Living Treasures

Now that I have floated the concept of the living treasure we have in our oldest craftspeople, it’s time to craft some clearer proposals so people can discuss them. I plan to make two separate ones, for my two organizations, Oregon Country Fair and Saturday Market, which have different policies and forms of operation and committee structures, but many artisans in common.

My thinking is that for now, we just agree to the concept, that there could be a “Master of the Crafts” designation. That might be an awkward name. Grandmother and Grandfather is close to what I imagine, but of course they would be too casual and vague to use for titles. Call it “Accomplished Artist of a Certain Age,” then, or “Old Hippie with Skills.” A designation.

Just kidding, but the name will be one thing to settle on first. I think it should focus on accomplishment and mastery, while honoring the creative individual who manifested it all out of thin air day after day, decade after decade. A lifetime of creative action that is still ongoing and open ended in our artist's minds. Most of us don't stop being creative. Ever.

Then each organization would need to assess the population of such people. How many of us are there? What would be the criteria? I’m thinking forty years of artistry (could be in all media) and an age of 65 or 70. There would have to be other descriptors as well, although not necessarily a judgment of quality, more of dedication. It just seems to me that someone who has put in a lifetime of work within an organization should get some form of a nonliteral gold watch. If we were employed, we would, along with getting our pension funds robbed and our benefits cut. We don’t get any pensions or benefits, but the point is that our chosen lifestyle leaves us rather vulnerable as our ages advance. There isn't anything in place in current policy, though in regard to Saturday Market, accommodations are often made case-by-case. This becomes an imperfect process that can be subject to too many variables and requires too many thoughtful but similar decisions, and none of them are easy. Honor dedication.

That’s all for now, I want to concentrate on the designation. I want to set aside any attached awards or accommodations or what might be seen as privileges or entitlements. Keep in mind that I want this designation to be earned, and clear in its criteria. Since there would have to be some evaluative body, I recognize that there is going to have to be policy created and set, and that is a big task with either organization, and it has to be done over time, with great thoughtfulness. But I think people can get behind the designation. We could give an award, like the Peach thing that food booths get, some visible badge or plaque of some kind.

This is a marketing bonanza for the organizations. Each designated artisan could have a pictorial display of their history, craft expertise, and the range of products and accomplishments in their lifetime so far, and if these had a uniform look, the customers would learn to recognize and look for them. It shows the roots of what the organizations are now, how the subculture came to be, and how it extends into the present and the future.I think customers would find this fascinating and we would all benefit. I want this to enhance revenue for all concerned, not take income away from either the organizations or any part of the vendor population. Enhance.

The artisan, in my imagined scenario, would enter into a trust agreement with the organization to continue to bring their highest artistry to the show, in whatever ways they were able. If they could no longer do their traditional craft (and to use me as an example, if I were no longer able to screenprint, which will happen) they would be free to change their art to any and all other forms of media. It would be easy for them to start bringing watercolors or scarves or writing. They would agree to abide by all of the standards and guidelines in place, particularly in spirit if not in exact detail, but basically they would get a pass to just create and display and sell their creations without the usual scrutiny. They would have earned this through their dedication and would be trusted to uphold the agreement to the best of their ability for the rest of their lives. Trust.

My main point here is that if you look at our organizations, we are all in agreement that we owe a lot to those who have built them with years and years of dedicated participation. If you sell somewhere for forty years, you understand how it works. You are part of it in so many ways that you can’t really separate your life from it, and it brings great sadness when you can no longer play your part. You need it. So let’s find a way for it to need you. Mutual support.

We can’t let our adherence to our rules allow us to discard people who can’t keep up. Standards change, juries get more demanding, and the organization and the elderly crafter begin to go in opposite directions. I will be able to do less as my organization asks me to do more. We need to think about our personal sustainability.

For each organization, there are going to be proposed policy changes down the line that are going to meet with resistance. My concept has already met with resistance, and my position is that those parts we resist are what we hold sacred. We need to identify those places where we get stuck because our concepts of them do not have any change built in. Turn the sacred upside down and take a good look at its underside.

For instance, with the OCF, the stated expectation of budget and management is that costs will continue to rise, so fees will continue to increase gradually, spread around the various types of members and guests so each contributes more in turn. My income, however, will decrease over that same time period. I just won’t be able to make more every year to cover the increased fees.

My OCF income pays for my property taxes and my entry fee to the Holiday Market. If I am to stay in my home and continue to sell at HM, I need that to stay in place. It will be a tricky dance. Similarly, to keep my reserve space at Market, I need a certain level of income there to make it work. Just doing these things independently as we tend to believe we need to, I won’t make it. I need my community to make this a more sustainable system for the aging crafter. Sustainability.

So my concept is that we market ourselves in a new way. I have a mental picture of people like Lotte Streisinger and Mary Lou Goertzen and Ayala Talpai and others sitting with their displays, bringing whatever they are currently working on, their books they have published, their teaching materials, and their skills and personalities to an honored place before the public. It would be clearly understood that they were in the category of a living treasure, no longer in the center of the general commercial mainstream but still a part of it, here by grace for some limited time only, to be celebrated and supported in style. If the items they could bring for sale were ten years old, that would just make them all the more valuable. Most of our crafts are one-of-a-kind, and that's just what many people want. Most of us would be able to find media to work in that would continue our productive lives, if it were easier to change in the marketplace.

