The wisdom of age and experience

Not my first booth, but close. 1977?

  I used to spend a lot of Sunday mornings reflecting on the lessons learned on Saturdays at Market...it seems that every week I learn something new or am reminded of something important about our community. For the most part, I have not felt connected as an experienced elder in more recent years, not quite as wise and esteemed as I expected. Rather, I feel more poignantly human and fallible. While I feel my creations are appreciated and still relevant, and I'm connected to my customers, I don't feel as much a part of an artisan community as I used to. 

 

Artisans have changed, with the internet I expect, but with the changes in the farmers' market and the rise of Whiteaker popup markets and the FSP, all sort of defining our market as kind of an artifact, kind of the establishment instead of the ground-breaking innovators we were and prided ourselves as being. Creative solutions to problems were always our strength. We were grounded in values such as authenticity, honesty, mutual respect, non-competitiveness, mutual support, and a rather conservative approach to change. We were careful about breaking something that was working so well for so many. We protected the common good.

That's still there, but the common use of employees at farmers and the idea of selling year-round, with commercial businesses alongside small owners, has set a different expectation. People can sell online and at Whiteaker without really being handmade, or in person...the boundaries are not as strict, and although we have tightened ours, we see more people trying to sell imports or manufactured items, thinking no one will notice. We still notice everyone and what they do. "We," meaning longterm members and your booth neighbors, see you when you pack up early, try to outsell your neighbor with attractive gimmicks like raffled items, think about getting your own needs met over those of the whole membership, and in general, erode the feeling of all of us "being in the basket" together. That kind of left with Beth, sadly. Her newsletter columns had an inspiring quality I dearly miss, and her ethics and sense of fairness and right action were unmatched and a real treasure for us. For the next few hires after her, we searched for "the heart of Beth" and a visionary leader. That faded away, and that's all I'll say about our community's search for great management. We are a hard community to manage, and a membership organization is a very hard entity to even understand. Even when you are a part of it.

Hard work isn't enough, although we certainly value it. There are some subtle undercurrents that are easy to miss or misunderstand, and hard to track. Certain events and changes trigger my senses of those, but I often don't know how to communicate them and I don't find a lot of welcoming of historical knowledge, more of an attitude of well, that was then. The 70s in Eugene was different from the rest of the world. It wasn't disco here, it was hippies. It was the heyday of the alternative society, the culture of DIY before the internet, building consensus and community and back-to-the-land, political awareness and protest, and trying to create a better world. Not the disconnect and escapism of disco...not generally pleasure-seeking...here that was the 80s. At Market, we always worked hard and prioritized political awareness and making a more fair economy and social world. I do not think that was just me.

I am not nostalgic for the 70s. It was painful and hard for me...1970 in particular, when I was 20. I am astonished when I look back at all that happened at once. I was a radical student in DC, getting teargassed and terrified, fighting to end the war in Vietnam. My family and personal life were crushed, though that was mostly tangential, but related. I met Black Panthers though my roommate, whose family was involved in the legal defense of the Chicago Eight. I saw through the artifice of capitalism and government. I never went back to accepting the status quo or not fighting for my rights to make better choices than what was offered to young women at the time. I wasn't really aware of disco...for me it was soul and Motown, as I grew up in Delaware with a lot of Philadelphia cultural influence. I went to the woods to heal in the mid-Seventies, and made my way out here as a traveling signpainter, inspired by Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez, and of course, Joni Mitchell. Romantic, but not accepting lies and manipulation. Looking for love, but not exactly recognizing it. I actually learned about love wandering the dark paths of Country Fair, where I realized that the love of a man was not what I either wanted or was going to find. There were so many other kinds of love, and most of them, I already had, or did find. I found safety in my community and built myself what I needed. I'm not nostalgic for that. It was hard work.

It was all of the liberation movements, mostly for me, feminism and anti-racism, and finding a way to do work that didn't require compromising my ideals. Being an artisan checked the boxes, and when I got here in 1976 and discovered Saturday Market, I found my spiritual and physical home. I thrived in the Eighties through what I learned from my membership organizations and community activism. I figured out my PTSD in the 90s as I figured out motherhood, and shifted my work to building safety and love for me and my son, but Market was always a thread that held my life together and gave me the means to learn and explore. I always recognized the treasure of it, but I remember looking around one day there and feeling like it was not working for me. My income had fallen from an average day of $350 to $200 to $30. I quit Saturdays and built a house, but I stayed a member and in HM, and when I started to lose my BHOR status and my ability to keep the same booth for the duration, Vi pointed out that if I just came to Market a little, I would have the points to keep BHOR status. Vi was wonderful at knowing each member and caring about their needs. Talk about a treasure.

So I came back. I strolled for one day (aargh,) then took 4x4s to build back my points. I got space 120 next to Raven, and through his wisdom and counseling I reconnected with my roots and the meaningful aspects of selling to the public in the center of downtown. That was 2006 or so, not sure, but since then I have come every single week that was possible. It's part of my identity.

