How to Deal With the Stuff

Thinking about hypervigilance, the defensive stance, and how easy it is to push people into traumatized reactions to what, to others, seem like ordinary statements or actions. Thinking about Facebook, how it keeps pitching me old posts from this blog, which sometimes I read out of curiosity, but rarely share. It seems lazy to share an old one. I suppose this will be the way I track my cognitive decline, when it comes...old posts will seem so good, and new thoughts mundane and hardly worth expressing. Or maybe it will be the opposite: maybe my old posts will be naive and trivial and my new ones compelling and passionately irrational. Sorry for you that have to watch...or maybe that is why you read these.

I wish I wouldn't think so much about aging and debilitating futures just because someone points out that I am not young now. Of course I blame the culture but really, it is individuals thinking these things that keeps it current. Yes, I don't want to move as fast as I once did, and I'm not motivated by the same things. Today I had thought I would get productive and go out in the shop, and the sun is out, so I could finish the pruning, but here I sit, wanting to write instead. So? Life passages are great. You be young, with all of the quickly made mistakes that set the course of your life before you know it. I actually like this slower pace here in the eddies at the edges of the mainstream. Do whatever you want on my former lawn, now tangle of blackcap raspberries.

I already did quite a few pages in my journal last night and this morning, working things over. I was spurred to put it down in words after reading a beautiful essay about author Patricia Hampl. It was some excellent writing, and reminded me that is why I practice writing...I want to create beauty like that. I feel lucky to have started this blog, because I put it here, people can read it if they want, but it doesn't create an object that will have to be dealt with. My living room (okay, house) (and shop)  is filled with objects. Even though I have started the process of getting rid of things, it's going to be a process for the rest of my time, and I don't expect it to get easier. No one is going to want most of what I have. Thank goodness for the free tree.

Lotte's family gave me more of her archives. This latest batch is much more poignant than the last, and I'm having a hard time delving in. One item is her copy of her book, (The Potter and the Muse) which upon re-reading provides wonderful insights into her work and through that, her life. Her extraordinary and ordinary life is part of my own musing now. I'm having an intimate relationship with her through her writing, one that is closed at the end but open for as long as I am the keeper of her things. The "and then what" part is what I'm chewing on.

I have lots of journals of my own, dozens. I put everything in there, all my misgivings and truth and probably quite a few lies that I believe are true. One reason I journal and one rule about it for me is that you never lie to your journal. This has saved my life a few times when I forced myself to check back and see what I said before, and the damning truth sits there, unalterable. Honesty has levels, and it isn't perfect. Perhaps it's more of an exploration of the veils of self-delusion, drawing them back.

Questions surface. Why do I think that, why do I feel that, why did I do that? Observations of what I have written about what I have done, causes patterns to emerge which can be identified. That's how I know about my hypervigilance and the many cognitive errors that I make under certain circumstances. I know if I'm writing at night, or putting aside other plans to write something scary, or writing long careful emails, or (horrors) the long ten-page letters to family members or lost lovers, I know that that pattern has meaning for me. Those are the signals that my trauma patterns are operating, and that something has set them off. While the material is essential to explore, sharing it is problematic. Mostly I don't send the letters. I save them though. I try not to read them.

Generally I can identify the causes now, of the patterned behaviors, which are usually multiple, subtle, and things that would seem ordinary to the observer. I can even have a rational track operating at the same time. If I'm defensive, the best thing seems to be to let it run its course, crafting the towers of self-righteousness and conviction, but then letting them collect dust. If I have to mount a defense, I have probably already lost whatever it is I want to hold onto. Somebody's wrong impression about me, my motives, or my actions, is probably not going to change through my defense. It has the best chance of healing itself through my actions leading forward, so if I can right my own ship so to speak, the sailing will get smoother. Back into the journal to discuss next moves.

Trying to fix everything, and thinking I can, is another aspect of the cognitive errors. (Google 12 or 15 or 20 cognitive errors if you don't know what I mean by that.) Feeling the over-responsibility syndrome, as I call it, means if the phone rings in a room, my hypervigilant self thinks I have to answer it. Even if it is not my phone. If I'm at a meeting or in a group, pretty soon I have just volunteered for everything, not to control it, but to set a good example of pitching in. Irrationality hates a vacuum. It's a heavy burden to set a good example. It's like trying to be a saint, very catholic. Have I mentioned it's Lent? Ash Wednesday still carries a shame charge for me, reminding me of how it felt to wear that smudge of certain sin to public school, and enter into that deprivation period when we gave up something we loved, like candy. That one was especially loaded as when Easter came, we got piles of it. Starvation and then gorging, so helpful for a life pattern.

I get that hoarding is about control, but I am not a hoarder, just someone with attachments to useful stuff and things that aren't finished with their useful lives. Like Lotte's journals. I could tell her family wanted to keep them, but they were all inundated with things that had to be saved. Anyone who lives 90 years and doesn't have to move into a place, has their history around them. It's essential history in some ways, and her Saturday Market history is really precious. I loved putting that together and look forward to working on it some more. They were very grateful to me for helping them sort things out.

From what I can tell with my little pokes into it, most of what I have now is Lotte's writing, and her writing about her artistic process and her pieces. My understanding of her work is increasing by leaps and bounds, and it's very profound. The materials would make a fantastic research project for a young artist wanting direction, or for some kind of retrospective about an ordinary potter and printmaker as an insight into how craftspeople live. Maybe it's museum quality...it is to me, but then I am the proprietor of the Jell-O Art Museum, so maybe I lack perspective on what the Smithsonian wants...or even the Lane County Historical Museum. Plus, they are full up  at LCHM until they get a new building, and UO probably is as well. Famous in Eugene is maybe not all that famous. Plus, potters are naturally humble, to my experience. Working with earth and fire keeps them very grounded and secure in the knowledge that back to ashes we will go. (Those damn Catholics again.) So Lotte probably expected it to be tossed into the bonfire at some point. It was important to do the work, and the product was less important. She wanted to give things away.

