, our municipality, and the good people who work for the city. To claim that she changed this relationship is so arrogant. I witnessed her manipulating city staff and surely some of them have given her a wide berth as her knowledge and abilities to manage us are so poor that they are no improvement over the times we have had to make staff transitions and our leadership reverted to members and everyone adjusted. She knows nothing about any of those times. 

She actually says two things about past managers that are ethically compromised, though we have no reason to believe they are true. A GM demanding that she run for the Board is fraught. The Board is the boss of the GM. One of the things she has done repeatedly is interfered with the elections, something widely observed, with the result that with over 300 members in the halls for this past election Dec. 13th and 14th, only 48 voted. So for her to assert that a past GM did so is likely projection, but if it is true, she didn't do them any favors. The bylaws clearly state that the Secretary is in charge of the elections, and the policy states that staff is not to be involved. 

Lastly, she downright admits that she walked into the office and took the job of GM. She took advantage of a power vaccuum, did not do her duties as a Board Chair to manage the issues, and set things up in a somewhat long game to get that salary and benefits. She engineered the salary increase, sat idle while the Board attempted to rehire, and manipulated the leaders to believe that she could do the job. I did not sit on the Personnel Committee, but to my knowledge she had no resume, no relevant experience, and was not qualified to fill the requirements of the job description. The Board at the time took what looked like the easy way out, and we have been paying for that ever since, while she strips out our assets, destroys our committees and drives away volunteers. I spoke up, believe me, but her campaign to undermine my voice was well underway and the other leaders did not listen to me. 

In her own words: "And it was such a wonderful community that I was like, I have to get involved. And then I became a vendor. So then when I was a vendor for a number of years, the general manager at the time just came up to me and said, Okay, so I'm gonna need your candidate statement by next Wednesday. And I go, What are you talking about? And she said, It's time for you to be on the board. Is that how this works? Like we take turns? And she said, Well, I just need your candidate statement. So, you know, I turned one in, and then I got elected. I was on the board for about three years, and as board chair, we had a staffing kind of complete turnaround, right? So after COVID, it's like everybody left, and that was really crazy. We had a brand new hire and a part time office assistant left in the office. And so I said, Well, I was Board Chair, I guess I have to go in. I have keys, right? So I just started running the thing. And then we tried to hire a couple different people. We did hire somebody, and it just didn't work out. It wasn't a good fit. And so the board got together and said, Well, you just do it, you know? I said, I'll do it temporary till we can find somebody. And then, you know, I just took it, but that meant I had to be off the board. I had to no longer sell. But it's a beautiful organization. It's a great community. And I am happy to do it." 

Her level of favoritism shows broadly in the interview. She guides the journalist around to her friends and feeds him false impressions of what is really going on at Holiday Market. Like her Annual Meeting presentation, this bears no resemblance to the reality of what most members are actually experiencing. 

It is galling to read. I'm embarrassed for KLCC that they sent a new reporter to interview someone who should have shown professionalism and skills to promote the community and market but just lied and referenced her non-accomplishments and rode on the work of past volunteers and staff. It is transparently a failure of leadership that she is still employed.  

If you have been reading back you can see that most of what she says that is positive about the market and community has been lifted from the writing I've been doing here. "Keeping everyone in the basket," is an attitude from one of our best managers that I brought forward when she attempted over two years to terminate the memberships of two of our most prominent and successful food booth owners. When she speaks about Pad Thai she conveniently doesn't mention that she has been harassing its owner for two years, treats him with contempt, and tries to neutralize his words and actions in several ways, from altering the minutes of the committee he serves on, to going around the guidelines to find ways to make his experience more difficult. Instead of setting those members up to thrive, which should be her primary duty, she is attempting to destroy their businesses and take their voices away. So yeah, she is not about keeping people in the basket. 