What I wanted to write about today, though, is the nuances of how we work out our process of decision-making and consensus-building. I feel that is central to the satisfaction our members expect to experience in our marketplace. We know authenticity when we see and hear it...that is a big part of why people choose to make a living creating things. We do not respond well to manipulation, or even cheerleading...it causes mistrust. In my dealings with the City trying to help manage the redesign of the Park Blocks, I tried hard to convey that honesty was far more important than most things in the process. We could tell when we were being pushed to an outcome, and I created the Downtown Developments Task Force to keep members informed on the real process and help us create responses that would keep our needs in the forefront. The City got me...they now have said that whatever happens going forward, they want to follow our lead. They don't want to do anything to us that we don't actively support. They are used to public resistance and worse, and they want to be careful not to stir that up in us. They actually do value our organization and event, and they do try hard to support us and help us thrive. I have changed from mistrust to figuring out how to be a good partner, without compromising. I used to say we said no without saying no. Now I want to say yes, but...we lead. We know what we want.

The whole city, not just us as one user, deserves a better Park Blocks. To get there, we have to embrace some difficulty and make the concessions necessary. We will have to accept displacing ourselves for a long enough period to have some real construction happen. It can be one block at a time, but it will involve at least a season, maybe more, for each block. We need to discuss what we want...we need more space on both blocks. Our food booths need bigger spaces, and we need a stage that isn't completely dangerous in the rain. We need to let go of the fountain even though we love it. It's not safe, it's a maintenance nightmare, and we need to let go of just a few trees that aren't going to do well in the future. We need to partner with the city in a vision for the next 50 years. We can't stand in the way of it.

It's hard, super hard, and we can see how it worked for the farmers, which has mostly been positive. We won't move to 5th St, but there are plenty of ways we can use the surrounding streets and spaces to stay together and allow the change. We can hold onto what is important for us and reject concepts that won't improve us. Opening in March is one of those changes that I see as destructive to our fabric. You can see the farmers Winter Market and how it doesn't thrive...without the commercial businesses and employees and value-added products, it wouldn't exist. Farmers here don't have much to sell in the winter, and they also need to rest, like we do. Lotte had a great quote about the offseason which I will try to find today. March weather is terrible, much worse than November, and I can tell you from history how experiments in our model work out. Sunday Markets had a terrible cost, and it took years to recover. Our membership can be fragile in different ways, at the same time as it is strong.

One thing I know is that providing a sales opportunity isn't enough...it has to be a good sales opportunity. Tourism in March is not there, and with spring break and studying, students aren't enough either. Until April the public does not really turn out. Ask the farmers why so many of them don't do the winter market. Check out the Art Walks. Ask members who quit why...it is almost always because they do everything they are supposed to and don't make money. The market makes money, with the fees at the level they are now, but it rained every week this month and I saw the vast majority of reserved members come one time (as required.) New members filled in but they did it for the points, and when the reserved members come back, on the sunny days to come, the new ones will get shut out. In other times of high membership totals, we would turn away as many as 60 members a week. A lot of them give up, and the reputation of Market becomes "don't even bother, you can't get a space." We need more 8x8s for this growth, which is one reason I am recommending we ask the city to go forward with the remodel. We move ourselves to Broadway or Park Streets one block at a time and allow the redesign to create more space. It won't be easy and I personally don't want to suffer, but it will serve the common good, and the future. 

It won't be my future. I'm in the founding generation that is trending out. I'm physically not going to be there as the strong woman I have built myself to be, and I have this small window of opportunity still to share the lessons of history and all that I know about us and how we think and feel. Members won't tell you why they resign positions or fail to get charged up about volunteering, or even abstain from decisions at the Board meeting. I believe the HM survey process failed because people felt unheard and didn't bother to try giving feedback anymore. The decision to stay open until 6 was not what the majority wanted, so the majority stopped asking for it. The online survey was too late. The people most affected, those who have to travel for an hour after packing out, will just limit how often they do it. Big price increases drive out people who aren't making enough. They limit the number of weekends they sell...they cut their losses, and find other markets. Online is much easier and works pretty well. There are artisan markets everywhere now. We are not their only choice. We can't expect the loyalty of people who don't have a reason to extend it. 

Tightening up has a lot of risks. Redrawing the map and displacing people at the same time as increasing their costs to pay for things they may not support just makes them quit. We have always moved slowly and carefully because change needs to be balanced with sensitivity to its effects. People need to feel valued, not interchangeable. 

I want to be supportive and careful not to reject ideas that are well-meaning and hopeful, but I also have things I won't say, that would help prevent mistakes, because I do not think I am always right, and I am not in a risk-taking part of my life. I don't have time for a years-long process of making the mistake of selling in March or raising the fees so high people will just walk away. I can't be the only person at the table speaking the lessons that worked for us before. What I can do, is ask for due diligence. If we are going to grow, or extend our selling days, I need some data. I need the census back that showed us how many people sold on rainy days in the last two years, and how much they made. Not how much Market made, but what the average booth fee was, and the highs and lows. How many people went home with less than they came with? How many people lost their enthusiasm for participating when they didn't feel listened to or valued? What are the subtle ways we showed them that they actually weren't really as important to us as we said they were? 