But when I add it to my own archives for the short term, (and I also offered to compile my Mom's writing for our family,) I get overwhelmed. I'm attached in a deeply emotional way to these materials, but I doubt that my attachment will survive me. I also have Mike's Mom's fabrics, and things all the way back to the sign-painting brushes and books and kits from a dying man, Charlie Toback, who lived over the fence from a place on Almaden Street where I lived in the 70's. I opened myself to what these people really cared about, and assured them I would make use of it. And I have! And I've loved them. I still want all of it. They might appreciate that their lives were extended in these ways.

Obviously the world is changing in a way that eventually makes these things useless and in the way, like me. I can fight it for awhile. I'll have to come to terms with it. Probably that will happen little by little, writing about it all the way, since some patterns are functional and do help my life. I could write a few books about it, if then they wouldn't become objects that had to be dealt with.

Probably should get tough with myself. Trick myself with routines like throwing away one thing a day or finishing books and then taking them to the Little Free Libraries. That's how I came across the Patricia Hampl thing. Now I don't want to get rid of it though. Maybe next week.

Same Old, and Also Brand New

Jell-O Goes Gold

I shared a seven-year-old post FB sent me, because it said a few things I have never stopped saying. Being engaged so much in crafting the elegant solution with so many people, lots of things don't change, and all of us, including me, need to keep reminding ourselves of how we get there.

It does matter what our process is. We do need to bring our best selves to every meeting. One person having an off day or engaging in self-serving behavior, or letting their fears overcome their manners, can have a devastating effect on people who are volunteering their time and energy. Every time someone goes off, everyone else goes home with the task of self-examination, checking on their own thought processes and priorities, and working on their skills and internal processes, just to get back to where they started at the beginning of the meeting. Careless words and actions are what drives volunteers away.

My two main membership organizations (Saturday Market and Oregon Country Fair) are full of visionaries, hard workers, practical planners, and dreamers. Our whole impetus starting out so long ago (hard to grasp the fifty year lifespan, already) was to create a better life experience, to share our talents, to work together without self-interest for the common good. Many of us were in our twenties and thirties, and if you were there, you remember why we needed an "alternative society." Mainstream reality was grim. Our generation of young men was being wiped out in Vietnam, brutally involved against their wills in a corrupt and terrifying war of imperialist domination (we had the draft and the lottery for it.) The government was clearly crooked and grasping (we had Nixon and then Reagan) and we had been collectively traumatized by the murders of our visionary leaders, the two Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King Jr, and many of the Black Panther leaders, who were trying to feed children and protect the lives of their community. Our country was described as divided in two, and everyone was fighting, even at the family level. It always seemed manufactured and phony, and what stuck in our minds was the advice to The Graduate: "Plastics." What a metaphor.

My cynical perspective sees everything differently than I did then, as history repeats itself but in ever-darker ways, but we have learned a lot over the years, and we have taught our children well. In my little corner of the alternative society, we're well established in experienced process, we practice peace, and we value self-assessment and education, and there's a lot of wisdom in every gathering. Some among us are excellent at cutting through the crap. One of my friends nailed it at a difficult meeting when she pointed out an absence of something basic, personal responsibility. We live with that every day as self-employed people, with our survival on the line with each action we take.

We aren't as flummoxed by bullies and gaslighters as we were in the past. Collectively the whole world is much less willing to tolerate coercion and negative framing and divisiveness, and people are much braver about speaking clear truth and leaving their fears and confusions outside the room as they focus on actual problem-solving. Crafting the elegant solutions comes a little easier now. Not that it isn't a constant challenge.

Facebook discussions have both facilitated and destroyed process but reading so many threads that are open to everyone has me convinced that on balance, these rather warped forums of participatory democracy are helpful. We can identify behavior patterns, illogical arguments, trolling, and inspiration. When people turn the conversation with positive framing, you can almost hear the cheering. When someone comes to trash things, they rarely succeed. Ranks close and their comments are either argued down to shreds or they sit like a turd on a platter at the end of the thread. People reveal themselves in ways that wouldn't happen in a live meeting. We can edit our comments when we say something that doesn't sound right. We can drill down into the issues and bond or identify areas we have to work on.

It can be too much. We still have to get in the room together and be vulnerable as we take step after step toward naming and solving the actual problems. But often the myths we carry are shown to be such, in the online process, and we can share that perspective and re-right the ship. We're more in charge of our own process than ever, at the same time being more bombarded by distraction and intentional obfuscation than ever.

Country Fair, with it's larger population of stakeholders and many more FB pages, does a lot more of this online processing then we do at Market. We actually do ours on Saturdays, since we meet there so frequently. Sometimes you could frame it as gossip, but I see it as the informal process that facilitates the formal process. We tend to stay away from online processing, (and I'm grateful for that) as our population is smaller enough to interact more in person throughout the year. You don't necessarily have to be a committed volunteer who goes to meetings to share your perspective with your friends and neighbors. I am convinced the networking that goes on during the day on Saturdays is invaluable to our work. We get discussion time and we reach a lot more of us who aren't online, including both the new or infrequent sellers and the regular every-week members on the Park Blocks. I especially like the morning set-up time and the 3-5 afternoon time for the easily shared communications that we can do ongoing during the season.

Of course the offseason is a different story. A lot of us go into retreat mode and turn our energies to other things, and the core group of people who are working on Market issues is smaller. But still, when we come together to work on our tasks and decisions, people bring skills. We slog through things that take time and care. We can't always be efficient and quick with how we work things through. Like with Fair, our event comes up quickly, faster than we are ready for it, and at the same time we can hardly wait for it. We feed so deeply on the actual gatherings. There's a thread right now on an OCF page where people are writing what they are looking forward to doing at Fair. It's as diverse as the population and illustrates well how many kinds of contributions there are, and how they all fit together to make the others possible.

Sure, there are always going to be people who cause other people to do make-work around them, who don't pull their weight, who complain and blame and make mistakes. Plenty of people try to eliminate process to just get the job done. It was easier when we were pioneers creating things for the first time, when individuals could exert more personal power and get approval for it. We have to be more careful now to create group buy-in, to get consent, to stop from acting long enough to make sure it will be the best way to get to the solutions. It can be frustrating, but we still have to do it, or pay the price by doing things over or repairing the damage.

