Exploitation hurts everyone

 Sure, yesterday's post was mighty serious...I've been sticking to the microcosm for the most part since what's happening in the macrocosm is so fucking vile that it's extremely painful to see the images, read the stories, and know that nearly all of it is true, and yet hardly touches the actual reality. For everyone, and of course, for women and men who have had bits and pieces of similarly culturally vile experiences in their youth, or in some ways throughout their lives. I'm not going there with my history, just because I've processed it endlessly already and "it wasn't bad" compared to what we're now trying to address.

Like racism, sexism and exploitation hurts everyone and that's another thing that gets a wink and nod when it happens in "polite societies" like ours. But our microcosm is not free of these exploitations and  crimes and you can ask nearly anyone about what they've seen and heard. It is rarely addressed. 

We have not yet gotten to the point of not blaming the victims. When you look at a festival of excess like the one we (some of us) call "essential" you can see that it is untouchable and efforts generally only go so far as patching things over so they won't seem too scandalous and prevent others from attending. But we've all heard about men to avoid, ways to protect your kids, legendary spaces used for sexual crimes, and I have heard actual discovery of trafficking that was enough to make many people leave. Not addressed. Yes it is hard to address. 

There are people in our community that love telling disgusting jokes, and men who have secret names among young women who have experienced harassment. I know several women who could testify to this. I've seen the tolerance and I've seen shameless flirtations designed to get favoritism that have, sometimes, worked.

The one place I have felt safe about zero tolerance for inappropriate behavior is the sauna...because I know the staff there and the policies in place. I've lodged a complaint and seen the man removed. Of course there will be some things that go unseen, but you'd be surprised by how many people there are on staff there watching and looking for transgressions, and then following through. Still, many young people will not go there and will not go to the event at all, and plenty of careful parents and small communities who protect and intervene.

I myself have intervened at times when something is sexualized that shouldn't be. Like calling a first-time seller or attendee a "virgin." I tend to jump right on that one, directly if possible or indirectly if I'm not close enough to it. Everyone deserves to feel safe. I stop some people from sharing jokes with me...they're not funny. 

Sexism is tough to identify and address, but this is the time. Let's change the culture on that right now, today. It's not harmless fun, and everyone knows that. We have lots of Bill Clintons and others and the whole consent issue has faded from importance somehow. I do think our kids are doing better than my generation with it all, but there has been regression, and all of this disclosure about these people in the files ought to result in changed behaviors all the way down to the most minor of transgressions. 

There are plenty of good, respectful people who do not think these minor transgressions are funny or excusable, and I see those good people all the time. Safety demands it. Let's work harder at it. Let's all speak up more and make sure the culture does change. Permanently.  

We know thousands of people have been trafficked from these prisons and concentration camps and that has to be exposed and stopped. Do the big things, and all of us, do the small things too. We can't be well when we are not safe.  

History Lessons

 Sadly, I don't want to write about personal things here now that I know there are people who will absolutely use them against me, which I used to be somewhat braver about. My bravery responds to danger...or shall we say my body does, and after many risky times in my life I have learned that I have to listen to that body, as the costs grow with every episode. If I want to stick around long enough in this body to see some restoration of rights, I'm going to have to work at it and protect myself.

I'm kind of happy to see how much people are learning to extend their understanding of White Supremacist Culture to include the ways people have been included in its reach, specifically right now white children, and white women. It's easy to see that white women have upheld it more strongly even than many white men...we've benefited from it, at least until we didn't. It took me personally a long, long time to find my work and the ways it had permeated my thinking. I had the privilege of taking my time.

The 15 tenets have been a good tool, as I argued with them and heard me using them in my life to justify my actions. The ones like Worship of the written word, Objectivity, and especially Individualism have taken me forever to see and stop trying to prove wrong. I don't trust help and don't want help and think I can do everything without help, which of course is actually another one, Defensiveness, and Only One Right Way, and truly all of the tenets bleed into each other, because it is a system, a way of being in the world, that is hard to examine when you don't have the time (Sense of Urgency) to pull out of survival and work more deeply than usual on your thinking and your assumptions. So I generally immerse as much as possible in Black History Month since so many resources are being made available during February. I read a lot. I read a lot of substacks, essays and watch a lot of posts on FB, which keeps me from throwing out FB though I want to, often. 