I'm not a total curmudgeon, but dressing to celebrate disco on Founders' Day is so not who we are. I'm not sure how to gracefully say that, or that I won't share posts with grammatical errors that show we don't care enough to proofread. I want to value contributions of people who are genuinely giving them in the right spirit, and I do appreciate the enthusiasm of our staff. But that's my current struggle...how do I participate fully when I am not in support? If I do it in the traditional way, I do it privately. I just pull back. And then I leave, and I don't say goodbye. It wasn't my plan, and it isn't yet my plan, either. I'll keep trying. I don't expect perfection. 

But I do think the values set in the beginning should persist as the values today. Community gathering, easy entry, member and customer services (even if we lose a little money on them...) and equality as a goal. Honesty. You shouldn't have to talk people into participating...they should want to. If they don't, you're not doing it right. 

So many things still on my mind. Is this what wisdom looks like? I sure don't know.

Hell-O Again!

 I've been having lots of thoughts, just not ones that would help things by putting them in this public place, even though my readers are few when I don't post a link on Facebook. I know there are some people who just support me as a writer so will read whatever I write. When things are messy, confidential or confusing, I don't feel great about processing them in here where I have to be oblique and they aren't really understood.

Mom's anniversary of her passing came and went and I'm sad at how much acceptance I have of her absence. I expected to be more bereft and I suppose I feel guilty for not suffering more. That Catholic stuff runs deep. I would say I struggle with guilt and shame much more than any other emotions. I've taken in many super Catholic ways of making things worse for myself while I try to be saintly for others. As being a saint is impossible, it wastes a lot of my energy. I have discovered that a lot of my anxiety is simply worrying. I seem to be capable of worrying about everything whether it is really happening or not.

So my main strategy when it is not Jell-O Art Show time is just keeping to a quiet routine and exercising as much self-control as I can. I try to get outside when the weather is gentle and read a lot...I try to rest my body in between what I have to do and what I want to do. While I am accepting of aging, I do have problems with things going too fast for me to feel comfortable, whether that is traffic (I cope by hardly ever driving) or news (I do like to keep track) or the developments in my organizations which I feel somewhat responsible to monitor and attempt to guide if possible.

Letting go of trying to monitor and guide anything OCF has been quite a relief and while I still find it problematic as an organization, I have convinced myself that the pendulum will someday swing back to more elevation of personal and intellectual freedom and less control and compliance thinking. I may be completely wrong about that. I heard that the new version of DEI education and work, now called EDIB I guess, to include Belonging, has abandoned any work on cultural appropriation. I get why...it is really hard to identify cultural identity and thus the right to create identified art, but it still needs to be worked on. The impression I get is that the less work, the better. I know I tried to get help learning and discussing DEI work within my committee and was not supported by management (was supported by the old management, but that's old news) or peers in some cases. I still am committed to doing it on my own, but I don't think the Fair needs to work on belonging...that's really part of the problem. Everyone wants to have that club called Fair Family and be in it, but it creates a lot of othering and calling tens of thousands of people a family is just silly and I don't subscribe to it. 

I stopped watching the Board meetings and just read the minutes which helps my irritation level. I feel terrible for my friends who are still trying and I sincerely wish them peace and hope they can stay strong. Some things should ease up. People have shown who they are, and their values are self-limiting. Once they believe they have established full control (even typing that makes me laugh) they will turn their efforts to something else. I am still conflicted about what I do at OCF, and still allowing myself to make money, but I'm much more guarded. 

I'm troubled by Market things too, as I will probably always resist controlling behaviors and the types of thinking that don't build trust. I don't know if I agree that as we grow we need to have fewer personal solutions to our issues and more uniformity. I can see how that is more manageable, but I think it's a cultural loss. I'm getting closer to giving up my responsibilities there. I spend far too much time volunteering still...I feel needed, but also hated. I'm oversensitive to criticism and such a people pleaser, and I know I make things up, so I can advise other people to let things go and not take things personally but when it comes to me, it takes some time to lose my attachment. It's also hard to see change that I am not sure I support, when my duties of loyalty and care require my support. 

Sometimes not having a vote is hard...mostly it isn't. It's very hard to be one of the few people who has any detailed history about policies and how we've solved things in the past. I have a lot of fear about getting things wrong. I forget that most of the little things we do wrong are fixable and forgivable. I do try to identify when people are being overdramatic and making crises out of ordinary problems, but it's not a good position to take to tell people to chill and let things work themselves out. No one wants to hear that. 