We have always valued consensus, but it takes time. Now we lean toward it, but we don't always take the steps to find it. We increasingly go to majority rule, which is flawed in so many ways, and furthers division, to my mind. It fosters coercion and domination. It short-circuits the careful decision-making process. It forces the consensus-building out of the meetings into the informal networks, the FB threads, the Market neighborhood discussions. It's the way it goes. It makes our experienced, traditional leaders more important than ever, and it's unfortunate that they are often aged.

Young or old, people with developed skills at building consensus to make morally right, thoughtfully crafted, fair and equitable decisions should lead the process. Loud and demanding voices have their place, but it shouldn't be at the head of the table. Change can come, but not at the expense of what has been so carefully built.

Everybody has their fantasy of what our shared reality is like. All of the many thousands of Fair-goers have their perfect Fair in mind and they try to experience it every year. Everyone who comes to Market has a vision of what it is that serves them in whatever ways they need it to. None of these are perfectly correct for all of us, none of them are perfectly the truth.

But in the collective reality, they each play a part. Each of us has the task to envision the best possible practices and the best possible experience, and work toward it. We do this with amazing power and force, and each event is an explosion of this manifestation of love. Every Saturday, every July, we are stunned by the beauty and joy we create together. Sometimes we have to slog through some mud to get there, but our collective vision remains clear and bright. I am so grateful for that, and so in awe of how many people try so hard to create it.

It's not easy to make a beautiful vision come true every day. Now in our traumatized political state, it's harder than ever in my lifetime. But it's happening, and happening harder and harder as the daphne and violets bloom and the weeds take off. I'm thrilled for myself that I have the Jell-O Art Show as my annual vehicle to illustrate that. I hope you have something similar and a way to express your creative and dramatic self that includes some silliness and some hugging and some singing and some brilliantly colorful ways to clear away the grime. I'm excited that my vision is still refresh-able.

I had been feeling a little old and in the way. It's kind of a default forced on us as we wrinkle and our disks degenerate inside us. We slow down. But this has its important place. We have more time to reflect, and take in the wisdom of others. We have the undeniable advantage of historical perspective that can so enrich the enthusiasm and energy of youth. We get to support instead of lead. We get to sit back and be satisfied, and embrace joy and contentedness instead of just acting and doing. We get to set the example and bring forward what we've been taught. We're part of the continuum in a new way.

We're all playing a part in this drama. Make them laugh. Make them cry. Touch their hearts. Watch them play. Applaud. What a world! Thanks for staying in it, even when you feel discouraged.

Early Saturday Market History

This poster, hand printed, was in Lotte's archives. It was most definitely from the first Market in 1970. I'd love to find out more about it, if anyone knows anything. Possibly Lotte made it, but it could have been another artist. 

Instead of working on my taxes I have been archiving Saturday Market materials, my own and a box of things I got from Lotte's family. She had saved and pasted in albums every article written and some of the newsletters and things from the beginning of Market. It's three volumes but here's some of what I gleaned from the first volume:

The people in the group did have some sales before this, known as the EPIC sales, (acronym for Eugene Peace Information Center) each Christmas for about a decade. Lotte did spearhead the effort to go to the City Council and an Urban Renewal group, SCORE, and the Council approved this one-day Market. 29 people sold in the rain. After the one day it was evaluated by the Council. Two hundred people went to the City Council to support the Market. 

After a lot of discussion the Council allowed another in June.

It was held June 6th and they were allowed to continue for the summer.  The first one cost 50 cents. The second one cost a dollar.It was located by the Overpark on Oak, in the alley. It wasn't a good place for it, and it soon outgrew the space. Dogs caused a lot of problems, apparently, but the people were all delightful it seems.

The City gave three months, then in September let them sell until Dec. 19th. Even though it was rumored that it would not be held on the Saturday of the October Renaissance Fair, it was. (That was the second "OCF".) By then there were over a hundred "booths." People sold on blankets and low tables then, very minimal. The City was always supportive, but some downtown merchants were not, so often the Council votes were tight. Hundreds of people would come to the meetings with petitions, and tourists would write letters. Locations on the Mall didn't really work well, so the group petitioned the county for use of the Park Blocks in February 1971.

The County Commissioners denied the use of the Park Blocks, 2-1. Nancy Hayward wouldn't even second the motion to deny. They offered the top of the Butterfly. The City had offered a courtyard of City Hall, but neither location had the visibility and aesthetics the Saturday Market Committee wanted. They went back in April and asked for Courthouse Plaza (which has since been redesigned) and again the commissioners voted no, 2-1.

The Market people had jumped through a lot of hoops, hiring a lawyer, moving toward incorporation, etc., and were surprised at the no. The Market was homeless. Then Eugene Downtown Association and many citizens and business owners came out in support of the Market, and on May 12, 1971, the County okayed the use of the Courthouse Plaza, for a three-month trial period only.

The first year they held a market on the day of the first "Renaissance Fair" but the second year they waited until June 19th to have a strong opening (Fair was June 5th). They hired M'Lou Carden as part-time manager and charged $1.50 to sell. The county only gave them June, July and August. They had rules, including No Dogs, a simple jury by Board members to keep it handmade only, and the hours were 10-5. Food sellers had to have temporary restaurant licenses. The second week it rained, but Rain or Shine was already the rule.

They bought insurance for $800,000 in coverage for the three month “trial period”. After total success, in the middle of August the commissioners had gone back to their 2-1 opposition. After some drama with black armbands and bunting, and rain on the second-to-last day, the Market Board decided to move to the less-desirable Butterfly lot. The last day on the Plaza, Sen. George McGovern came and shook some hands! Coburg also offered to host the Market.

Courthouse Plaza permitted 250 booths but people were asked to limit themselves to a 3’x 6’ space. Vendor totals were up to about 120 regularly, and it thrived. They signed a two-year contract for the Butterfly, but it was larger, sloped, and there were fewer people selling, but the rent went down from $25 a week to $10 a week, and I think they paid that to the City.

Even Sunset magazine featured the Market. It was appreciated much like it is now, with most of the opposition to it coming from people who didn't even go see it, but feared political action, the hippies, and so on, although there were always, as now, many people who did not fit the counter-culture stereotypes.

