Tuesday Load

The new sidewalk is just about perfect, and here shows my Tuesday load, arriving home. The big number of baskets is my kid's shirt sale, which is one of my Tuesday options. I have found if I take the hats and bags, and Jell-O of course, I can take one type of sale shirts. Women's, men's, or kids, or maybe at some point, tank tops, are gradually being whittled down from my vast piles of items that are no longer in my Saturday stock.

With the new wide sidewalk and the stepping stones I temporarily installed next to it, I can fully turn the trailer for easy access when unloading. It's smooth and efficient and a pleasure.

Finally we had decent weather for a Market, in this year of rain every weekend and cold on Tuesdays. It was supposed to be 85 but the clouds kept it down to just warm and pleasant. The crowds still look larger across the street but the booths are crowded quite close together over there, so it looks busier. We have so much space even our high of 27 booths yesterday didn't fill it. There were many more people enjoying the benches and the quiet and we even had a mandolin player for a set.

It doesn't feel terrific yet but the vendors are a friendly and inclusive group. Now if we could only attract a few farmers and more food carts. I noticed the hot food offerings across the street were many; lots of booths that are not technically food booths are serving food, and it seems rather unregulated. Sales on Tuesdays are improving, and lots of Bach Festival participants were spotted, some even spending their cash.

My average for the 6 Tuesdays this season is around $90, not too far from my average last year, so that is encouraging. My lows are lower and my highs are too, but it is all leveling out, to a sort of consistency. People are catching on to the idea that there are interesting things happening on both sides of the street.

Country Fair puts a hold on my Tuesday attendance for a couple of weeks though I will try hard to be there next week, which shows last year as one of my highest. The very highest last year was the last one I went to, October 19th, and I have no idea what that means. Most of my retail theories are hot air, since there is not a lot of logic to how things play out downtown these days, if there ever was.

What I'm saying about the farmers is that they are in a growth phase. That's all I can say.

In a sweet kind of serendipity, I got the little job of OCF Archeology back prints, and D.J. brought me the "art", an old Chelamela shirt we made back in the 80's I believe. I searched the files and found the original art, which is so much better than a copy taken from an old stretched-out t-shirt. It's funny to see my old, awkward lettering on the logo. Looking through the drawers and boxes of art, I am again struck by how many hundreds of t-shirt designs I have done over my working life. Someday a retrospective would be fascinating (to me, anyway).

I'm still fairly panicked about getting everything done in the next two weeks, but nothing to do but keep working until the day to leave. I've managed it every year so far, so I don't know why this would be an exception. The trick is to do it without any emotional meltdowns, and maybe I will accomplish that from here on in. It is nice to have some quiet Tuesday time to think and to do whatever busywork and connections I can do downtown for a few hours. Tuesday Market is sweet.

But Saturday is rocking. Now surely this week it will not rain. We all need a sunny day.

Something is set in stone

Quite a week. Not what I expected, much more complicated than I wanted it to be. My goal to navigate my life with grace is fairly elusive.

Accepting physical limitations, or any limitations at all, is pretty hard to adjust to, I'm finding. I am tenacious and tend to hang on long past the point of sensibility. But like the ER nurse said, embarrassment? That's nothing.

The sidewalk project was highly successful in so many ways. It was exactly what I needed to do, and it was a wonderful change to work on a physical project with my son in a way that left both of us satisfied and happy with the results. He's 21, and has grown up rather delightfully despite my imperfect parenting. He got the "Work Hard" teaching, and is strong and getting stronger. He was a good team worker with his friend, and it was a pleasure to watch them work together and get all the phases of the job done thoroughly and with positive energy.

He can think well and is a creative problem-solver, and amazing with physics, spatial relationships, and practical solutions. I will be happy to turn this property over to him someday, knowing that he will maintain it and extend its life after I am gone. Or he will sell it and it will end up a pile of rubble in the dump, who knows. I doubt I'll stay attached to it when I am gone, though I may not be able to leave my kitchen tile. I'll have to have a little piece of it on display in my retirement condo or, more likely, my shopping cart filled with empty boxes and wet sleeping bags.

Even though I now have a completely accessible sidewalk to my shop, or more correctly, a driveway for my bike cart, any subsequent steps to make my houses really accessible will be much more difficult. Fortunately this is a longterm goal and not something I need immediately. Even to use a walker I would have to remove some cabinets from the back hallway, so I will have to think about that at some point. It's not that I am convinced I will become disabled, but more that I am trying to ease my fears by preparing for what seems to be the direction my body is taking me.

