Saturday, Saturday...

Yes, I was singing the song when I got up. I listened to that hard, gusty rain early this morning fully aware of how lucky I felt that I did not have to drag myself out of bed, suit up, and go down to the Park Blocks for the day. I so love the sensible people who decided we would not sell during the winter months. I know some of the farmers do (starting in February) but weather is tough on people. It definitely puts the lie to the concept of "homeless by choice" in Oregon. That's just the way some people try to make themselves more comfortable about the overwhelming abundance of their lives. It is not a fun adventure to live outside permanently.

That cute little Yellow-rumped warbler was the first bird I saw this morning on the suet, and I saw the Bewick's Wren yesterday. I love my simple life of watching birds, reading about the pioneers, and looking around online to see what directions I can take my research. Yesterday I was cruising through the online listings for the Special Collections at UO, and I see that they have three folders of James Huddleston's papers!!! This got me so excited there are not enough exclamation points. I will rush over there early next week and see what they have. It may be disappointing (I counsel myself) as they think his wife's name is Jane, and I know better. There may be little trace of Samantha, who interests me much more than her husband, but considering that he died in 1890, these relics will be thrilling no matter the content. Apparently there is a ledger book from his storekeeping (he had the first couple of trading-post stores in Eugene City in the early 1850's) and some letters, presumably hand-written. I want to see Samantha's handwriting. I thought I had her signature but as it turns out, most of the county records were written and signed by the clerks, not the principals in the transactions. Maybe she put some notes on Jim's letters.

I don't know what else I will find there. I spent the day looking through the photos in their digital collection and they are wonderful. John Baugess's collection of the donut shop and tavern that were urban-renewed from next to the Smeede Hotel in the 70's are cool, reminding me how long some of us have known some of the rest of us. There are many photos of important houses during restoration, including the Daniel Christian house which is one of the oldest. I found more evidence of my theories about this place. I didn't even get halfway through the archive. Is it arrogant to think I can add to the research on Eugene's early days?

I applied for a grant from the Historical Society to publish my book, to finish the research and write at least one book of it. I am actually thinking that two might be necessary to avoid the one being too personal and not relevant enough. To quell my self-doubt as I wait a month to hear if I got the grant, I have thrown myself into pinning down details and gathering a lot of background knowledge so I don't say too many stupid things in print. The grant money doesn't really matter so much, it's more the motivation of it, as it is so easy to put the project aside to focus on one of my other projects, of which I have far too many, all a bit too large. I am so passionate about this research, and I know passion fades, so I am trying to really get something on paper and make some tangible progress. I have been filling out the family group sheets for the families I am studying, and it's fun, kind of takes the place of crosswords or sudoku in keeping my brain pliable.

Meanwhile I am getting no physical exercise and have to bring that one higher on the priority list. I couldn't sleep after a day online, started doing that self-recrimination of the late night, which I got out of my brain by thinking about the yellow-rumped and the Bewick's. I love birds, and plants, so that makes things all right in the world. It worked last night, anyway.

So if we get some breaks in the rain today I will get out and look at something, some buildings or some trees. I constantly speculate about what plants Samantha, Miranda, and Grace might have put in this neighborhood. I know Catherine Davis so loved a couple of large firs she insisted they be saved, and I wonder if they could possibly still be there, only 150 years down the road. They were in the River Road area, just off the road, apparently. They'd be huge, so they ought to be visible in the skyline. I could bike out there and try again to pinpoint the boundaries of the Davis land and see. I also have to go to the Creswell cemetery and find Tillie Van Harkin. I realized that she is the person who divided the property into three (or four, depending on where 200 feet from the corner is) so I have to learn more about her. She may get the credit for a lot of the improvements. She lived here (or owned it) for 18 years, until she died in 1942, but she was old, and she certainly didn't do the work herself. It's another effort to check directories and figure out who actually lived in the places, and I want (obsessively) to fully document every year of this place. I want to know exactly where all my people of interest lived, and I even want to know all of the first owners of the Huddleston lots.

I have plenty of directions to keep going, and plenty of ways to distract myself from the main points. The digressions are fascinating. I discovered three of the Vaughan brothers had married women with the last name of Briggs, and it turns out that two were mother and daughter, and the mother's previous husband had been killed for his gold after selling some cattle to the miners, near the Barlow trail. We had a murderous past, Oregon, as most people may know. There's a tombstone in the Coburg cemetery that says "hung by mistake." I think the notorious criminal Hank Vaughan was related to the Vaughans I'm studying...his problem was mostly alcohol. Probably lots of the problems were alcohol. But dead is dead and everyone had rifles, and six guns, and big pieces of wood to club each other with. Not to mention winter fever (pneumonia), cholera, snakebite, and all those other things in that game you maybe played in school. You could trade a set of clothes for food, if there was food. Mules, horses or oxen? I found one person who was maybe the first child buried in our area, Jesse Haskett, son of Jesse Haskett and Miranda Vaughan, who died from a rattlesnake bite, and a report of a time when 7000 rattlers were killed on Rattlesnake Hill (so they could build an early-day subdivision and name it for what they covered up with houses. That went on then just as now. No, most likely they were just trying to protect lives, still an excuse for lots of crimes though.)