Why not? We have to figure out what blocks us from putting this in place. There are quite a few areas where we run up on what I call sacred things. Some of these are equality, creating separate classes of vendors, the purity of standards, the control of juries, and changing policy just in itself, which is hard and takes a lot of discussion. We see resistance from those who have already managed to find ways to make it work for them and don’t want any special assistance. We come up on a lot of our fears, the simple fears of aging and death, of ill health, of dependence on others. We are a group that really likes being in control of our own lives and resists calling attention to our weaknesses and needs. But you can hear the fear and relief come out when people immediately start raising their objections and discouragement.

People have a prodigious level of ownership and dedication to both of our organizations. We want to contribute, to give of ourselves, and mostly we don’t want to take or get more than what we think is our share. But we have earned this. We have worked as long as these organizations have existed to make them work for us, and this is just a new wrinkle we haven’t fully considered yet.

It’s not a completely new idea, but it’s a bit new to us to focus on trust and accommodation and making a new set of rules that is less strict than the layers of rules we have worked so hard to put in place. I will quote Michael Bertotti here as I often have over the years: We keep making new rules but we don’t take away any of the old ones.

We keep layering up the restrictions and guidelines but we have a hard time stepping out of that to see the over-arching direction of what we put in place. We want to maintain an increasingly fine level of artistry and keep our marketplaces vital and full of the new and innovative. Our youth-oriented culture thinks we have to do that with young people, and old ones get shuffled off to the side rather than elevated. I really bristle when I sense that I am supposed to get out of the way, and when I feel pushed to meet a new set of expectations that wasn't in place when I started making whatever it is that is in question. I don't want to have to feel defensive.

I believe we are unintentionally making it difficult and ultimately impossible for ourselves to continue to participate meaningfully in what means the most to our lives. Let’s take a look at that. Let’s take the time to carefully examine and respond to our changing needs.

Our organizations are just over forty years old. That is still young, and we are beginning to mature but not there yet. This is an opportunity to put in place a vision that is cutting-edge in our segment of the culture. We need a retirement plan, or rather a refinement plan, because we aren’t going to be able to retire. We need a continuation plan.

I want to age in my place. I’ve carved it out, I’ve invested in it. I want to keep it. I need security, support, and vision to continue to inhabit the life I created. I am one of a large and growing group, and our membership is beginning to show that we are in crisis. This often means that we just die with a garage full of fabulous work that no one has seen, had a chance to own, or has any further purpose or meaning to anyone.

Let’s not abandon those of us who have put in the years. Our current rules and regulations do not allow enough flexibility for these individuals who are so deserving of our support and trust. Just start thinking about it; that is all that I ask. Add your vision to mine and let’s see if we can craft something that we will all be very proud of.

This is My Beautiful House

I spent a crazy amount of time yesterday researching antique wallpaper while fielding emails and ignoring Valentine's Day as well as I could. The wallpaper came from inside the walls of the house I remodeled, under the lath and plaster I removed, literally pasted to the boards that the house is built from. This is the house I've been living in since about 2007 after working on it for twelve years.

It's fascinating trying to imagine the process the previous builders and decorators of my dwelling went through. It was similar (but probably not very) to mine, but there were so many variables and conditions that have changed since then, and so few clues left behind. It makes me wish I had put more evidence inside the walls myself, and also determined to write about some of it for the next owners.

That's one cool thing about working on a house, the idea that some of it will remain when I am gone. Some of it has been here awhile. This house was probably built in the early years of the twentieth century. I searched Deeds and Records way back in the beginning and the land was first recorded as the property of Samantha (Davis) Huddleston, who was Eugene and Mary Skinner's babysitter. This makes the history of Eugene seem very short and personal.

She began selling off the lots in 1906. It has been through about a dozen owners, and it took us a year to clear the title and get the land sales contract in place. We paid $23,000 for it, in 1988, and it was a dump. The yard was total blackberries, puddles, and leaking water and sewage from the inadequate plumbing. I started working on the yard even before we signed the papers, mostly because the filberts and climbing roses had overgrown the sidewalk. It was without a doubt the worst house on the block, and neighbors were very excited when we started working on it.

There are two little houses, a bit bigger now, but neither even a thousand square feet. My ex-partner Mike did most of the work on the "little house" that is my shop now, and I did almost all of the work on the bigger one where I live. I started in 1995 and am not technically finished since I still haven't managed to get the baseboards on. I've even done a few things two or three times already. Mine is a life that responds to my house.

It's a good value, worth maybe ten times what we initially paid, though of course by now I have bought it a few times over and the value is almost all equity. It still has a few problems, some created by me, some fixed, some just maintained enough to be handed over to the next owner.

I've been trying to write the book of it for most of this time also, going through my various crises of faith and trying to get an angle on it that will work and make me want to write. I enjoy the research, and this week I made a list of topics that reflect the things I like most about it, which might work to make a framework for the writing.

So the wallpaper is one. The walls themselves were made with big nine-foot-long 1x12 boards, planed but still rough, probably fir, mostly clear. One layer went vertically on the outside, and one horizontally on the inside. They are separated by a flat 2x4, but no insulation was put into the 2" space. The outside was covered with narrow clapboards, though when it was first built it could have been covered with asphalt paper or shingles. Hard to say.

