Interesting Times

Although I have found many subjects worthy of commentary, I haven't been wanting to blog recently. Most of them seem too sensitive, or more correctly, I am too sensitive. I love blog therapy, writing it all out for the constructive process of illuminating the issues for myself, but I have to remind myself I do have a few readers and they already know a lot more about my internal monologues than they probably want to know.

My relationships seem really complicated, not so much my personal relationships but the ones I have with the several membership groups I am involved in. Saturday Market is just jamming as summer bloomed so rapidly and everyone emerged, blinking, into the light. Saturday is an emotion-packed day, with the vexing end seeming to be me getting trapped into unwelcome conversations with drunken or similarly impaired men who think I am *handsome* as I heard yesterday. Dude, I know I am not pretty, at 63, but don't do this. You already observed that I did not need a man as I packed up my stuff, yet you still tried to help me. I am going to have to perfect more defensive techniques, sadly. Raven says just put my courage on the end of my sword and wield it. Instead of shutting down when (people, but mostly men) try to manipulate me, poke them with the sword a little. "Move along, please, I'm working." Or not even please. Just be as rude as they are. I already have learned to never, ever give them my name. It seems I have more problems with this now than I did as a young person, maybe because men my age are far more desperate than younger men, and maybe because I just keep hoping it will go away rather than perfecting skills to deal with it directly.

But all that is outside the real roles I play and those are the complexity. Not only am I a regular seller at the events my groups sponsor, but I am a longterm one. That means I remember how it used to be, maybe even helped set it up that way. I had my zero days at Market when the fee was only $3.50 and it still felt bad to pay it. I snuck into the OCF long long ago before I learned how to participate. I've made most of the common mistakes and had most of the common misconceptions, and I still don't get it right every time.

I even had one zero day last year at the Tuesday Market when we were trying hard to survive across the street from the farmers. I'm not selling at the Tuesday Market this month. It feels strange. I don't know if I will again. Our two organizations are friends again, and are engaging in some dialogue, but we're still *complicated.* I love the farmers. Even though I grow much of my own produce, I get most of the food I buy at the LCFM. It's essential to me. Yet I am mostly on the outside, looking in.

With both SM and OCF (and in the past with LCFM too), I am also a contractor, in that I make things for the organizations, and get paid to do it. Not quite an employee, but in a subservient relationship of sorts. They are both stellar to deal with, btw. Always so respectful of the self-employed, they always pay me right away and contracts are clear and thoughtful. I have zero complaints, and love the opportunities. I want to leave them feeling the same way about me, professionally and personally. I care deeply about my business reputation and performance, so the physical limitations of my body as I age concern me. At some point I will have to step out of these roles. Maybe I can manage for another decade. That will also change the relationships with the people who contract with me, and that will be difficult I suppose. Maybe I'll get a gold watch, but probably how these things go normally is they just stop calling at some point, or I retire. Usually contracts end with no fanfare or even mutual appreciation. Guess we'll see. Meanwhile, thank you so much for helping to keep me alive. I particularly appreciate the loyalty of all of my customers last year when I had the broken heel. That was inconvenient to say the least. But this year things are going well!

And then, because I have been here awhile, I am an elder and a volunteer. I'm an officer (Secretary) of the Market, and on the Craft Committee at Fair. I take minutes at meetings, I'm on the Kareng Fund Board, and I do various other volunteer activities as they present themselves. I do a lot of unpaid work for the Jell-O Show too, and all of it is fun, and all I do by choice. I'm happy to serve, and I'm sure I do a lot less volunteering than many, many people in our community. It does take a toll, though.

Listening to the Dalai Lama the other day I was reminded of some of my continuing misconceptions and issues. I tend to dismiss the options of asking for help or advice, and just fall into my patterns unconsciously. One of my worst patterns is that I assume things and then run with them. As you might imagine this causes me to often range far afield emotionally, with absolutely no real facts to take me there. A particular bugaboo for me is that in a situation where I do reach out and don't receive a response, I immediately decide that I am not worthy of the person's notice, that I have not been heard, and that I need to try something else. Another person would make a second inquiry, but I rarely do. Rather than the uncomfortable checking things out, I just go farther into whatever plan I have hatched, without feedback, or worse, imagining the feedback I would have received. The non-response bugs me royally and it is a condition of email and the speed of our world, and I need to adapt to it.