I notice the way old people walk, our shoulders slumping, heads looking down, unsure of our footing and our spines compressed and sinking. I see that happening to me. I consciously correct all the time, but the chronic stuff is there and I'm not that much of a magical thinker to imagine that it will just go away. Being graceful about it involves feeling prepared, so I can get the emotional stuff sorted out first and then act professionally and personally as I make the necessary changes.

Gradually I have to stop screenprinting, that much is clear. I only have so many squeegee passes left in me, and I have to stretch out my own retail work as far as it will go, to secure my income. I've been trying to prepare my customers for this, but it really isn't something that can be eased into in any kind of transitional way. One day they're my customers, the next day they aren't. It is a terribly uncomfortable transition and I don't have that many customers, so each time it has a huge, shattering impact.

My sense of loss this year has been huge for me and I don't see it getting much easier. Maybe people get used to loss and learn to navigate it with acceptance and humor. So far it is just pointing out my poor social skills and tendency to painfully trip myself on my undeveloped capabilities for long-term planning and strategy. But I will muddle through and maybe in the process develop more compassion for the others who are facing similar struggles.

We all have challenges that seem major to us and are barely noticed from the outside. Trying to explain it gets glazed looks from others as they probably are besieged by their own fears on the common subjects of health and mobility. I feel defensive, as it looks like I am strong and perfectly healthy, and plenty of people have it much worse. I don't really want to talk about it, and would rather just stay in a world of positive thoughts and happy outcomes, but this year it is just not an easy place in which to dwell with any assurance.

So, remember to fill myself with love and gratitude. I did get to a new level of appreciation for my friend Richard, who so quietly stands by me and supports me in the ways he has learned I will accept support. He has to watch me make a lot of errors in judgement. He has mastered the art of not saying things that will stick out over time as pointing out my inadequacies as a planner and builder. If he hadn't been available to advise on the sidewalk, and then to commandeer the pour and show us how to do the edging, running the joint lines, calculate the cubic volume accurately, and on and on, it would have been a much different sidewalk.

I remember when I started building this house, when I was reframing the inside of the walls so that I could insulate. I would look at a wall and divide it by how many studs I thought would look uniform and though I did put them in the right places by doorways and such, I didn't even get why they ought to be placed 16" on center. I didn't even understand basic things like using dimensions that would limit waste with 4x8 sheet materials. There was a world of knowledge I found out the hard way, and it would have gone so much worse had Richard not consistently checked in, finding a way to respectfully drop the pieces of information in the places where I could hear them, and never feel disempowered. He never told me I couldn't do a thing, or that I wasn't prepared or knowledgeable enough. Over more than fifteen years he was patient, encouraging and so very helpful.

And I was often arrogant, impatient, and dismissive of his input. I was really attached to feeling like I built this house myself, and could and would do any task that came before me with great strength, competence, and skill. I did do amazing work and even surprised myself with how well I did, and how determined and persistent I was in finishing it and making it somewhere I live happily. But I would have more of a hovel and less of a house if it were not for Richard and his constant helping presence.

I have this American Independent Frontier Woman mythos that holds on from my heritage, from my grandmother who lived in a soddy and my ancestors who made moonshine in the Kentucky hills. I like working alone and I like learning at my own speed. I like feeling like I am in control of my own life.

So allowing my body to age gracefully and to continue to try to respond healthily to its limitations will be a continuing challenge, and I will have to apply all that I have learned. With the sidewalk, although I was right in there doing a lot of the shoveling, screeding, edging and finishing, it was such a relief to pay my son and his friend to do the really hard parts, and it was so warming to hear Richard tell me that I didn't need to worry about the pour, that it would be fun, and it would go just fine.

It went well, thanks to my neighbor Fred who manned the wheelbarrow at a crucial time, and to Rich who fetched lunch for us and made us think we were having some kind of a party. It went well, thanks to John and Eric who got up early and were ready to work, always cheerful and happy to be learning new skills. It went well because Richard came early and stayed until it was all finished, and lent us tools and worked hard doing all that only he could see needed to be done. And it went well because with Richard involved, I could stay grounded and fairly confident and even look kind of in charge, and I didn't hurt myself.