That's it for Volume 1. I'll post more about this as I go through her notebooks. What a treasure. 

We are the Center, and the Center Will Hold

I'm trying to force myself to go to the March, but so strongly compelled to stay here and write...and have my excuses lined up for why I can't go into those huge crowds. I don't want to indulge my excuses, but maybe I can write and then go. Or get started and then finish after what will surely be inspiring.

I know that whenever I force myself out of the cave, I gain things I didn't know I wanted. When I stay in, I'm not contributing, and I know how good it feels to be contributing. Reposting things on Facebook does not satisfy deep down, particularly when I know my reach on there is so tiny as to be insignificant. My reach in a huge crowd will also be insignificant, but at least I will open myself to seeing others and what they are doing and saying, people who are far more courageous than I.

I spent a lot of my twenties and thirties protesting. I was somewhat fearless back then and allowed some damage to accrue...damage that has come back to haunt me again and again. But when I hear people's stories and see how they have transcended theirs---because we all get damaged---I know I can do better. I can speak louder and work harder to armor myself. I do not want to be a fearful old woman, beaten down by thoughtless people who probably don't even know they are toxic. I want to be one of the ones to shift that damage back and force the change that will stop it from spreading.

I've been reading back in the Saturday Market archives, randomly, as I try to organize the ones I have. Lotte saved every newspaper article and mention of the Markets and I have done that too. Hers are mostly mounted in albums, yellowing and with her notations. Mine are piled up and not organized so that anyone else could benefit. Reading back over only the last decade of what the Markets have been through is incredible. I was there, and it's far too much to keep in operating memory. Yet we have to carry the stories forward so we know who we are and how we got to today.

It's easy to see how people have forgotten even the recent past in politics and government, and how impossible it is to keep perspective with so much new information. That is no doubt part of the current strategy of bombarding us with misinformation to keep us confused and shut down. Even I hear myself asking "What is the point?" and feeling hopeless and lost. I know better! There has always been a point, and it might even be the same point: to make our lives better. To limit suffering and help all of us move in a healthy and life-affirming direction. To live well. To be happy, and see joy in the world around us. Simple things, simple goals, but constantly thwarted.

I can't afford, for my own peace and happiness, to get crumbly. The things I have fought for, stuck my neck out for, haven't been accomplished yet. I don't get to stop working. Since I do have access to history, and I can recognize patterns, that's part of my job. Since I have words, I must use them. I can't keep quiet. None of us should, since it is taking all of the effort we can collectively apply to even hold the center.

But the center is holding. We own the center. The center is in our chests, our hearts, and our minds, and we know what is right because it resonates there. That song "Shed a Little Light," so eloquently describes how we go to the well on the hill, how we feel the rightness of what we are filled with, and how we hold that as sacred vessels of life. It sounds religious but only in the greater sense of reverence for life. The life of our planet. That is what we are holding dear. You and I will come and go, leave our bodies and our boxes of newspapers behind. We will not finish our work.

But that's not the nature of our work. It isn't one task that can be completed. That's one thing that makes it so hard, so discouraging. We don't see the effects. But that's one reason I have to go today, as fearful as I am of my little emotions. I remember at a protest years ago, the biggest lesson I learned was just from watching a young man speak to counter a confused section of the crowd when an argument developed with a Republican supporter. (Remember we have been fighting this Republican mindset since Nixon. Reagan. Bush senior, and W. This stuff is not new, just much more depraved and thinly disguised this time around, and crass. Low.)

This young man just spoke loudly with some advice to basically ignore the troll and not get engaged in his power game, to not let him take our power from us. As I remember it he was also a Dad, with young children. He wasn't saying a simple message about peace, he was drilling down into the practice of it. He was giving us a way through our next few minutes, a new way at that moment. It was what we needed. He responded to our need, leading from the center. He was within us, and the truth and how he spoke it was the balm on the troubled waters that kept us flowing.

The days of bad dads and powerful men doing the wrong thing are waning. The patriarchy is desperately struggling for control, and we are denying them what they have felt so entitled to. They are still winning and taking all the gold, over and over, but we are winning too. We are winning a thousand, a million small battles each and every day that will swing that pendulum and swing it hard.

We are winning. That is why we keep working through the discouragement. Some parts of what we are trying to save will indeed be saved. I can't say I am thrilled about the future, and the struggles still to come, but I do feel proud of how hard we have collectively worked. Pitching in works. Bringing skills works. Gathering to feel the hunger and break the bread and pass it around works.

Sure, it hurts. I'm accessing deep feelings today, which also happens to be my son's birthday. In 1990 I was laboring hard, long hours of trying to open, trying to do the first letting go of an unimaginable amount of letting go that I would have to learn to do with my son. He was born in the evening, after more than a day of that altered state that was so terrifying and also so simple and direct. Nothing else mattered. I was visualizing myself as an elephant. The task and my body were huge. I felt gravity, and waves, and immeasurable natural forces. And with a lot of help, we accomplished our goals.

We set out together on his life. He's taken it well in hand and he's doing well. He learned what I was able to set before him and many more things I wasn't. He has a fine mind and body and has only begun to accomplish all the things of his life, many of which I will not get to see or even hear about. He's a man now. But he isn't part of the patriarchy. He's a good man.

He's more than I thought I would be able to give the world. My heart wanted to keep him inside, all to myself, but that isn't how life works. We have to open. We are compelled to open. We must BE open.

So I will open the door and go downtown. I can stick to the fringes if I have to. I will take cash and I will give it where cash is needed. I might chant and I hope I'll sing. I will do my tiny part, add my tiny voice, and try as hard as I can to stay open as long as I can.

And for my reward I will pick up a library book written by a friend of mine and read one of his fine short stories, and I will go to my grocery store where I have been a loyal customer for forty years and more, and buy something for myself. Something healthy, or not. And then I will come home and get out an album of baby pictures my Mom returned to me, an album about my son that I wrote a lot of little stories in. I'll go back to that proud and focused self who was able to keep a child safe for long enough for him to grow up. I'll laugh at my naivete and unevolved cultural politics and remember those days before the internet and before decades of therapy, back when I thought pretty well of what I had done and what I was doing.