Communication is a challenge as we grow and I expect that is true for all of us...we forget to tell someone, or tell the wrong person something we haven't thought through. I try to balance how much I speak up at the meetings, as I don't think my cautionary and sometimes lecturing tone is well-taken in general. I never like a tightening-up phase, but I really hated the chaotic phase that preceeded this one, so again, I am hoping for the pendulum to swing slowly back to a more relaxed acceptance and lessening of the control that people desire when things feel out of balance. We really are a strong organization and hard to break...people do get damaged when their efforts fail or they are misunderstood, or when their own damage gets exacerbated, but I like that at some point they can come back and renew themselves and their commitment and mostly be forgiven. 

That's one reason I am wary when people get rigid and think other people should be prevented from participating. I am much more comfortable working around everyone's weirdness than banning them from the organization. Eventually we figure out the keys to better relationships and if we can use our values of honesty and striving for consensus and balance, we can do fine with weird people. I've always said we don't all have to like each other, but we do have to work together. I hope we are building trust. We need to be, if we aren't. I miss how Vi used to say things like everything is happening as it should and all will be well. We need someone saying that when the drama is high. We'll get through it.

But this will be my last free Saturday until after Xmas, or that is the plan anyway. We'll see what the outdoor season brings. I know I am badly out of shape so I dread the first day...it might be rainy and I will just have to bring the least amount of weight I can and take care of myself as well as possible. I had a hard time walking at all last weekend after the Jell-O Show. I was on my feet too much for the three days it took to set it up, do it, and put it all away. I had to spend Monday doing nothing but sitting and reading. Since I just got my 2 boxes of shirts yesterday (well, some of them, with the rest due today) I will not have a lot of resting days next week or the next few weeks. It may not be easy but I feel like I can do it.

I hope so! Perhaps I will be able to write about at least some of it. Maybe it will go even better than expected and I won't worry so much. I try to remember to ask myself what is the best that can happen. It's always possible that expectations will be exceeded!

The Offseason Dilemmas

It's so pleasant to have Saturdays without Market for a stretch. I treasure the Fridays and Sundays around these Saturdays as well. After so many years without conventional weekends it's just fun to do what other people do...clean house, do yardwork, start weird projects from the never-ending list. Get three or four-day weekends every week if I want. Be a writer and a Jell-O artist. Stay out of the shop completely. 

This past Saturday the 13th was what would have been my Dad's 100th birthday. He only stuck around until 46, so he's been gone for over 50 years, but still, you only get one real dad in most cases. I've mostly made peace with that part of my past, because some of the things I like best about myself came from him. He had a lot of curiosity about making things...wanted to try them out and see what kinds of problems there were to solve. He had a workshop in the basement and I spent a lot of time just watching him and probably asking a lot of questions, or maybe being intimidated into silence. I learned how to saw, for instance, by remembering the way it sounded when I tried it as an adult. He didn't teach me how to use tools. We weren't exactly close but I did model myself after things that were "boy things" in the 1950s. I had three sisters so this was partly just to carve out a different path for myself than what was available to young women then. It was basically limited to service to others, men mostly...you could be a wife, a teacher, or a nurse. Lower status jobs were in retail and clerks, like file clerks. You could be a secretary. He didn't offer any Dad guidance as he was sexist himself and had no idea how to mentor girls. I liked science so decided to study medical technology which I might have liked okay, but I really thought I should study to be a doctor. At some point in college I veered off into a whole new path which led to Eugene, Saturday Market, and who I am today, so I'm glad I did not study to be a doctor, but I did have to do it all without much adult guidance.Consequently I did not know how to offer my wonderful son, whose 34th birthday was yesterday, much adult guidance, but like me he was good at self-education and managed pretty well to become a good person and a productive worker.

What I am is often a Secretary, because I love words and reading and writing and being precise. These Secretary positions are ones of responsibility and the title is misleading, but that's usually my role in whatever groups I am in. Even for the Jell-O Art Show, for which I am an elected Queen, I take notes at the meetings and send them out to keep us all on track with our wild ideas. It's controlling the narrative, but I like doing it and get a lot of ideas in the process. Formal meeting minutes are less fun, but everything about the Jell-O Show is informal and really fun, almost all of the time, so I'm happy to be in the Jell-O Art season once more.

We're cooking up some silliness for this year. Writing the script for the performance and making the sets is so much fun for me I am a bit blind about collaborating. Working in consensus is a continuous challenge in all parts of life...it is always easier to be controlling and make things the way you are sure is best. The deeper you are into it, and the more you have invested in your vision, the harder it is to allow other people equal participation. It has gotten easier as I have learned the strengths of my collaborators...they bring skills that complement yours and all are needed, even the ones that slow down the process and raise objections. I've had my scripts thrown down on the floor and thoroughly rejected. Naturally it stung but it was a lesson in simplification and absolutely the rewritten script was far more successful and usable. It was important to see that person as someone who could cut through politeness and say what needed to be said, and important for me not to be personally invested in my golden words. Each person has their style of giving input and sometimes it is hard or annoying or distressing but it's worth the struggle to find what a friend once called the pearl in everyone.