Concrete sticks around awhile. The old sidewalks we moved were here almost as long as the houses, and this one could outlast at least the little house, which needs to be rebuilt and probably will be at some point. It's way different from ninety percent of what people do all day, all the slippery human interactions that can be confusing, frustrating, and fraught with doubt and self-recrimination. Concrete is physical and real and now more or less stone. When I cruise out of here on Saturday morning and cruise back in Saturday night, I am going to love that sidewalk/driveway so much.

Glad I got a few pictures. It was nice to have something real, hard, polished and finished to rest upon this week. Now, back to work.

Friends for Life

My oldest friend here in Eugene, Galen, is leaving in less than two weeks for a big adventure that may settle her in faraway lands and I'm shut down about it, trying to get myself to feel what I am actually feeling. I feel loss like a big dark cloud over me and it's making it seem like there is nothing I can do to express my appreciation and love for her steadfast friendship. My mode is avoidance but I know that is so destructive. I busy myself with work and other commitments, when what I really want to do is cling to her and tell her I can't quite live without her. But that isn't what adults do and this is as close as I will get to it. I'll figure something out, though it will seem inadequate, and anyway, I tell myself, we are friends for life and there is a lot of life still to come. Maybe. If we are lucky.

It occurred to me yesterday that I am a reluctant leader. I don't really want to be important and under scrutiny for my actions, reactions, ideas, opinions and thoughts. I could be wrong! Don't listen to me!

But I was right about the weather at Tuesday Market, it was gorgeous. We had a healthy selection of crafts and some real shoppers, the kind who look at every booth, even if they don't buy anything. The traffic flowed a little better in our mini-plaza and we built it all a little bit stronger. There are regular Tuesday sellers, many having been there longer than I have, and they put in the hours and work hard for the improvement that we need, and to sustain what we have.

We get pretty excited when one of the known good sellers from Saturday joins us, and this week it was Willy from White Raven Artworks. I'm not sure how well he did, but he did attract some attention. I set up in a different spot, which was an interesting perspective as I could see most of our Market from where I was, but I'll probably go back to my old spot next week. The center court vision we have for Tuesdays is still stuck over in the side quadrant, but it suits us and our numbers for now so I'll stop trying to push for something that just isn't happening.

We're settling into our separation from the farmers on Tuesdays and it looks like we will be fine. Sales are definitely lower for me, but they are on Saturdays too, and there is not a way to ferret out the real causes for lower sales. There are so many variables, and most of them are well out of my control.

I'm struggling for some clear concept of the state of our relations with the farmers right now. Their splashy front-page article was like a PSA, the information so carefully controlled, and while I feel it was generally accurate, it still only painted a small part of the picture. Yes, they are popular with the public and certainly well-loved in concept. The beautiful food and plants are vital to our lives and we all want them to thrive and want to be a part of their support.

If the past is the past, it was awfully unfair to single out Noa and Kate to blame things on. Noa did the best he could to run three markets a week and all things managerial and I believe he was left fairly powerless by the members and Board at the time. Things got so bad there is no way it was his fault. There were lots of other players, but some of them are big earners over there and in any case, it is not helpful to call out individuals and castigate them for making mistakes. If the past is the past, let's not go there.

What about the present? What about all the issues that have been swept under the rug, like the big grant from the city that remains unspent, even for the electrical improvements that are costing thousands of dollars in loss to individual businesses, every week that they fail to work properly. What about the recycling that isn't getting done, the small farmers who have lost the opportunity to sell over there with the banning of the consignment and community booths? People who can't hack the seniority and space issues, people who are some of the longest running members, who have been there for all of the thirty years, who have been forced out to make space for bigger businesses who may not even be farmers. I think they could put a fair number of vendors in the space used up by the beer garden, and by businesses who have storefronts in other locations and are just taking advantage of a very profitable, cheap space downtown that wouldn't be open to them if the regulating functions of the organization hadn't been cast aside to focus on the manufactured crisis.

Yes, the tax thing was bad, and it was going to be exposed at some point, so it makes sense to spin the story. Most of the money that should have been spent to pay that debt was used up by the subsequent bad managers hired by people taking credit, but the real reason the organization had to borrow start-up funds was that they changed the fee system from percentage to flat fee, which made it so the only way to make more money, was to add vendors. The space problem is manufactured by the simple fact that they big earners felt that their fees were too high, so even the 3% fee for daily sales was dropped. The flat fee is so much cheaper for the big vendors that the space is now highly desirable, and the reason for most of the growth.