It was okay that I was naive. It was okay that I set aside what would have prevented me from leaping and created that child. It was the most brave and foolish thing I have ever done. I didn't know how much of what I got from the well was going to go into that part of my life, and how satisfying it would be. I only knew that childbirth was a miracle, and I wanted to participate in a miracle.

So Happy Birthday John, and thank you for the miracles. Thank you for your patience while I learned so many things, and your abilities as a teacher with such a complicated class. Thank you for allowing me to ground myself in your mere existence, from that egg that came from my grandmothers, was grown in me when I was in my own Mom, that was grown in her, and all the way back. We brought forward Life that we knew nothing about and are not here to fathom. We are part of Mystery.

It is not about me, and most definitely not about my little insecurities and weaknesses. Today is not about my comfort levels and my thoughts and plans. It's about Life and the Well, and where Hope comes from. It will come. It keeps coming. We keep working. We keep winning. The prize is within.

Be open.

Giving Away Art

Last night I attended the memorial for Lotte Streisinger, which was of course lovely and a warm group of friends, family, and acquaintances. As always, we learned things about her we will try to remember; they fill in the gaps and although it is too late to let her know, they increase our love and admiration of the person, and are gifts to us as we mourn.

My recent history with Lotte is mostly a repeating scene. I would spot her at the Market, heading off with her walker to set what I now understand was a frequent routine: taking a basket to fill with the beauty and bounty of fresh food and whatever else she needed from what we offer at her legacy market. She didn't shop for crafts much, as we all have to collect fewer things in our later years, unless we have a way to pass them on efficiently. But invariably I was with a customer or otherwise involved in my own routine, which on Saturdays is compressed to what absolutely has to be done in a fairly strict time frame. When it is my time to go get food, I have to do it then. So I'd try to keep an eye on her travels, and work it in to say a quick hello. Often I would run after her (she moved fast for a slow walker) and often she'd be leaving as I arrived at her car. I'd vow to do better the next time. Sometimes I didn't want to bother her.

At Holiday Market on what was her last visit, I ran after her and stuffed a tote bag into her basket. I said "It's a present. I don't think you have enough presents." I figured she'd pass it on to someone or at least enjoy it. She so loved other people's creations. Other artisans have told me she would stop and look at their displays and smile. She was a great appreciator. I often characterize what we do at the Market as the artist/appreciator direct relationship. She of course was extremely good at both roles, and has inspired me to collect many works, mostly earrings and bowls of which I have far too many. Need is not the operating value: it's connection. I want the crafter to know I value them, and want them to keep working, and my cash is a path to their success. I refuse discounts and tell them, "Make money."

Alas, I never collected a piece of her pottery. I remember what was surely the last time she came, with a minimal display of pots, and I don't know my reason for not buying one. I'm good at excuses, so I'm sure it was something lame like I have too much stuff or too many bills, or I just didn't think it through. But when I had an essay published in an anthology, (Winter Tales II: Women on the Art of Aging) I gave her a copy of the book and she gifted me a copy of her book. So I have a precious object, and am satisfied, but of course I have my regrets.

She actually invited me over for tea at that time. It was years ago, before I broke my foot, and maybe that was part of my excuse litany for why I did not go. I know I was intimidated, not knowing how friendly and gregarious she was, and I know I have kept it on my list of things to do, as I really wanted to connect with her about the Market in a deeper way, but I didn't follow through. Lesson number 3487 in how making excuses hobbles my life. Sigh.

Now I know she would have made us tea or even maybe a whiskey and we would have had the most wonderful time telling stories and filling me with what I know in my heart is what built me and fed me all of these decades. Her vision for how we live as artisans and humans who love beauty and nature, birds and plants, who closely observe and understand what is real and how we must protect it, her vision was manifested through her careful and diligent work. I was afraid I would cry, but now I know I would have laughed.

When I found out that she is the reason we have John Rose glass work in the Hult, and a bronze umbrella and the flying people at the airport, and a collection of small and profoundly attractive works instead of some expensive and pronounced sculpture, a key piece of my awareness of her legacy emerged. She really is why we have our 4x4s and our 8x8s at the Market and not a department store, why our town has so many craftspeople and so many lives built around us, and why I am here and have thrived here.

Yes, she did this in community and not all by herself, but she brought that vision and calmly set it in place. Her daughters gave the Market a box of her archives and I went through some of it yesterday. We saw some of it at the memorial. She kept in scrapbooks every newspaper reference, every opinion piece, and every photo published about the Market in the beginning. It's quite a treasure. I was dumbstruck how many of the original issues are still our issues almost 50 years later, and how so many of the ways we do things were set in place then, in 1970 to 75, before I got there. I know that her guidance is why. She watched over us.

When it was needed, she went public with letters to the editor. One of the last ones pled to not change the Markets, and it was in reference to our present situation. It made me cry. As the person who has self-appointed to carry this legacy of hers, I felt helpless and knew that I would not be able to make it so. I've worked for years now, decades really, to hold on to our essence and move it forward intact. Every change gets my scrutiny and often I despair that we can't know what the longterm effects of our changes will be. Did we blow it when we got this or that policy or fee? Did we make the right choice about that person or that situation? We can't get it right each time.

I have a collection of little stories about how her strength brought us through. I should maybe have told one or two of them last night, but it was the time to tell real, personal information about her and I didn't have enough. I may have told some of them in here, and maybe along with our 50th I will put together some type of history of how her legacy has butressed us as we have moved through our hardest times.

One of my stories has a dark humor to it. I'll tell it here but you have to promise to laugh. The short version is that I co-sell with the farmers at Tuesday Market, and I take a smaller more flexible display for the shorter day. I try to fit in small spaces so I can locate among them, as I like the friendships and the continuity of that, and I sell tote bags, which people need there. So one morning I was setting up and my whole entire display fell over. I had spread it too wide and the bags and hats are heavy, so with a great metallic crash, it fell flat on the sidewalk in the somewhat narrow aisle. In my horror I looked up, and here came Lotte with her walker. A minute or two of difference, and the headlines would have read "Longtime Member and Officer of Saturday Market Wipes Out Founder."