Rude awakenings often result when my fantasy scenarios collide with the other party's reality. That happened this week and tweaked me right into my worst emotional suitcases. Fortunately I have learned the tiny subtle signs of this journey and can usually arrest myself in the earlier stages and then just have to process the embarrassment and hurt, and things don't usually escalate into confrontation or tears or excessive drama. Generally the other person is not even aware of my whole process, they just think I am somewhat wacky and turn aside to their other concerns (I assume), but it erodes my credibility in those other realms I mentioned, the business sides, and it bothers me a lot. My people skills need work.

I have got to learn to not be afraid to ask direct questions and make assertive statements. I've got to make myself polish, and take with me, that sword. I watch young people do this all the time, very well, and think some of it is just the holdover of attitudes toward women from the fifties. From the century that is over, as HH said. We will soon say bye-bye. I think young women are so much more free of these internal restrictions than I am. Maybe I can take some lessons from the women of  my son's generation, as I do from him. I'll try to pay better attention.

I can operate in the big boys club, if I do what they do: pose with strength and bravado, and fake it until you make it your own. All the men I told my story to went right back to one of the first actions I took, which was an attempt to protect someone's status and not embarrass them, and stated what a man would do. And it made perfect sense. I was nurturing and protective of the other people, but not me.

That, unfortunately, is part of the legacy I struggle to carry this Mother's Day. I got the parts of motherhood HH spoke of, I loved abundantly and relentlessly and I protected and served and put my own needs aside for the twenty years of my son's childhood, and that is a hard role to extricate one's self from. I was a good mother, but that sexism that I carried that made me defer to others, particularly men, has never really been eradicated from my deepest-set behaviors. I don't even want to offend the damn drunks who prey on me at the end of my working day. I don't even want to point out to people when their treatment of me feels like bullying. I just want to run away to safety, when creating my greater safety is the challenge.

My accommodating nature takes it back on myself,  as I spin trying to apologize and explain and redeem myself for what is mainly just a bad set-up in my complicated life. The big boys will be in charge for some time yet. The meek inherit nothing. No one is in place to assert for me, nor do I want to appoint someone to be my protector and advocate (though I wish I could.) I'm on my own, and I can do it. I can make my life work better, have done and will do. I'm in charge because I want to be, and I have earned it.

When I step into the realms where I am not in charge, I need to bring my sword and my strength and feel the legions of strong women behind me. We are far more powerful than we even want to be. It takes a lot of courage to be powerful and thoughtful, and still nurturing and kind and gentle. I'm better at it than I give myself credit for, when I don't snap back into that childhood pattern of helplessness.

We ask that of our men, and we ask that of our leaders, and we need to also ask that of ourselves. It is not enough to just be a good Mom, we have to step up and be far more powerful than is comfortable. I can tell myself to do this, and sign up for the pain and discomfort, because I have been around long enough to know that scuttling back into my cave of safety just doesn't bring the big changes I need. I have to speak for me.

I'm going to work on it. I'm going to give myself more credit and speak more clearly, even if it brings some tears. Everything takes practice. It does not matter if it takes a lifetime or a moment.

I'm going to practice on some drunk guy next week if I get the chance. I'm going to find a way to be strong while still having compassion for his humanity. He's the one acting predatory. I'm not going to be the one acting like prey.

And that is my summation of Mother's Day emotions for the moment. I love my mother so very deeply, and I love the ways she has taught and supported me so thoroughly for so long. She did everything she could to teach me these things by example and thoughtful listening. It's up to me to learn the rest. I will.

Thank you Mom, and thank you Son, for all of the ways mothering made me a good person to be in this world doing the things I do. We're successful. We're powerful. We're happy. Even through the complicated times.