The little businesses, the ones who make under $400, would actually be better off within the Saturday Market organization, which has always included those who grow or gather. Some recently posted pictures on the Market website show the LCFM origins, boxes of produce on the butterfly lot. Yes, we started the farmers market, launched them with great effort, and though they separated to run their own organization after about 10 years, those roots are still part of the history. But the past is the past, and now not only are we accused of sabotage, but when we do genuinely try to help, we are scolded.

Farmers are coming to us asking for space and the benefits of our membership organization. We want to welcome them in, but we turn away vendors every week, and the 4x4 system really does not work for those used to one or several 10x10s. Even the 8x8 space is small for a farmer's booth. We want to add an area for farmers, which would help relieve their space problems, allow those who are closer to our ideals and values to join us, and provide an option for those who don't like the policies and practices of the current LCFM leaders.

One thing I know about our organization, from long decades of involvement and observation, is that we really do operate from our core values of equality, fairness, good intentions and thoughtful, conservative management. We really do not engage in scheming, twisting and mis-representing, though I'm not saying we do not make mistakes. Mostly due to the large numbers of people involved, we have our share of darkly humorous jokes, but we operate with the highest morality we can envision. Our leaders have integrity and really do care about doing things right, not just getting them off the list.

We care deeply about the present challenges and the future of our friends across the street. We can't turn ourselves away and pretend we aren't affected by what they do and how they do it. We won't be ignored and kept out of their business completely, because it is our business too.

Many of us are terribly frustrated and demoralized about how difficult the last few years have been for the relationship between the two organizations that are often described as sisters. It's more accurate to view us as the big sister and them as the younger brother, with all the resentment and fractious bickering that comes with growth and autonomy. They do not want our oversight, though they like it when we wash the dishes and bring our assets to the marketplace. They do not even actually seem to want our participation, at least not on our own terms.

It's not that simple, of course, as the real history is definitely not as simple as the article in the R-G would have people think. The organization is in greater internal chaos now than it has ever been, and it has a history of chaos. But let's not talk about that, because that might lead to actual solutions to the problems that might be fair, serve all of the members, and allow the two organizations to be good neighbors instead of cold acquaintances who have an unspoken history.

I don't have a solution, aside from the consistent, patient slogging through each issue as it comes up, never really addressing what it says in the mission statement, the "shared values." It would be enormously helpful to get us all in a room, hammer out the shared values, and make a plan together to make sure all the micro-businesses, large and small, have ways to succeed and a place to sell. But that isn't going to happen, and it would have to be a big room.

The Friends of the Farmer's Market are wonderful people all, but you can't have your friends in charge of your business. In organizations like ours, you have to stay focused on your core values or be swallowed up in confusion. The farmers have friends, but real friends don't just love you. They question you, they reflect you back, and they tell you the truth.

They consistently care, and though they sometimes get things wrong, they come back for another try. The best friends are for life. The best friends stay up at night and listen to your grief or they think about you from their beds, tossing and turning about how to help. They can't walk away.

That's how I'm feeling today about the farmers. I haven't been able to walk away, even when I know it would be good for me. My intentions are coming from my heart and I'm using my brain too. I'm reluctant to get out in front, but I'm always going to be there in the room, willing to speak truth, willing to craft elegant solutions. Even when I am terminated, glared at, and criticized, and told there is no space for me.

Even when I have a lot of other things to do! Even when my emotions are crunchy, I can't shake my feelings of loss, and my finances are scary. I want to feel good about Lane County Farmers Market. I love the farmers. Tough love, friends for life.

Bit by bit, clarity and progress

Got completely soaked yesterday on the way home from Tuesday Market, and the rain didn't let up until long after I had unloaded the wet stuff into the shop and changed clothes. I didn't totally mind it, as it wasn't really cold and added interest to the process. Plus it gave me an excuse to take it easy for the rest of the evening, as I had expended some major energy.

Tuesday Market is building. Aaron moved his food cart to the east side of the plaza, and next week Deb and I are committing to moving over there in the hope of starting a circle of booths that will create a more cohesive event instead of a scattering of individuals looking over across the street hoping for some scraps of attention.

We need more booths to really create a destination, and it definitely affected us to move away from the produce, but we are feeling that it was the best decision, to occupy the east block, and by mid-summer we will have a warm, interesting event happening, with entertainment, lots of food choices, and exciting, attractive crafts.

