Just Write Something To Grease the Wheels

Practicing writing for the book and history displays about the Market. Obviously this would need a huge edit for a display, and maybe even more detail for a book, once I work out the structure it would take. I have a good idea for the book, something Erci Witchey told me about this other book I was writing. I plan to use it for both projects, eventually, at least in some form. It's called mirroring. I would take something from one part and compare it to another part, and make my points inside that structure. We started by framing our first history poster as Then and Now. It was mostly about our sites and an overview, and you will be able to see it this Saturday right next to my booth! Come by and tell me some stories.

I also think it would be an awesome way to feature some of our artisans. Do a profile of Gil Harrison another of our early potters, next to a profile of one of our potters today. Do the same with a jeweler, a printmaker, and so on, and in the process show how techniques, styles, technologies, and crafts have evolved through the work of the hands of these members. I love the concept but I would need to develop some interviewing skills, which I don't currently have. And it would be tough to write about people who have died...there just would probably not be enough information available to write a good profile. However, that particular book coule be kind of simple perhaps, featuring one signature piece and just enough of the artist's statements to tell the mirrored story. Anyway, it's one of my ideas.

I wrote this piece after I had just finished reading all of the newsletters and minutes from our first decade, everything I had at the time. I have since found more sources, about six more boxes of old things, and JoAnn told me she had saved every newsletter! So now I need to go back, figure out what I am missing in the newsletters, and see if she will let me borrow hers to make copies. I may develop more insights through additional materials. I'm thinking that each decade probably had a theme of sorts. Considering all that was going on in our world in the 70s, experimenting seems right. Perhaps at some point I will write more about the politics and the alternative community and how Market fit into all that. Now you can see why Suzi's book about the Fair is two volumes and she still didn't tell every story. These are big stories.

Saturday Market in the Seventies

Though based on an ancient tradition of artisans bringing goods to the commons for a market day, a weekly craft market was a novel concept in 1969 when Lotte Streisinger and her group of craftspeople and artists decided to create one. They had successfully mounted craft sales events for a decade and were part of a renaissance of handcrafting. The 1960’s cultural shift toward more authentic and natural lifestyles contrasted with what was seen to be the bland disconnecting lives of the 1950’s Americans, and Eugene became a center for seekers of healthier choices.

The founding values of having crafters sell their own goods directly to the public, on public space, outdoors and in as simple a fashion as possible proved to be popular and accessible. Though the first rainy market was small, the new gathering grew to uncomfortable size in the City-supported Downtown Mall, and some rent-paying merchants resented the group. After Christmas, the founders looked to find Lane County land, which seemed more abundant, and faced a different set of conditions.

The County Commissioners required incorporation and liability insurance as conditions for even preliminary discussion of siting. Though the group had only been charging $1 per space, they now needed to spend $500 to incorporate and $800 for insurance. They formed a Board of Directors and had the goal of being a 501(c)3 nonprofit, though subsequently finding that they could only qualify as a Mutual Benefit Corporation, which is not federally tax-exempt. They decided to structure themselves as closely to a nonprofit as possible, and set up not only the decision-making Board of five, but a Market Committee, composed of everyone who attended any particular meeting. This level of democratic management fit the community of artisans well and often Committee meetings included well over one hundred participants. When a space lottery was included, three hundred members would show up. Policy discussions were thorough and impassioned, and policies were hammered into shape, by a consensus process learned by many community groups of the era.

The County Commissioners were reluctant to support the Market but did allow them to stumble toward stability which finally came on the “Butterfly” parking lot across from the Lane County Courthouse. The first full season of May-Christmas happened there in 1972. The gathering had been embraced almost instantly in its first season by the public, and although it took a little longer for the downtown merchants to embrace the benefits of increased Saturday traffic to their businesses, several community leaders helped support the fledgling organization while it worked through its internal challenges.

Those were many. Volunteers governed and managed at first, and though the County required a hired manager, which soon grew to a team, salaries were very low and benefits were subjective. Winter layoffs when the Market was dormant guaranteed new managers nearly every season. Volunteers were still needed for many functions and the idealism brought passionate energy to every decision. Often the Committee would reverse Board decisions or the Board would have to survey, assess, and make decisions for the group for the common good. Every area of operations and philosophy had to be debated, and the first decade was highly experimental.