Still the One

I started selling at Saturday Market the spring I arrived in town, in 1975. I've been a continuous member since before we had memberships. As other old members might remember, we instituted memberships as a way to make needed revenue back when our booth fees were $3.50 a day, plus 10%. It wasn't a popular decision, but we were always struggling for funds back then, while we all learned how to be business-oriented as we tried to work in the mainstream of Eugene business in the 70's.

We always had to swim upstream, but now that we have been doing this for 43 years, we have learned how to do a few things well. We worked on all of our relationships to bring them into line with our ideals. Yes, we could operate non-competitively in a dog-eat-dog world, and yes, we could do it on our own terms. We worked out a good relationship with the City of Eugene, the Eugene Police Department, and with Lane County. Each time the personnel changed, which was all the time, we worked out new relationships. This was never easy. Sometimes we had to cut our hair and put on nylons, metaphorically.

We had to explain ourselves a lot over the years. We don't work the way other businesses do, because our motive is not profit...except it is a little bit as we try to create profits for each of our members. Each one, not just those who are good at it. Our collective efforts began from our acceptance and regard for each other, for our orientation as a team, not a collection of individuals, but a group working toward the same goals. We exist for mutual benefit, and our mission broadened to support what became Eugene's weekly gathering place and celebration of human efforts. Plus, we are fun, and we make amazing stuff.

Sometimes we felt forced to be together when we had big issues to work out. There were many contentious meetings up in Growers Market and lots of people took offense at lots of things. What carried us through were qualities such as honesty, integrity, compassion, dedication, loyalty, and a growing sense that we could learn the skills we needed to operate in the world no matter how big it got.

And our world got big, as we got popular. We were able to revive the Farmers Market, which had been killed off in 1959 by the farmers allowing themselves to be moved into a commercially owned building where they lost the right to determine their own fate. They became a grocery store in a land of many of those, and the individual farmers couldn't make it without the collective strength that was eroded when the conditions changed. That early farm history is well documented in the book Market Days, which you can find in the Public Library.

Lotte Streisinger, one of our founders, observed that all successful public markets seemed to have foods and produce involved, and despite resistance from officials, we learned how to have street restaurants that were safe and tasty, with great customer service, and we learned how to partner with farmers to provide what the public wanted. Our guidelines and mission always involved what was grown or gathered. We are natural allies, and often the same people.

We've sold together most of the years since 1969, and the early (unpaid, volunteer) managers will tell you what happened when the proximity was disturbed. Our synergy is one of the most essential factors in our success. So we are now in one of the most difficult times of our history.

Both Markets have long outgrown their spaces on the Park Blocks. So many people want to join our fun that SM turns away as many as 60 potential sellers every week in the peak sunny season. LCFM turns away willing members as well. We could expand, we could move, or we could weather what has become a difficulty.

Saturday Market is not anxious to expand, because running a Market the size and scope of ours is more than complicated. We have a staff of over 20, working year round to focus on the 33 Saturdays and additional Holiday Market days. The burgeoning, unwieldy mass of individuals that converges on 8th and Oak is quite a challenge to manage. Each person has a need for something and expects it to be addressed. We are all owners, proprietors, bosses, staff and volunteers. The person who has an uncomplicated relationship with Saturday Market probably doesn't exist.

Yet, our experience and our collective strength hold us together. We solve the problems that come up. We apply our best thinking, we try to lead from the heart, and we are patient and slow-moving when we can be. We try to let time be our ally and our first approach is to shine a light on the problem, and see if we can involve those who will be affected, to work out the mutual benefit.

The mutual benefit is paramount. Things have to work for all of us.

So at the end of Market last week I had a chat with one of my favorite neighbors at the Market. I had heard he had a complaint, and I wanted to hear it from him. He was grateful to be asked, and not afraid to tell me he found something I had done more grating than one of the buskers we all had trouble being supportive of. More grating. I had to swallow hard on that one, because the thing I had done was really, really fun for me and some of my booth neighbors. It was music, and the intentions were good, and lots of people participated and lots of us had a great time. Yet to him it was grating, and hard to suffer through.

