Joyful Girl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Rita Louise Hytrek, maybe 17?

In the thick of it

Mid-Holiday Market, and it's all as usual. Good news is there's nothing on TV so I am not tempted to watch it so I don't get depressed by all those commercials that are so well engineered to make us feel inadequate and required to consume. The food ones are really hard on me since I quit eating dairy. I can't even really say I quit, I just limit it as much as I can and am gradually embracing veganism too. It just makes ethical and health sense so it's getting easier and easier. The dripping hamburgers and pizza don't even really look that good, mostly because I know those oversize shots are fake.

I'm dedicated to reading for hours so I can clear away some of my literary clutter. My livingroom is dominated by the Saturday Market archives and I don't even know if I will get out the decorations, although I probably will. I got them down from the attic. My top priority project is working on my Mom's book so right now I'm reading about sod houses and that early Nebraska history as background. I keep getting distracted by all of the other subjects I am curious about but I'm happy to be curious and to have plenty of resources.

Keeping on an even keel, though I got a cold and remembered how wimpy I am. I did force myself to work this week and the cold was conquerable mostly, but of course there will be more germs this weekend to deal with. Can't do much about that.

I got named Volunteer of the Month at the Board meeting...it's always nice to be recognized. I tried to come up with the reason I volunteer so much. It's not really explainable, except that I like to pitch in and if I perceive a need, it's hard to walk away. I have skills and they're needed. It does seem like my role is changing, though, as the organization changes, and I'm not going to resist that. I will always have a voice, and unless something prevents me from continuing to be a member, I'm guessing I will always find a niche. If it's not in leadership I will do background work. The Country Fair is always there for my time and effort if Market gets tired of me. I feel bad that I don't give more to OCF, but maybe I will get that writing done for the 50th in January when I have a long list of writing projects and will have lots of time to do them.

I guess I have a lot of hope about the political situation as the administration crumbles, though I know it is going to be painful and possibly horrifying to watch the death throes of these people who think they have power. They've done a lot of damage, and according to my conspiracy theories, they're doing things our future will include more of, not less. The riots in Paris are a good example of the kinds of complex movements which will emerge as we deal with the real issues of climate change. Either we deal or we all die...seems clear enough. It's a heartbreak but like the planetary cycles, there will be some good things to come in the midst of the disasters. I'm glad I live in town where I will be able to access resources and probably won't lose everything. Of course there are no guarantees.

Had a bizarre experience last night. My niece wanted to treat me to dinner and she loves Panera, so I agreed to go. It's at Gateway, somewhere I never go...and I had never been to that chain. Their website made it look bearable and it was, but certainly nothing I would choose on my own. The person on the register was an over-sharer...told us how she had lost 140 pounds and got off insulin while she was pushing some pastry on us (I had to accept and it was terrible, but it was just a bite.) She would have kept talking but I cut her off to order. They didn't actually have a lot of what was on the menu but I was able to get something with no cheese, barely. It had a lot of mayo. It was all white bread although there was a better choice that I wasn't aware of. It was all institutional food heated up in a microwave. The place had a fake fireplace and wasn't cozy, but I was there to catch up with my niece and that part was good. Being at Gateway reminded me of what the rest of the country has for choices...that is not my life. Nothing in their pastry case looked appealing in the least.

Store after store of plastic bright and shiny, tons and tons of things I don't need or want...made me see just how small and precious our Market is, and how healthy Eugene is for artists and those who want to surround themselves with real things made by real people. Made me all the more determined to hang onto it and keep nuturing it. What we have built is so full of meaning and life that it will never lose its attraction...it won't fade away with the commercial competition. It will get stronger. It speaks to people, what we offer. They see us, too. All we have to do is get them to come in the doors, and be ourselves. I'm very much looking forward to our 50th season and the opportunity to show us as we really are.

It will help if we can be our best selves. Our affinity for personal drama is one of our worst pitfalls and we have to work really hard to stay grounded and not get into it. It takes vigilance and ethics. I was proud of our Board this week as they navigated some sticky issues and did well. Nobody forced decisions, everyone was thoughtful and compassionate, and people could keep their heads above the possibility of murkiness. It takes leadership. We have some. I'm grateful for it.

Speaking of that, I get to do something this coming week that will feel kind of scary...I will be in the room with some important community leaders. I think I am up to it. I'm worried about how to portray myself, and how to avoid saying the wrong things, but I feel pretty confident that I will be able to keep my perspective. I see people all the time acting in brave and confident ways and I can certainly rise to challenges. I just hope it isn't too intimate...or too religious for me. It's just a couple of hours though. I've learned in the past year how to hold my tongue and wait, and not speak too impulsively. Not always, but most of the time. Okay, some of the time. Guess we'll see.

Probably none of them will know about the Queen of Jell-O Art part. I might not even mention it. As an old woman with an overgrown haircut, I will probably not even draw that much attention. I'll dress down. I won't drink too much coffee. I just hope I don't have to eat cheese and butter. I'll do my best.

See you tomorrow!

Change can be small

The California fires are probably what really got to me. The roads lined with burned out cars: we all can see what happened to the people in them. The look of abject horror on the men standing next to our criminal president as he called the town "Pleasure" and siad we'll have a good climate, when we all heard the estimate of twelve years left to fix something, some small part of our death sentence.