The inside was covered with a thick kraft paper and some crude, straw-flecked plain paper, dark turquoise in one room, brown in the other. At the top was a printed geometric border, and my research shows it was woodblock printed, probably in the Twenties, as it is Art Deco in style. This was covered with a pale striped damask-type paper with floral borders at the top, Victorian in style but most likely newer than what was underneath, so not really Victorian. But who knows? Where did people buy wallpaper at that time? Did they order it through Quackenbush's hardware? Did a traveling salesman bring around the sample books?

I'm speculating all sorts of things about it. The front door is most likely in the same place it was, because the big porch seems to be the same age as the rest. The more ornate flower print is in the livingroom, but the prettier turquoise was in the bedroom. Maybe the original front room-parlor was in the room without the door, and the one with the door was more of a kitchen/dining room. Or maybe the person who picked out the wallpaper just put the one they liked better in the bedroom. The bedroom paper has less fading and wear, but that room is on the north side. And it has a closet, but of course that could have been added later. Was there wallpaper in the closet? I wish I could remember. I can go on and on like this.

I get an excitement when I think of the huge upgrade the owners made when they put in the lath and plaster over those two (possibly three) paper layers of decorative improvements. The plaster wasn't particularly masterful in style, but it wasn't such a lost skill in those days so the homeowners may have done it themselves. The trim boards were all put on over it, of course, and on the back of the transom boards (need more research, are they called that? Head casings?) Frank Bowers signed his name with a flourish. His signature is big and proud. I put mine under his on most of them.

Grace Bowers was the owner of the lot in 1914, and I think she was married to H.F. Bowers. This could be Frank, or maybe Frank was another of their relatives, maybe their son. Payments of amounts like $100 and $500 were made over the next ten years between the Bowers family and F.G. Vaughan, who bought 2 1/2 acres for $700 from Samantha Huddleston on my birthday in 1908 (only 42 years before I was born). The property was south of 11th St, and west of Van Buren, so it was probably my land, though the records are spotty. But it does say that Vaughan paid the city and county $100 to have 11th extended west.

Can you imagine that West 11th wasn't even paved then? My neighbor May told me that when she was little, her dad built a little tarpaper house where hers is now at the end of our street (ends at the Fairgrounds, which was given to the county by Huddleston I think, at which point it stopped being a racetrack for horses). She's 91 I think, so that would have been 1925 or 30, and she remembers being completely surrounded by a lake of rainwater in the winters...this was just a big pasture/wetlands then.

Anyway I think the Bowers family sold the place in 1924 so they may not have done the plastering. Maybe some future owners took off the trim and put it back on like I did. The windows and doors are cased with beautiful clear fir with the crown molding details that are found on Victorian-style interiors. They are often found on the outside, though. My windows were all plainly cased on the outside, but the casings were sunk flush to the siding rather than proud of it (I love these technical terms) which could mean the clapboards were put on later to cover the cheaper covering of the original house.

It's a fun tangle to unravel, and I will have to go back to Deeds and Records and do it again so I am sure I have all of the information I can gather. I hope you can still go view those. When I did it in 1995 you could still see the spidery handwriting of the clerk who recorded it all.

The single most exciting thing about taking apart and putting this house together was the board I almost missed, but found in a pile of the tongue-and-groove siding I salvaged from the walls and ceiling of the kitchen and bathroom, which was a kind of shed-like thing tacked onto the back side of the original two rooms. Spaced about a foot apart on the back of the clear fir are three names and dates: Elmer Jouvin Van Orden, Marcola Oregon, April 23, 1915; what looks like Howard Bowers, Jan 10, 1916; and Bilyeu or Bilyer Vaughan, Eugene, Ore Jan. 10, 1916.

So Mr. Van Orden from Marcola put this siding up in April 1915, and then Mr. Bowers (maybe H.F., or maybe Frank is the same person) and Mr. Vaughan put it up again in January of 1916.
My feeling is that the 1915 house was recycled into my house in part. It isn't a clapboard, so it may have always been inside, because maybe it was common practice before sheetrock to line your walls with t&g boards. The entire kitchen and bathroom ceiling and walls were lined with this wonderful material, which is now partly on the back of my house where I ran out of clapboards that matched, and partly in my bathroom as wainscoting (and that is another story.)

So I think F.G. Vaughan or his relative Bilyeu and Frank Bowers or his relative H.F. finished building my house in 1916. That would make it just coming up on it's hundredth birthday in a few years. My work at the end of the twentieth century probably bought the house another fifty years, though in this neighborhood in this century, it might go to the dump well before its useful life is over. All of the things I labored over so diligently were done for my own purposes, the kitchen the way I want it, the clawfoot put in without a shower because I am a bath person, the old foundation shored up but not replaced because I didn't decide to put on a second story as we originally thought we might. It's a perfect one-person house, though it could have two bedrooms if you weren't a person who liked to have a whole room full of Jell-O art and silk scarves waiting to be painted. People like bigger houses now, though that trend might be eroding, and once I am gone or can't keep the house, I will have no say, or even awareness possibly, of what happens to "my" property.