There was also a huge problem with racism, and I seem to be uncovering some. The Davises were Quakers, who were often persecuted for their anti-slavery stance, which may be one of the reasons they came here, but I don't know if I will be able to write about it. The attitude toward the native people and any people who were not white was abhorrent, more than criminal, but it's pretty hard to pin attitude down in dead people, unless they wrote about it. I can quote them if they did, so maybe James had some tidbits in his papers. I know there was some scandal with one of Samantha's sisters, and maybe they will shed some light on that. Who knows how many scandals I can uncover? I can link Vaughans to known racists, but I can't call them out from here. It turns out both of the families did have descendants, and it may not be too late to contact them, though people don't always want to talk about charged family secrets. Clearly the history of Oregon was shaped by the issues of slavery and human rights.


So, yes, I am loving the Saturdays off, don't miss Market a bit, and am working hard on the things that make me smile. I mixed up some gelatin, though I didn't make anything from it yet. Maybe that is today's big project. It beats cleaning the bathroom by a long shot. But saying *long shot* makes me want to pick up that book about pioneer women...

Willamette Forks Ride

Before Coburg was a town, the hoped-for town was a couple of miles closer to Eugene, a bit west, and the cemetery I went to today was called West Point Cemetery, and was on the land of William Tyler Vaughan. I will have to go back and check these "facts" to make sure I have it right, but in looking at the land, I felt like I was right there in the minds of those earliest settlers when they pulled their wagons to a halt.

That big hill I passed so many times on the freeway that signaled the entrance to my Eugene home, the one with the columnar basalt surface that looks so interesting, and is probably the result of much mining, overlooks the land in a protective way. The freeway runs through that part of the valley just like a constant river, but in the little graveyard I could hear the kinglets in the incredibly large old Doug fir that sits right in the center of the plots, lying quietly in the shade of the Coburg Hills.

William Tyler Vaughan and his wife Phebe still lie there, buried over a century ago. Uncle Billy's son Thomas J. Vaughan and his wife Elizabeth are there, too, with a bigger headstone. Another of William T.'s sons, John Quincy, is also buried there with his wife, Flora.

John Quincy was interviewed by Fred Lockley and told the very amusing story of his father's original trip out west in 1845. They were living in Missouri when a neighbor asked Uncle Billy to accompany him for a couple of days to help him handle his large cattle herd. Apparently after two days he was tempted to take the whole trip, although he didn't want to leave "the old woman" without any money, so someone was sent back with some money he borrowed to tide her over until he came back. He said he would be back in a couple of years, and if he liked Oregon, they would move there. This train turned out to be the lost wagon train that took the Meek Cutoff, about which much has been written. Despite the difficult journey, he was committed to Oregon.

William Tyler Vaughan

He had nine children at the time, and in farm families all children worked, so with his large group of sons, he may not have been so necessary to the family that they couldn't get along without him, but of course I wonder how Phebe felt about it. Looking at their photos, I wonder if maybe he was irascible and some amount of trouble. In any case, he did return and in 1847 the whole family arrived in the Willamette Valley. According to family history Phebe Hazlett Vaughan was English, and was tall, stately and dignified, wrote a perfect hand, and dressed elegantly in silk and satin. On their trip west he brought the first purebred sheep to the Willamette Valley, though they left Missouri with 258 sheep and had only 100 when they got to Oregon. After less than a year on their 640 acres just over the Lane County line in Linn County, William was off to Sutter's Mill in the Gold Rush of 1849. He returned with a fortune, and went again with his two oldest sons to California, twice. They apparently made almost $20,000 mining gold, which no doubt funded their subsequent land purchases.

The land he chose was a peninsula next to the river, and somewhere I have a map of the donation land claim. Thomas later bought another 320 acres inside Lane County. I have a lot of questions about the Vaughans, and it was exciting in a quiet way to see their graves and imagine all of them there, living and dead. The big fir in the center was most likely one of the original trees on the plot, so all of them stood in its shade as I did. Six hundred and forty acres is a huge tract, so all of the land around the cemetery was theirs, at first.