I settled for blocking a whole bunch of people and if you want to "friend" me and those people are in our mutuals, I'm not gonna respond. I sense a motive in there that is not just wanting to get to know me. I'm such an introvert (and do so much self-protection) that reading even disturbing material is easier for me than RL relationships, and right now reading and watching PBS is about all I'm doing. I'm glad I can type, but I can't do any work for a couple more weeks and that is really hard for me. 

I'm a worker. It's an addiction I can admit, but one that keeps me soothed in this era where the veils of "everything is fine" are shredded and we all have a long way to go before we will feel safe again, in so many ways. It is great that WSC is getting exposed, that white people are getting used to the idea that we actually are not benefiting from it, never have, and our main job right now is to quit enabling and promoting it. And do what we can to destroy it.

My parents signed a deed for our house in 1955 that had a covenant in it, and while I felt safe in our neighborhood, I had no knowledge that we were "protected" by that. We had scary people, in my case a dark Italian young man who just terrified me though I don't think he actually ever did anything to me. He threw something at one of my sisters once but I am sure now that we were all just playing with sharp sticks we shouldn't have been and it was an accident. We played lots of Cowboys and Indians back then and he was no doubt one of the people chasing the white women. I remember being tied to a tree and escaping so I also have no doubt that I was some kind of Annie Oakley character. But anyway, it was the 50s and these things were deeply embedded in us with the early days of TV, westerns and shows about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and all kinds of romantic dramas where all the good guys wore the white hats. Symbols were so clear in those days, even though what stood behind them was still obfuscated.

We knew a lot of Italian people and Catholics but no Jewish people, to my knowledge, and as it turned out my Mom was not all that racist, but my Dad was from Kentucky and he was not hiding his racist leanings. I remember him complaining that he was supporting a Black family with his taxes, at the same time as my Mom hired a Black "Cleaning Lady" who we treated with disrespect without even knowing we were doing it. I'm sad she had to clean up after me, as I was a really messy little scientist who collected bones and feathers and did not care who was offended. After a certain point I got my own room because none of my sisters liked my style. But yeah, we have a photo of my Dad with a soapbox racer he built and it has a KKK symbol painted on it. That was around 1930 maybe, but when my brother pointed it out a few years ago, I was all "No, that must mean he wanted it to look like an ambulance..." Nope. Part of why he exited in 1970 was that he didn't like the way society was changing and taking his daughters with it. We were hippies (my older sister and I) to a degree, and we were in college and my roommate at the time was the daughter of a prominent law family who was defending the Chicago Eight. She was the first Jewish person I got to know and because I was 20, my understanding of everything was minimal, but I at least could tell who was promoting equality and justice and who wasn't. We were in the streets and having lunch with Black Panthers but when I look back at myself, I was so white and innocent and in need of protection I know I embarrassed myself daily with these good people. I did not really get so many things, and took in a lot of damage from my Dad, his culture and his own damage that I'll never really get out from under. Life isn't long enough for that. So I have a bit of a Sense of Urgency going on. But I still try to look at and think about those 15 tenets every day. And by now I have learned that WSC and the KKK also hated Catholics, Italians, and the Jewish people. Everybody but themselves, basically. 

Once in awhile I inadvertently do something right, but it's not significant in this fight we are all in now. Hippies got some things right, but in a superior way, and hippie men were mostly just as sexist as the rest of the culture. Still, to be in my twenties and thirties during many of the liberation movements at the time helped me at least develop some critical thinking skills that are useful every day. 