I'm sure tired of writing about this person, the narcissist. I'm tired of trying to get people to see these completely evident patterns of sociopathic and destructive behavior. I want the members who can to pick an issue, one that they think is important enough to their future to protect for all of us, and do their part. I cannot keep making the sacrifices for the org that people have been happy to watch me make. Was it enough to see me called an evil nasty woman right in the middle of Holiday Market as I was ignoring my potential customers to do the task of giving away the baskets in the raffle? Was it enough to see the staff "likes" on a bullying post for which I was told I deserved the bullying? 

Is it enough to hear KLCC being gaslighted and the city misrepresented in a post that will be on their website virtually forever? Can you really still say this is not about you? 

Don't just listen to me. Ask for her resume. Ask for an audit of even one part of her job performance. Using her job description, make an analysis of what parts she is actually doing, as one of her greatest skills is getting other people to do her job. What does she do to earn that prime salary? Ask about how our savings have dwindled to a third, and why. Ask yourself where your information is coming from, if you are even getting any. Finally it is clear to me why she is trying to derail the archives project...she does not want you to know the real history. She does not want you to know what is really happening with the market. 

The thing about narcissists is that their power is an illusion, but they know how to line people up to support them and protect them from accountability. Those people are enablers. I will admit to being misled in the past, but I am clear about it now. She's so confident in her illusory power, that she just admits it all in that interview. 

Just compare that to the interview you would have been proud to read. Compare the treatment you have received and seen others receive to what support to thrive would look like. Compare the outreach to what outreach would really look like. What partners do we really have? It is an illusion.   

More False Narratives

 For the record, the references to the Kareng Fund/Caring Fund in a recent interview with KLCC are completely a false narrative. The Fund does not hold contests for funds, with essays and winners. We grant funds to low-income artisans who apply, for emergency relief. Our mission is narrow. Plus the GM does not handle these grants, which are confidential and handled by the Kareng Fund Board. So just a story that is not true.

While it is possible the person telling the story got some type of grant from somewhere, it was not from the Kareng Fund/Caring Fund. We can give her the benefit of the doubt that she is just confused about the details.

I won't even get started about the self-serving monologue about the GM. The cartoon in question was from the very early days of the market when both the city and county did not want us selling on their properties. That was settled by 1972. History shows that since then the City of Eugene was quite supportive of the market, even giving us $1000 after the arson that burnt up all of our equipment. 

And we were closed for 10 weeks in the beginning of the 2020 season. So yes we were closed. 

You have to ask yourself why these false stories are being told. I have no idea. I'm not going to link to the interview, which is just full of favoritism and blather. I'm disappointed for KLCC. 

 

  

Living in Community

 I've been holding back my emotions and processing the bullying I received on Xmas Eve. There's a lot of background for me that you will know if you have been reading here a long time, which I will keep to myself for now. The one image I won't be able to forget is the entire office staff and some of the site crew watching while I demanded the bullying post be removed from the members' site. They were lined up not to hear me, but to reject me and side with the bully. Accusations flew at me: I "called her out" and "made her cry." I deserved the "natural consequences" of my words. It was pure DARVO: Deny, Accuse, Reverse Victim and Offender. 

They refused to take the post down, as I protested that she was taking out her anger on poor people...hurting the recipients and applicants to the Kareng Fund. She reposted my writing on social media without my permission, used it to vilify the most unselfish thing our market community does, the grants to people suffering. 

They shrugged and said it was the internet. She named me loudly and tried to turn the community against me. To be clear, in my post I named no one, and did not try to shape opinions. I observed some behavior that went against community norms, and I commented on it, the behavior, the actions, and the pattern recognition I had about the trend of violating the norm of the community. I did not call anyone out. I'm observing patterns and I can't stand silent and pretend I don't see them, but instead of blowing things up when I started seeing those patterns, I confined my voice to my little tiny opinion essays. I tried communicating with the powerful, but they did not respond, and were angry with me. I stopped trying to participate when it was only acceptable within some very narrow limits. 