Yeah, we're all gonna die, we already know that, and lots of the conversations I have as someone on the verge of 70 are skirting that topic, which in itself is just something to accept and adjust to. Every day upright is a gain over the odds, a testament to having been lucky or careful. I got some good genes; my Mom's 92 and still with us, but that's an anomaly I get to enjoy. Can't count on anything about it, though.

Biking downtown in the smoke the summer before last, it first really sunk in that my future plans were delusional. We can't do outdoor retail in an apocalyse. There's not going to be any 50 more years of Market, with or without me, unless things drastically change. People will adapt, for sure...there will be lots of things we won't need and can't afford by then anyway, probably including cotton canvas and baseball caps with plastic inside the bills. And of course my years are limited, so I won't see that future, whatever it turns out to be. My son might, and whatever children he might have.

It's sobering, and desperate, and completely infuriating that people who don't know where they are or what they're doing are able to thwart people who are actually working on solutions and education. Infuriating isn't a strong enough word. I got a measure of hope from the elections, but seeing those determined people posing for a group photo in DC, all dressed in their suits and stillettos eroded that right away. Those people dress like that because those rules are tight. Even when they do dress like that they are easily denied the tools they need to make the changes we must make. Some of them will do some good work, and maybe all of them together will at least stop some of the bleeding. But hell in a handbasket is still our direction and mode.

Not my fault; I'm trying. We're all trying. But we have to try a lot harder. Not consuming mass-consumption geegaws and gadgets is a start, but if just the hippies are doing that, it's such a small drop in that bucket. I decided to stop buying seafood, so one more fish can maybe stay in the ocean, one more chink in the diversity of that zone can survive. Such a tiny, tiny step forward. I will work next on meat, then keep working on a plant-based, down on the food-chain diet, but such a tiny step. One person. One front in the giant war to sensible choices.

I had already decided long ago to severely limit my purchases of plastics. No new Christmas lights, no new so many, many little things I might ordinarily buy without a thought. Might help a little, and of course, collectively we will all help a lot if we can stick to it. But what happens when my phone breaks...will I quit taking credit cards and lose half of my customers? Will I stop buying ink because it comes in a plastic bucket. Will I really reuse my produce bags more than twice? What about my plumbing and rain gutters, my favorite tea bags, new shoes? How far can I get with that?

It doesn't matter how far I get, I just have to keep going in that direction. Decades of following the hippie way have shown me that we have been right since that first galvanizing Earth Day (I was in DC) and we can always do more to cement those values and teach others. Our children did learn some of them. Lots of our kids are carless by choice, as inconvenient as that is. Lots and lots of people are examining their choices and doing their best to be thoughtful and progressive.

It is not enough, but it is enough to keep trying. It's all we can do, just not stop trying. Forgive ourselves for not getting the big things done, and try hard to not dissolve into helplessness. That's the real danger, to give up, since we are so helpless in so many ways. You have your Go bag, your earthquake water jugs, your canned tomatoes, and yet, you might not have any choices when things happen. You might be helpless because your utility company failed to make the right choice. You might vote and have your ballot thrown out. You might holler loud as hell and still be silenced. You might be right and still be wrong.

We just have to keep trying. We've had bad kings before, Nixon on our side of the pond, Henry the 8th, Pol Pot. Plenty of them. We can barely trust the ones that seem good. But we've pushed our country back in the right direction, and we'll keep pushing, and we'll keep being smart and sensible and creating beauty and creating hope.

What if I made a list of all the plastic things I need, and picked one at a time to figure out better alternatives for? I can say no to lots of products and write to the stores or manufacturers to tell them why and ask for better choices. I can use my privilege to drive change.

I let my neighbor know what I thought of his new leaf blower (he said at least it was electric, as if that was really better.) I carved a new end for my broken rake handle. (Gotta get out in that forest and neaten things up...ha ha.) I decided maybe those alpaca boot liners might work even better than those foam ones. There's quite a lot I can do on that little piece of my personal front lines.

After finding two dead possums this fall, I saw a live one eating the earthworms I nurtured in my compost pile. I have hardly any garbage as it is, but I can make less. I will patch my gardening pants with my other gardening pants, and mend some shirts, and maybe even darn some socks. It's meditative. I'll read more library books and watch less TV, so the advertising won't seduce and depress me quite as much. I'll stop looking for things that bother me and look harder for things that warm me.

I'll enjoy the hell out of the Holiday Market that we are so lucky to have. I'll observe Buy Nothing Day in a meaningful way, and thank others who do. Even my worst customer at the Market is at least there, trying, instead of ordering online so we can waste more fuel and packaging buying empty boxes full of junk we don't really need. Being thoughtful and caring is a big step forward, composed of many tiny ones, and there, I can always do better. Always.

The sun came out of the fog, so I did all my laundry and hung it out on my wooden racks and clothesline. This time of year I have to move it around the yard a bit to catch that low sun, but I can dedicate my whole day to it if I want. I worked hard for a day off, so I can enjoy it. I'll purge my FB settings of the real-estate dealers and car ads that are somehow preying on my account. I'll be more careful what I like and share so I don't spread pernicious untruths and demoralize myself and others. We will still have to fight, every day, for equality and justice.