So every year about this time I watch and rewatch a lot of documentaries and try to learn all of the new things presented from history, which generally have that "oh, what?" feeling attached. I try not to shame myself too much for what I had to learn and still do, and I try to find ways to make reparations within my ability to do so. It's always complicated by my trauma and my imperfect efforts to manage that, and it really can be exhausting. But I am not going to be a white woman who echoes "I'm tired."

I do not know how so many people survived to this day with what this WSC culture did to the world, is doing, and will do. I listen to every word from Henry Louis Gates and read Stacey Patton and our local educator Kokayi Nosakhere, just a few of the many, many people who are articulating things for us as we drag our feet and take our time. I don't always get it, but I keep my damn mouth shut until I do. 

And I call it out when I see it. Marginalization in our microcosm is alive and well. We have a ton of WSC going on in our current little power structure, and you can easily apply many of those 15 tenets to what has been happening. Cultural appropriation is supported, we never make any statements in political crises (except don't bring your politics into our commerce,) and while I tried to speak to the Board about equity a few years back, I was cut off (for taking more than a "moment") and my efforts were then used to oppress people in a perverted use of the concept, to make new rules with no exceptions no matter what that meant for people who needed accommodations. Many of our current policies are based in this reverse equity that, along with gatekeeping and obfuscation, insures that people in power are supported and those without it are driven away. It's covert, as most types of oppression have traditionally been until recently when some bandages are being torn off. Not in our microcosm though, where is it just business as usual. Pretense. 

We used to spend a lot of time crafting solutions to address needs and carefully making inclusive rules that allowed for diverse circumstances. You won't see that happening with this admin. You will comply or else with this power structure. And members are walking away. There is not one intact committee at this point, and no one points out why. Instead of a members' bill of rights we get no access to our fellow members (I no longer get the packet with all the emails, as I am not encouraged to contact any fellow members.) People are encouraged to join committees but if you are captured, your good intentions will find you doing the work of paid staff without the benefits of payment. Actually the benefits now are negative. Toe the company line or you will be pushed out or even attacked. You've tried not to see it.

In a healthy membership organization people are happy to serve, the work is fairly distributed with people's capability in mind, and their contributions are honored. We left that territory in 2023, after erosion for the previous five or so years. Some people experienced that health, so they were unable to see and believe that others were not experiencing it. Same situation now. Until it happens to you, you just can't, or won't see it. And when it happens to you, you are shocked, look around for justice, and realize we didn't think we lost that. We had trust. But trust can be perverted. We had honesty. Now we have lies.

But in this time of great awakening and diligent witnessing and a different type of honesty being demanded in the world, our microcosm is still sadly behind the times and not even participating in the times. This economic crisis is not resulting in the strengthening of our safety net, the one we created together, dedicated our lives to, and thought we made strong and durable enough to handle whatever came along. We just didn't think it would be sabotaged. We just didn't think hard enough about what we needed to do when things got this hard. 

And now the good people have walked away and all the jobs are "too hard." The solution is simple but it's not happening. Everything is great. 

Sorry, sugar coatings are not going to happen anymore. Better get used to it. Standing next to a predator does not make you safe. Eventually they will turn to you.  

Officer positions are not just about tasks.

I have a lot to do today, but feel I have to comment on this latest proposal to strip items out of the Secretary job description in order to convince someone to volunteer for it. 

The job of officers is to uphold, protect, and shepherd the organization, to make sure it operates legally, holds the rights of the members for them, and has oversight and management responsibilities for everything done in the name of the organization.  This is essential and must be in place, legally and morally.

They are supposed to receive staff support to do the tasks that come with their areas. The President who facilitates the meetings needs someone to print and send the agendas and meeting materials. The Treasurer needs someone to do the financial management and payroll and pay for the permits and rent. The Vice President is backup and assistant to the President so that job doesn't get overwhelming. Only the Secretary is legally required to attend every meeting, but they are not just there to make sure accurate records are kept. 