That has taken me about three decades of sharing my writing to learn, and really what I've learned is to suspend my reaction until I get a chance to process the initial feelings and get to the point, which is to create better writing. It's part of me to react emotionally, to feel oversensitive or humiliated or unappreciated or insulted, but when I put that into my journal instead of saying it out loud, I avoid burdening other people with my irrational or unhelpful emotions. That's part of the NVC training or RC practice that has had lasting value. People speaking their own positions clearly depends on your ability to hear them and whenever you shut down your ability to listen non-judgmentally, you shut down any forward improvement or movement for everyone. Which is not fair and is not collaborative. It's like brainstorming, which you do open-heartedly without evaluating, and improv, where you say "Yes, and..." and never No. Hardly ever. I watch a lot of "Whose Line is it Anyway" and the ease with which Wayne Brady and the other more subtle improvisors pick up and run with things, bringing themselves along but not dominating, is eternally fascinating to me. It's an important skill in a lot of areas. Watching Key and Peele is also super and I wish they had done that show longer than they did.

Group process is tough. Allowing that everyone's ideas may be as good as yours is not natural to a lot of smart people. Being controlling is always tempting, but striving for consensus in an honest way nearly always results in decisions and policies that will stand the test of time. It is tempting to manipulate the process in the set-up, to only present the desired outcomes to be considered, to shut down divergence, and to push others along until they agree with you. It's insulting and dismissive to them...and they notice. Enough of it and you will be worked around...people will disregard your desire for power. I've been involved with membership orgs and group process long enough to see many examples of mistakes in power-sharing. We need a lot of types of people to really be inclusive. I'm currently reading a book about Radical Inclusion, because I recognize that I tend to include people I am comfortable with or already agree with on a lot of things, and that is not a true consensus-seeking process. I don't respect it when I witness it and when I engage in it, I don't like watching myself either. I get the tingling of warnings that something is being sacrificed for my comfort or that of other leaders.

Yesterday I dragged myself down to the Park Blocks to measure for some changes that must be made to fix the issues brought about by the additions of the stormwater catchments. We lost a lot of spaces and have to find more to replace them, or consider more radical changes like additional selling spaces, like in the streets or surrounding spaces that won't feel directly connected to the whole. We know people don't like being separated from whatever they think is the center of it all...the stage and food court for most people, but for me, the fountain and its plaza space. I've known for years now that the City wants to remove that fountain and replace it with an in-ground splash pad, which I have gotten used to imagining, with many reservations. The designs we worked with include benches for parents watching their kids play, of course, which look good on paper but impact our booths. The space I use to keep my bike and trailer safe is also going to disappear when the fountain does. I will be challenged to bring those into my 8x8, as there is not safe storage elsewhere for something that irreplaceable. I'm prepared to do that. So I'm able to not bring my self-protection up when we start discussing possibilities, and I even tried to stay off this Map Task Force, because I do not have to be there for every activity and decision the Market makes...I can't be, and need other people to pull the heavy weight as much as they will, as I am aging out and need to and want to. There were a couple too many of us yesterday and it wasn't consensus-based in the least. You can't keep people from creative visualization when they know they are good at it, so there was just a constant buzz of new ideas when really our task was to measure the spaces, not make decisions. But decisions were made. I didn't enjoy it and left as soon as I could. I just can't be involved in every decision the organization makes. I will do my agonizing in my journal and try to find a path to that duty of loyalty which requires me to support them. Whatever resentment comes up is my problem to keep to myself and make go away. It is not my organization to control...it is my organization to participate in. It won't always be on my ideal terms.

But it turns out that I am the only person left with a complete grasp of the remodel plans and how hard we worked to preserve certain elements of our autonomy and survival and fortunately, I documented everything about that four-year, now 8-year process. It started with the public market proposal and the study that the New York-based Project for Public Spaces consultants did for the city. This was brutal, and began with a thorough media campaign to trash downtown, which was in bad shape. The biggest difference between then and now is that it was all in the RG multiple times, the lead-in, the foreshadowing, the discussion, various opinions from the citizens and experts, and the conclusions and results. Now we see none of that, and that is one reason we absolutely need the Eugene Weekly to come back and help us with this more hidden phase we are entering now. I have albums of news articles that we still need and don't have. I have other albums of emails that I have printed out and will never supply the whole picture, as texts and in-person meetings are rarely documented and decisions are not always inclusive or collaborative. Efficiency has taken away some of that. Fortunately the City is rarely efficient and is required to do a lot of public statement before they move on anything. The challenge is finding out where they are doing that, keeping up with them, and being there to respond. I spent some hours reviewing City Council agendas since I stopped listening to every meeting and public forum but I am going to have to pay more attention to all of that, because the people who do, often speak in ways I would like to counter or correct with real information instead of self-interested speculation.