And as it turned out, his concerns were not so much for himself, but for others who were less willing to separate their friendship for me from their need to do what we came there to do, which was to make our rent and sell our goods, as equals. My fun had stepped on their basic rights. My music had hurt them in some unknowable way. There was no proof that sales were lost, there was no clear line between good and poor choice, there was nothing concrete in the mix, there were just the relationships. And I had to tend them.

Which was easily done in this case, by me changing the way I was having fun, to fit back into the spoken and unspoken agreements we have in our neighborhood to work for mutual benefit. I was not the one who got to determine how that mutual benefit was addressed. And it was not a good idea to do it without hearing from those who were not so delighted by me.

We're still friends. We understand that it has to work for all of us. Equality is one of our major tenets, and why we still have one space per person, so that we can all fit (or as many of us as there are spaces, anyway.) We can get annoyed at each other, but we have to repair it, and we have to stand next to each other and do it.

I'm not full of solutions and opinions about everything, but I do feel like an expert on what I do on Saturdays. I've made and still make all the ordinary mistakes of the messy lives of humans. I do know what matters in the spaces between the sales, outside the primary transaction of a person giving me money for one of my creations. I've sat in enough meetings, worked on enough consensus decisions, and watched so many individuals grow and learn together, to get it. And I wrote most of it down. (I'm a visual learner.)

We are all in this together, and it takes all of us. When we grate, when we err, and when we triumph, we share that with each other, and we are so lucky to have that. No cubicle, no boss, no time card, we self-direct. So we have to know our hearts, and they have to be good. Otherwise, we will hear about it.

And we will have to laugh at what we hear, take it to heart, and do better. Fortunately, as humans, we can always do better. I might be singing Saturday, but I'll be doing it from a music spot. That is what makes the most sense for the most people. See you Saturday!

The Jell-O Art Show Show, not as it appeared.

Such a beautiful sunny day yesterday, keeping so many of my people in their gardens and back yards, or biking with their families, allowing them only brief moments inside, which may or may not have included dropping by MKAC for the few short moments that I have focused the last two or three months of my life upon. The gallery was filled, but maybe in my quest to keep the secrets of the My-i-electronic stew of the show covered tightly, I forgot to make sure you knew that this was something not to be missed. Even the little bit of repartee with Slug Queen Sadie was priceless and not graceless as I had feared. She's so wildly talented. 

I will try to deliver a pale substitute elixir, but those twenty minutes are here and gone now, as ephemeral as the wobbly items that graced the pedestals. So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome something sublime:

iJell-O Script version #165b:

Here we are after 25 years of the Jell-O show, checking in with the Radar Angels as they make their Jell-O Art.         Let us go to their “site” and see what is streaming...

Picture that iconic album cover, loosely interpreted with a bit more fluff and glitter, including people with Jell-O on their heads, and shiny gold lame. (We missed you, Gil.)

We're Radar Angels one & only Lonely Facebook Band  

Stand back & let the evening jell...Bumpbumpbumpahdumppahdump

 Yes, the whole songs, with a band, maybe not quite the original lyrics, possibly a few more kazoos than the Beatles recorded. You might know how this goes from previous shows. The sight gags here involved oversize thumbs, from texting all our friends, you dig?

I’m going berserk, ( I ) just can’t communicate this way 

I’m going berserk, texting what it takes just a minute to say

Musical transitions occur between the five songs, leading you gently through our narrative. Comedy skits, written by the participants, attempt to connect you with what is coming next, not that you will feel prepared for these types of surprises. Soon you see three hot *girls* letting you know that

Friday night is Facebook time!

Rumbeando, escalada, try to keep up here as it goes viral. Likety like it!

Oh look, I’m a hottie-oh a lookie oh a lookie at me! Lookie at me!

Then prepare yourself for the ordinary disappointment which suffuses the virtual world. Unfriended by your second cousin in Louisiana. Not invited to the dang event! Sitting in your kitchen on Grinning Singles not finding anyone in your age group who looks the least bit appealing and is also not pretending not to be married. You have been there, and this you know because the entire audience responds with the most empathetic groans and moans to our heroes.