I still enjoy working on my houses, but major building projects are most likely not in my future, since the owner-built experience is not quite as easy as it was in 1995 when I started. At some point the little shop will need to be remodeled back into a rental house, I'm guessing. Both could be torn down for a McMansion or some ugly apartment complex. The duplex next to me could doom our whole block, as it is not being maintained and will most likely be sold and demolished. I don't know how many of my neighbors will remain in place as we age. The future is all about as many questions and speculations as the past is.

But starting with the wallpaper I am going to write the story of my life in this house. This is the next stage of my ownership. When I read back in my journals, I remember that this wasn't even the house I wanted. I wanted one a few blocks south but since $32,500 was out of our price range, we passed on that larger yard and cuter place. Maybe we made the right decision.

But I am as thoroughly amused at this stage of my occupation as I have been all along as I have just spent the larger part of two days on the old wallpaper I saved from the dumpster, and I still don't know much at all about it. Writing the book may just take as long as building the house did.

At least we have the internet. Anyone know any of those old dead guys? Floyd G. Vaughan died in 1927, and is buried in Mulkey cemetary, which I am not sure you can even get to anymore, somewhere up past 18th. I'll have to go see if I can learn anything from his gravestone. There's nothing more to take apart on this house; I've had my fingers on every inch except the inside of the bearing wall in the middle. I could still unearth something from the yard, or something more from the Historical Museum or the library. Someone planted the huge Gravenstein right behind the house, and I will study its rings if it ever falls down, which surely it will someday, because it is just a tree.

At the meeting last night someone quickly explained the concept of Thich Nat Hahn about "inter-is," (yes, more research is indicated), when they pointed to a sheet of paper and said within the paper is the tree, and the logger, and the logger's family, and what they ate for breakfast and who fed the pig that fed them, and the oak that provided the acorns eaten by the pig, and so on. We can never, and waste time trying to, separate ourselves from all that is. Inside the house, I live, and I eat the kale that grows where a Vaughan may have grazed a sheep, and the rocks I found under the house came from a river or a glacier or a truck that hauled them from a mountain, which was driven by a relative of Grace, or the wallpaper was screenprinted by an artist in England just as I now am trying to figure out a way to screenprint on Jell-O.

What a wild and fascinating existence. I wish I could be this alive every minute, because right now I feel like my life is very, very short and tiny, and at the same time touches everything. Leaving a book behind sounds like a pretty good idea if I can just narrow things down.

Retreat

A friend sent me an email about a writer's retreat that includes months of isolated solitude...always something I have thought I would love. I try every winter to create that kind of artistic space in my life. This year it has seemed to be about cleaning.

Cleaning is a control fantasy and although it is necessary to do it periodically for health reasons and for maintenance reasons and for social reasons and for comfort, I still find it mostly boring and time-consuming and haven't really succumbed to expectations (I don't know whose...some Fifties mom like Donna Reed? She never sees my kitchen.)

The layers of dust in the kitchen and bathroom had to go, though, so I did all the shelves and objects I love and have forgotten, and re-organized some clutter and boxed up a few items to get rid of. I cleared out the living room rather thoroughly and even got rid of the futon which was essentially an upholstered shelf since it wasn't comfortable to sit or lie on and only the cat really used it. It freed up too much space really so I brought in a card table to work on and now the room is filling up with the various projects that keep me busy when I watch stupid TV at night.

I know it is part of my creative process to make space that is clean and open but I tend to get anxious if I am not actually creating something, and I tend to fill open space with work. I have heard myself telling me to work more even when I am in the middle of physically working. It's just a drive and a form of self-discipline that the self-employed learn to weather. But I always feel great when I have a clear to-do list and the next steps of whatever project are lined out. Not there yet. The isolation deepens and I get quiet.

The Occupy part of the Jell-O Art Show theme is making me think a lot. Will I occupy my soul like I did last year? Last year the making of the piece was a grief process and I put in a ton of time on it. I don't really want to do that kind of thing, but am reflecting on the life process that is involved in working for political change.

Observing the occupiers online has let me see the passion and joy lots of them are bringing to the task...perfect to express in Jell-O. I've seen many of them appear just like they are in love, tender and full of emotion and inspiration and obsession...they're in love with the possibilities that open in life when we feel powerful. It's hard to see the fog of dejection and discouragement that covers our society when we all feel hopeless about the direction of things to more repression and less freedom and less soul and more empty sex-as-distraction. Being bad is part of the new sexuality, if you haven't noticed, because being bad is much more fun than being good. Or so we think.

I hate Valentine's Day, by the way, because I am a single human who is not in a duo and it is such a reproach to be bombarded with the way the world tries to make us all conform to consume. Of course I want a heart-shaped box of chocolates and all that it symbolizes! I've tried many years making all kinds of valentine homage with paper and gelatin and doilies and whatnot but the fact is that I don't have a love interest and my behaviors indicate that I don't even really want one. I long for one in that romantic way that is not realistic, as I set my life up to deny that possibility. The chocolate just gathers in my meno-pouch, which the advertising tells me is really the reason I am not finding my love. I have to lose weight while eating more sugar. Spin around again. Get dizzy.

It's all advertising! A box of candy does not really speak about intimacy and dedication to others. It's just something to learn from. And the Occupy movement does not escape the advertising and other forms of marketing that pervert and change the drive for power over one's own life into the widely misunderstood political forces that create actual change.