The money that was ready to do the Park Block remodel was about half of what was needed, and right before the pandemic had its effects, that money was pooled with the farmers' money to get their block built. The land swap, the demolishing, moving the farmers for two seasons to 5th St, and now making the pavilion work have all sucked up a ton of resources. Saturday Market was ignored and shelved, and we were kind of happy about most of that, except that the dangers of the lack of maintenance on our safety increased. We asked for concrete repair and we actually do need a bigger food court that can accommodate mobile kitchens, and we need a better stage, and so do all of the other park users. The Pavilion has terrible acoustics (those are expensive) and is not very usable by smaller groups who prefer to be outside anyway. All the gravel surfaces are hard to use. It's working pretty well for farmers' market and met some goals, but not all of the goals for the what was called Town Square and now doesn't really have a name except Downtown. It looks like the City is proceeding with implementing some of the parts of the vision that included the two southern blocks. We got the curbless streets, partially, and will get more of that this season, and likely for the next five or so years.

It is super hard to work on all of those problems at once. Everytime the FSP comes up at City Council, it is obvious there that no one on the council or staff knows a thing about Saturday Market and no one knows how to find anything out. We have gone through too many managers in the last decade to seem approachable, though they are gradually learning that we have an engaged manager now. However, I am still the person who brings the history and continuity, and because I do that as a volunteer, it is just not respected. I'm hoping that archiving the materials, which actually go back to the 2000s, will help. It helped a little during the remodel...at least they attempted to show that we had history, although it was generally incorrect, like the whole thing of the farmers being 100 years old. They became LCFM in 1979, after the Saturday Market revived them, but nobody really wants to hear me tell that story again. It's not that important right now, like the story of how 5th St. got started with hiring our manager and taking 75 of our best artisans over to make an indoor space that ultimately got gobbled up by Obieland. He has all the power now and he has tried to marginalize us the whole time, rather successfully in fact.

But now we seem to have the ear of some City staff and we may be entering a new phase of being understood and respected. The present power structure within our organization is doing well with building relationships but I would not characterize them as inclusive. I'm concerned but don't have much power to do anything about it. As an old lady from the past I am not often listened to with real openness, though as I turn out to be right I regain respect. I know our membership. I know just how annoying and self-interested we tend to be, and how that presents to bigger entities like the City. They deal with that kind of energy in everything they do, and have their work-arounds, which I have seen in their naked forms and have learned to accept as inevitable. Yes, they do public engagement, but it is scripted for their desired outcomes and it gets ugly when the people try to change the course of development. These times are the worst for that...corporate power is not honest and the battles are dire...witness NWNG, student housing, and the 5th St Market District and its connection to the Riverfront, which was supposed to be the 8th Avenue Willamette to Willamette Great Street program. Won't ever be now. It's all about what 5th St. wants.

And since Obie hates us, there's no way we will find a relocation solution that will work for us when the big parts of the remodel happen. We saw our season flounder with the 8th St and Oak and Park Street construction all summer. It was harsh and took so much staff time, policies that had to be tossed together and a loss of cohesion in our membership as self-interest prevailed. We know that our honor system of payment is often not enough to motivate fair payments when people feel their situation is not fair. So we know we didn't get honest fees from everyone. Some of us made big donations. My personal merch program donated over $2000 to the general expenses and I am not the only person who gave or bought equipment or gave excessive volunteer time. That's what we do when we're needed. But for people to give, they need to really feel a part of all of it. The reasons why they may not feel included are many and complex, but we need to figure out how to motivate people. Inclusion, where they get to speak for themselves, is essential.

I've always fought against fines and punitive policies because they drive people further away. As an org we seem to be going closer to that territory, as OCF has as well. I quit volunteering for OCF as I knew my voice would never be heard in the present atmosphere, and that is a relief for me to stop flailing. Now I will choose to comply or quit. I never want to be in that position with Saturday Market, and don't plan to be. It is my retirement plan, my sustenance, and my key to the future survival of my little world. I owe it to my history and my survival to keep trying, to learn how to increase our inclusivity and fight against our tendency to tighten things up when it gets hard. We used to be able to craft a lot of individual solutions for our very individual concerns, but we may not be able to continue to do that in a world that is less honorable and more life-threatening. Fighting the tightening up is hard to envision and hard to do. No one wants to hear about fears and will dismiss what presents as fear. That is always the first defense used against little old ladies. It's my job now to reframe concerns as logical and visionary rather than trying to protect what we have known. After so many years of that with the city, I am not sure how much I can continue to learn better ways to do that. I'm annoyed that I have to. 

But that's today. It's my day off. Maybe tomorrow I will get back into problem-solving. Really what I should do today is make some Jell-O. It always works. Also there are sticks to pick up. I'm super tempted to take my saw around the corner and help the neighbor who has a tree blocking the sidewalk. It's a street tree, so the city is responsible, and I am not, but it needs to be dealt with. Probably not by a little old lady from around the corner. I want to do it though. 

Irony is Not Dead

 Not amusing to hear the narcissist speak about supporting orgs started in the 70s which struggle with things like embezzlement. 

Give back the money.