The Secretary needs staff to make sure that legal registrations are complete, the Board is prepared with materials needed to make informed, legal and sensible decisions. They have oversight over the entire organization, the recordkeeping, the public record, the archiving, and the current and future actions of the Board. They don't do this alone. All of the Directors are responsible for the organization, now and in the future.

Staff gives support to those roles, but staff cannot be responsible for those roles. It has to be members. Paid employees, supervised by the Board, can be directed to do tasks but those tasks are the responsibility of the members. Releasing the members from those responsibilities is not the role that can be legally taken by the members.

If you can't get anyone to volunteer for the oversight responsibilities of the organization, you have got to admit you have a big problem that you must find a way to address. The jobs are not overwhelming in themselves. When an organization is run capably you do not experience volunteer burnout. We had 30 years in which we had little problem with burnout. There were problems, but they were addressed.

Continuing to strip out the member responsibility and oversight of the organization just opens it up to more danger, weakness and destruction. Denial about where the problems are coming from is a huge issue.

Sure, officers and Board members are among those who step up during transitional times when there are big changes in staffing, big budget issues, and other challenges like the Park Blocks redesign. During the staff transition in 2021-2022, there were more than 30 volunteers doing the tasks that staff needed to be supported in, including checking members in and out, working on the receipts and paying bills, doing everything the org needed. Not one savior as the false narrative tells...you can read the minutes. Ask me and I will send you a copy. Most of those volunteers have moved on for various reasons but the energy was so positive and supportive, with everyone pulling together. 

Compare that to what we have now. Being on the Board has never been one two-hour meeting once a month. There is a lot of research, discussion, and careful thinking that needs to go into every decision, every action. We've always had task forces, and our committees did the research the Board needed, and made sensible recommendations based on their diligence. It takes as much time as you have available to do a good job. It isn't an honor and it isn't always easy, but with the right staff support it is collaborative and manageable, spread among groups and teams and applying everyone's best thinking and innovative solutions to every problem, current and projected. It is service. 

Weaponized incompetence has ruined every committee and driven away dozens of volunteers. Where was the Board training to handle the past two years of challenges? Where was the volunteer training to support and educate the willing volunteers? Where was the appeal process when they were bullied and vilified to push them out and make them stop trying to help?

Shoving responsibility into a closet that only staff has a key to is so dangerous to our survival. If you can't get anyone to take responsibility, you have got to address the cause. The longer you put it off, the more danger the actual survival of the organization is in. No one is going to want to serve on the last Board, the one that disposes of the remaining assets of a community treasure that was thrown into a canyon. Do your jobs. Accept your responsibilities.

We have the resources to do what is needed. We always have the resources, but you are being told that "everything was lost." Nope. Things were thrown into the canyon. Has anyone taken the time to look at the 2019 archive I put together? Read the past minutes, see how past staff and members worked together? If you can't find those resources, why not? I've said I have a digital archive. Everything from the past four or five years is still in the office. Need new ideas? Maybe you don't. Maybe everything has been done before. Maybe you are not hearing the truth and seeing the reality.

Lost Opportunities and Erosion

Again, you are welcome to share these essays but please do not post on any social media. I do not give my permission for that. 

 Market news does not stop in the offseason, though many of us take some distance and do other things It was a small Board packet with not much in it, but two things exploded off the page for me. First was a brutal takedown of a member who, to my knowledge, did not violate a single policy, but acted as a whistleblower and the exact kind of person needed in times of deception. She became the scapegoat for her efforts and is now not only banned for five years, but is not even allowed to speak to Board members or staff, or attend any meetings or market functions. That overreach is stunning for a person who as far as I know was a member in good standing. Looks like they rewrote the Code of Conduct a bit to include people who speak about the market on social media, where as far as I know, free speech rights do still extend. Not only were there no real charges, she was also not notified of this action and not given any form of appeal or chance to speak for herself. This was not the fair and reasonable process as specified in all of our policies regarding membership. 