Angeline Baber Vaughan

Floyd G. Vaughan was another of William T.'s sons,and must have stayed home to farm when the older young men went to California. His wife, Angeline Baber, was blind, and he had a special seat in the wagon for her, but when she was 47 she fell from the wagon and was killed. Her grave is there, and I expected to find some of her children buried there, but there were no other headstones near her. He went on to marry Miranda and have more children, including Grace and Bilyeu, and bought property near the Huddleston DLC, which later included my little piece.

Even though Coburg is only eight or ten miles from Eugene, it was a strenuous ride for me, as I am quite out of shape, but despite the traffic on the way back, I thoroughly enjoyed the day. I didn't even look at any antiques, so I have a reason to go back. I guess they have a Heritage festival in February, so I'll have to see what that's about. There may be a lot of Vaughan heritage still in Coburg, or at least I can imagine it to be so. I can find all kinds of old stuff and imagine it was theirs. There are also many descendants, and other associated families like the Barbers to look at. My aunt Lud used to work for a John Barber, an attorney. Maybe we are closer than we think to our history. I keep running across these family names, shared by people I know, whom I have never asked about their heritage. So many things to investigate!

Ah, the Offseason.

As I write the sun is trying to dispel the fog we've been living in for a couple of weeks, and if the sun succeeds in coming out I will have to get outside myself. No excuses. It's time to start the pruning, which I love, and continue the many small projects in the yard. In the house, it is time for cleaning, writing, slimming down the reading pile, and all of those life maintenance tasks I was happy to put aside for a month or two while I focused on selling.

It takes quite an effort to unhook from the production/marketing/consuming treadmill but I like to make a solid break for at least a few days, before I do the inventory and organizing necessary to move into the next retail year. My piles of shirts are a little smaller, and I will have plenty to start the next season, so I am not pushing myself to resume being productive in the shop. I'd like to clear it out to do some different projects.

I still have a lot of blank silk scarves to paint, and could pick up my interest in that, using the new dyes I bought and steaming the scarves for more luscious results. Maybe someday. I have a few sewing projects I want to finish, but I hesitate to turn my living room into a sewing room again. I put away all the Xmas doodads yesterday and cleaned a few shelves. I am trying to be in the getting-rid-of-things mode and am having some small successes there. I can combine these by taking a pile of books to donate to the library, which gets me outside, walking, and gives me a little goal. Little goals work better for me than big ones.

Mostly I want to re-immerse in my research and writing. I am just on the verge of putting my book into physical form, printing out some essays and starting to make it booklike. I know a lot of what I am interested in writing right now will be backstory in the research files and not be the book, but I still have to write it, and that means investing the time. Now I will have the time.

It is also the beginning of the Jell-O Art quarter, aiming toward the 26th Annual Jell-O Art Show on March 29. Thanks to the powers who set the date not for the first Saturday in April, which is of course Opening Day of Saturday Market (43rd annual? 44th?) It's darn hard to do both on the same day. I won't have to, so I can fully immerse in whatever the show turns out to be, and the process will be as fun as the result. I plan to be much calmer about it this year, now that I know I can sing on stage without any undue attention being paid, can just be a part of it instead of the Queen, with all of her important duties. I will still be the Queen, of course, but after two years I will not have to make it all about me anymore. I have an idea for the piece and am scanning the culture for funny bits to form the show around. Perhaps I should practice twerking, since I have a feeling my hips might need some updated moves for that. It's quite tricky to find cultural issues which are going to last until April. Miley may be old news by then (one can hope.)

I'm putting meetings on my calendar today and seeing how the weeks fill up, but there are still nice long gaps in there to do what I want. I'm considering reading through the 80-some original Lockley notebooks at UO (I suppose one has to read the microfilm nowadays) because I find it unlikely that he did not interview Samantha Huddleston, and maybe even her mother Catharine Davis, and maybe more of the Vaughans. The interview he did with John Quincy Vaughan was delightful and there could be more that didn't make it into the library compilations. Although William Tyler Vaughan was colorful and there are some good stories, he doesn't figure that importantly in my particular interest, but I can speculate how he impacted the lives of his children and grandchildren. I love reading the entries by all of the pioneers, especially the daily-life types of things. People went through hardships we might have been too weak to survive, and of course many of them did not. Big families and multiple marriages were common, and I love going to graveyards, so one of the first items on my list is to go to the Coburg IOOF cemetary, which I believe is actually on Vaughan land in Coburg. I want to see Angeline's grave (F.G. Vaughan's first wife) and see about the children she had with F.G., and the children Miranda had when she married Floyd. Lots of little details I want to get straight.

Writing about the early days of these settlers is practically fiction-writing, so I'm looking forward to it. Guess I had better get to it. The sun seems serious about today, so a bike ride to Coburg could be a fine idea. Certainly cannot stay inside if there is going to be sun. Be right back!