My income went up ever-so-slightly and other people seemed to do a bit better than last week. Once the tourism really starts, we'll be ready. I still have the only (and best) canvas tote bags, which are needed by the food shoppers, and both sun and rain encourage hat sales. I probably ought to minimize the table space for my curious and seductive Jell-Oh Art flowers, and bring more shirts. I have plenty of shirts to bring, all of the kids line and women's shirts that I no longer want to sell on Saturdays. They're still good, just don't fit in my space or on my trailer.

In other news, I sat in, taking minutes, on an OCF committee that really had great process and that encouraged me quite a bit about my involvement in the Fair and how things work in that world. It's always my interest to study and reduce the us vs. them energy that comes when segments of populations don't see or understand other segments.

It's usually an illusion based on some unmet needs or unheard perspectives, and it's usually built into the history and process of any kind of organization. My tactic of late has been to insert myself into the arenas where I feel unseen, and give "them" a chance to see me and see that I am rational and trustworthy, and may even have something constructive to offer.

Of course it is usual for both "sides" to see themselves as the misunderstood parties, and in most cases intentions are good and listening skills really advance the understanding. In letting go of my efforts to hear the farmers and attempt to allow them to hear those across the street, I have seen that my position in the middle had become not only ineffective but a stumbling block to the natural progress of the issues. My perception is that it is flowing naturally without me and I am so happy to have lost the associated stress.

On Tuesdays I am looking forward to positioning myself with my back to the street so I focus on things that are not frustrating and emotionally draining. The less attachment I have to what is going on with the farmers, the more I like them and the more easily I can interact with the Tuesday sellers, who are generally just vendors and artisans like me who just want to make and sell their products in peace.

With OCF, I don't have any personal issues I want to advance, just want to do my little part to solidify the organizational knowledge base and help people make fully informed and thoughtful decisions. I have found that working small on the committee level is the best way for an individual to connect with the big spinning peach, to just be a part of the conversations and the processing that has to get done, and is best done early when the decisions are being formed. I'm still in the beginning stages of listening and observing to see where the energy bottlenecks are.

When they seem to rest in individuals who are unknowingly, or intentionally slowing down change, it can be a big problem. People who are not open to seeing themselves and their behaviors with thoughtfulness are a thorn in the side of organizations who are usually responding to change that is thrust upon them. While there is some value in knowing how things have always been done, it's more important to know why this is so, and if it really speaks to the core values or is just habit.

I'm encouraged to know that OCF people are there, looking within and holding the values strongly. When their decisions seem scary or just plain wrong, it is valuable to look at the core values and bring them to bear.

I love the way Saturday Market does this so often. All of our struggles are lessened when we can remember what needs to lie underneath our actions.

Yet, we have to remember that our core values are not necessarily the core values of those we interact with. The harder task is seeing where the others are coming from, where the values may differ, and working to align the "opponents" so that we all become us. Or We.

It can happen.

Jell-Oh My

My dear friend Ra gave me the great idea to call the stupendous jello art Jell-Oh! What a perfect way to get around the problem of using the corporate name, yay. Now I just have to go back and edit it into a gazillion blog posts so that it will be googly enough to register.

Now that I know about the filtering ways of google I wonder if I am anywhere near as famous as I think. Google keeps showing my blog as the top search result, but that is just what it wants me to think is the top. Now I'll mess it all up again with a name change. But oh well. It's really about making the stuff, not selling it or being famous. I just want to make the stuff.

Which brings me to the Market emotional territory. Things have been a bit dramatic of late, all winter and it doesn't seem to be over. I keep returning to the wonderful fount of knowledge and understanding that I gained from counseling, mostly from RC, Re-evaluation Counseling, which is a peer-to-peer network for building community through emphatic listening skill-building.

What I'm using the most is the work around drama, what constitutes it, how seductively attractive it seems, and how to eradicate it from our daily doings. It's work everybody needs to do for their own benefit and the great relief it brings to all human interaction.

I'm no expert, but what I have learned is that if you don't own and work through your emotional issues, the hurts and confusions and pre-judging you inflict upon yourself on a daily basis, some of which goes all the way back to birth and early childhood, you will spread your suffering around and make it much larger than it needs to be. This is not easy work.