This has always been true. Our delusions can be comforting until they are not. When they crumble, we can always pick up and keep going, so that is what I will do. Maybe in the future we sell homemade smoke masks and smocks to preserve our last polyester fleece vests. We'll keep adapting, and we're good at it.

And we can support those who are better at it than we are. I like to drop twenties into the donation jars in Holiday Hall. There are neighbors of mine sitting in those chairs, backs to the sunny day, working for me. Working for real change. They aren't asking for much...your cooperation, your encouragement, your support. We can all give that. We can all keep moving forward, in the right direction, with our flawed selves and our ignorant choices and our thoughtless mistakes. We can forgive ourselves and each other, and be thankful we learned something.

Everytime I bring these little things up with people, I get new ideas and make new allies. We are stronger than we think, and we are doing better than we think we are. Let's keep going. Let's live while we are here, and leave a better planet when we go.

Thanks for your participation.

Our Extra Hour

Nice to get up and turn the clock back...even though it means our last market on the Park Blocks will be dark at the end when we give our final howl of the season (for those of you who aren't there, we always end the last Market with a primal howl to the Crafters' Moon as we leave downtown for a winter indoors. It's a fun balance to the little song in the morning...)

I feel called to respond to Bob Warren's Weekly viewpoint about the Market's relationship with the City and the Farmers. First, I thank him for caring about us, and for saying that in public, which we as members rarely do. Those of us who try to speak for the group know we can never fully express the thoughts of 600 diverse members, our staff, our Board and all our community supporters. Hardly anything is fully in agreement with this group, except that we love the Market and want it to thrive.

His main point, which was a little hard to pick out, was that the PPS consulants from NY, who were hired to advise the City on downtown solutions, proposed closing the Market for a season and a half and tearing the Park Blocks down to the ground and starting over. It was a terrible shock to us who had been working with the consultants and immediately destroyed the trust that we, as primary stakeholders, would be heard. The City has never directly said that they won't follow that advice.

If you aren't aware, I am the head of the Downtown Developments Task Force for Saturday Market, and as such I have been meticulously tracking our relationships in downtown for the past four years, with plenty of attention given to it before that. You can check back in the archive of this blog for many posts I've written about the subject. I listen to as many of the City Council meetings and workshops as I can, and have been included in lots of meetings with City  and County Staff and others working on these issues. I have a collection of paper a foot high and I have studied both that PPS report and the Park Blocks Master Plan in detail. The city has never directly told us they won't close or move us, though we have directly asked for that assurance.

And it isn't like I started five years ago. In the past I took minutes for the Farmers, and I've had relationships with them for over thirty years. I was there when they separated from Saturday Market about ten years in, and watched as they tried to make it in various locations until they secured the north block across the street from us. I've sold at lots of Tuesday Market configurations, and know for certain that the only way we crafters succeed at TM is when we are right there within the produce booths. Proximity is everything for the markets. The synergy and symbiosis is extremely complex, has a long history, and I would dispute the dog/tail analogy. Sometimes it's one way, sometimes the other. It's not simple, and involves a lot of individuals who don't agree.

One thing that's true is that we at SM are wary of following the farmers down the path they've chosen. We are heading in a different direction, or more correctly, they've struck out on a new road and we are staying on the one we're on. When the Urban Renewal Funds were allocated, the City did pitch a large sum, $11.2 million, to the Park Blocks Remodel, (Edit, I had this way off. $5.2 million was for parks spaces, which included Kesey, Hult Cts and Library Plaza at the time, and $4.7 for farmers was correct, plus their leftover $500,000 which still hadn't been spent) to match the $5.2 million for the Year-Round Indoor Farmers' Market. The money has been sitting there, some of it used in the Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper efforts to activate the Park Blocks and downtown. I would say that almost none of it has yet been used to directly benefit Saturday Market as the renter of the southern blocks, but things have been proposed. Some of it has benefitted us, indirectly, like dislodging the camping that was making the PB unsafe for us, and a general improvement of the downtown, but most of the energy has been spent on the weekdays, because Saturday didn't need fixing. We've told them that. Everybody but the PPS consultants knew what we meant.

We've been sitting in this position for years, of figuring out how to say no without saying no. The first thing was the Feasibility Study for the YRIM, which was initially proposed as a Public Market kind of development which the farmers and the crafters would share, co-managing it, finding ways to make it work together. We participated in the study survey, which showed that it was feasible, but when we realized it would obliterate the Market we built, we said a definite flat NO to further participation in the project. We coulda had a building. We decided we don't want a building. We most definitely do not want to sell indoors. "Public Market" has a history for us.

Our magic is in our once-a-week, outdoors in easily accessible, beautiful public space, with low-cost participation costs, member control, independent funding, and all of the very same tenets set in place by our founders almost fifty years ago. That's who we are, that's who we want to be, and we know we are the experts in how to do this. You can see our success every Saturday. We don't really want what the city has offered.