Turning Everything to Silver and Gold

My pipes are well insulated now, but I remember when the drains would freeze and I'd wash dishes in the bathtub. The snow is still too deep for my bike and trailer, but I have a car, and it starts. My house is at 55 degrees, but I have lots of clean socks, and boots, and that makes me one of the luckiest people I know today.

Yesterday was traumatic, not a good day to be one of the overly empathetic. It was hard enough on people getting to Friday's load-in, not to mention Saturday. Our Market looked full compared to the Farmers' and the Authors fair. I'm guessing any weekend event blew their budget yesterday. Still, the mood was good as Market began, vendors and supporters coming in on skiis, sleds, everyone changing from boots to indoor shoes, spreading out our offerings as if it were a normal Saturday in December, meaning fully stocked and with expectations running high.

Then a broken pipe in the ceiling of Holiday Hall let loose a deluge. Susanna's vinegars stood in a ten-shower stall as vendors and staff ran for tubs and towels and the showers spread and the ceiling tiles crumbled. In a matter of minutes the water was turned off, as well as the electricity, and each and every booth in Holiday Hall was shut down for the day.

Beth circled them up and took the lead. She promised to do everything she could for them, and if you know Beth, you know that everything she can do has been tested and will go beyond all of the things that came to your mind. Within the hour all of our members who could be were relocated, either in the lobby, or temporarily in one of the booths of the many members who hadn't been able to make it down their particular hills. Probably none of them had the sales they had expected, and all the work they had done to their displays and arrangements had to be done again, but creativity is problem-solving, and most of us are rather good at it.

A fund was started to offer some immediate relief, and I'm guessing there might be a Kareng Fund application or two. Longer-term relief will come as the situation settles out. People cried and hugged, and helped. Everybody helped. In the Main Hall, it was possible to not even know that all of that had happened.
Business as usual, hard times are hard, but we do know how to pick ourselves up and start smiling again. Even Susanne just kept working, drying off her products and assessing her immediate future. It occurred to me later that some people got drenched. No one whined.

I can't count the number of times I have said we had a hard year. Last year was a hard year too, and we were talking about the years when we had booths still outside in December. This is just not an easy life. You have got to have some inner resources when you break your foot or your car or your top shelf with the fifteen mugs on it. Oh yes, that happened yesterday too.(Not the foot, that was last year, though other people broke other body parts more recently.)

Resilience is the key. You get right up, accept the hugs and generosity and get back to work. Forced to stay home? You make more stock for next week, because our silver lining is that we do get next week. It will probably be cold and rainy, but that will feel normal. Troublesome is normal.

Why do we even expect things to be easy? A few things are, like helping in crisis, and responding to need. Yet, not so easy to watch people get sick and leave us, to figure out what to say, how to be compassionate within your own trauma, your own damage. How do you provide real comfort when small pleasures and gestures may be all that is available? It is a stumbly way, like navigating the streets with two inches of packed ice on them. Do not fall.

But if you do, do it right in the open in a community like ours. Someone will pick up your spilled groceries, hold your hand, look into your eyes. Someone wants to be there for you. It isn't easy for them, and it isn't easy for you. Not really for anyone. We all have something holding us down, keeping us back, tripping us up.

It will be okay. All will be well, as Vi has been known to say. Things happen and sometimes they are poop. When the poop headline hit the papers last summer, we thought it had the potential to kill our Market. I can laugh now, but that was huge, and yet, we played an important part in fixing that problem. Now people are viscerally aware that everyone poops, and they need a place to do that. One less thing that gets shuffled into the closet of compassion fatigue.

Each little thing makes the big picture, and the big picture is still an expansive landscape like one of Tim's photos, fractally filled with detail like one of his little botanicals. Every little raindrop holds a reflection like Katharine's dew photos. Things are just not simple, and they do not remain the same. The snow will become legend, and maybe next year we will use the Atrium instead of Holiday Hall. We don't see the opportunities in the same way we don't see the disasters coming. All we can really do is stay positive, flexible, and resilient. And sometimes we fight for what we need, fighting kindly in our way.

Don't forget that we are survivors, and our hearts are working, and we can always do more, and do it better. Just keep doing your best. There will be another Saturday, and another glorious morning, and we will learn some more about grace and love. Keep opening. It hurts a little, but sometimes it brings the help we need. 
Better go check the pipes in the shop and put on a third pair of socks. See you at Holiday Market!

Oh yes: THANK YOU.

Caring Indoors

Day three of the three-day weekend. I am always surprised how tired I get. Today I apparently slept through my alarm, highly unusual behavior for me, so maybe I am not supposed to take the time to write today. I don't seem to have a clear point (not so unusual...)