Should the Market open in April or May? Could the overflow of interested crafters be handled best with a Sunday event, a lottery system, or something new? Could food be sold, and how? Would it be a good idea to incorporate nonprofit groups for free, as a community service, or should the event try to be nonpolitical and sales-based? Decisions had to be made about fees to accommodate both the higher earners and the beginners or artists who failed to sell well regardless of their dedication to craft.

The fee structure changed often as expenses increased, as staff retention became a goal and the number of selling opportunities blossomed with the popularity of crafting. The Saturday Market intentionally mentored other markets as a way to keep the event small enough to fit in the 250 spaces

of the lot, and markets were started in Portland (1974) as well as many smaller towns. In 1975 a popular manager, Lou Elliot, used his on-the-ground training to move to manage an indoor venue that became the Fifth Street Public Market. Originally pitched as the next evolution for every crafter, that development encouraged some 85 artisans to move indoors, where the everyday gathering space also appealed to the community. The nature of the Saturday gathering changed with the need for it, and some wet weather years helped shrink the event and eliminate the viability of the Sunday markets, which ended in 1976.

Conventional advertising was discouraged but promotional events began early, such as Easter parades and Egg hunts, Tricycle and Wagon parades, and a pet parade before it became apparent that pets would be a continuing problem as the temporary restaurants increased. It became accepted by the public to bring kittens and puppies to give away on the surrounding sidewalks, and despite discouragement of the practice, it continued for the first decade until finally being controlled in the next. As a lively and unusual event, the Market attracted many types of individuals who had their own goals, whether that was to show off a costume, a performance, or a baby cougar or chimpanzee. Both animals were seen briefly in 1975 before being asked to leave, and the continual appearance of parrots, ferrets, and even a truckload of rabbits, meant to be meat, challenged the managers. A gallon of worms was permitted in the produce booth. The “No Dogs” policy had been set at the very first market in 1970, as essential as “Rain or Shine.”

At first busking was seen as panhandling, which was illegal at the time. Free entertainment was a welcome addition, however, so the musicians and mimes were asked not to appear to be begging, but to step up their professionalism. Paid entertainment developed gradually as the budget grew healthier, but soon the newsletters listed individuals and groups who are now legendary (and some still appear!)

Christmas markets were difficult in the weather and privately owned indoor markets developed, though the Saturday Market continued to be held each week. Many years there were several indoor Christmas markets to choose from, with predictable effects on the volume of crafters on the Butterfly. Still, sales potential for the season was attractive enough for the crafters to develop ways to stay warm and dry. Booth models and tarp arrangements evolved as the craft professional remained determined to adapt.

A Food Committee formed as it became apparent that regulations would bring conditions that required careful management of the risks of selling in hot weather, by inexperienced operators, and in outdoor conditions. The County Sanitation Department worked along to educate, inspect (every Market day) and secure compliance with licensing, and the Market tried covering licensing costs until the operators were doing well enough to manage their own costs.

Produce and other farm products were always considered essential to the event but farmers struggled to participate, preferring to sell from trucks. Early years included consignment produce booths managed by Market staff, and a farm or two tried having a booth. By 1978 The County had done a feasibility study for a separate Farmers’ Market and on June 23, 1979, the first Lane County Farmer’s Market was held at the Fairgrounds, attracting twelve trucks. It grew to as many as twenty-one, but the season and decade ended with a better solution still up in the air. Saturday Market continued to pay for the Farmers’ Market manager, permits, and costs, often at a loss for the budget.

Newsletters were created back in the day of the mimeograph with its purple ink. Usually 81/2” by 14”, they were given to all vendors and contained not only instructions for parking and registering properly, but minutes of meetings of both the Board and Committee, and creative stories and drawings of members and staff. Various logos and lettering styles appeared, graphically representing the evolution of the Market image, and in 1977 the basket of flowers replace a pushcart drawing. “The Basket” persisted as the iconic logo to the present day, although it was redrawn for special occasions to include holly or hearts, and for the 50^th season in 2019 it appeared as a more realistic, antiqued treatment of flowers, signaling a shift that will likely continue into the future as the Saturday Market reinvents itself each season.

Joyful Girl

I've been so discouraged by politics, but not my personal life, that I've been rather silent, but just keeping things to myself. I'm editing a book my Mom wrote about her grandmother, Johanna Hytrek, who homesteaded in a soddy in Nebraska. The line of joy from Johanna to Mom to me is strong...and though Mom didn't know her grandmother, this book is her way of showing that really, she did.