Goddess knows we don't want a fully remodeled space. Our deep culture is site-based. I've written about our neighborhood relationships and all the ways we've adapted to our space in the 35 years we've been in the southern two blocks. We could not move, even temporarily, to some parking lot with no shade and no services to accomodate construction, without it destroying what we've grown. Our stance is that we can't move, and we can't close, but there are lots of weekdays and a whole period of 41/2 months when we are not renting the Park Blocks. If the City wants to improve the concrete, fix the walls, remove one or two trees (no more!) or propose a way to add a restroom or a new stage within those limitations, we might enjoy that. We might support some things like that. But not all of us. If you take out the fountain and eliminate my space, well, I will have to re-assess my whole operation down there. If you put a bathroom where I have sold for so many years, change where the food booths set up, move the stage to the other block, or ask us to move to City Hall block for a year, we think Saturday Market might fail to thrive. We think we would lose members, find that a lot of people would take a leave of absence at minimum, and our budget would be broken and we'd suffer. So our position is no closing, no moving, and no going indoors year round. We want what we have built. But we are the tenants, not the owners. Yet we are a big part of the owners, which are actually the public, right?

The City has patiently explained that a community solution has to be found for the Park Blocks, and we don't own that, as renters one day a week (for 35 years, though.) Yes, of course, we activate the park and downtown like nobody's business, and the City staff who has tried to emulate us during the week for several years knows just how hard it is to do that successfully. We have the keys to that and they've learned from us. They even subsidize other craft organizations to have booths at their events now. Crafters bring life and quirk and people love them. Farmers do too, and there's a  lot of mutual admiration in that synergy, until it gets framed as competition. We don't compete with the farmers.

So the building and our relationship with the farmers. Sigh. I was fired from taking minutes for them, as it became clear that we (SM) were not going to agree with some things going forward, and I was perceived as an outsider. They did a lot of things that made them different from the LCFM we knew. They began appointing community members as Board members, ended informative communications and a high level of member involvement, for a different business model that they felt served their purposes better. They ended the longstanding "gentlemen's agreement" that we had held with them, that we would not sell produce and they would not have food booths. They added a beer garden, and began adding businesses that were more commercial than we allowed in our Market. Maker is the Seller went by the wayside for them, as they allowed direct agents and employees more than we did. All of the changes were things they wanted for their organization and we couldn't really even object that much. They are a different kind of market with different needs, and that just became more so as we diverged. We had to actually oppose them in some siting proposals, such as closing 8th and Oak so they could use 8th as selling space. We had to show them that would probably not work out to their beneift either.

That was all okay; we had some hard feelings but we mainly operated much the same as usual. Our friends were still our friends, and we tried to keep our disputes mostly out of the public eye. Lots of people still think all the activities on the Park Blocks are "Saturday Market." Then came the UR funds.

The Farmers' management and Board bought into the building idea. They want the YRIM. We said our hard NO but we said it softly, and we chose to not oppose the farmers in meeting their own needs in the way they want to meet them. We've been watching and listening, and though we have our fears about changing the Park Blocks operations, we aren't opposing the building. Some of our members have all along had no objections to it, and nobody knows how it will play out. It could be good for both markets, and it could kill both markets. It is speculation at its most concrete level.

Remodeling the Park Blocks into the Town Square is a huge project with lots of details, and there is where we sit, contemplating the details and wondering about how to proceed. Confidence isn't high. We could use some reassurance. Maybe Bob can get us some.

We do have a 5-year contract on the southern blocks, but things can be done to it within that. We proposed that some on-site storage might be nice, since our staff hauls tons of equipment two  blocks every week, and it's hard. So the City staff thought putting four pods, two for them and two for us, might be good, and they plopped one down, after we took a hard look at the site and tried to find space. Once we saw the first one, we said no to any more. They are huge and ugly, even with a dino wrap. We've adapted to those (two now) and the unusable, low-capacity locked restroom trailer. We've lost two prime loading spaces to those, and a few to the crosswalk, but the crosswalk was necessary and important for safety and kind of works okay. We like the pink flower boxes. The effort was made to make them fun and funky with polkadots and we liked that. We even asked for a similar treatment to the place we put our info booth. Some people even liked the EPD camera in the fire lane for two Saturdays, though I was not one of them. Yes, people who were watching the tapes, I was that old lady who kept looking at the camera with my arms folded. I felt safer without it. But nobody asked me.

We didn't really have a chance to oppose the deck on the west block, and the feedback we gave about design wasn't taken, and frankly, it's kind of a folly. Little used, it is impacted by our porta-potties. We asked to move those across the street so the deck would be better, but couldn't get that. The deck didn't take space we were using, but it impacted quite a few members and mostly we've settled into being okay with the deck and occasionally it works. We will certainly always need more customer seating.

This is getting too long so I'll try to wrap up. Thanks, Bob, for speaking in public, even with the small errors like getting Opening Day wrong (It's ALWAYS the first Saturday in April.) and I hope no one thought we don't get along with the farmers or want a bulding of our own. We want what we have built. We love the way it works now, and we don't want to change anything major. We've tried to be clear, and we actually have developed pretty good relationships with City staff over the past couple of years. We think they've heard us, and we think when the plans start being made, we might be okay with them. But, there's a giant, overwhleming BUT.