Holiday Market is so irresistible to me. I try hard to stay in my booth but am compelled to see the new crafts and artists, and the progress of the ones I know from previous years, marking time by artistic progression. I found so many things I wanted or needed. I tried to support some of the new artists who were trying HM for the first time, trying to make them "fall in love fast" as I said in my last post. Here is a pile from last week. This week I will have a much smaller pile, as I was far too busy making sales yesterday to even make it to the farm, as I call it when I hurry down the hall to the farmers' market room.

Most of us who sell outside have a palpable sense of relief when we walk into the doors at the Fairgrounds, dressed in our nice clothes, without our many layers, ready to focus on our friends and neighbors who come to see the gallery that is ours. We relax as the facets of our jobs shift slightly to a different focus, as the sometimes desperate feeling wanes, as we increase our trust in ourselves and our choices. I know I will do well. I don't have to worry about it at all. I can look at the totals of my past years (I have sold at every Holiday Market we've had, from the first when we invented it.) This trust turns to pure love as we deepen our friendships and our enjoyment of our community.

It's always enlightening to see the new people who don't quite see our existing culture, the ones who pack early or complain about the management when "the management" is walking by, the ones who don't sell well and get desperate and hawk their wares to our guests, the ones who sell out because their prices are too low,or sell little because their prices are too high. The Holiday Market at its best is not a discount show. We don't offer early bird specials or loss leaders or any other tricks to get our potential customers in the door. We dress ourselves up and try to present a warm, rich, gorgeous showing of us at our very best.

The complaining ones don't see the deep love that is going around the room, the neighborhood alliances and romances and new friendships and history and joy. They miss some of what is running under the surface, the river we ride in and the strength of its flow. We're not perfect, but we are us.

I try to help with bringing others in with us. The first weekend Art Bag project was a perfect try at bringing people in. Yes, it was transparent that we were trying to get more shoppers and booths to commit to the first weekend. We had a lot of empty booths last year and far fewer this year. A practical look at the costs and returns leads some to just sell on the sure-thing December weekends, but the bag project worked for me and I made more money the first weekend than last year. And, in a bigger surprise, I sold more bags.

I will admit that because I sell canvas bags, as well as print the ones the Market sells, I made the complaint that the bag project was going to cost me. I fell into a petty space, and I could feel that it was petty, but I learned that lesson one more time. If it feels petty, just quit it. I was wrong. The bag project served to raise the interest in canvas bags, and aligned with the plastic bag ban in Eugene and other cities, bags are more popular and needed, and Saturday/Holiday Market is now known as the place to get the good bags.

This will, of course, be of direct benefit to me, even if all of my fellow members develop and sell a bag. It's like selling tie-dye in the tie-dye capital of the Universe. People come. They want the selection and variety and artistic expression that we do so well. Those 46 bags with the 46 recognizable artistic styles were a joy to see and touch and the people who won them were more than delighted. To our credit, we did not take their addresses and add them to our database. We simply gave the bags away. Joyfully and with our whole hearts. We were us at our best.

Much is made of the consistently amazing philanthropy of my other organization, the OCF, but people may not see our quieter form of this at Saturday Market. We give free space, even the costly HM space, to nonprofits every week, where they can sell handmade items and raise funds for their organizations. Womenspace runs the coat check/ package wrap tables in the front of the room. We have buskers, and there are many, many people who seek to attach themselves to our success. We are happy to share.

What is more, we formed our own emergency relief fund, called the Kareng (caring) Fund. I'll write more about it, but I just want to announce that we have started a little bag project of our own. I say we because I serve on the Kareng Fund Board, with eight other kind folks. The Fund is ten years old, and has given out over $20,000 in grants to artisans in crisis, with career-threatening situations or injuries. Almost all of our funds have come from Market members and friends, and from the fundraising efforts we do at the Holiday Market.



In the coming weeks I will post pictures of our latest good idea, more tote bags! We decided to ask artists to decorate the back of our Kareng Fund bags (with the Market basket filled with hearts) for us. I have collected several now and this week I will get them photographed. They are sweet! This time Market members will indeed be eligible to win one, but these come with a cost, and will be auctioned off on the last weekend.

The fun just never ends! This one will feel good. On that morning, we drop our frame of being all about making money for ourselves, and we share it with each other. People seem to love contributing to the Kareng Fund. I know it is deeply satisfying to work with the Board, giving grants and expanding our scope.

This year we applied and hope to be granted our own 501c3 status. We now serve not just Market members but any low-income self-employed artisan in Oregon. That means OCF members, LCFM members, and those from other towns in our state. We will be doing more outreach and making ourselves known in the next year (still waiting to hear from the IRS regarding our status, though once we do gain it, donations will be retroactively tax-deductible.)