Will you “LIKE” me? (Thumbs up, then down.)

Will you be my “FRIEND”? (Thumbs up, then down) Would you like to have a loving “CHAT” with me? (You guessed it, no way.)
Must have been those velour pants, with the expectant junk (actually we didn’t even consider that sight gag, too obvious, not family friendly. We like a modicum of decorum. We used a tiny violin.) Anyhow, he can’t get a Real Connection.
They tried and they tried. You know this song and dance:

When I’m browsin’ on my phone

You know I’m feeling like I’m so alone

But I keep surfin’ more and more

I’m losin’ my imagination

Need some physical sensation

I can't get no, oh no no no.

Hey hey hey, that's what I say

Well, as you might imagine, we did have a compassionate and nonviolent response for him, poor fellow. Him and the hot girls, who also posted the mostest but still couldn’t get anything real. We responded the best way we could imagine, by feeling. Feeling gooey.

Hello humans,
Where ya goin?
Time to watch your flowers growing.
Time to touch, to dance, to be
Doot-in' doo-doo,
Feelin' gooey.
No me mails to read,
No you-tubes to view,
I am the real me and you are the real you
We are sharing our lovely gelatinous goo 

We love Jell-O

All is gooey. 

And then, as everyone begins to make Jell-O art in their aprons and wings, and the website for the Jell-O Connection loads, and we forget to use all the many carefully constructed and brilliantly designed props like a spinning hourglass, made by someone who had no clue how many things you can’t do in a 20-minute show, (*taking a curtsey here for the meticulous and clever set design and execution, however misguided and borderline obsessive*), and fog and bubble machines do get turned on, as far as I know, and:

Crickets and frogs begin to fill the swampy site with sounds. A fat frog who looks very little like Kermit steps up to the mic and appears to eat it, surrounded by fairies and elves. He/she warbled and croaked out this little ditty:

Why are there so many questions about art?

What’s on the artists’ minds?

Artists have visions, sometimes delusions

Art leaves you nothing to hide

Here on our website, we’re going to show you  (and here, not to be obtrusive, I must tell you that the fat frog stripped off his/her painfully and (borderline, whatever) cleverly constructed concealment to reveal, yes, you guessed it, The Queen of Jell-O Art herself! In costume! And let me tell you I had about six layers of costumes on...that was interesting.)

The Secrets of all Jell-O goo:

Today you can find it, the Jell-O Connection The artists, the Angels, and you. (She sang this, on the mic, in front of thousands, or dozens anyway, of our area’s finest art patrons and lovers of all things Jell-O. I know you sent your representatives to see this personal transformation, since after fifty or so years of saying this was something unimaginable, I became one of the *performing* Angels. But I’m interrupting her song)
We say that every wish can be made in Jell-O if you have the right recipe 
Here on our website, we have the apps you need, 
and we give our secrets FOR FREE!
It’s so amazing, the joy you’ll be raising, 
See what it has done for me! (Songwriters can get away with a little self-indulgence, if they are still in their first innocent year of queendom, so I put this line in, and took it out, and put it back in, with appropriate gestures. Apparently it worked.)

Today you can find it, the Jell-O Connection,

the Jiggle, the Angels, and You. (Repeat three times and hit those high notes, though not those ones in the soprano range that you wished you could hit like you did in the bathtub. Maybe next time.)

Big finish, as everyone steps in from wherever they were (your narrator had some peripheral vision problems, you might say, as she pretty much saw no one else, in her incredulity that she managed to finish her song with no tears or all those other unrealized fears, mostly by not looking at any of her loving fans in the audience or anyone else in the real world…)

We’re Radar Angels Lonely Facebook Band,

We hope you have enjoyed the show, etc. (Royal wave, the wrist action, etc. Remember to bow to the band, and yes, you do have to leave the beloved stage, new diva.)