The City isn't telling us what they're planning, in specifics. The farmers aren't telling us specifics either. Better communication would be great. If there are drawings, we should have them in my foot-tall pile. What I do have is not acceptable. I have resisted going to the City Council and dumping my pile of research on the table and telling them I need better answers. I don't think they have them.

I have avoided going to the public for support, because I know it is there, and I believe that community solutions will honor our needs and we'll be able to negotiate the ways we will say no without saying no. I believe in our creative intelligence in finding true inclusive solutions and there are certainly some we need, like that fourth block issue, Free Speech Plaza, the outlaw space I support with the fees I pay for services and promotion of my Market. I am always hopeful that we are strong enough to be clear and give credence and evidence to our positions so that all will see that solutions can be found that are elegant, supportive, and successful.

Hope is a thing in short supply, and I appreciate the distraction from the national crisis to get back into our local reality. City Staff will present on Town Square plans at a worksession at 5:30 pm on November 13th (Tuesday because of Veteran's Day.) I will be at that worksession, taking notes.

I will speak at the following Public Forum if I need to, but it has never been my first choice to make this about me and what I think is right. Our decisions at Market are made by seeking consensus. That's just how we operate, and the current language of participatory decision-making and community conversations and so on isn't really as far from consensus process as you might think. The test will come when the City staff decides what they will move forward with when they hear everything the stakeholders have to say. Councilors have said the Park Blocks are forgotten space, are shabby, are unused, and many other things that make me think they have never been to the Market. I know they do sometimes come...I saw one there yesterday sitting on the lawn for a long time.

I thought about making her work by discussing Bob's column, but I decided to just keep doing my Saturday job, making money to pay my bills. Property taxes are due and I don't have the money just yet, though yesterday will help. Still, I spent $15 on grapes. I love the farmers. I'll send her my link.

We'll get through whatever comes. As archivist for the Market, I've read about lots of times when things looked dire, and here we still are to tell the story. We're not going anywhere.

If you would like to join my task force, you can email me at dmcwho@efn.org and I'll send you updates and links to articles and meetings. Not everyone wants to know every little thing about the Park Blocks, but if you do, there's a way to keep track. I can't channel the words of the goddess, but I can let you know what I know, and occasionally what I think. It's essential to me, and why I volunteer to listen to all those lengthy meetings and read all those detailed documents. I care. I know you do, too, and that was Bob's message. People care.

See you next week for our last howl in the gathering dark. Then the shiny Holiday Market! Let's hope for the best on Nov. 13th, after we survive this next Tuesday. You know what to do about that.

Something Feels Right

Don't want to dwell on it too much, but for some reason today I feel good. Maybe I got enough distance on fears, by skipping the news and reading only some of the articles in our now, stripped down and eviscerated newspaper. It just doesn't pay to buy into fear, and I think I got kind of mired in it.

Not that the fearful conditions have disappeared, but just that I got some distance, I guess. Remembered that my little life is mostly protected, at least at the moment. I have a good roof, dry space, and safety. I keep getting messages from some email hacker but I don't believe them...they're in my spam filter so I don't care. Today my internet was down for unknown reasons, but I think it was just that it was windy and wet last night, and it's back, so I don't care.

I still care about a lot of things, but they're over there somewhere. I'm annoyed with having to take the booth and weights tomorrow, but we only have three more outdoor markets, so they're kind of precious. I can't believe the good weather is gone, but we had a lot of it. I got so many of my outdoor projects done, I actually feel that my property is well-maintained at the moment. No one will care that one wall only got half-painted. I'll catch up next year.

I don't get a day off this weekend, but I'll get one someday. I had a week without much commitment, so I got to do what I wanted most days, and that felt great. Next week I have only one meeting on my schedule, which is amazing. Thank goodness because of Holiday Market we put most of our groups on hold until January and February.

I've got tons of writing and archiving projects piled up in my livingroom, but my niece got an apartment so I don't have to clean up to make space for her, just for myself. I feel free and alone, in the solitude in which I thrive.

Even had the energy to rake my neighbor's leaves. He's old, older than me, so I get to do it and keep the leaves. I have realized I can't get a load of leaves from the city anymore; it's too much work. I have to work less. It is now my job to work less.

Except tomorrow. I have to work more. Property taxes are due, and I don't quite have it in my bank account. It will come.

Okay, back to work, but I just thought I should record some ease and not anxiety for a change. May it last. 

Silence

I shouldn't write I shouldn't write I shouldn't write...my brain keeps telling me this since I am so obviously triggered by what has happened this past week. All the signs are there and I know my patterns pretty well, though they can still surprise me. I know a lot of people read this who might use my vulnerability in ways I can't control, who might not know they add to the grief, who are mostly respectful but also might be compelled to read this like people watch wrecks...for the juice, for the life exposed, and it doesn't make me feel safe. My safety is an illusion I cling to with both hands.

I know I go to this confessional to lay bare my emotions, for myself and in case there is someone out there who needs my clarity and help. I know the confession hurts me more and any net gain is dubious. Trauma just keeps giving and it doesn't matter what the original source or the recent event is, it doesn't matter what the specifics of this episode are. Damage is real and accumulates, and truly I don't believe it is healable. For me. I hope it is for you. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help in real life, in some subtle way. You help me, and I know it, and I appreciate it. The more quietly you do it the more I appreciate it.