I know many people don't know about the KF, so come ask me if you have questions. We are always accepting donations through the Saturday Market office, and will be mounting our campaign this week. Be part of us. The working poor, the self-employed, have not had an easy decade. Some of us are so far below the poverty level we may never rise above it (certainly not on our Social Security income.) We need each other. We are the safety net that we have woven for ourselves and our community.


Give of yourself this season. It is about so much more than cheap appliances and sock sales. We don't have kettles and bells, but you can find us at the Holiday Market. We want you in our family.

I will be there by the south side doors, near the entrance to Holiday Hall where the nonprofits put up their tables. Wave

at me as you take a few bucks in there and help your neighbors. Stay small and make big changes. I know when I broke my heel and a lovely card came in the mail with an unexpected grant, I cried big tears. It was not about the money, which of course I badly needed for my three months of immobility and year of recovery, it was about the caring. I felt held in the hands of my people.


Let's hold out our hands, and hold each other. Not just now, but especially now, when there is so much we need and so much we want. Presents, yes, but also presence. I will try to be here for you. Thank you, from my heart, for being here for me.

Last Outdoor Market!

Aargh, it's supposed to rain Saturday, and this will be the last week that I will care, for a few months. Selling outside on the Park Blocks in November is always a challenge, and we have had a couple of difficult weeks. Last Saturday, however, was so satisfying.

Apparently a lot of people thought it was the last Market (Thanksgiving is unusually late this year) and turned out last week for a rocking day. Sales were great, approaching summer levels. There were tourists from California and France. The members who did sell mostly clustered up near each other and it was ever so friendly. We could see and hear the stage from the west block, so we danced.

One of the good parts of small Markets is that we get to see new artists or take the time to look at familiar ones, and invariably there are new, exciting crafts to discover. When food booths are missing we sometimes step out of our habits and order new foods we haven't tried before. The 3-D paintings were extremely impressive, and there was no line at the pad-thai-pork-stick booth. 

At the Board meeting last week we began with stating our appreciations, and among the gratitudes for staff and organization was this: we get to be outside all day long. This is something I take for granted, because I spend a lot of time outside, but having that one 12-hour day every week when I can stand among trees and look at the clouds is very pleasing to me. I've learned weather watching mostly from that.

The normal weather pattern here is west to east, with most of our storms coming out of the south. Those warm south winds usually bring the wettest days, but when the wind switches to the northerlies
 we get cold. The balmy intervals usually mean rain on the way, and just because the sun comes out, doesn't mean it will get warm when you stand on concrete for all those hours.

But that cup of tea is so much extra comfort, that bowl of soup, or the hand-warmer crepe. Even holding a plate of noodles is gratifying, and with the smaller crowds I sometimes even get to eat my hot food while it is still warm. The pressure comes down and we all relax a little.

Every neighborhood at the Market has a little society all its own, and ours is quite familial. Raven starts that little song right at 10:00 and the juju is shared, the hopes for prosperity and fun. The cone of power is raised and we all holler. We compare notes throughout the day, completing our loose rituals and repeating our sometimes tired standing jokes. Our competitions rarely get serious, as we all support each other and sincerely wish the best for every one. We can afford the luxury of keeping our hearts open to the day and to the opportunities that the public brings along with their browsing or intentional immersion. We are safe, we are encouraged to grow and change, and we are loved. Nothing could feel better on a cold wet day than a sense of greater purpose.

Yes, friends and neighbors, here is where I preach my old refrain about how the Market made me and what a precious, irreplaceable and ephemeral whisp of spontaneity it is. It only happens when you attend, only cooks when you stir the pot.

I've been a member since before we kept track, my first Market in 1975 when I was new to town. I've never missed a Holiday Market and though my commitment occasionally lightened when I was single-parenting and building the house, I have always kept Market close. I've had most of the selling experiences a person can have. I've written many words on the subject of my joy. It's always, in some way, just what I want it to be, exactly what I need.

But the ephemeral can never be taken for granted. The last few years have been some of our most challenging and though we are not in crisis, most of our challenges are ongoing and we haven't solved them yet. A lot of the questions we have to answer are not posed by us, but by the conditions under which we operate. We sell in public, so the public is mostly in charge, but it is our job to contain the surge of energy and turn it to our benefit. We work hard at that.

I have to get out in the shop today, with Holiday Market starting next week (!!) and there are many things on my list, but it was a priority to say this: If you can, by any means possible, come down to the Park Blocks this Saturday.

I know it's hard, and sometimes feels foolish to take the chance of coming out when there's no guarantee of comfort or success. I know those property taxes took most of your spending cash. I know the Farmers' Market will be closing at 1:00 and will be tiny anyway, but they might have cranberries and there are all of those lovely breads and squashes, and you can never have enough apples in the house. Have you seen all the new flours and grains? Emmer?