Today in the book it is Christmas, and on my way to looking up the spelling of crèche I checked into FB and after several posts about how we will be rearranging our underwear drawers instead of watching TV at 6:00, I found the Resistance Revival Chorus singing with Ani DeFranco in celebration of what happened in those midterms. Those midterms! How they did revive us.

I'm eating mashed potatoes, plain, no butter, since I can't eat butter now or milk or cream either, and sometimes it feels like I live in a soddy in the sand hills surrounded by the endless prairie, and all that matters is a Meadowlark and the lilies that live across the road in the ditch. I know my Mom had some lonely times as a joyful girl in those prairies, and has a few now too in her old people's home where she will be turning 93 in a couple of weeks. Working on her book is overwhelming joy for me.

She's a good writer, Rita. She worked on this book for years and years and workshopped it with insensitive old men and lovely old women, some of whom could relate and some of whom could not. Rita walked miles to the one-room school in the snow and had a lot of brothers and sisters but still, had lonely times, as most kids do. She felt like the black sheep sometimes and I was always the one in our family who looked most like her, with our widow's peaks and low foreheads and dark curly hair and cowlicks. Rita has always been my role model and my supporter and we've weathered a few things together and apart. She says I am the only one who cares if the book gets finished but I know she cares and her joy will spread to everyone when we get this done.

So I'm loving spending my winter week taking out the extra spaces in her sentences and correcting the very occasional typo and trying to decide if Johanna, who was from Obrowiec, Poland, would spell creche with the accent or not. Turns out it is a French word, but Johanna was Catholic and I have no idea if she would use the accent. I finally decided that Mom didn't use it so that's the decision right there. 

I'm hardly correcting anything in this manuscript. Once in a while I will change a sentence that could be better if it didn't start with But or And, but it isn't really my job to change Mom's style at all, just to finish the book. Just get the book into print. I'm almost ready to do that, though I got a wonderful idea the other day. I had one of those flash realizations that I could do some drawings for it...don't tell Mom, as it's her birthday surprise. I drew a Meadowlark and the lilies, and am working on some of the other plants that Lewis and Clark found in that part of the prairie, and ones that Mom mentioned in her writing, though I will have to guess what the slippery grass was.  The sand hills part of Nebraska was both long and short-grass prairie and there are lots of photos to reference on the internet and in library books.

It's not intuitive at first to realize that there are parts of the land back there that are still natural prairie grass and native plants. On those homesteads, there are lands that haven't been plowed, that maybe haven't even been grazed. I'm still learning that when they got there, they didn't plant alfalfa or anything...they used the natural pasture, not only for their cows, but they twisted up the grasses and used them for fuel. There were no trees where they were, except willows in the creek beds and later, the cottonwoods they planted on their tree claims because they grew fast. There were shrubs, like chokecherry and wild rose, and you can bet they gathered whatever fruits they could find, but mostly they had to coax whatever they could out of that deep rich soil after they took out all the roots and grass and only harvested if it rained properly and didn't hail and lots of other things went right. They burned hay twists, buffalo chips (dried flops) and later, when they had them, corn cobs. After they got some ducks, geese, and chickens, they had feathers for quilts. Before that, they were cold. The soddies were kind of warm though, with walls three feet thick. You still had to go outside to pee, of course, and feed your animals and milk your cow. Once you got one.

Johanna and Gregor arrived in 1886, which wasn't that early, but where they were it was just about the right time because there was a train to Atkinson, about 40 miles away from their smaller town, Stuart, and they had some neighbors (mostly relatives of theirs) and some opportunities to buy land and lumber and things that greatly helped. But they built those first houses from big chunks of sod, whitewashed them inside, spread clay on the floor, and put in a couple of windows and a door. The roofs leaked, there were critters dropping down on them, and they built frame houses as soon as they could, but they really did start in the dirt there and built their wealth the hard way. 

Those families were mostly short, powerful people who could sing well and who didn't chatter much. They worked hard and took what came. Johanna lost her 9-year old oldest son in the Blizzard of 1888, just the second winter after she arrived there. That's the part Mom is writing right now, the great loss that defined the rest of their lives. They didn't find Romanic until March, after two months of deep grief. Snow in Nebraska in those days was nothing to play in. Blizzards literally took your breath from your lungs and no one could go out to save you without perishing themselves, so there was a lot of torture in that experience, and Johanna was nursing Uncle Stencil at the time, who had been born in November. January 12th was the date of the blizzard. My own grandfather, John Paul Hytrek, was born the next year. Johanna kept living. 