I know, not funny, but no one did get hurt and I certainly learned a lesson about physics and professionalism, which as a seasoned member I still needed a refresher course about. I thought making a sort-of funny cautionary tale about it was kind of how I do things. Make mistakes, write about them. Maybe she would have laughed with me. I was way too embarrassed at the time to discuss it. But at our tea, we could have...while she encouraged me to put some more berries on my stoneware plate and poured me a little more tea into my handmade cup. It's a dream sequence now.

I know Lotte will stay with me. During Holiday Market, when we had a table display for her, I would run in there and put another little comment in the book. Not enough of them, though. On Sunday nights I went and put away the flowers in a cool place so they'd last, and I took home my copy of her book, and her photo in its frame. I put her in my kitchen for the week and burned a handmade beeswax candle for her. I kept her company that way, singing, washing dishes, just thinking of her and the Market and my life there, and just loving her in a sweet and pure way. She deserved a gentle departure, which I think she experienced.

I should have told that last night, but I try to fight the urge to make things about me. All of my stories are always more about me than about other people. I don't think she was like that. In the notebooks she didn't editorialize. She turned outward where I turn inward. She modeled that for me. The stories others told were about that, particularly those of her grandchildren. Her history shows that. She did what she did for the community and for the world, not for herself, though she lived a life in which she was rich with time and love.

And that is why what she gave us will be a living testament for her for as long as we exist. We come to the Market to take the products of our inward turnings and turn them out. We turn out. The appreciators turn out, and people's needs are met, in all the ways the central plaza promenade and market work for communities around the world. She brought us that and it was exactly what we all wanted, and thank goodness our town took that and ran with it, and continues to.

You can see how many ways that could have happened differently. The quirks of Eugene and surrounding areas are directly from all of the little self-expressions that we feel free to bring out here. It's warmth and life and makes for a lively downtown and an ever-expanding universe of love and peace. We are way more than a Market. She was way more than a potter.

She gave away her heart, and last night many many pieces of her art were piled on a table and all of us politely pawed through them and took a few home to love. They have a life of their own, mostly quick studies, paintings, not all of them skillful, not all of them finished or polished or frameable or even important. What was important was the giving. What was important was the sharing. May we all remember what generosity really is.

May we never cease being inspired by Lotte. I will hold her dear. I will carry her forward as hard as I can. I will fight using the tools she used, write using her words, draw from her inspirations. I miss her so much. And next time I get the chance, I will put Lotte in the center of the table and try to channel what I think she might want said and done about our Market. I will need your help. Someday we will all depart, and the treasure we have been given is far too valuable to let fall.

I look through my kitchen window where I see the same birds Lotte saw, and drew, and shared with her grandchildren and children and us. I see the huge maple tree that I drew and printed on the tote bag I gave her, which one of her daughters is now using. I feel her loss and I know my gain.

Ahh life! So brief, so ephemeral, so full. Now I shall call my 91-year old mother, and treasure her as the other nonagenarian who made me. I feel so very lucky. And I'm glad it isn't sunny, because I need to be sad today. Plus, I feel some Jell-O Art coming through...maybe a tribute. Maybe just some playtime with art, in my kitchen, finished off with a carefully arranged exquisite snack on pottery with the fingerprints of people I love, maybe tuna salad without pepper, with whatever is in the kitchen that might look lovely with it. I will repeat her words: "Let's just see what happens!"

Breaking Pots

I'm supposed to be tired, and I do have to go to bed early, so I thought I'd wait and write next week, though a friend today urged me to do it despite my fear of repetition. Repeat it better, she said. She talked about what we needed now, those of us still traumatized and grieving for the progressive society we thought we were building. We're afraid, and we're tired of fighting all the time, when we thought we were feeling rather safe, and on the right track to a world we were happy to live in, one working toward real and solid equality and justice.

It was surprisingly easy to derail us, shockingly swift, and though we have been valiant, the damage has run deep in everyone I know. Damage or denial, or both. Defiance, and determination to hold onto what we built, what we loved, and the resistance has been strengthening, and the safety probably imagined to begin with. Perhaps we were lulled, and I'm cynical enough to believe everything was calculated and that those far, far more cynical than I prepared well for what seemed so swift a denoument.

But it ain't over, and that arc of history (edit: the moral universe) bends toward justice, and that pendulum is going to swing like hell and I still have heart. What she was saying we needed was that. Heart and soul, which is what we get when we gather, and why we come.

So I sat down to read and rest, and the first thing I read was an article about teaching writing, which said that too few programs make service to the community a central tenet of writing. This was so close to my conversation with my friend about this place where I write, that I put down the book and came here to all of you. Tomorrow will be a heart-wrencher, a busy Saturday, always our best days at Holiday Market, and in the morning the Auction with Percussive Interludes, aka the Pottery Smash. It starts at 8:30, and you are invited if you like. It's not public, but it isn't private either, and if you know us, you can come.

We are the Kareng Fund, and the Saturday Market. Three potters do the work: Frank Gosar, Jon King, and Alex Lanham (former potter), with assistance from quite a few who stepped up "organically" as we say, to take on duties to make it happen. It's an auction of seconds, surplus, and donated goods from mostly potters, but also many others, with the proceeds going into the Kareng Fund to give grants to artisans in crisis. The Fund has been going since about 2002, when it grew from hat-passing to an actual bank account and from there to a 501c3. I serve on the Board, with eight other kind souls who try to make good decisions about what we can do to help people who need it, and who try to raise money to grow the fund and give more grants. None of us are super-great fundraiser type people. Asking for money is hard to do when you are shy and kind of poor and a down-to-earth hermit. Not all of us are that, but it does go along with the typical artisan personality.

So the Smash developed. The first year it grew out of boredom and was very literally potters bowling their pots down the aisle. Pots break when you do that, of course. It completely horrified those of us whose work doesn't break when you drop it, as we didn't understand breakage. We felt loss. It took some time to work through that to feel release. Over the decade and more of the Pottery Smash, fewer and fewer items are broken, but we can count on a few people to toss that stuff into the specially-built cage for it. No bid for this bowl? Jon will pretend to let it slip off his upraised hand, with a glimmer of glee in his eyes. Like this one? Oh well, it has a big crack in it, so CRASH!