A person has to go and search out my writing. I don't post it on social media, I don't push it on anyone, I just write essays about my life in a remote corner of the internet. Before the explosion of anger at me the post had 5 readers. Now it has almost 200. The internet works its ways, but it is not our community, and the internet does not make the rules. And while they might not be written down, our community does have rules.

She loudly called me an "Evil Nasty Woman" right there in the food court as I clipped the winning tickets to the baskets. Standing around were dozens of people who had just bought tickets, and had been disappointed to not win one of those five baskets. She loudly declared she and her family would no longer support the Kareng Fund, and I had to ask why. According to her in anger, it was because of me, hurting her feelings in a post someone had brought to her attention. She wanted her families' donations back. I gave her back the one item remaining and had to rummage through the baskets to see if there were more. This made me feel shameful. Donations are freely given...as far as I know, no one has ever taken them back. But she demanded and I went into fawn mode. I didn't fight back. I swallowed and tried to keep working. She escalated, in what I now feel was a proxy fight where she was used to express the outrage that some people have been holding for me for using my free speech rights. I think she was provoked to provide drama for people who feed on it. I keep being accused of creating drama, but that is not me. I write things. I don't even broadcast them. If you don't like what I write, don't read it. Make your own observations, please. Think for yourself. 

Not everyone knows what it is like to live with the same people week after week for years and decades. Some of the members have known me for all these fifty years. They've seen me make mistakes, learn to own them, learn to do better, have my feet held to the fire, try to make amends, try to not make the same mistakes again. We've seen each other do this, sometimes sitting in judgement, sometimes not speaking to each other for years or other times clearing the air and getting over it. Generally we have allowed each other the personal space to do that work without public scrutiny. I've been told we don't hold each other accountable and to a degree that is true. For instance, when someone works in group process, they are not necessarily responsible for the products of the group and the process. They may have tried to block it, they may have initiated it. We don't always know, and we certainly don't know all the discussion and thinking behind their positions or stances, so most of us do suspend judgement and fail to demand accountability. We shrug and say it is "not about me" and stick to our own business and keep working. Sometimes this is not the most healthy response, as we also generally fail to defend each other. 

Many of us have agreed, tacitly or overtly, just to work beside each other and not address our disagreements. I'm certainly holding out some issues that I haven't settled with the people who worked to create them, and I've been the scapegoat many times and watched other people being held as scapegoat, something there is rarely any kind of justice for. Generally time just moves on and people get more chances to act to build their reputations in whatever way they choose. The community allows a wide latitude of behaviors, but it does have rules. No one likes being bullied, so bullies get isolated and people walk away. They are rarely confronted. We are a peace-loving community so we often overlook things, to keep that peace. I'm not saying it is the best way, but it is a longstanding way. 

But sometimes, like now, things become intolerable to a large portion of the membership. I registered that there were several members not at HM who had previously been there, and my guess is they couldn't afford it. Accessibility to those at the low-earning end is a big part of our values. We didn't have a "regular 5% increase" in HM fees as has been stated. There were many years there was no increase, or things were cut to prevent one when costs rose. I remember when it was scary to cross the threshold of $1000. We thought we would lose member participation, and of course we did. Lots of things cost us member participation, and we learned how to balance costs and fees carefully and increase slowly. We're not seeing that caution lately, though it may be there in the board discussions. I stopped attending board meetings a year and a half ago, so I can only hope that the discussions are well-rounded. I think they are. I don't agree with all of the decisions, certainly, but that is nothing new. While sitting there for 15 years without a vote, recording the actions and decisions, there was a lot I didn't agree with. Even when I seemed to be "on the inside" I was rarely if ever a loyal cheerleader. I cheered for the organization, for the community. 