I know I no longer walk around feeling like I have a visible gaping wound in my chest that shows my faintly beating heart with all of its scars. I healed that over with fifteen years of therapy with a wonderfully supportive woman. I know I forgave my Dad by visualizing a tiny flame in the ball of ice that lay in my pelvis blocking me from a healthy sexuality for decades. That tiny flame did melt that ice, but only just. What helped the most with him was looking at his wedding photo, where both he and my Mom looked so innocently nineteen, with no possible idea what their lives would bring. He didn't mean to do anything to hurt me, but was a product of his own damage. If anything, I blame alcohol, but of course that is too simple. I don't really want to blame, I mostly want it to not have played out the way it did. Yeah, no do-overs. As I recall I was having a beer on his birthday when I made that forgiveness happen. I love irony.

Between episodes of this PTSD I am always certain that another will never come...that learning my patterns gave me the tools of prevention and self-care that would steady me so I could turn it off. I am always so discouraged when the lie is put to my faint denial. I'll carry this damage to my grave just like my broken ankle and heel and whatever else simmers inside me. The task now is to be strong despite it, to speak out through it, to use it for the forces of good instead of complete submission.

I cried yesterday just trying to watch twenty women on the street corner dressed in black. I was so grateful to be working so I didn't have the option to join them as they asked. I was grateful that they didn't walk by my booth so I didn't have to dissolve in tears of gratitude and horror. The pains are always so fresh when I am around other hurting people. I love my empathy, and wouldn't trade it, but I see too much of all you transparent people and it makes me so vulnerable to know how transparent I also am. I also derive joy from this...and hope. If we can see, we can help.

We can carry each others' pain, maybe easier than we can carry our own. I am crying for my brother and my son as they have to sort through all the ways I didn't help them, protect them, teach them how to be better men, though I suppose it wasn't completely my job and I probably did okay at it. I know, though, that my damage prevented me from projecting a healed sexual being who could teach the good ways. I hope I gave them some skills to find their own paths through what our culture throws at them. I have always tried for honesty, to an extreme, for justice, and to not be phony. My son didn't see me put on makeup to be something I wasn't, or dress to seduce, or use controlling behaviors to get my needs met...or more correctly, he helped me identify them and stop using them, a constant life process of learning improvement. I dragged him and one early girlfriend to an NVC workshop. I asked him to teach me what he knew of NLP and how it operated from his perspective. We were able to be allies rather soon in his life, though he might have rather had a bit more parental authority in place. Can't re-do that one. He seems fine: exploring, balancing, being honest.

My brother is part of our deep family tragedy that is so far back we can hardly address it any more than we have. It doesn't unfold so much now, but we've kind of evolved into addressing ways it set us up for what happened later, when we left the family and tried to find our way as independent adults. At our recent reunion all was not comfortable in our family group, despite our mutual wish that it would be. None of us have all the keys to make it so. We try pretty hard, and have the gift of the great-grandchildren and the kindness of each other. Mostly it's good, but then the damage seeps out. I try to minimize it as much as I can, keep it in my journal. None of them deserve it either.

It was rough, my past, though not so much compared to what I've read and heard about other women and children. My experiences in college and during the Sexual Revolution of the 70s and 80s were mild enough but deeply unsettling. Rough enough that I don't like to think about them. On Thursday and Friday as the world watched a battle on TV, I worked myself to exhaustion on my roof hammering on shingles one by one in the extreme heat. I didn't eat and didn't drink enough water, obsessively working in silence. I wanted to "finish it." I finally stopped on Friday at 4:00 which was probably my breaking point, and had the sensibility to take a bath, drink so much water I was amazed, and sit still after making a beautiful meal and smoking some bud. I did not allow myself to walk down to the store for a beer, though I dearly wanted one or two more than just about anything.

Escape is necessary in some form, it seems. I know better than to add alcohol to the mix at these times, though the impulses are very strong and are why I keep it at the store and not at home. I know it can be cathartic, but it's just too loaded with guilt and shame. Sugar is safer...bud is good in that it limits what I will do and say. I need limits...it's at these times when I wonder if a supportive partner would indeed help, but really, the silence of my backyard is what works best. I drink that in.

I went though the first stage, exacerbated by my 50th HS reunion which I missed. I would've liked to go, but 3000 miles and thousands of dollars prevented me, since I had to go to the same place for my family one month before. But I would have liked to see some of those friends I went through so many years with. Some of us were together since first grade. We stumbled through a lot. The first stage of examining my past was thinking about some of the hundreds of harassments and assaults I experienced as a woman born in 1950. Stuff was just built in. There was no way to avoid a lot of it, and I was unprotected, mostly, except by suburbia's relative safety, and my privilege of being in the middle class. Plus I was a smart kid, so got some entitlements. But no one encouraged me to think big back then...not really even to go to college, though you would think someone in the 99th percentile would get more encouragement. Maybe it was those old men who were the Guidance Counselors. I had one brilliant English teacher, Kay Booth, but she stands out as the only one who empowered me, and she just made me give up on college when her estimation of me didn't follow through into my treatment by my male teachers there.