But it was done, and now the precedent has been set to ban members without violations of policy, an outrageous step that belies what is said in our preamble to our bylaws, our traditional inclusivity, and the boundaries of good sense. People have got to be free to disagree with the Board. When an officer said "Shouldn't we get the right to control who serves with us?" I knew we were in trouble. No, you don't have that right. The members elect who serves. Kicking someone off the Board is bad, but taking their membership and access to being able to make a living is extreme. It's shocking. I served with many people I might have wished would stay home and not participate...but that is part of the challenge of being in a service position in a membership organization. You learn skills. You don't learn more control and dominance techniques and restrict the flow of true information. We're all business owners who have the right to do our duty of care for our organization. 

The second thing is that 2024 was revised to show not the rumored $30,000 overspending, but instead, $70,864. That overspending was covered but the same practices this year will result in the same situation. At the beginning of the offseason period, there was $10,000, but if I remember correctly, staffing during the three months of no income costs about $84,000. So at the end of the fourth quarter for market (our fiscal year goes April to April,) there will be some amount of deficit, which is overspending and financial mismanagement to a degree never seen in this organization before. The savings were never touched, even all through the pandemic, but now they are halved or worse. The insurance picture (three employees have 100% of their health insurance costs covered) was not changed due to tantrums by the lead professional, despite that no org like ours can afford that cost. 

Operating in the red for two years is unacceptable. Yet, cost cutting is not on the agenda. No officers seem distressed by the reality of a bankruptcy direction of operations, while others of us are losing sleep on the regular. Another walloping fee increase will result in a loss of members who are forced out by the high cost of joining linked with the reality that new members may come for weeks or months without successfully getting a space to sell and balance that $85 starting cost for membership. When you lose a member, you lose all of the income from that member, all of the fees, weekly, monthly, and in the future. It could be thousands. Plus it gets around that joining the market is not a good deal for members, and we go into a decline. We're there...the count only looked like we lost 8 members but sadly we can not really trust details reported now. We get lied to about everything. 

There is a campaign to close the market after Halloween, which means three lost selling days for members that won't come back. Selling at farmers is given as an alternative, but it is not the same experience, by far. You don't get to choose your space at the farmers market. Your hours are 9-2, and some of our members are not  permitted to sell their (for instance plant growers who are not certified.) So our own guidelines are not in force over there. Our food booths can't sell with the farmers, and we ceed the community gathering role to them, to our detriment. We make ourselves non-essential to the community. Poor future planning. If we closed on every day that we might not make much money, that would be every rainy day, every day with an early football game, and the weekend of OCF. So will those be next? Is our message to the community that we are only open if we can make money to some unpublished standard? That their need to gather and have the market experience does not matter to us? And for members who cannot get into or afford Holiday Market, you're just not on our radar? We have never operated that way and don't need to now.

I never hear anything about cost cutting. Those color coded envelopes to solve a problem created by the narcissist, resulting in the same practices she tried to throw out? Spending that did not need to happen. The extra security forces hired for a day the streets were supposed to be closed to traffic, which was not cancelled when the city cancelled the Hallowe'en event in part, because of weather? We paid for that, and I'd argue that it was never needed. What will happen this year, when we are assured that there will be protests through and maybe in our space? Community activists have already heard that our staff does not want protestors during our selling day. Taking the stance of commerce over free speech is a big mistake. We never made any statement during the pandemic movement for Black Lives Matter, the erosion of DEI...we pretend we are not political. So our silence complies. Even though we are in the center of town, pretending to be essential. A very mixed message indeed.

Members are trying. The Budget Committee continues to do the work the lead professional is supposed to be doing, tracking the financial picture to stay out ahead of the challenges and recommend sensible practices to balance the realities. It seems the sensible solutions don't get supported. Raising fees has a cost, a nuanced and complex cost over time. Members leave when their needs are not honored and responded to, when things tighten up so compassion can't be extended. Members are our customers, but we are harrassed and bullied and thrown out if we ask uncomfortable questions. 