Operating by seeking consensus is something I don't think is still being stressed. Maybe it is there in the quest for unity and the pushing out of different opinions, but it didn't used to be acceptable to banish people for their different opinions. We didn't banish people at all, actually. Membership is voluntary, and we didn't feel it could be taken away unless there was something illegal or unforgivable happening. We worked with everyone who wanted to participate, no matter how difficult it might be. It has never been easy. But when that last board insisted that they should have control over whom they served with, I knew we had lost something irreplaceable. Control had won out over allowing diversity. The wrong people had a majority to enact that control over the entirety of the membership. We are not a community that responds well to control tactics. We don't like to be manipulated and we really don't like to be lied to. We'll deny that those things are happening unless we are forced to see the patterns, but they are undeniable. My list of unprofessional behaviors is now 8 pages. When I said we were not hiring a professional manager it wasn't the first time, but this has been the worst time. 

Natural consequences are what unfolds in direct relation to what is done. It was not natural to target the KF to vilify one person by one person who felt hurt. So allowing the post to stand was unfortunate. I didn't read it closely, as I don't do social media at work, but I know my selling was interrupted and my holiday and the end of my fiftieth season was tarnished and tattered and I examined resignation over harming the Fund. I've thought about walking away from market a thousand times. I don't expect now to be supported as a member or even for my free speech rights as a human. I expect more retaliation and I expect it to feel irrational and angry like that episode did. I don't know how to process that the people whose salaries I earn for them, the organization I support with my labor and energy, will not be supporting me back for probably the rest of my increasingly short life remaining to me. That's an oppression I'm learning to live with, but haven't learned to accept.

But I do know how it is to live in community, as badly as I do that. I've learned it the hard way over the fifty years. I know I operate best in the middle distance, not too enmeshed, not all the way disconnected, but close to the neighbors and friends I have learned to trust, tolerant of the many I disagree with, and willing to lead from the middle. I want what the members want, but only those parts that build community, help us treasure each other and our equality, allow us all to thrive. If the members want mean people controlling our lives, I will gladly be a nasty woman. I thought that was a badge of honor in the macrocosm...I think it may be in the microcosm as well, despite the confusion of people who don't think those are related. 

This controlling group of people wants only their inner circle to matter, and the rest of us to get on board or go away. If we don't go willingly we will be forced out. We'll be distorted and vilified in the narratives promoted to the community as if they were truth. We're not only divided, we're supposed to use power to set that division into the policies and the future. Money matters, but not community. 

It's just not going to work. No one has the only key to the community treasurebox. Vi came to visit on Xmas Eve too, looking sweet and cared for, still Vi although she cannot see now and has to rely on her other senses and her family. She reminded me of what we lose when someone leaves, and why we don't let them leave all the way, if they will stay connected. I still quote her: All Will Be Well, and the Universe is unfolding as it will. Not sure she actually said that in those words, and she obviously didn't say it first. But it speaks to our need for patience and a kind of faith. 

Community is what people are attracted to in the market, and speaking about when they say they come to the market to see me, or for a demonstration, or for a band or performer they love. We do it right in the middle of our town and we do it every week, so although we keep moving, our collective memory and history is always with us. There will always be people who don't understand it, don't value it, or don't feel part of it. It has lost its charm for many and the feelings of belonging come and go. But nothing an individual thinks about it or tries to do can substantially change the reality of it.

We all have the power to hurt each other, but we choose not to. We choose to elevate others when they do well, but not to reward them. We volunteer to give, not to get. We serve, and take responsibility. We serve each other, and the organization, the market community, and the greater community. We serve in gratitude for the opportunity and to protect the absolute jewel we created, built and nurture. 

We try to do better. I can not face a future of being bullied, so I hope that is over. I do not want an apology, but I want the person to change, if they will, if they can. I don't want to carry or pursue a grievance. I want to let it gently go into the past, and do what I can to make it through this challenging offseason with joy and creativity. 

But that may not be the choice I get to make. I'm easy to bully. I make myself vulnerable at every turn, and I am always surprised when someone turns that to their advantage. I got hugged by someone who has bullied me for over a decade, and told by several "We have not always agreed with each other, but I have always respected you..." We don't have to agree. We can have 667 different opinions. We do have to preserve the opportunity to have that diversity. 

We have to live together. Yes, all of us.