Feelings aren't facts. When you feel something, it can cause distress, even if the feelings are positive and you are pleased. We develop a natural habit of amplifying and sharing the feelings, and if we bring a lot of confusing old stuff along with them, we tend to go into irrationality rather quickly. It's very difficult to stay out of it and remain rational, while at the same time feeling the emotions, identifying the patterns and their steps and pitfalls, and keeping it to yourself while you process. That is the delightful part of co-counselling, that you create a safe space to do that processing and come out the other side back into the present, with another human, so you are not alone in the work, and you get some assistance from someone who cares.

People who have not learned this regularly amplify and spread their distress all over whatever the rest of us are trying to do, and it makes things so complicated and uncomfortable! Good listeners can divert some of this, because we all want to be heard and seen and know it is real, but mostly there isn't time to do the kind of listening that will really help the people who really need it. Particularly not on Saturday.

Other times all it takes is one person giving their full attention for one short period of time. There are a couple of people in my sphere who are really great at it. Beth's address in this week's newsletter touched upon it: "Focus," she says. "Right now." Our Board chair, Willy Gibboney, is a really practiced listener and he has been called to listen to several people this week, to encourage them to stop and listen to others, to develop their compassion. When he has to go off and do this instead of sitting on his little stool making drumsticks and talking about his craft, my heart aches for him and how seriously he takes his volunteer position in our organization. I'd much rather watch how he gently mentors young people and listens carefully to even the most needy wacky person who wanders down our lane. I'd much rather see him sell some shirts and get inspired about new drum designs.

We are starting to see the swell of people from outside our area, bringing their interest and attention (and money) to our little lives, that influx that helps us survive ourselves and make it one more week or month or year doing what we want to do. With their help we are able to not only survive, but thrive, and spread our way to those who are looking for it. We need these customers. They need us, too.

They don't need to see our distress, the way we stand too much and are cold and trapped in our booths and fearful about our utility bills and whether or not we are doing our best work and whether or not we are being treated fairly and whether or not we are indulging in complaining or really seriously in need of help. They see us from the outside, and we forget that everything we communicate is what they see. We all know how well that desperate energy plays on out little 8x8 stages, how easy it is to scare off those who really want to buy something, but don't want to engage in some troubling conversation about how all of our problems are really caused by someone else and how we really need more sales and better customers. Can you imagine how it is for them to feel that kind of neediness coming from us?

When we are blaming others, glaring or holding onto misunderstandings, failing to extend compassion, all about ourselves and what we need instead of what we are bringing to share, we are sowing our distress and amplifying it. You nurture what you pay attention to. If your whole day is about how this or that person is doing this or that wrong, you are most likely communicating that and mostly that, not your joy of creation, your next great idea, your happiness to be alive and doing what you love.

So I will echo what Beth says. Focus in, get serious, and do your work and do it well. This is it, now is the time. We have a lot riding on our moments. Every little negative way we fail to process our irrationality and spread it to others adds to the hurt and not to the joy.

Get some help if you need it. Learn about your internal landscape and how you dramatize it, and how much happier you could be if you could shut off some of those habitual pathways that lead you down the road of distress. There are lots of folks doing co-counseling in our area: wonderful, skilled people who will welcome you in and help you learn how to be happier and make the world more wonderful. Lots of them are also tuned into NVC, Non-violent or Compassionate Communication, which shares much of the same thinking. Paraphrasing Marshall Rosenberg, why are we here if not to make life more wonderful?

If you can't afford one-way counseling, find the RC class, or if nothing else, do some research and ask a friend to trade time listening to each other. You do that anyway in less formal ways, so it could be an easy step to clear some private time and try it out. Develop your empathy and compassion. Do it for yourself, and do it for our community. We need you to be your best self, so we can be our best selves. There's a lot of work to do!

Gelatinaceae

I've started a new blog just for the Jell-O Art, named for my new flora, and will mostly be putting my jello art posts over there.

Gelatinaceae will lead to bigger and better splashes into the big pond, I hope, as I try to expand the possibilities of my gelatine art.

And now to get to bed, tomorrow will be a big day!

A big ball of energy

I have some time before I go to take minutes at an OCF committee, and remembered I was going to write a post about the Fair. Everybody loves to love it, but so many people complain about it too, how it doesn't respond correctly to their very big needs.