There are so many crucial steps in ceramics, seconds are a given. There is no shortage of them. As a bowl collector myself, I keep a box of shards in the shed for my eventual mosaic whatever. All the favorite pieces break if you use them. You can't really fight it. It's built into the art form.

And loss? Just the other side of gain. Have/Lose. Like death, we pretend it won't happen, but that never stops it for long. Like most inevitability, the grace comes with acceptance. Sigh. Lotte died, slipped away, although we loved her hard and tried to let her know that. Had to happen. She gave us as much as she had to give, and set a wonderful example of how to make an artisan life.

We say she was our founder, but everyone, I hope, knows that Lotte didn't do it alone. Saturday Market isn't about ownership, and never was. A group of people around a table ate homemade food on homemade dishes and decided to make their work close to their homes. They put their efforts toward something direct, from their hands to ours, put their minds to working out how it could be best accomplished, what would last and be fair and what we would want to live with. They worked by consensus, a concept also homegrown and refined here in our region, though an ancient model made hippie style from new roots during that same fertile time a half-century ago now. It basically means you come to agreement before you move forward.

Eugene didn't like The Market at first, like people didn't like the Smash. People who made businesses the conventional way were resentful at the easy ownership of each artist, who merely had to bring their work and join in, with little overhead investment and no bankers, no buildings, and what looked like no rules and no taxes. It was self-governance, and it took time and dedication, but the foundation was built on something ephemeral: community. It took a community of artisans to make it happen, and a community of appreciators to complete the circle. Thus it was born and thus it happens today, seemingly effortless and profoundly full of determination, resistance, love, loss, and face-to-face equality. It costs more now. It isn't easy and never was, but it has always been fun and that won't change.

We have breakage. We had a two-day complaint fest on Facebook this week, which was witnessed by about a hundred people perhaps, where we looked within and found we didn't see quite the same things. I found it damaging, but at the same time, I had no trouble showing up today and sitting with my goods once more, saying hello to those I didn't agree with, working together once more to do what we do. I'm not afraid to work on consensus. I have great confidence that when everyone gets in the same room and starts to work on a problem together, a solution will be found, and it will be elegant. It might take more than one meeting, and there might be more than one problem. But after four decades of working in community like that, I know it can be done. I also know what prevents it from working, and what destroys it.

But those are subjects for other posts, because what is up tomorrow is sweet and kind. Enthusiastic appreciators bid happily against each other, siblings and partners and fast friends, and everyone feels like they win. We usually raise enough for at least a grant or two, and with the Basket Raffle the next day, we usually raise enough for several grants, and at the same time during Holiday Market we give several. Oddly, over the years of granting, the amount in the fund stays rather constant, growing slowly, and the 80-some grants keep amounting to more and more given out. It's magic, like the money comes out of the air somehow. It flows through and gets where it need to go, helps the ones who need it the most.

Tears will be shed amongst the happiness tomorrow. Someone who is here today will not be here next year, and we remember many who were with us until they weren't. It's a big family, enclosing thousands if you count everyone, and thousands more in the outer ripples. It's rather astonishing that it works as well as it does. We all pay in what we have, what we can, and the sharing happens and the people who we pay to do what we can't do ourselves, do that, and everyone gives what they bring and takes what they need. It goes around and comes around again.

My neighbor brought over some cookies and asked me what I will do for Christmas, and really, this is what I do. Holiday Market is my holiday. Maybe I'll see my son and his wife, or maybe we'll do it next week, and on the day of Christmas I'll cook something and sit and read and watch a movie, happily in my solitude, feed the birds, listen to music. Write in my journal. Look out the window. The day after I will go and get the rest of my booth and bring it home for the winter.

I'll be happy to be alone, because I will have spent the last three days right in the middle of our community. It's got everything. It's diverse, it's lively, there are people who give and those who need, people who laugh and some who cry, people with kids and those without. Broken legs, new babies, dementia, funny stories, horrible embarrassments, tender hugs. We have it all. It spreads out over us. It's what we built because it's what we need. It's abundance and joy.

This is what we have that no tyranny can destroy. We laugh in the face of the desperate selfishness and greed that we can hardly imagine. That's not the world we're making. That's not the story we're writing. That's not what's going to happen. I know it, and you know it too. We're better than that. We might feel helpless and discouraged, but there are a lot of us, and we're not as susceptible to their devious techniques and mind-bending as they think. We might flounder individually some or a lot, but in community, we will not fail. We bring our hearts, and our hands, and we are good at it.

See you in the morning. If you miss it, see you in the spring. See you on Impeachment Day. See you in the funny papers. Have a lovely Christmas, and a wonderful year. Keep giving, and keep bringing it to the commons. Those things are ancient, and they will not be destroyed. Break a pot, save the world.

Let's Fall in Love, Rewritten

Let's make Jell-O,
Why shouldn't we make Jell-O?
Republicans screwed us, they took us to hell,
Why shouldn't we jell?

Let's all eat cake,
Thanks for all that Dana can make,
We've got Dave's cookies, we've got Pad Thai,
And we can get high!

Dance, while we still have our health care,
Smile, while you still have your teeth.
Play, while you pay off your mortgage,
You won't get tax relief.

Let's shift our eyes,
And notice we live in paradise,
Here we have love, here it is mellow,
And we always have Jell-O!

If you know me you know that for me, Jell-O is not the stuff you can mix with water and eat when you're in the hospital,it's my metaphor for sacred joy. Jell-O Art is my vehicle for fun, my glamour, my saving grace, and all winter after we close our retail season, I sing and write parody songs and scripts for the Radar Angels performance, and fill my living room and kitchen with strange and wonderful creations made with the transparent, brilliantly colored and sometimes jiggly substance that the uninitiated eat. It feeds me, but not in conventional ways. And on the advent of spring, sometimes on Opening Day of Saturday Market, high holy day as it is, we have the Jell-O Art Show, and it is glorious and Joy Incarnate. And, bowing, I am Your Queen of it. Humbly.