It's hard, but it's so worth doing. Saturday Market uses every dollar for the common good, to present the world-class event and make it look easy, to serve the members with what we need and more, to provide comfort and ease for the customers who come from all over that world. Our staff works so damn hard for us, and whether or not anyone else comes, they will be there hauling trash and putting up shelters and now we even have patio heaters! Beth will call out as many names as she can, and everyone can have an 8x8.

We need lots of customers, even if they individually don't spend money, to fill up the place and make it look interesting. Customers are part of the entertainment! You may not know how many of us are writers jotting down overheard dialogue or character sketches. You may not know that we are constantly inspired and gratified by ordinary heroes and friendly folks who come down and love us, or learn to. We think subtle things, like how to not see every new person as a customer, but to be open to what is being brought to the marketplace by each of us, including the person holding the cash. It's a lot more than a money exchange down at 8th and Oak.

But more than customers, we need our members to sustain us. We need you to put in your twelve hours or whatever it takes you to bring your goods down and spread them out. It's not just your ten percent that we need. Every week we get people new to us, both members and customers, and we want them to fall in love fast. We want each person to be able to see and touch what we hold so dear in our lives.

It's most likely going to rain on me, and not just on the way home like two weeks ago. My tote bags are going to get damp and something will fall to the pavement and need to be washed. That canopy will get wet again and be a problem to dry, since I won't be using it until April. My foot will hurt and my hands will ache.

But the moments of the last day outdoors feel golden, glowing with emotion as we wrap up another season. I am constantly amazed by what we are creating downtown, by our longevity and sustainability and the toughness of our commitment to each other. I plan on spending as much money as I can on Saturday, buying those apples and cups of soup and silver rings and new socks. Yes, I could wait for Holiday Market, but if I do my purchasing this week, Market gets the ten percent, and maybe we get a little healthier with a little bigger rainy day fund in case our weather magic wanes.

Last week as I passed through the corner where we all meet, there was a young man playing classical music under the tree, one who has aged with us right through his cute stage to be a very serious musician. Lotte Streisinger, one of our founders, happened to be navigating her walker in the opposite direction (she comes every week, and on Tuesdays too!) We shared a huge grin at the perfection of the moment.

Saturday Market is as perfect as our earthly endeavors can get, due to the conscientious work of thousands of members and those who serve and love us. Come and be a part of it. It's your last chance until April, and that is a very long time from now.

Next?

Windowsill is in, caulked in every way, and I got a quick coat of paint on it yesterday in the balmy prequel to today's deluge. That project is finished, except I really don't like the wambly front surface. Put it on the list to edit. Do better next time.

I've been writing my book in bits and in my mind as I do other things, and have been thinking a lot about my friend Richard's role in the process of the house. I have to write a chapter about him, but it might not make the final cut because it is really not the subject, but part of the backstory.

Richard showed up in my life through a mutual friend's work project, and I was looking for love at the time and got a big attraction. I was also looking for a way to remodel this house, and I asked him to make a bid. I never ended up getting any others, because as we conversed about it, he said a fateful thing. Of course I don't remember his exact words, but this is how he talks:

"Some people do their own work. When the owner is building, the permit department treats the project differently." Okay, that is how I talk. He might say something about the bastards not being quite so hard on an owner-built project, and something about how there were lots of options, but what I didn't hear was essential. I didn't hear that any part of it was too hard for me to do on my own. I didn't hear "You can't" in any words, and that has been true for the last twenty-some years.

We've had thousands of complicated talks with times of annoyance or crush getting into the edges, but over the years I have been able to drop most of my defensiveness and delusion regarding the way men interact with women over projects involving tools. Richard has been my mentor.

I didn't recognize the role, as I can't think of any other mentor like him in my life. He says things like "I don't have to be right," and "so that's how you decided to do it." He always agreed to do the parts that seemed way out of my reach, like tying the two roofs (old and new) together, and he gave me a wonderful book on framing which I still reference. He checked in frequently without it seeming like he was checking on me.

Sometimes I paid him and sometimes I didn't. I have some quirks about money. My initial budget for building half a house, with kitchen and bathroom, was $13,000. He helped me make the plans, which I drew myself, he gave me essential details about how to navigate the permit process, and he was wonderful with sources, referrals to experts, and answering dumb questions. After awhile I didn't even think of my questions as dumb anymore.

We're funny together. I talk differently with him, adopting that "guy" attitude and inflections that make me seem dressed in overalls and chewing on a straw, channeling my farm hand side. Long over my crush, I don't act like a girl (whatever that means) around him, I act like a contemporary. I feel handy, accomplished, and able to converse in builderspeak. I'm not embarrassed about my lack of skills, and he somehow has gotten into my brain with his logic and extremely solid ground. I frequently feel overwhelmed with the scope of a project, and his voice reminds me that a house is just a box, and I am able to reduce the project to stages that seem doable.