Taking the minutes of two committees changed the relationship I have with the Fair, as I am now not just a booth person, but a volunteer. It doesn't show, and won't get me anything, except a new understanding. There are literally thousands of really committed people who do jobs of various levels of importance to make it all happen, and happen well, and they will not notice me joining them, or think I should get anything for it. I don't do it for a pass or to belong or for most of the reasons people are committed, I just felt I had a skill that was needed and thought I could offer some time. I've often thought of ways to reduce the "us vs. them" division that is part of our operations, and this was a surprisingly easy one. Now I'm both us and them.

The one most important thing I have noticed is that there is no one in charge of the Fair, in the way people expect when they complain about the various ways their Big Important Needs are not being met. There is no one noticing that you are being stepped on, or feel that way. It's too big, the spinning ball of energy that is the Fair, and no one is spinning it.

If you are lucky and really dedicated, you might have a slight, temporary influence on the speed or direction of the spin, the way Leslie did, or certain staff people have in the areas of their expertise, but in general, no one person is in charge of the spin. It just goes and goes and gets slowed or diverted despite the best efforts of many to make it the way they want it.

But if you have a Big, Specific Need and the solution seems so simple and you feel ignored and unseen, this is because there is no one in charge of meeting your needs. You have to be in charge of that. If you have a special situation that doesn't seem to fit the rules or procedures, the generally attempted method of meeting your needs is to just quietly do what suits you and make things happen to fit. This does usually work, so we are always quite surprised if it doesn't and we somehow get stuck in the process.

The situations I am thinking of are mostly booth related. Your booth rep gets a divorce and you are cast out, friendless after so many years of thinking you belonged, or you want to hand things over to your kids but they don't actually do what you do and it gets a bit sticky. Or you want to continue, but not doing what you were doing, and rejurying creates huge problems. Or there is a tree growing in your booth and you know if you cut it someone will be mad at you, but you can't get the people who are supposed to do it to do it.

I've seen this over and over, that you don't know who to ask, and you start the shuffle from person to person, each one refusing to back your dog or even admit that you have a dog and there is a fight. I've done it myself, complete with the tearful rant where years of frustration get dumped on one overworked and befuddled volunteer, who mostly just wants to have a pass so they can dance in a meadow in the sun. Along with all the wonderfulness and positivity that so many bring to each other so repeatedly, there is a seething swamp of dysfunction and poor behavior that is just part of the human condition.

No one is in charge of cleaning it up or preventing it from happening, although the many trainings, hippie ethics and actual skilled communicators within our organization do help many work through these things and sometimes do it well. I've heard more than once that instead of a Scribe Tribe, we need a pool of skilled facilitators or counselors or steps to follow to keep things from getting to the screaming rant stage.

Now that I am closer to being on the inside (still no t-shirt) I see the screaming ranters a little differently, a little more as patterned behavior and not so much as hurt individuals. I think the Fair needs to find some ways to evolve together toward feeling more united and less divided into interest groups, and it is possible that the Scribe Tribe concept is one step toward that. I know I am attending meetings I would have no reason to attend without my role. What are some ways we could encourage more people to step into something in which they have no direct interest? How can we get each other to see more of the big picture and feel more a part of it? I think Suzi's book Fruit of the Sixties had a big part in shifting my thinking, as I saw how many roles some people play over time, especially in the beginning when there were fewer of both us and them.

I'm not full of answers. I'm just taking these small steps to help my own understanding. One, there is no one in charge, and two, there is no one in charge of fixing your Big Important Problems but you. However, there will probably be no easy solution, no matter how simple things look to you, unless you can see a bigger view, way beyond your situation and into the spinning ball.

Put out one finger, and move toward the ball, and see if you can feel it from the outskirts. No? Move closer. Be careful, don't get too caught up. Be assured, it is not what you think.

It's almost never what you think it is. I like that about it. It's better than I thought it was, though the parts that are bad are worse than I thought. I like thinking that nothing I do will matter in the least, to the big picture. I'm simply unimportant, like the other thousands of us reaching out one finger to test the wind.

It's actually making me love it more, that big, uncontrollable, wild spin of big trees and small folks. Nothing is under control.

I thought of the shirt I want to do for this year: Oregon Country Fair Spawn

Tiny fertile seeds of thoughts and stoned nights around campfires, laid in the gravel to be found or not, to grow or not, to die and be forgotten, or not. To shine briefly and then flame out.

Missing Lowell, Wally, and all those others. So many others. Good thing they left their seeds.