Actual change is what happens when people go home from the demonstration and are kinder to each other, more helpful, more forgiving and compassionate. Each action and thought and statement they make shifts subtly to one more positive, uplifting, progressive. They then dedicate their life to continuing this process of change, often with little visible result.

And then, shift happens! We can see in this movement many of the people who have been dedicated to change since they were young, and in fact we see them all around both in and out of the movement. We see them take the boundless energy of the young people who are newly introduced to the possibilities and channel it, make it palatable, integrate it into the lifework so many are doing. This can feel like co-opting (remember never trust anyone over 30) but it brings it all into the glacier of infinitesimal movement that is social change.

Everybody got to fall in love again this winter. It was fun, it was sexy, it was heartbreaking and it was full of emotion. I think it will be a productive relationship, this one between the people of the world and the structures that control and direct them, this one where the people try to not be such a submissive partner and get a little help with the housework for a change.

I think the advertisers and marketers will use it if they can, and part of the struggle will be to expose them too. There is no doubt that strategy is a tool of the "government" or power structure that is well in place and will be ruthless in protecting the status quo. But the true power of the people is that we can't be fully controlled.

We will do what we can see that needs to be done. People will throw themselves against the fences and walls and open up the hidden doors. No one thought the Berlin Wall would be dismantled and no one thought the parks would be filled with people becoming suddenly visible. We can't go back. It might not be comfortable and safe but change is in progress as it always is, and it just got a major energy infusion.

So yeah, I am trying to Occupy my soul. This is not a new endeavor, just some new framework for it and some new people and some new ways to encounter them. New kinds of chocolate with chili peppers and spice.

New ways lead to new projects and new ideas and more fun. It can't all be good. Some of it is boring housework and some of it brilliant flashes of intuition. Some is longing and desire and some real affection and dedication. Some is heard and some will be left in the roadside dust.

My job is simple, to keep observing and thinking and doing and then manage to express it all in Jell-O by March 31st. Sometimes I think I should have ignored the revolution and become a medical technologist as I had planned. Then my task would have been to fill dishes with agar-agar instead of Jell-O, and grow organisms instead of primroses and violets. Maybe I would have gone to medical school and maybe I would be a whole different person with a whole different life, opening a two-pound box of See's next week. Or maybe not.

It's all speculation. All interpretation. All selection of possibilities, and it seems that choosing the most life-affirming option at each turning point has been a good choice. Practicing peace leads to peace. Practicing art is a never-ending joy. I think I have a soul to occupy. Now I just have to spin up a message that won't make everyone too dizzy.

Aging in Place

Some friends my age are building a new house, their "Age in Place" house as they call it. It will be fitted out for whatever the future brings as far as mobility and other physical considerations go. Seems a wonderful, sensible idea for those of means, but I don't think building another house is in my personal future. Could be wrong. The shop needs a remodel, and I was standing in the yard yesterday picturing how to rebuild that back corner that is rotting from the rain.

Mostly I know now that I can't do it alone, because I don't have the fifteen years that I spent on this house. I know too much now about how things have to be done well to last...things I will be doing over in this house. Like wooden front porch steps. They just aren't going to last for decades.

Aging can come with lots of fears. I think I cracked a rib cleaning the other day. I got some new furniture thanks to the ever-generous Betsy and took the opportunity to rearrange and clean my living room and bedroom. It is lovely, even scrubbed the Jell-O out of the carpet. The new hutch hides the TV and a lot of the clutter is gone. Yay. Aging will need some simplification and decluttering for sure. It could bring some breaks and pains and decreased mobility. I spent a few hours wondering if the rib ache would make me stop printing. No such luck.

As an aging member of a subculture, the craftspeople, I've been thinking about this concept, which I will call the Age in Place Initiative. I'm planning to work on this in my two organizations, Saturday Market and Oregon Country Fair. It comes from the fact that we older master craftsmen and women are treasures, and our needs are a little different from other interest groups in these memberships.

In OCF, Booth reps are not currently really included in the Elders system (which is a wonderful step forward for many folks), so we have the perfect opportunity to craft a proposal for a little system of our own. We want to remain in place, doing what we do. We need the opportunity to earn, still, and we won't retire if we can help it. We don't want to give up our spaces, and many of us don't want to take on partners, pass the business to family members, or whatever options are currently viable. OCF doesn't have a plan for us, except that we should give over space to younger crafters and get out of the damn way. We can take this opportunity at the committee level to talk about our needs and figure out what to make guidelines about.

At Market, the Kareng Fund is a huge step forward in providing small grants to those members in crisis. They are currently discussing a Modest Needs Initiative that will be an expansion of the effort to fill pressing needs. I think the Age in Place Initiative is a way to frame the current wish to address what we've been calling Vintage Vendors, a confusing term that isn't quite right yet. We can look at what the Market already offers in both policy and practice, and brainstorm ways to address the needs of those who will not be able to continue to do things the same way they did them in their forties and fifties.

I see things like fee relief, point-system fine tuning, and mutual support. For the OCF I see a scenario where there would be a lot of trust of the aged vendor, to take us out of the party booth concept into the way it could be if we look for elegant solutions.