My creative process with these things involves procrastination while I visualize each step and figure out what I have to do first, in the middle, and at the finish, and while I look online and in books to see how other people do similar projects. Sometimes I launch without the proper preparation, like with the sidewalk. I don't know what I don't know yet, so when the concrete delivery is scheduled, Richard always shows up a couple of hours early. With the sidewalk, he brought  tools I didn't even know existed, the ones to make the grooves and the flat margins around the edge, and he was there when my two young men and I got behind the pour and almost had a hardened pile in the middle. We managed, but without him there I would have a cracked, roller-coaster path with lots of mess around it.

We would sit somewhere and gaze at the project while we chatted, and every so often he would say, "Well, what you could do..." or "One way you could do it would be..." or "Some guys might..." He must have had to bite his tongue every time to keep out every single note of discouragement he might transmit. It didn't seem like he was being careful, but now when I notice some of the awkward solutions I applied, I think he showed amazing discretion and strength. I did some boneheaded things!

Even though it took fifteen years and is not exactly finished, there is no doubt it is impressive that I completed a house and am living in it, spent very little money (maybe $30,000) to do it, and learned how to do plumbing, wiring, roofing, carpentry, sheetrock, all of it, from library books and trial and error. There were other people who lent a hand to tip up a wall or give me a piece of information I needed, but having Richard in the project with me made all the difference. I depended on him without even being aware of it.

I say that I built this by myself and I feel like I did, but there Richard is in many of the pictures, walking the top plate, hanging out the fascia, backing up the forms so the concrete wouldn't spill out. He never shook his head in dismay at my ignorance, though no doubt he hid a few smiles in his shirt collar. He got frustrated, and there were times we couldn't talk about a few things, but the connection persisted and deepened and I know he is one of the few people who really gets me, and is capable of true support, not just of me, but of anyone. He's got his curmudgeonly side, but sometimes when he talks about values and honesty and right and wrong, he approaches the role of spiritual guide as well. He does some deep thinking.

I can't say that I understand men very well,or the dynamics of male-female relationships, but I feel like he didn't treat me like a woman, and this was a glaring difference from they guys at Jerry's or the inspectors who had to come every six months (they tried, but sexism is just built in). He treated me like the artisan I am, the generalist who is curious about how to do everything and wants to try it, but has to do that exploration alone and at her own speed. He never pushed, he never did an insensitive action like tossing aside my work to replace it with his, he never was anything but supportive. And I didn't make that easy.

Quite simply, without Richard I would never have done the project, and one of the most significant life experiences (second only to parenting my son) would not have opened to me. I wouldn't be the person I am now. The amount of satisfaction and challenge and comfort and prosperity that I have gained over the last few decades gets partially logged into his column. And let it be said that he worked with me on lots of other things besides my house, my OCF booth for starters.

I'm not skilled at mentoring, though I have tried to encourage many people in many ways, and use some of what I observed, but I'm not just a taker either. He recently wanted a sailboat, and I lent him a bunch of books on sailing and am excited for him that he got one and is learning to sail. That is another of my interest areas and I'll enjoy talking sailing with him too. He's got grandchildren, so we don't see much of each other right now, but we're still there. I owe him, but he's not the type to add up life debts and expect payment. He would probably counter with some ways I opened up his life, subtle things I didn't notice. Such is the nature of complex, long friendships, that most of the big ways we appreciate the person are never spoken.

I have to find a way in the book to convey the weight of his help without it seeming like we were partners or that he was in charge. It was always my project, my house, and my mistakes. He certainly didn't make any.
When I look at my living room ceiling, which is smooth and level with only that one place where the sheetrock tape came loose, I have the lovely memory of looking at it with him when it sagged six inches and was ragged with long strips of derelict wallpaper and spider webs, and we delightedly hit on the idea of putting the laser level in the middle of my screenprinting carousel, which was in the room at the time, and rotated it slowly, marking the level on the walls. He got that chuckle at the elegance of the solution, at the potential of a finished ceiling, at the progress of finally being able to tackle one of the knottiest problems left to finish. It was just one of the moments when we both felt great, a moment right up there with looking up at the Country Fair trees as they swayed and groaned and speculating about what we would do when the big ash tree finally fell on the booth. Which it did.Talk about elegant solutions.

And what a joy it was to have someone to share that with. When I finished the sill, and the shingles on the OCF booth this summer, I took pictures and posted them to the faceless internet, but I was looking around for Richard. What a priceless gift he gave me, a twenty-year gift of standing next to me in pride and alliance.

So maybe the dedication page for Richard Whyte. He's not the story, but he certainly had my back.