College, oh dear. I dove into the revolution. We ended the war that was killing off the  boys of my generation. We all sacrificed our psyches too, though it took a long time to realize that. We had our bodies on the line as well. I can't think about the details. I stopped adding them up long ago.

What surfaced for me, this time, was all the ways in which I was complicit in the oppression of others. I feel devastated by ways I turned on other women, and even men. I see no way to make amends. I can't even remember names for sure, or all the details, and I feel sure none of the other people involved want to talk about it. I am sure no one at the reunion wanted to talk about the party where someone "pulled a train," which is a deflected way to describe gang rape of an incapacitated girl. In my memory I heard about it the next day, and it was outsider boys, not anyone in my friend group. I turned on her, though, and took away the support she deserved. I was at that party. We didn't do much to monitor each other, our level of drinking, our willingness to go all the way with our boyfriends. We were all confused kids lying to ourselves and each other about what was right and wrong. I was raised Catholic...a bad setup for sexuality, at best. No parents were watching us. They were off drinking with their own friends, I suppose. I would love to check out these memories with my old friends, to see if maybe we took better care of each other than I remember. We would now, I think.

I remember two incidents of assault, one physical and one verbal, on the day of my Dad's funeral in 1970. Really, grown men? Did you think because he wasn't there to protect his daughters, they were now fair game? So damaged. I remember being angry, and telling my Mom, but what could she do? One was a neighbor, and one was someone from my Dad's job. She couldn't respond. I could barely respond. Were they just drunk? I'm sure they had their excuses.

I don't want to list my credentials for MeToo. I don't want to have these credentials. I am fully aware that I participated in some of my own damaging experiences more or less willingly. Trauma victims do that. They often ruin their own lives, unable to imagine anything else. On some levels I have done that, though my life is far from ruined.

Yes, the challenges today are to work right though the damage to keep on shouting for less of it. I am so happy to see how powerful young women are these days, at least ones in the progressive culture. I fought hard for that, with so many others. We bought that with our painful experiences. We want that for you. That's one reason why it is so devastating to see it erode, to see the Kavanopes and the Brocks get away with their shit over and over. I am so tired of bullies. I am so dedicated to calling out bullying, no matter who it takes down, even when it is me.

Bullies hurt all of us, whether they do it through sexuality, racial injustice, economic injustice, or the current depravity of power over all. I hate America so much right now. I hate old white men (I give some exceptions to that, for those of you who are really trying, and I hope you know I see you and love you for it.) I am sad to be feeling hate. I am full of grief for so many reasons. I am stalled and can do only this.

But I'm going to call my Mom in 30 minutes and talk about none of this. Then I'm going to go out and put on some more shingles and work harder on forgiving myself, and most of you. I'm going to look harder for what's going right, to be grateful for the young man who had my back yesterday, when in my trauma I took it on myself to kick a vomiting man out of the Market. I wasn't thinking. He almost clocked me. It wasn't my job and I wasn't keeping myself safe, because traumatized people often can't do that. Thank you to my fellow member, who might not have known that he was there yesterday to save me from myself for a minute. That's the good news: allies. We are legion.

We are in this together, and we are in the right. We may not be winning all the many races and jumping over the many obstacles, but we will. It has taken our lifetimes, and it will take the lifetimes of our children, and theirs, but it is not all pain. We also have joy. I saw the Bewick's Wren and a woodpecker at the same time today, because I could rouse myself to put out the suet. The birds are hungry. I'll start there. Forgiveness is a process. Practice peace. Work for justice, one foot in front of the other. And cleansing it all with tears is pretty cathartic too, so I can feel good about that skill. I can weep. I am proud to be a woman who cares.

Looks like Fall

Lots of emotions swirling around today. A friend lost her husband, and he joins a list of lamentations that are a function of my age that I am struggling to get used to. Sure, we know people die, but many of us are still not equipped to ride through the storms of feelings that come each time. I guess it gets easier. Mom, at 92, is much more philosophical than I am about it. I'm sure I'll learn, the hard way.

OCF struggles with deep structure at the moment, and some issues are so complex I haven't even wanted to weigh in. I try to pay attention, to witness, but this last Board meeting wasn't livestreamed, though I sat there waiting just in case it kicked in, while I watched the Eugene City Council on another channel. I monitor the City Council for my Market community, so we can prepare for when they come to us soon about the changes to our home ground, the Park Blocks we have rented for 34 years (and 15 or so more if you count the Butterfly and Courthouse Plaza.) This is our 49th season. I've only missed the first five. I should have gone to the OCF meeting I guess, but I just don't have enough energy to get deeply involved when it's so complex. Even witnessing takes a lot of energy. It's chilling to think that my own volunteer efforts could come back to bite me. I have the skills to be a good Board member, but skills wouldn't be enough in the current climate. It takes true dedication to work very hard to find that balance of all those needs. I can't do it for more then KF and SM right now. I'm still working, too, when I can fit it in. I'm drawn to help OCF, but I can only be part of the mostly silent network that supports and waits. I will most certainly vote.