If you see us as treasures, it is easy to see why we might need some kind of protection. As the Fair gets bigger and bigger, it has been a struggle to keep up. I don't think I can work as hard as I've been working, for too many more years. I already have eight people who help me do parts of it. I can't even provide passes for that many people as it is. What if I need more? My son has a crew job, and at the moment, has no interest in my craft business. I want to stay in my space selling my stuff until I die. How can that work for me and for the Fair at the same time?

I guess I am starting a task force or committee to brainstorm and make proposals. I'll announce that at this month's meetings. We'll see if anyone is ready to work on this or if it stays in the concept stage a little longer. There's no hurry...I'm only going to be 62 this year. Maybe when a person gets social security they are happy to really retire. I doubt I will be. For one thing, I need to stay active to be happy, though whether or not this has to include screenprinting is a big question.

That's one of my problems at the OCF, that my craft definition is screenprinting, although I can jury new crafts if I desire. There is a returning vendor clause that gives extra points so the jury is more flexible about the nature of the crafts. My wish would be for a pass from the jury process at a certain age. Maybe this would be 70 or 65, but I'd like a little old lady to be able to bring whatever she has made to sell. If this means she sews one bead on a scarf and calls it transformed, I'd like to see the organizations be able to accept this reality. That will probably not be easy. We're pretty tied to the "ever-increasing level of artistry" concept.

Let's face it, things really don't get better and better as we age, although we can delude ourselves to that effect for awhile. The physical limitations are rough. The energy just isn't going to be there, no matter how much we might want it to be. I can't sustain having eight or more people make my OCF experience possible. Somehow I need it to be many people less. The Elders had to fight for one companion or helper. Even that isn't going to be enough for me to keep selling.

So how will I do it? I need more people to help me solve this problem, to help remove barriers and make it possible. At Market we have informal systems where neighbors help each other with the hard parts, erecting popups and taking breaks, etc. I'm in a great neighborhood for that and feel pretty secure for this season. It wouldn't be hard to formalize some of that. We have a great point system and pretty good compliance for the volunteer two hours for HM. We could find ways to support vendors helping vendors.

OCF vendors are different because of the high volume of work compressed into the short time, so we tend to be more isolated in our needs, but still, I have good neighbors there who would help me, and do. If they can't remain there either, though, that falls apart. They're starting to talk about the transitions too. I don't want to feel overrun or forced to change to fit the rules, I think it might be possible for the rules to change to fit me. Not me, per se, but my subculture, the segment of our unique area population that we are so lucky to include.

So that's my idea of the moment. Now to apply the creative process.

Essay Flotsam and Jetsam

So here's some stuff that didn't make the final cut into the essay. Turns out the limit was 2000 words, not 2500, so many of my tangents were too tangential. Alas. I posted them on the Occupy writers group page, since I will probably not write the seven essays.

"Consider that to evolve, as a species and personally, might be the reason we are here right now, working and thinking and searching. If so, consider that the Occupy protests, which are a flare-up of the continual work of all movements toward social and economic justice, are instruments of that evolution. Through shifts in thinking, group process, communication, and tactics, the limited model of protest has been re-imagined into an unstoppable, accessible Movement. "

That was my opener, which was mostly a thesis statement to get me started and didn't work as a good beginning for the final essay. Some of the points I had to abandon are in this section:

"The marketing of the movement has shifted through internet sharing. Posters and signs are displayed in downloadable form for use by anyone. Patches and t-shirts are free, not sold for profit. Although there is no shortage of co-option of the language, such as television shows and advertising using the words “revolution” and “occupy,” the message of the movement is not lost in this, as it strives to become more explicit and direct. Through sharing on social networks, charts and graphs illustrating economic realities and the real effects of political theory are easy to find, to use to convince Aunt Ethel just how the trickle-down economic theory of the Reagan years worked out. Online petitions and initiatives can be started by anyone, and spread virally to everyone. Furthermore, the General Assembly meetings at the sites are livestreamed, with commenters to the side who are responded to by the person running the streaming, who can convey them to the people present in the room. Anyone in reach of the transmissions can watch and hear it for themselves without putting on a pair of pants.

In response, the actions of the authorities have evolved, using the tools of the military to target enforcement and oppression of dissent, arresting leaders pre-emptively, wearing down the protestors with constant harassment, and using the same tools as the protestors to shift public opinion. The media cooperates to carry the party line, with television newscasters repeating the same phrases and viewpoints right down to the local broadcasts, through the use of news gathering through passing on of submitted “public service announcements” or PSA’s. One famous video on YouTube shows dozens of newcasters repeating the same phrase, “Conan O’Brien may be about to push the envelope on late night television,” with the same inflections. This is known as McNews, the commodification of information. Mass media shows itself to be increasingly irrelevant in the face of that generated by individuals on the scene."

I had a lot of what sounded like propaganda in there, even I could hear it. I love it when I inspire myself while writing, and end the final sentence with a euphoria that I wish and hope gets to the reader. Mostly it is probably me thrilling to the sound of my golden words. I wonder if birds do that, love their own songs?

There is also the possibility that I just like the idea of getting attention for my brilliance from all the sapiosexuals out there. Easy pit to fall into. Whatever. I'm human. One of the things I said in my closing is that the movement is human. It's like a living organism to me.

