Joy was the main thing

 Lots of drama at market yesterday. Something we didn't hear about is that the Board cancelled November Park Blocks markets starting next year. It's two until 2031 when it will be three. It's a significant loss of selling days for members and will likely result in more competing events to attract our newly homeless members who just want to sell every week. None of my page of reasons not to do it were apparently compelling for the decision-makers. It does not serve the members.

But that was lost in the dismay of people with scented products, whose reactions ranged from staying home to plans to actually collect data, which would have been a good move before the decisions were made. As that is a health issue especially at Holiday Market, it's hard to support not making changes, but there are a lot of people potentially affected, including food booths, plant sellers, tea sampling, and many things that cause issues with the air that we commonly breathe. It's opening up things that could have significant expenses attached. 

And several people wondered if I will be able to still sell my hats. I don't have an answer for that. The online guideline still reads:  Commercial straw or felt hats, (or any commercially made hat,) either decorated or undecorated, may not be sold. All hat vendors offering work in contravention of this standard at the time of its implementation are allowed to continue selling them for the duration of their continuous membership. 

This is in a handbook labeled 2024. I have not seen the wording of what was passed by the Board or recommended by the Standards Committee, so will have to wait for the online handbook to be changed or the minutes to be provided next month. It wasn't in the Standards minutes that this was even a plan. I was not notified and don't know if anyone else who sells hats was...I received a letter from the Standards Co-Chair about my issue in particular that began in July, but nothing was mentioned about this wholesale change. Perhaps I was meant to be distracted, or it is just the poor communication and transparency we are supposed to be used to by now.

I don't fault the committee, who are hard-working volunteers whom I support. I'm sad for them that they don't probably know the history of this issue or what will potentially appear in our market that they will have to deal with. I am not worried about competition. I have never approached craft-selling with competitiveness and won't start now. We all just do our best in our niche we carve out and hope everyone else finds success as well. Competition is really not part of our makeup, generally. We just want to explore our artforms and sell what we make. It's pretty simple. 

But many of the Standards guidelines were crafted to prevent unfair competition, with handcrafted products which, as they are harder to make, need protection in the marketplace from commercially made items. There have always been gray areas that create inequities, and now there are more...it is rare that someone prints their own t-shirts, for instance. Digital printing has taken over that market, and you can see direct print done by computers on lots of items that were formerly handmade...tote bags, for instance. All of the stickers and patches and things that are ordered and put out for sale with only the work of the designer have replaced the hand-printed bumper stickers, etc. of the past. So one can assume that a digitally printed patch could be sewn onto a commercial hat, or that could even be ordered already complete, or commercially embroidered hats could be put out on the shelf, or even worse, commercially made fleece, knitted, crocheted, dyed bucket hats, or straw or felt hats will appear now, with a vague 50% contribution line drawn.

It's not going to be easy for the Committee to judge. Is design enough to meet that subjective 50%? When you look at a hat and I look at a hat, we will likely not agree on what that means. It can't just be the outward appearance of the item. When I look at my hats, I see the art preparation, the screen-making, the printing of one hat at a time, by hand, by me, with a little squeegee, and the retouching with tiny pens, brushes and markers that I have to do to get the finished version to look as close to perfect as possible. It is extremely rare that a hat I print is ready to sell without the re-touching process. I do a ton of handwork on my hat. But if you don't know this, you might think my rather simple design does not look like 50% of the finished item. 

I'm going to probably have to deal with this repeatedly going forward, as the committee does not seem to have knowledge about the process of printmaking, which is an ancient and old-school art form. The fact that is it being replace by digital printing is nice for the artisan perhaps but it is bad for the hand-crafted marketplace. It is of course not just hats but a lot of items, so we get to the gnarly "Consistency of Standards" world where opening one door leads to a hallway of others. We have had over 40 years of Standards Committee efforts to regulate these things and manage the protection of the hand-crafting artisan, so throwing out the history and starting now is going to be quite a hardship for people producing traditional crafts, not just prints but so many other types of craft items. 

Standards Committee already works very hard and this will being a lot more anxious people to their meetings, so I don't plan to make their job harder if I can help it. But I am ready to educate them about hand-printing if they want that. Changing technology does not demand changing standards. I sat at that table for many years, decades even, trying to help them articulate these issues and communication and transparency were essential. Surprising and shocking members with new limits does not go well. We would always make an effort to call in all of the affected stakeholders before crafting solutions, even when it was 100 jewelers to converse about charms. No, it was not easy. And when it was hats, four of us were inadvertently left out, thus the exceptions. This time pretty much everyone was left out, unless it was just me. 

New is not better. New is just new. Better is when people are more encouraged to thrive, more easily navigate the rules, and are allowed to be honest and ethical in what they do. As a community, we are wedded to honesty and ethics...it comes with the hand-crafting territory. Talk to any of us about it and you might be surprised how it plays out in every workshop where the production choices are made.

So you will hear more about this as the work of the Board is revealed, whatever it was. I hope the minutes are comprehensive and we aren't given false narratives about this too. 

I still have not had the inner courage to really examine the Code of Conduct revisions, which were also passed with a lot of secretive process, though I trust that since it took six months, a lot of diligence was applied. I don't necessarily trust the motive and what lies between the lines. Take a look at it yourself and see what you think might happen if you make a mistake or become the target of harassment. I will study it, when I have time, and see what I think might be some pitfalls. 

Policy is a living thing and always needs adjustment, and the makers of it need to be their best selves when they craft it, just like the artisans in our workshops. Ethics and good will and honesty are so important in our community. I wish I felt confident that we had that in place in all of our leaders. 

I remember what the mother of one of my friends wrote in my autograph book when I was five, something I have reread countless times and thought about deeply. She wrote "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. "

I told some convenient lies when I was little, to protect myself from my siblings and parents and find my way in a world of deprivation and bullying. Sometimes I was the bully, often the one crying. The dissonance was high as I learned about lies of omission, lies of commission, and all the sins and layers of sins taught in the Catholic Church. At some point, probably in my late teens, I decided honesty was the only way to go forward in life, though it was never easy to practice and is always hard to find in others. But I am committed to honesty. As a non-fiction writer, there is no other way.

There was also so much joy yesterday! One friend showed my photos of a cave system he and his fellow archeologists discovered, another told me about her potential new job, many others about their travels. One through-hiker bought hats for her support team...I assume she was taking a break from the Pacific Crest Trail before her final push. I imagine those hats in her cache near the final takeout. I'm excited for her. I'm excited for the printmaker who got to print and give away woodcuts at the Fiesta Cultural Friday night (he looked tired.) The City supported his costs so the prints could be given away as they dried. Must have been so fun. I've enjoyed him going from screenprinting to other more complex print techniques as his passion flows, something I always thought I would do but have probably run out of time for. He won't always be at market as he gets into shows where fine art is easier to sell. We lose many artists as they develop skills that take them into bigger circles and more success. 

For some reason, probably the hours of service I put in as a volunteer in the last two decades, I stuck with what I was already good at. I started teaching myself to make prints in the 1980s. I still do most things the same, hands-on way I did then. I don't use a computer much at all, certainly not for design, and I'm not going to start now. It's a trip of discovery to be getting near the end of my productive life. What will I do when I have to empty out my shop to install some kind of caretaker? Maybe go back to making things out of paper, painting silk, or something in Jell-O? 

Maybe I'll just keep writing things. I love it and it's important. There will never be enough truth-telling to replace Wendell Berry and Gloria Steinem and those others we are now losing. Fortunately, they wrote things down!