Saturday, Saturday

Saturdays during the offseason feel weird in a wonderful way. It's sort of a day off, house-cleaning day like for most people, though I seldom really take a day off from work, because my work encompasses so many different activities. A few years ago I had the satisfying realization that almost all of my activities dovetailed into a progressive effort that could bear the plebeian title of keeping me alive and prospering. The delightful part was that none of my work was at crosspurposes--nothing got in the way of the progress of any other part. If I was working on the house or garden, that was providing the space, inspiration, and comfort for my body to work on the retail stuff or the art stuff. Reading was advancing the writing, writing was advancing the t-shirt ideas, and all of my art forms were being refined and my skills improved, so that my whole life was a multi-faceted work of art.

I started taking pictures of my ordinary space and days, just marking things that wouldn't matter on a big scale but kind of mattered on the little scale. Since I live alone and my son is in a phase of life that doesn't include much interest in his parents, no one will ever probably see these photos, or read the many daily journal entries that are just my processing of whatever is happening in my life or my mind. I'm not really doing it for any reason except that it marks things for me. One of the functions of other people in our lives is that they hold our memories (however inaccurately), and they keep track of us. Lots of people use Facebook or online blogs to serve this function, though again maybe no one really reads or cares much about those entries. After I'm gone, or pretty quickly even while I'm here, these entries scroll down into the archives which very few people will discover or care about. Nothing really matters very much.

That's not a comforting thought, and generally we find things that seem to matter to keep that thought at bay. All those yellow and green people downtown today think that their football team and all the energy and expense around that is vital to their lives. It may well be, but in my life, none of that stuff commands much of my attention. I like parades, but I'm not really tempted to go down and hear all the passionate yelling and feelgood stuff surrounding what I think is a war game. I wouldn't mind hearing that gospel choir, because gospel music is really uplifting to the spirit, but I just get an emotional response from the energy of the music, not from any religious passion or comfort thinking about the divine. Though I was raised Catholic, I find religious thinking alienating and superficial, and that part bothers me. I do like to hear the voices raised in joy, but I don't enjoy the we-win-you-lose paradigm, or the concept that we are the only ones who matter.

I guess the point I'm circling is that we all have many fantasies about what is important, and tend to forget that those things are seldom important in the same way to anyone else. People like to reinforce their fantasies with conformism, insisting that the importance is universally shared and is reality. I'm here to say that the Ducks and the Church are not important to me, along with lots of other things like what couples do, and romantic love, and Wal-mart, and I could go on, but my point is made. We all live in our own worlds. We all star in our own movies, but we forget that most people are just watching their own movies, and what we are the star of is a tiny piece of a super long film.

That's one reason our society and world are so imperfectly run. It's difficult to take actions while considering that almost everything we think is not indeed fact, but opinion. We tend to operate as if it were fact. We get so passionate about our versions of truth. If no one is present who thinks differently, we tend to run with our version as if it really were universal.

That's one reason I'm committed to consensus-seeking decision-making. Each person brings a piece of the truth, and everyone is equal at that table. At Saturday Market meetings, we sit at a big round table and that ensures that we don't line up on two sides of an issue. As soon as someone is perceived as sitting at the head of the table, a hierarchy forms that doesn't serve good decision-making. And as soon as we defer to the majority, we cut off some of the most vital parts of whatever the action is, because we cut out the minority.

I can be public about an issue now that KLCC interviewed the city planner who heads a Citizen's Advisory Committee regarding the funds granted to the farmers market for infrastructure improvement. Basically this committee was hijacked by a few members who became convinced that closing 8th St. to traffic and filling it with the farmers' booths was the most wonderful idea ever brought to the Eugene table, even though it was not an infrastructure improvement and not within the charge of that committee. I will leave it to them to point out all the ways this is a fabulous idea, and say now that I don't agree, and a large portion of the 600+ members of the Saturday Market also do not agree. The committee got seduced by the idea, but they had agreed to work by consensus, and our SM manager did not agree, and blocked the consensus. This was not an easy thing to do, because at least three of the members of that committee were skilled at manipulating, dominating, bullying, hyperbole, and marginalizing and insulting those who did not agree with them. It was shocking to watch. I've been shocked by this kind of group behavior for a year or so as I watched the farmers work through their challenges. Sometimes it was not intentional or done with self-awareness, but came out of mainstream, conformist thinking, which is definitely not my tradition.

I could be wrong, and it could turn out that this closing the street idea is a good one, but without the process of involving the people using the space, it will not be a well-thought-out idea. Imposing a fantasy on a situation that is doing just fine could kill it in various ways, and at least those ways have to be explored in the decision-making process. The Saturday Market community does not make wild concept-type plans without thoroughly examining the details and all the pieces of truth that all of the stakeholders bring to the big round table. We don't permit manipulators and bullies to sit at our table. or at least we don't grant them any power. We welcome dissent, but you have to bring your manners and your fairness with you. We are not making lives where there are only two sides to any argument.

So a bunch of us went to the committee meeting and sat there. We just wanted our presence acknowledged, and even though the manipulators tried to frame us as coming in combat to dominate, that isn't what we were doing. We were just witnesses to say that we refuse to allow such an important decision to be made by a few people whose tactics are not inclusive.

We are inclusive. We thrive because we let in as many people as we can, while defining a framework that sets us apart from the mainstream. You can't buy your way in and you can't bully your way in, and if you cheat you will be found out eventually. You are welcome to take part in all of the processes that make us such a successful and thriving business model. You are welcome to bring your tiny piece of the truth, but you will be forced to keep in mind that you are tiny, and not bigger than our tiniest voice.

We don't sell out and we don't respond to pressure. We're not going anywhere. We're strong in our diversity and in our collective power. You can work with us, or work around us, but you won't walk over us. And we are good at looking into the darkness and calling things like we see them.

So yeah, let's make this decision about how to get the LCFM needs met. First we are going to let all of the stakeholders weigh in, and then we are not going to take a majority vote. There is more than one right way, and we will take the time to find it. Everyone can win, when no one has to lose. This is called crafting an elegant solution. We are craftspeople. We will build the elegant solution, but not with a big hammer.