That brings up a whole range of psychological analyses that I am just not going to touch. Keep growing, movement! We will need you to be mature, productive, and dependable, while also playful, imaginative, and juicy. Lots of people are placing this personal ad, looking for their soulmates.

Writing about The Movement

I've been trying to write an essay for the Oregon Quarterly Essay contest, which I used to enter every year until I decided I knew too little about how nonfiction was being written these days, and felt I couldn't catch up. That was essentially one of my many excuses for not following through on goals.

This book You Are Not Your Brain is kicking my excuse factory in the head (my head). I have all these neural pathways that do not serve my goals. I won't do the work they suggest (charts and stuff), I hold on tightly to my mode of making excuses for why I can't do what I actually know I can do. I mean, in terms of the essay, I can write one. I've written three so far, all almost submittable with some editing (2000 words is a short, short essay for me). The last one I rushed to finish to take to my writing group, three women who are stellar writers themselves and extremely thoughtful editors who know all my tendencies and have heard all my excuses. It was their suggestion that I do the essay when I mentioned I was trying to write about Occupy.

And let me say right here, I know this is one of my things I do: instead of working on the thing I am now on the next level, procrastinating by examining in detail whether or not I should do it at all. And how I should do it, and why. And I tell myself, that as an Occuposter, I have no authority. I've looked at Occupy from across the street while I tried to sell at Tuesday Market...I read about it on Facebook.

Actually I have read an immense number of things about Occupy, so maybe I am a kind of authority, in a limited way. I can synthesize what I have learned, and frame a few opinions, which is after all, what an essay is supposed to be. I can pose any number of my theses and elaborate and conclude. My writing group pointed out that I have about seven essays packed into my 2000 words already.

Part of the problem is the contest itself. The top prize is publication in the magazine, and I have read enough of those over the last ten years to know that mine will not appear there, although I can always see it with the photos and all and imagine that. So probably not the $750 for the top spot for me, but there are ten finalists, and they all get to go to a nonfiction workshop with the judge, who ever that turns out to be. I got to do one with Lauren Kessler, and superb writers have read my submissions, which is kind of exciting. Barry Lopez even read my first one, not that I had the courage to talk to him about it. But I don't want fame...way too scary for my hermit nature.

I'm not even sure I could stand at the podium and read my submission...if I were in the top three, who get to do that. My friend Betsy wisely points that out as a highly developed excuse...I mean, I have actually wondered how I would dress to appear on Oprah and used that as a way to discourage myself. Really?

Also the deadline is Sunday, and as a last-minute editor I have taken my pages over to the building at UO enough times to find out that you can't even get into it on days it is not open, which I assume will be the case unless by some miracle I find it fully finished before five pm today. I could...if I buckle down and do that. I could get it done right now instead of using up my typing energy here and on FB. I should!

I really have to step up my commitment to my goal of being a real, functioning writer. That was the first worksheet I skipped in the book: set your goals and prioritize them and decide how much energy you are willing to spend on them. This is really a 10 to me, I really, really do like to write and to do it well. Getting into a nonfiction workshop could be a wonderful experience. I can still remember how charged up and encouraged I got from the one with Lauren Kessler. Who cares who is the writer involved? I want to go.

I want to write all seven essays, and post them online and further the work of progressive evolution. I want to change the world. I don't really have to go on Oprah, and if I do, I'll bet my sister would lend me an outfit.

Okay, what would be more fun that spending today writing, writing, writing? Nothing else on my list compares. I'm doing it. Maybe I'll win. Maybe I won't. But I will have met my number one goal today, to be a real, functioning writer.

Maturity

This year when I do my taxes I won't be Head of Household for the first time in decades. Also, next month I will apply for social security benefits. My life is changing rapidly.

I enjoyed the OCF Board meeting. I had been avoiding them, afraid I'd get mad about that old "us vs. them" feeling that comes up when I disagree with establishment policy, but like many myths, I find the us/them dichotomy a little too simple to sustain in reality. I don't have a simple relationship with the Fair. I pay them a lot of money, to make a lot of money, and I also do printing for various Fair groups, so I get a lot of benefits from Fair relationships. A lot of my friends and family go there, work there, love it. It's a huge part of my year. I think it was the rain in 2008 (has it really been that long?) that made me rethink my attitudes.

As I sat by my huge pile of wet shirts all packed to go home, for an extra night and day because "they" wouldn't let my helper drive in, I had a lot of complaints. I've sold at the Fair for thirty-some years, but I didn't feel "seen." I thought that staff lumped me into a category of "gray-haired ditzy craftswoman" and shut down the minute I walked toward them. I thought I saw that happening enough times to give it mythic status, and I was defensive about it. I wrote a nasty letter that I had the good sense to put aside, but the feelings rankled for more than a year. At some point I realized that if I wanted to be seen, I had to show myself. I had to step up a little and build trust from my side, so next time my needs weren't met, I would have more avenues to articulate them.

It wasn't just staff, but I could frame lots of the volunteers as my enemies as well. I could build that pile of resentments and complaints as high as I wanted, but it all mushed down to the fact that if I wanted cooperation and trust, that had to start with me. I give Jen-Lin the credit because we were friends, and through her I met a lot of the people I held responsible. And if she liked them, and I trusted her, by extension...I might like them too, or at least get to understand their perspectives. She gives good attention. I could give better attention.