People are walking away from the lying and some are devastated. I spoke with a former staff person and learned that I had believed a raft of lies at that time, used to demonize people who were honestly trying to do what was right. It was before I realized how much I was being used to serve the ends the narcissist had planned. People do not enjoy being used. 

Stripping out the legal and moral responsibilities of the officers to get people to serve in those positions is so transparently ill-advised that I cringe just thinking about it. Will they throw up their hands when the money is gone and dissolve the assets, let the market die? For the pleasure and benefit of one person? To shore up someone who will lie to us, refuse to do her job, and then weaponize her incompetence is shameful and a dereliction of duty. Serving as an officer at a time of deception and corruption is a personal risk not many people would take. Trying to pretend that is not the situation to get someone to take on the responsibility is criminal in itself. How many of the currently serving Board members were told it would involve one meeting for two hours a month? Most, I imagine. They were surely not told they would have to untangle this toxic mess, protect the vulnerable members and take hard actions for the solvency of the market itself.

Manager searches are not easy, but they are rather simple. Attracting candidates gets harder as the community finds out for themselves how clunky and broken things are. Hiring and firing for purely practical reasons can be done without drama, with honor, and there is plenty of precedent and resource for doing that. The market needs a professional manager with financial management and personnel skills, someone with honesty and integrity and compassion and empathy. The first document is the Ideal Candidate profile, not that complicated. I'd expand to put in some things about integrity and honesty. But if this had been applied for this last hire? We wouldn't be here today like this. Go read that transcript of the KLCC interview again. Cognitive dissonance? Don't pretend everything is okay.

 

 

Ideal Candidate

1. Experience in Non-profit organizations: Has designed, implemented programs to accomplish goals and policies established by a board. Has created and maintained , in accordance with Board policy, Administrative, Operations and personnel policy manuals and other key organizational documents.

2. Financial management: Has developed an annual budget in consultation with a treasurer and board. Has experience with payroll, tax liabilities, and other financial, insurance and contractual obligations.

3. Personnel management: Has recruited, oriented, supervised and evaluated personnel.

3. Community Liaison: Has experience working with City, county governments, arts/crafts groups, downtown associations, etc.

3. Operations: Has experience purchasing and maintaining equipment.

3. Computer literacy: Knows QuickBooks Pro, MC Office, and MS access

7. People Skills: Has experience working with persons from a variety of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, and ability to demonstrate cultural competency. Employs oral and written communication skills, including skill in listening, conflict resolution, confidentiality, and applying a sense of humor appropriately.

    8.  Event Planning: Has participated in management of events, including experience with craft, retail and food industries. 

Keep On

 

It's getting harder, as we were warned by observers of how authoritarians work. On the macro scale, we are being challenged in every way to step up, do more, stand firm. I vividly remember the moment in my early activism when we discussed not going to protests without gas masks, and the way the Kent and Jackson State killings shocked us as college students when we realized they would kill us. Of course at the time my awareness of the even greater world patterns of oppression was slim and I was naive, but things that happened at that time were so traumatic that I still puzzle over them and how they changed my life. It's not possible to go on living as if that stuff didn't happen, though of course I did try. 

I ran to the woods and wrote and worked on getting through winters of snow and cold that made me cry, worked on skills related to clothing and food, tried to find safety in community that I was not ready to handle. All the personal revolutions at the time added up to a sea change that wrote the history of the next decades, but I had stopped participating with my body. I see in retrospect that I had to, and I'm grateful that people helped me do that. I was not built to be much of a warrior, except in intellectual ways and a willingness to keep learning and finding ways to push society forward, however small.

There were a lot of us hippies doing that then, once the Vietnam war effectively ended and some criminals went to jail. A deep cynicism was embedded, and it took the next few decades for me to put thoughts together and find ways to proceed with the overwhelming challenges of having to support myself in some kind of coherent way. Lucky for me, I ended up in Eugene and found Saturday Market, then only six years old and still being put together as well. I stumbled in and found ways I could be myself, and then pitch in and help. The arson fire of 1982 and misspending of the mid-80s galvanized a group of us to take responsibility for the collective survival of the precious community effort of the smart people who created the market.