Still work, just different work

 I was so relieved at the end of Holiday Market, where I masked almost all of the time. It seemed to me that people were grateful for that rather than avoiding me...I'd say about 20% of the population both internal and external was masking. I know I felt safer. I had one quickly suppressed sore throat episode and got exposed to Covid, but I didn't get sick. I felt safer on Xmas Eve, and didn't mask much that day. I tried not to hug anyone but I did a little. It's emotional to end a season on a holiday that is kind of fraught for me, although I weathered the emotions well I thought.

 When I went on the 27th to load out, I didn't mask, and also went downtown to the library and grocery that day, masked inside. About six days later, not having seen a single human, I came down with what I think was RSV. I didn't have a fever, just a lot of congestion which caused a cough. It has lasted a week and isn't quite over. I tested negative for Covid twice.

My respiratory distress is always linked to particular foods for me, dairy and citrus, and I did push the limits of that around Xmas, because everything has butter in it and I love satsumas too. So it got kind of bad, not restricting my breathing or anything, just gross mucus and a lot of coughing and sneezing. I believe it was a virus and it has almost gone away. I figure I got it from touching something downtown...door handles, whatever. RSV persists on surfaces for a few hours but it was also possible it was some other virus. I have isolated and taken care of myself but it wasn't fun and I still can barely eat anything without reacting to it. It will be a long time before I have any dairy. I put all the cookies and things in the freezer.

So not a fun start on vacation time but the upside was I didn't really do any work to speak of for the last several weeks. Right now I am obsessed with sorting through papers that I've saved for various reasons and books I am most likely not going to read. Books go to the Little Free Libraries and papers are just recycled or saved in smaller units for a little longer. 

I'm a lot better at letting things go but recognizing the feelings of loss that come with that. I'm wrapping up my OCF volunteer experience and letting go of being an insider on the issues and gossip. I always like to know what is going on with everyone but I figure over time I will probably hear the important stories, and it's too many people to keep track of anyway. Lots of things I might rather not know. I worked really hard at increasing communication for members of OCF, particularly crafters, but as I went through my records I felt like there will be no net gain over time for the time I spent and things I put in place. My work will be erased or supplanted by the efforts of others, some well-meaning and some not, and that's just the way it goes. OCF is giant and never stays the same, whether that is good or bad overall...it's not possible for one person to have much real effect on any part of it. 

I'm proud of my efforts and glad I tried but also relieved and happy to be out of the way of it now. I don't feel obligated to respond to anyone or monitor any FB (except for Negative Shit) or lead or even follow. I was just an observer and complainer for a long time and while I may try not to be a complainer I will still be an astute observer of all of the ways of a membership organization and can do that from somewhat of a distance. I'm disciplining myself to care a lot less about it all. At some point I will stop watching the Board meetings, maybe soon. 

As for Saturday Market and the Kareng Fund, not leaving. I was named Volunteer of the Year, 

which generated a lot of nice compliments and appreciation from my fellow members and staff, so that felt very good and I'm proud of my efforts and what is at this point, kind of a legacy. I still have a lot to do there, not the least of it being the archives, which I think about all the time but have not really gotten to. I'm using being sick as an excuse. I will get a big chunk of it done though, as I realized I don't have to take notes on the materials from the last few years in detail, as I have all the Board packets and documents saved in electronic form, and the newsletters are posted on the website. So I will likely drop back into 2019, which is nearly finished, and move to the present before I go back into the old stuff. Soon.

I feel like I am running out of time to get every part of my life in order for the inevitable end of my ability to do this kind of work. If I'm going to write any books I can't just put it off that much longer. I doubt I will write any fiction. I had a period of that and will collect all of it in a form I can access easily if I want to go back and edit it, which would be needed. A friend gave me a copy of a story I had written about her 20 years ago, about an incident that was meaningful for us both, and she was still moved to tears by it, but frankly, it left me kind of cold. It was over-the-top emotional and dramatic. I am absolutely no longer that person so it gave me insight into why I got a lot of confusing reaction to my writing back then, and to some of my actions as well, so it set of a period of self-examining with a different perspective than I've had before.

Last night I went through things I'd saved from John's school career and it was actually pretty depressing for me. In many ways I was not a good parent. I was self-involved and had a lot of work to do both to keep us alive and well and to process my own issues, so I was not emotionally nurturing in the ways I would see as important now. He was on his own to a large degree and I can see that in his behaviors and attitudes...at the time I wasn't able to do it any other way I suppose. I think I saw it as letting him have the freedom to develop as a person but more guidance and structure would have really helped. Single-parenting has some definite drawbacks. He had good teachers some of the time and he responded to that, but by high school they didn't have much time or ability to influence him and neither did I. I was present, volunteering and working at school, but I think that made it worse for him as home wasn't different enough to be a sanctuary and he experienced me as part of the system. When he quit he wouldn't even discuss it. Our struggles were harsh.