Here she is, surrounded by flowers, when her asthma had gotten so bad she had to live in town. She died at only 69, in 1921. She was 34 when she lost her son.He wasn't the only child lost to these pioneers, these settlers. These immigrants. That wasn't their only sorrow.

Mom says they all thought that the Poncas who lived in Niobrara had been duly compensated for their grasslands and that the buffalo had been harvested for their robes, and it's highly likely that none of them thought much about why there was free land for the proving-up. All they knew was that they were earning it for their families, at the request and the benevolence of the freedom-loving American government, and we all know the mythos and perversions of all that.

I recently finished the book The Bone and Sinew of the Land which was about free black americans who tried to settle in the frontier of the time, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, where the earlier part of the 19th century was acted out in all of its horror and injustice. That frontier story was much less romantic than the one of my Polish ancestors, much less joyful, and way, way harder. One of them was even named Free Frank McWhorter, a different bookend to my family shelf, whom I suppose, was at least related to someone who was at one time, property of one of my white McWhorter ancestors, or someone from our clan. Almost no one in today's world has a history that is fully separate from the injustices of the American past, in America, anyway. And the Poncas had no choices, like the people we're going to be lied to about tonight, have no choices. Their suffering was generational, everlasting, yet they'll find joy. We will only find it if we ground ourselves in reality, as they likely have had to do too.

The thread that ran through all these stories, we know now, was about how ugly, selfish, and grasping some men could be. Nothing's changed there but the victims and the details of the horrors. What an easy story, to be battling snow and drought, in comparison to murder and theft and brutality. What a do-able life, to get over family tragedy and know that things would improve, that strength could be found and abundance would increase. Most of us do have do-able lives, here in the land of our privilege.

Sorrow and joy, birds and flowers, potatoes and wild rose hip tea. Can we keep this world? Can we slow down the destruction, right the insane wrongs of our present reality? I will certainly try. I realized this year I've been doing the Market and Holiday Market for ten years now, without the use of fossil fuels. Not perfectly, as I had some help there when I broke my foot and had to be driven in vans and such, and I suppose there are some compromises made in the climate footprint of bikes and tires and Rubbermaid tubs and zipties and all the details I still have to improve upon. And I'm 69 this year, the age Johanna was when her trials ended. 

I'm still in pretty good shape, though, and probably not being able to eat cheese and butter is going to help me in the long run. I enjoyed those potatoes immensely, good creamy Yukon Golds grown by my farmer friend on his clean Yoncalla land, with his cippolinis and my own homegrown garlic. Little joys can go a long way. Maybe I'll dig some cherries out of the freezer while I watch Henry Louis Gates tell some more people their ancestors were slave owners or slaves, or worse, kings and queens. I'll just keep the TV off until Jeopardy comes on. There's always joy in Jeopardy, watching ordinary, good smart people do their best. No one is ever mean or nasty on Jeopardy. 



Rita Louise Hytrek, maybe 17?

Chasing Down the Pages

A second intense, long day of classes and chatting with writers at the Wordcrafters conference and I feel like I could sit down and write my whole book tonight and never stop. I worried that at a fiction conference I wouldn't get enough to help me with my narrative nonfiction, but I was dead wrong. I already knew I wanted to use fictional techniques, and my writing group has always worked on my pieces just like fiction for that reason, and that carried through the workshops too. Nobody glazed over and said, "oh, you mean memoir," as if that were the thing old ladies do when they have nothing new to say. No one even seemed to see me as an old lady!

Every topic, discussion and lesson translated directly to my work, and since I am only comfortable listening with notebook in hand I right away started to jot things down. Quickly I formed the habit of putting the general tips on the left side of each page and my specific ideas for my project on the right. As I went from room to room the pages filled and now I have 24 pages of very specific plans for each and every part of the book I will write. Furthermore, now I know that I will certainly write it.