 I learned useful skills, like taking meeting minutes, and chairing meetings, and consensus-building group decision-making. I met a lot of people I've now known for 50 years, and many are still in my life. I found ways to create the safety I needed and with help, took advantage of that period in this town where resources were abundant and creativity was high. I chose the life of an artist and writer and hung out with the other artists and writers, who were kind and appreciative and supported my growth and education. I had a baby at 39, kind of at the last minute for me, and that got me into the real therapy that got me to today. None of it was easy though a lot of it was joyful. 

There was damage in my life, like there is for many, right from the beginning, much of which I did not understand as I lacked the framing. It took people outside of me to point out some helpful ways to work through doubts and misinformed attitudes and it was not in any way a perfect process. I would not say I was successful at a lot of what I envisioned for myself, but without the visions, I would not be here, like this.

I have gotten a lot of advice in the last few weeks to focus on self-preservation and "be nice and quiet" and some of it came in familiarly disturbing ways. I have known a lot of narcissists and bullies. As a codependent empath, I am a favorite target: it's easy to manipulate me. I know how to control immediate reactions and I recognize the processes, but I get caught up in fascination and the naive idea that I can make it stop, and have to, for all of us. And the reactions have to take their course, most times.

Obviously on the macro stage, I cannot do all that is being asked for. I will boycott and strike, and I can work within what others are doing, and keep trying, which for me is mostly education. I spend a lot of time reading about racism, white supremacy culture, and trying to find a way to see that in myself and change it, even make reparations. You might think this is not the immediate problem but it is the most giant part of it. I regularly look at the 15 tenets and pick one to work on, currently the Right to Comfort. 

It's cold, so cold, but I have a lot to do so bundled up, I'm working. I wanted to get out ahead of the production season and took advantage of the sun to dye the full range of bandanas I use, plus print up all of my current designs to be ready for the first half of the season, including OCF. I printed a lot of hats, too, though it was harder to do with cold hands and I'm taking a break from that now. I'm clearing out space for what I know is coming, as well as I can, but I'm not comfortable and I know most people are not. Those who are, are questioning it, by the thousands, maybe millions. We are watching Minnesota and seeing all the ways we know we would or would not put our lives on the line like that. We want others to do it, but we, for our various self-protective reasons, might not.  

We will give money, we will do what we can, and we will continue to witness, but this macro problem is huge. We feel naive, we feel unfit to rise to this challenge, and we know this is the way the future will set itself in place, without our consent, without our ability to fix it. We'll carve out some concessions debated by people with some power to manifest them, but we will not win the climate emergency and the coming health emergencies being put in place by the power structure, even as brilliant solutions are crafted and gain traction. It's not going to be a straight line to something we can live with. Some things are ruined.

I went to see Urinetown yesterday thanks to a friend and on the way there, we were some of the people who got very close to a fatal accident, seeing an unresponsive person getting CPR a few feet away from us. My friend, who has witnessed several deaths, looked away and started this technique she told me she has learned, overlaying an amusing memory over a traumatic one right away to keep it from deeply embedding. Something to try to learn that might help me be more brave. We had a great day together and it helped me not get derailed by the brutal reality of intentional or accidental death, with its unbalanced consequences, the end of life for the victims and the aftermath for everyone else.

As a person with a highly developed visual ability and a lot of pattern recognition, it occurred to me that I have a vivid memory of my Dad's body and the events of his death, even though I was a thousand miles away at the time. It was May 1970, right after Kent State, during the Student Strike. I was in college in Washington DC but we'd left town for a break from all of the intensity. When I research the events of that time, I cannot even believe how many things were going on right then. It feels like that now.