And sure enough, as I looked closely at what people said and did in the context of their jobs (whether for pay or not, all of the work we do for Fair is work) trust blossomed like a strange and terrifying orchid. Pretty soon it was impossible for me to see any "them." All I could see were issues that might benefit from the application of more energy, perhaps my energy.

Did I like everyone and want to hang out with them? Not really relevant in the context of work. Not enough communication in both directions? Read the minutes, or better still, go to the meetings. I heard there would be an effort to better document the work of the committees through a group of minutes-takers, and this was really up my alley. I am fascinated by meetings, but I like to have something to do. Taking minutes is fun for me. So I started going to meetings, as an active observer, taking minutes. Immediately people became real to me, and I'm assuming I became real to them. When I sat in the room with people who craft the budget, do the longterm visioning, work to articulate guidelines and to make the Fair walk it's talk environmentally, I got the big picture in a lot of new ways. I had not been paying real attention.

And personally, did I want to be reactive? I could throw angry letters out to the FFN, but did that result in change? Anger, shaming, taking people to task: those are violent and don't result in effective leadership. The people I was meeting were humans. I could see when their feelings were hurt, when they got defensive, what closed them down or frustrated them.

It did not take long to build trust for me, and I hope it is mutual. Last night I was officially appointed to the Crafts Committee, a longstanding committee that is quite vital in the process and perhaps not fully utilized in some ways. I don't have an agenda beyond listening and contributing to forward movement. I went to the Board meeting with a little trepidation, mostly embarrassed because I had not attended a Board meeting in so long I couldn't be sure I ever had. That's pretty disgraceful to me. I read the minutes word for word, but even though those minutes are explicit, there is nothing like being in the room to get the sense of a meeting, and by extension, a community.

I think the Fair is so many fairs happening at the same time, (since we each have a complicated relationship with it) that for decisions to be made to serve the most people, many many stakeholders have to weigh in. I didn't really have an opinion about Barter Fair, except that the proposal to take a break from it this year seemed too harsh. That was easily amended to put closure off, although it is tempting from a "let's get this change in the works" viewpoint to see what a relief to many a closure would be. Problem is, Fair decisions have to work for everyone, if that is remotely possible. Taking one more year to solve the problems of Barter Fair was the right way to go for now. The problems are big, and what is on the ground in that parking lot is real, and has grown naturally from the desires of the participants. That has to be honored. It isn't just a managerial problem that can be solved managerially.

That's the crux of the matter at the Fair. We challenge ourselves to act from the heart in new ways to make a better society. That ethic is strong in the Fair operations and policy-makers, by my observation. It comes up at every meeting I've attended, that someone says "Well, to be consistent with our values," or "to do things the Fair way" or some such statement. I firmly believe this does come from the heart, and Fair people generally have well-developed hearts. People say "family" without a trace of irony. It's a giant, messy, wide-ranging and very powerful family, doing ordinary things in a rather extraordinary way.

At this point in my life, I really want to be consistent with my values. Honesty, trust, hard work, being loving and giving and forgiving, just simple basic things. Layers of actions are built from there, about how to make money, how to be creative and feed myself physically and emotionally, how to be proud of my actions and words and contribute to the common good. How can I ask the world to be what I am not willing to be? I can't be a hypocrite, if I can help it.

I'm not saying I'm drinking any Kool-Aid in regard to the love fest part, though I have seen the magic and felt it for myself. It's definitely an amazing, earth-shaking event and organization that enriches so many lives and changes the world. Of this there is no doubt.

It has to be sustained, and have a continuing life for as long as it can remain positive and enriching. Lots of forces are always present to take it down other roads, and it has gone down a few I wouldn't have chosen if it were my choice. But, it has gone down those roads through collective action, and because into the open space came the people who came, carrying what they carried. There is a certain brilliance in the concept of "it is what it is."

Quite simply, I am one of the creative people who make it so, whether I do that in reaction or action. I can watch and criticize from the sidelines, I can make it harder to move forward, or I can be one of the ones who adds my efforts to the wheel.

Last night the facilitator looked in my direction about fifty times, and I was invited to respond as much as I wanted. This was true for everyone in the room. This Fair is responsive. Questions were thoughtfully answered. Concerns were actively heard. Opinions were expressed, and it felt like equality.

I still have things to sort out in regard to OCF. Reasons people don't participate are many, and I can articulate some of them as I make this shift into a more solid "us" position. Maybe I can even bring in a bit more participation in addition to my own. I would welcome more crafters at the Craft Committee meetings, and there is one tonight, at 6:00 in the town office. Good decisions take thorough efforts. We have to think things through, and untie the knots that bind us into contorted positions that don't serve the common good.

Lots of people have been doing this for all of the forty-plus years of the Fair. They've done their best. I am grateful to them. It feels a lot better to join them than to criticize them. I'll try to be careful, and I suppose I'll continue to make errors as I go, since life is a mystery and a wonder and there is no one right way to do it.

But if I had to make a list of what I love about the Fair and what I don't, one would be long and one would be short. I enjoy pitching in. I like it when my assumptions are challenged. And I love to watch good process unfold, and the Fair does really good process, when we all pitch in.