But it's only December, and this was quite a week in politics, and it's the Holidays. So after reading the paper this morning and before heading off to my day of retail at the Holiday Market, I spent a little time yelling obscenities, a little time lecturing myself, and by the time I was slogging through puddles at the Fairgrounds, I was composing songs.

My lecture was about letting politics get to me...I paid way too much attention to the tax debacle and was way too scared by the zombies who think they are in charge. I'm quite terrified of what those people are doing. It puts me in this state I call the matrix fantasy which is the cynical feeling that no matter what, I am enslaved and playing whatever game they want me to play, powerless and complicit and doomed, so doomed. I've felt it since the Kennedy assassinations, really, so it began when I was 13. When it began I was too young to know what I was doing, but I worked on my resilient qualities, taught myself to escape into trees, books, and creativity, and cultivated my joy.

I had a traumatic childhood, as did many of us, and I feel for you if you are as unhealed about it as I am. Holidays are particularly bad for me, so this year I vowed a drama-free six weeks. I decided I would limit TV, mute all the commercials, and do whatever I had to do to avoid laying my feelings on someone else, most particularly those who are close to me. I get hypervigilant about my particular conditions, and I know my patterns and weak spots really well by now, so avoidance works and if I stay low and don't get too vulnerable, I am always hopeful that I will not fall into those dramatic patterns. My lecture involved restricting my social interactions, not allowing myself to be too vulnerable, not eating the things I know make me sick, not doing the things I know make me sad and helpless and anxious.

Yeah, wish me luck. All that is pretty incompatible with selling one's creations in the public marketplace. Being at Holiday Market is like having an open house of the heart. I am lucky enough to see all of the people I love (who live nearby at least) and I treasure our short but deep conversations and check-ins. I thrive on the warmth in the room, with so many people I know and have worked with so long. I eat well, and I'm proud of my work and how popular it is. I have reams of observations and stories about what goes on there, and I do love it. But it does make me vulnerable and there are a lot of people there who get my heart strings twanging and it's not always harmonic.

But today, people from the very first were SO KIND! Everyone, from the start, was sweet and nice to me, appreciative, welcoming, generous, loving, and wonderful. I have experienced this before when things in the big world got bleak. Each time, like after the election, after the financial crisis, after 911, or after significant deaths in our community, each time people came out, spread love, and managed to salvage some peace and some joy from the wreckage. Determined, deliberate, and making a statement. That is how the people are among whom we live.

At one point, and this was tragic with a side of comical, I was over buying sweet potatoes and the fire alarm went off over at the Farmers' Market. A loud voice said to Evacuate, to Leave the Building!! Repeatedly, with a very loud alarm and flashing lights! People began to comply but I literally ran back to my booth on the complete opposite side of the building, and thank goodness this was not happening on the craft side. However, the alarm and flashing lights were loud and bright enough to be intrusive, and that's when things got comical. Sadly for the farmers, it shut them down, but for us, we shut the doors and Pickles and Peppers kept playing, everyone gathered in the aisles, hoping against hope that the sprinklers would not come on, and it was kind of like Shopping While the Titanic Went Down. People kept shopping, people were laughing at ourselves, and all of the stories came out, of the time the ceiling fell in in Holiday Hall, which was during the big snow, and remember how booths were empty so other people moved into them for the day, and remember when we sold outside, and on and on.... It was a party. I guess it was hard to play clarinet but it was once in a lifetime, and a good story is always going to be a good story.

I felt terrible for the farmers, who were having a great day because the Fix it Fair was really fabulous and brought lots of people in. I think it did shut them down, though I'm pretty sure they didn't get deluged with water because there was actually no fire, just a teense of smoke from some soldering that I suppose no one thought would be a problem. I know it was hard on them, traumatic maybe, and I do care very much about that. Some day they'll laugh but probably not tomorrow.

It healed me, though, because there was one part of my day today (but only one!) that was hard. I was having a really great visit with someone who recently left the farmers' market, and our friendly conversation actually turned into a fight! He started trashing Saturday Market, repeating all of these mythical things that some of them think about us, which I won't of course tell you, because they aren't true, but I was kind of laughing and trying to tell him that no, that's what we say about them...and it would have been funny except it was ugly instead. He was hating us. He was holding resentments he had held for over a decade, because I know he had them then and it was the last time I actually had a conversation with him. I had forgotten why I avoided him. He hates us. He blames us for everything that isn't working for the farmers, or didn't work at some point, or hating us for everything we are and do. He really had it stored up.

Fortunately we were interrupted by some shocked customers and I told him we'd have to finish our conversation some other time, because I honestly feel that we do. We have to have it out until we both understand that those myths held by all of us about the "others" are not true and are in our way. And they're hurting us. They're not going to be helpful as we move together into our mutual and connected futures. And they're similar to other myths that other groups are operating within. It reminded me about the perils of division and irrational thinking and blaming and holding others responsible for things we ourselves need to work on and fix, and how we are really going to have to do that in concert. We really will. We can't split our town or our country or our world into two halves and operate separately. Anyone promoting that is putting us into the matrix fantasy and I simply will not accept living there. It's not the world I am willing to co-create.

So. It has been decided that I am vulnerable and will not get away with trying to pretend I am not. I will have to struggle through the holidays and the politics and the realities of aging and death and so will you, and we are stuck with doing it together. We cannot separate from each other, we can't separate from our myths and delusions, and we are going to have to work with them. We are here and it is now. Feel your grief and your fears, and so will I, but we will also bring them on down to the community gathering place and spread them around a little. It will help us all to do that.

That farmer and I may not get around to another maybe less ugly conversation, but at least we had the lovely one before we started to disagree, to remind us that sometimes we like each other. Us laughing and partying while the farmers had a hard time today will hopefully result in more of us supporting them tomorrow to get past it. (By the way, the sweet potatoes I got were amazing!) People buying or not buying things today will be just like them buying or not buying things for the rest of the month and then again for the rest of my life, and I'll love it and be bothered by it as it comes. It's the life I chose.

And I chose it here, and I made it here, because of all of you, so if I isolate and don't write and try to protect my tenderness, I won't do it very much until something makes me break through and sing and dance and wear Jell-O on my head. Because that is how it is. That's the joy I want, and that's the joy I make. Thank you for doing your part!