I find myself wanting to go out to Fair site in a deep way, to visit the Spirit Tower where I have always connected with my lost people, even though it has mostly disappeared and lost its sacredness. The river is still the same, the land is still quiet, and you can still hope to see the Pileated Woodpeckers and hear the tree limbs clacking together in the high breezes. That land is ours, is mine, when I need it, something which feels like the most amazing accomplishment of the community I am so lucky to be in. Grateful for the people who had the foresight to make that happen, the big group that raised the money and understood the need.  It's a safe place. Still, when I go, it's a bit like work.

I go to my booth, all packed up for winter, and poke around looking for lost pushpins or scraps of wood that will float, but it's usually quite clean. Sometimes I rearrange the vegetation into the living boundaries of our camping clearing. I try to envision the next project I'll do, and talk myself into the new design of the roofline. I am the one who has to do this. It's the same ownership as I have for my two houses. I'll think about my 50th Anniversary projects. I have big plans, but can't do them right now.

I vacillate between feeling too old to do the work and too young to give up using my hard-won skills. I evaluate my abilities to climb ladders and make the right decisions. I try to think about when I will fit the work in. In one sense it's vastly easier to pay someone to do the construction, but in other senses I need to do it. I need to go out there and see how my choices have played out, how my directions have been followed, and how nature has treated what I've made. On my two houses, (I have two small houses on a city lot, one of which is my shop) I've done substantial amounts of the work, in fact spent about fifteen years remodeling the larger house. It was life-altering work and it brings me a great deal of satisfaction. I thrive on a feeling of accomplishment.  Yet death reminds me I could go quickly too, so what projects should I prioritize? Everything's right at the top of the list; everything's vitally important.

I've been trying to find that satisfaction in less physical work, in archiving and writing, but it's harder. I recently removed a piece of the plywood siding on the shop to replace a rotten place, and had to take out the window and add some trim. It took a lot longer than I had planned and while it was relatively straightforward, it was just maintenance, one little project on a long list. I'm reluctant now to start another one, with the weather changing and deadlines coming up. Here I sit on a day when it didn't rain, thinking I need to get out there and start on that roofing. But my friend and her husband were roofing, and now I know she wishes they hadn't been. Certainly today is not the day for me to climb that ladder. So I got out the archives, and told myself I'd spend a day organizing and writing, but I have a feeling I will end up finishing up the summer pruning and preparing for the next rain.

I had to navigate someone's unjust interpretation of my actions again, and his attack. It wasn't the first time from that person, so I could discount some of his ire since I know how he works it, but of course it still derailed me a little. I'm mostly aggravated that he was thoughtless in his actions, in his drive to have his own way, and caused damage, not just to me, but to our process and other people involved. it wasn't major damage, but the discouragement of injustice adds up. Again, I'm getting used to it. I'm starting to tell myself things like "people will always be messy to deal with, and it's unrealistic to think that they will understand ethics in the same way I do." I'm trying to be patient with those who are young, rash, and need more education, because lots of people had to be patient with me while I learned how to be a little wiser and slower to react. I have enough support from people who do understand, but most of yesterday I spent checking in with various people, not even all the ones I needed to, and it was an astonishingly low sales day for me. I didn't even get near to $100, with my great-selling products that easily bring much more than that on a better day.

So it wasn't my day, and I joined the ranks of the discouraged who really get creamed by our fee structure, so I made a vow to bring out my chart early next January, and petition again for fee relief for the low-end earners. I commiserated with a lot of members yesterday who have had many bad sales days, so it isn't about me at all. I can certainly absorb one when it was mostly caused by my inattention to my customers and my job. I talked to many who are experiencing lots of marginal or just really bad days, and I don't think it is "paying their dues" while they build their businesses and improve their products. I think it is the capriciousness of our event, that on any given day there is a lot of luck involved in how well you sell. I think we can build a much more compassionate fee structure that acknowledges that unpredictability and eases the burden on the majority of our members without savaging our profitability. But I will set that aside for now, as it will be better done later and other things are on that horizontal list that push profits to the edges.

Fiftieth Season and Anniversary design projects are in the center, and stories from the archives, and the time is near when I will lose the opportunity if I procrastinate. I have good designs worked out in my mind, but nothing on paper. I dread that feeling when I try to go from mind to pen, when I am not really capable of expressing my vision. I know it's common and shouldn't stop me, but it makes it hard to start. Of course there is only one remedy for that, starting. Or saying maybe later.

At some point there will no longer be a maybe later available. Quite possibly that is the base fear that is behind all of my distress today. At some point I will have to lose my attachment to all my things, to all my future accomplishments, to all my visions and cares. I will have to let go of all of it. Maybe I'll get time to finish up a few, but maybe not. Staying off roofs won't help. Successfully processing small traumas won't help. Calling out injustices won't matter. It's all going to be one big injustice if I don't get my mind around the ultimate justice of It Is What It Is. What Goes Around May or May Not Come Around. Que sera, sera. Be Here Now.

Fortunately I can access a lot of wisdom from my community and what my generation has learned in our explorations, and of course, humans of the ages. They've all stood more or less where I stand.I'm not experiencing anything that new or that serious, just more steps down the human paths. Think I'll wander off for the rest of the day. I always feel at my best when I'm out in the yard, putting things in order, just enough to feel good to me but not enough to really disturb her comforting chaos. I guess I can thrive with a messy garden, so can thrive with a messy life. No sense in trying to change everything at once, even if I could.