I can track his anti-progress as he developed a personality and resistance to the systems, which both of his parents transmitted to him somewhat unknowingly...I mean, I can't get behind the systems without my own resistance so I wasn't selling him on it properly. Once I realized that math and science achievers were going to get channeled into oppressive militaristic channels, most likely, I wasn't as willing to push him into that, though I did support his interests and tried to get him the resources. We were poor, though, so I had to ask for help and that might have kept him out of some things. I don't think he got to go to computer camp and even Culture Jam refused us a scholarship because people thought I could afford it...I did afford it, but it was hard. People didn't see the truth of what looked like financial security because I looked like a successful crafter and we had that big business for awhile (which left me with little but debt, which I kept private as it was embarrassing.) I got $200 a month in child support. I was remodeling a house for us so he could have a room that wasn't on the way to the bathroom. I had to work multiple jobs and that meant all the time. I still feel misunderstood with my poverty consciousness. Getting something like dementia or a disability terrifies me. I won't even buy myself a new vacuum cleaner or consume much of anything outside of food.

 I couldn't get him private music lessons when he might have responded...things like that. We didn't socialize with people with money and resources. He didn't have much privilege, which is kind of a good thing in retrospect, but he internalized being poor and lost his enthusiasm for trying somehow. Somehow he found out that extra effort would not be rewarded and wasn't worth it. I'm sure being poor was hard on him. I got all of his toys at Goodwill. Health care was a nightmare...I would put off taking him to the doctor in a way that shames me no end now. Poverty is serious, and people you know are suffering from it. Fortunately at this point, I am not, really...my hard work paid off, but that doesn't mean I will ever feel safe in this world.

No doubt I am missing a lot by just looking at these school-related artifacts but he didn't give me a lot else to get to know him with. I didn't know how to draw him out, and he didn't share a lot of himself with me. We were right on top of each other in our little house and I was working on the other house from when he was 5 to 16...my goal was to give him a room with a door on it that he could lock and he never did get that. As a builder I was self-taught as I am with everything and there was something about the way I hung his bedroom door that made it not close properly. So even after he got some real private space, it wasn't enough. I was always there, which I suppose is why he learned to close me out. 

I was 39 when he was born, which was good and not so good, as my forties and fifties were full of some radical self-improvement and it was clunky. I was in therapy, co-counseling, learned NVC (kind of) and spent a ton of time writing, going to meetings, and having my very necessary adult growth spurt. I left him pretty stranded when he was a teenager, and his Dad was even less help. He survived it, and had good friends, but it was a lot less than I would have wished for him. It's not something he wants to talk about yet, though I keep expecting that part. I know I went through it with my own pretty self-absorbed parents. My dad abandoned us when I was 20 (suicide) and my Mom was always distracted with having too many kids and too much work to do. I felt loved, and my son feels loved, but there were things I blamed them for and for which they were guilty. So I expect him to have some resentment and blame. I think that is not something he will want to address unless he becomes a parent and starts to pick it apart...which I don't think he is planning. I try not to feel like that is my fault. It's hard to imagine anyone not feeling reluctant to reproduce in this world, though someone did tell me once that the reason they could do it was that they believed in life. 

I believe in life, because the natural world is something I pay a lot of attention to, but I am not sure how much I believe in love. I am a-romantic and can't really get into anything celebrating those areas of human interaction. I participate on some levels but I do not gush and that story reminded me of how far I have gone away from all of that. I regret pursuing whatever I was pursuing in my fifties when I was on OK Cupid and trying to get this one guy to be with me. I'm grateful to him for refusing me, as painful as it was. I learned a lot from just that and he pointed me toward many useful resources that did help me. I suppose I had to go through that. But I wish I had spent that energy being a better mom of a teenager. His needs should have been what I was thinking about (I was...) and his future should have been more in my goals list. I guess regrets are important to, so we can do better, but today sucks.

Not that much I can do to fix it, but I am a very supportive mother of a 34-year old, within the limits we are fenced into now. His birthday is coming up. As always it is bittersweet, as all the holidays are, when I compare my life to the mainstream lives online and TV (I know, don't do that) and I try in various ways to do better with him. I will keep trying with whatever good time we have left, and I will try very, very hard to not burden him with my aging self. So I will not text him my feelings about his report cards and all the things I did wrong. I'm telling you few people who enjoy my drama and bullshit for whatever reasons...I'm glad you get something out of it and I carefully don't really want to know who all of you are, for the most part. I'm writing this for me, because as I found out when I was in my thirties, and am still finding out, I am a flawed and selfish person. Not the only one, but it's not something I can really hide. I'm glad people can appreciate me anyway, even though what I do is hide it with hard work. I will work hard for the common good. I will work hard. I will work hard for you, albeit tangentially. I know how to work hard.

I don't know how to not work hard, but once I sort all of these papers, maybe I can work on that. (*bitter laughter*) Happy New Year!

As a follow-up, now that I have gone through all of the school papers, I found out there were some good years when things went just right, and all along I did have a lot of involvement, whether that was really good or bad. I just had to pull back sometimes. It's forgivable.  Here's a photo from kindergarten.