Going into the first day, which was Thursday evening, I was saying to myself (in my habitual conversations while walking or working) that I wasn't focusing on publishing, that I loved the research, that I was only writing the book for myself anyway....These are all the usual excuses we make when we are afraid we would rather fail from inaction than from hubris. I knew that, so I didn't say them out loud once I got there. All of these people were publishing, or published, and they weren't all that different from me. They were creative people, I am creative, and I feel that I am a good writer, especially when I bother to edit and remember to use what I have learned. So I just pretended to be a real writer for the first night. These big shots with lots of books that are bestsellers did things like accidentally drink my wine, touch my Jell-O, laugh at my clever repartee. They were friendly even though they were surrounded by their real friends. Some even told me intimate things about their real lives, and we connected like people do. Ones I knew liked me more, and I liked them more. We had a community. And we have books.

Magic happened. Maybe it was in the first few hours, and I couldn't tell you what started it, but now when I look at my notes I have it all there. I have the structure, I have the beginning, the end, the scenes, the characters, the vision. I already had the passion and the material, but now I am sure that I have a book. It's not just a thing I'm working on, it's not a memoir, it's not an essay here or there, it is a fully-feathered story with a narrative arc and all of the elements that make a compelling tale. It has suspense, it has depth, it has real marketability, and it is mine to make happen using all of the magical techniques that are there to use.

With what I gleaned from the minds of these experienced and hard-working writers, I have something real, compared to the maybe-fantasy-dream-someday pile of papers I had before. Someone I respected even said words like "fine" and "good." Those are the pats on the head I so needed, the taking me seriously that I have only had in my intimate group of four with whom I have been meeting for decades now.

Sure, I get compliments on my meeting minutes, and I am a great speller and can put together an articulate opinion, but my creative writing rarely gets read. I have these blogs, these unedited ramblings of mind that I toss out effortlessly to promote this or discuss that.  I have folders and files of pieces I've written for myself, all in preparation for a next step I have been unwilling and unable to take. But these writers shared themselves with me. They told me all the things they learned that helped them, and they helped me and the others in the room. They said so many useful things! I also have piles of papers and books and materials to study, all given generously by those who created them and lived by them. I am the luckiest person right now.

I'm not holding the manuscript; it's still in my head and in my notes, and it will be many long months before I do hold it up ready to take the next step. I don't know what that will be. I do know that I have had a wonderful time being me, in the midst of what might have been some terribly intimidating people, but now they aren't so scary. I showed myself and they received me kindly, even enthusiastically. They liked what I do, and they liked what I say, and some of them even accepted my friend requests. I wore Jell-O and shared it, and some of them were properly amazed and delighted. And the Jell-O was just a sideline. They liked the inside of my mind.

It feels like there is nothing so wonderful as that. I will go to sleep a happy, lighter woman. I will rise up early and go catch one more class at 8:00 am. I am the richest woman in the world at this moment. I hope I remember this feeling when the drudgery sets in and I don't have time to write and the writing is crap. I hope I remember how naive and untrained I can sound on the page and how hard it is to pound it into shape. I hope I can be humbled and still keep in mind the euphoria. I hope when I stand at a podium and talk about my writing, I can be of this much help to someone else. What a world we imagine, what a story we tell!

Writing Exercises the Whole Life

I'm supposed to be working. I take minutes and transcribe them as one of my jobs, which translates to a lot of sitting and I only get paid for two out of the five groups I do this for. Six if you count the Jell-O artists, for whom I track script changes and write things for possible use in the performance. Still, I generally like to do it. It feeds my need to articulate carefully, use my vocabulary, practice typing (still don't use those little fingers) and put things into words when they are sometimes said in less-than-elegant or diplomatic ways.

The task uses a certain kind of careful language that requires impeccable spelling and a solid understanding of intent, lots of editing skills, and the ability to construct simple sentences. I like long run-on sentences packed with lots of dependent clauses and uncommon words, which I should be using in fiction or even in blogging. I can't often use them in the minutes or reports I type. I can say anything I want in the Jell-O scripts, which is my joy in that job, but filling up the script with language usually involves taking it out in the next draft. We only have about a twenty-minute show.

Meetings are often two hours or more, so that is four or five for me. I have to move around on my seat cushion a lot and refocus my brain afterward. Super-tight attention is required to avoid interpretation in minutes: there really shouldn't be much of me in there. Of course there is a certain personality and style that comes through. I don't want to get lazy about it, and actually welcome the times that someone takes issue with words or phrases and challenges me to think again. Without that I would be throwing hours of focus out there to not even be noticed. Not many people read minutes at all, or at all carefully. You have to be a certain kind of detail person to even bother doing more than a quick skim.