So yeah, to reflect on all the advice to me to protect myself and not engage with things I get damaged by, to ease into my Right to Comfort, is cognitively so dissonant. I don't think those who advised me really grasped the circumstances of my microcosm. I spent the last 50 years building something precious and unbelievably useful with some very fine and brilliant people. We worked around those who were not as able, brought them along when we could, and tried to find others who could help. It was always inclusive, always with justice and right livelihood in mind, always imbued by what we felt were the highest aspirations of the hippie, artist, and creative cultures. We worked hard. The last years from 2015 to now have been the hardest. We did many hard things all along!

But the relentless dismantling of our work has been devastating, and there is just no way I can stop caring about it, both because it is my living and because it is one of my co-creations. I have a responsibility to the others I worked with, as well as everyone who has come along, and has needed the market and the ways we can help marginalized people who need our support. I work for the members, as I always have, leading from the middle and respecting the abilities and contributions of all of us at once. Group process depends on equality: equal strength, equal cooperation, equal benefits. 

Favoritism, bullying, domination and control tactics...none of these were built into our org and when we experienced them, we worked together to limit them and make them irrelevant. It has never been easy, and for someone like me, there is an equal amount of time working at tasks and reflecting on the best ways to do them, the most respectful ways to work together, the responsibility we had to honor the legacy we were given, and the most ideal visions for the future of this way of life we need and want.

I did not start the Kareng Fund, but was asked to serve a few years after others did. I was happy to bring my skills and until this year, it was all positive. I still cannot accept that anyone would attack this tiny nonprofit, but the undermining of it has been ongoing since this narcissist was hired. The subtle things led to the blatant events at the end of December and I see how the Fund is also an easy target for people who don't understand or value what we built. I hope it was shocking for observers to see that, but I know the result will be more tangible: a loss of support. There will be rationalizations. Some of what will hurt is my effectiveness was diminished. Processing the incidents took away time I could have spent applying for grants, writing promotional posts, thinking of ways to expand our worth and protect our recipients. We may need to further separate ourselves from the market where we have accessed our most support. Previous market managers gave careful thought to how they could support and expand the fund. This one does the opposite.

And that is just a little side issue to the undermining of the whole deal. We are losing members, and the overspending and subsequent fee increases will drive away more, people who need the market, people who planned to have continuing access to it for their survival as they age. These small tragedies will likely not rise to the surface of  community consciousness, but I heard one tale yesterday, and expect to hear more. No one should have to say they just couldn't afford the fees to join this year. The market is for the members. When fees are high, there are supposed to be solutions, built in, that will support those who need help. Sending people to the KF for their fees is something we had to stop, as the Fund does not have that kind of resources. Maybe it could, if there were more mutual support. Instead, there is a push to institute online payments...won't that end the envelope rounding up that supplied a constant slow feed to the Fund? We asked for a donation button on the website, and there is a redirect to our website, but there are other ways to support the fund which may or may not be promoted. We'll see what the real effects of the bullying will be. 

The undermining of my reputation, the erasing of my history of support, and the attempts to silence me have cut the ties to the kind of information I was always able to provide from our history that guided us through some of the recurring situations we've experienced. I'm not the only person who has experienced this; it's up to a dozen or more now. I won't be bullied. As long as bullies are supported, I won't be engaging. I'm not going to fix this situation I tried to prevent and I won't stop witnessing. It's the very small sacrifice I can make, the sacrifice of my personal safety for the progress of the members who are more able to work out the solutions. The microcosm may be looking trivial in the light of the macrocosm, but like the production of Urinetown and the Jell-O Art Show, artists and writers and performers have to play with their strengths and take the long view of what must be kept alive for the common good. Today was my day to write the script for the Jell-O performance, and I wrote this instead. 

I will now redirect my passion to further explore how the silly and thoughtful forum of art can be used to elevate. For more serious subjects, try working on those 15 tenets by reading other writers, like here: https://60kandbelow.substack.com/p/for-white-bodied-people-who-feel?r=18jj9q&triedRedirect=true or nearly any writer of color out there. Do what you can, and keep doing it. You have the gratitude of the world.

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.