Yet keeping the public record is not only a legal requirement of most organizations, it's a facilitative skill. Anyone can check back on a detail, and I frequently do, and assume others do too. I tend to leave things out that might make someone look bad, in the interest of moving forward through awkward times. Volunteers have a hard enough job speaking in groups without having to be super careful about how they might be misrepresented. I try to keep to the salient facts, including the discussion points, but I don't generally put names to opinions. You have to be there to really get the sense of the personalities of the meetings I transcribe. It's a little less transparent, but a little more efficient and protected from people who like to target other people with their complaints. While I simply love reading the OCF Board minutes, with all the names and attributions, I don't do that type of attribution unless someone asks me to. There have been times I have quoted people against my better judgement, because when getting paid, I do have to remember that I am working for the people who hired me, not myself. But the truth comes out. If someone acts like a jerk, they don't stay hidden for long, even if I extend them some courtesy. There are always stories between the lines, whether or not I am aware I am alluding to them.

I'm blogging today instead of transcribing just because I want the pleasure of writing without concern. I barely edit these blogs, though I like to think I write in an organized way. I read them over a time or two, but mostly they just flow out and that feels good. It's how it used to feel when I would spend three or four hours writing fiction, somewhat effortless and in the zone, really a pleasant place to dwell. I wish I wrote more fiction.

I'm still using the skills I learned over the last couple of decades, and my writing group still meets weekly to talk about writerly subjects. Pitching my script idea to the Radar Angels was a lot of fun for me, and deepening it as I incorporate the characters people want to play and the style they want to play them, as well as their lines that they write, is a great exercise in collaboration, which balances my need for control. One member carefully led me into a discussion of "holding space" as a facilitator, rather than moving the group in a particular direction. That felt useful and I try to do that. I'm not in charge of anything (setting aside my role as the Queen of Jell-O Art) except for helping all of us to hold space for each other, so that we all can thrive and create in the ways we want to. It's a gorgeous process to witness.

It has been working pretty well, the script, the minutes, and my writing life. I'm still working on a book, about my house and property and the historical background I've been so thoroughly researching. The research is a lot of fun, and I will hope to write some articles about it and some sections of the book in the next year. Unfortunately that work generally gets shelved in May and not addressed again until fall or even winter, as the business of making a living intrudes. I might get a couple of things in before April, but that is looking less likely as the meeting frequency increases and the workload does too. The board I found in the house is turning 100 years old next month. The first date on it, April 23, 1915, is one century before my brother's wedding will be, in Australia. I'll be there and not thinking about my board. The photo shows the board, which has three signatures and two dates, and this is another one, with the date of January 10, 1916. I assume that was the completion date, and the other, signed by Elmer Irwin Van Orden, the completion of some earlier phase of the work. Trying to answer the question of what Van Orden did has been a great puzzle. My current theory is that he did the basic framing to convert the two-room old building to one with a shed-like addition for the kitchen and bathroom, or maybe he built the foundation and chimney, or maybe he moved the building there and did those things. I don't know why the wood would have been on site to sign unless he had done a significant phase leading to the finishing done by this guy, Howard Frank Bowers, and Bilyeu Vaughn, who both signed almost nine months later. The fiction writer will have lots to do to fill in the gaps for the nonfiction writer.

This is the board, but not the right signature.

Back to the present year: John wants me to speak at his wedding, and I am tempted to use that tidbit in my speech, but I know that my house is about my life and the task is to speak to his life. I'll have to scratch that itch in another piece of writing. I'm not planning to take my laptop with me but rather paper journals, so I might take the one I write house pieces in. Experience tells me to just take a blank journal and write all about traveling to strange lands with my Mom, and I have learned to listen to experience, that's for sure. Maybe you'll see something here before I go, but March will be a very busy month.

In the meantime, I'll include a youtube of a Radar Angels performance song that I had absolutely nothing to do with. The skit was about a lot of things at once, as usual, as you can see by the diversity of costumes. It's a great piece of parody and staging, and if I knew who to credit for filling that space with that level of creativity, I would credit them. I have a feeling it was all of them, because that is how it works in collaboration. There, I have a lot to learn, and a lot of it is not at all about me. Good exercise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vuu3ofp92Uc     
The song came near or at the end of the 2009 show Jell-O-Zone. Since the year was the sesquicentennial of Oregon's founding, the pioneers were included. Wish I could read the script.