Wild applause, a few tears, euphoria, many levels of gratitude all around. Take some pictures, pack up all of that Jell-O and those new artifacts for the Jell-O Art Museum, and go have a cast party. It's over. Sent into the Jellozone, never to be repeated, but legendary, and nowadays probably available online in a few weeks. You get 15 minutes plus, thanks to youTube, which only has 5 billion users or so. But that isn't all that interesting. Go check your Facebook.
 

We did more singing. We expressed our thanks and looked at our unbelievably cute pictures on a big screen. We went home and tried to sleep, and I can report that I cannot remember the last time I lay in bed, surprised to find a smile still on my face long past midnight. I’m still smiling, though I doubt I will be able to do a single productive thing today (Wait, what? This isn’t productive?)

You just have no idea how may blogs full of insights and powerful, life-changing realizations I could put here if any of us had the attention span necessary. I love being almost 63, and being able to say that I did something I never knew I would love so much as this, and feared so long as this.

Working in a group of highly creative, giving, brilliant individuals making something from thin air, germinating ideas, embellishing, discarding, being diplomatically critical, being dependable or not, committed in varying degrees, terrified, reluctant, exhilarated, satisfied, perfectionistic and realistic, and getting together repeatedly to focus on something so ephemeral, this is an amazing, and probably fairly common occurrence. Stepping out of the safe background into the maelstrom of risk, taking part, participating in something outside your own little world of safety, this is an everyday action.

Board and committee meetings are something like this, minus the singing and dancing maybe. School projects. Opening days of Saturday Markets. Every busker knows what I just learned. Laugh if you will at old people who state the obvious. Every learner is a curious, semi-aware newborn puppy at some point in their process.

Performers do this, playwrights, chefs, teachers, activists, students, parents, Jell-O artists, lots of people do this. I am happy to say that nothing in my life so far felt like a Radar Angels production, so fully engaging all of my talents and gifts and passions, filling my days and thoughts, leaving me so ecstatic. And yet, it is something so very unsubstantial, so unremarkable, so ordinary and insignificant to the larger worlds that go out from me in this kitchen with this old and clunky laptop. I get that. Do not feel guilty for missing my stage debut. Watch the video someday.

I am here to tell you that you already know the secrets of all Jell-O goo. You feel something, a fear perhaps. You are drawn to it, and repelled. You are terrified and intrigued. You are compelled, however long it takes, to move into it, and through it. You saw those Radar Angel-type people in your neighborhood, you wanted to join them, but you were not asked, or coddled, or that properly nurturing person in the interface did not see that you needed nurturing. I’m sorry. Do keep trying.

Fears are there to be conquered, though it matters not a bit to the larger world if you do so, except maybe on the grand scale of collective consciousness it does matter, a lot. Who knows?

Jell-O Art Show is over for this year. Next year is a very long time away, and a 26^th anniversary is not too significant. Fifty, now you’re talking, but that would make me 88, and that is a challenge I don’t have much control over. But I urge you to save the date. That one will be huge.

Thank you all, my fellow Angels, the ones who skipped this year as well, because you are still in it. You are here with me, humans, from frog to queen as if it were as easy as stripping off a converted Ducks graduation gown and a decorated baseball hat or two.

You’re all Queens, and Kings, fairies, whatever you want to be, because the secrets of all Jell-O goo are that there are no rules, no winners and losers, no criticism, no rejections, no judgments, no negativity or violence at all. That is the world we are making.

That is the world we are living in. That is the world we have chosen. We are so happy to share it.This world is collaborative. And gentle.

Time to stop trying to rewrite and describe something not describable, and uneditable.  I have to go cry it out now, and then scrape the Jell-O off my kitchen floor. There are a few things to do before next Saturday, my next public appearance. I hope if find it every bit as heart and soul-warming as I expect to. Maybe see you at that one. Love you.

Mwuah!

All at once!

So, so, way too busy. Jell-O Art Show in less than two weeks, then just a week to prepare for Opening Day of Saturday Market, with all of the attendant details that come with the family reunion that launching a community event will be. We have a huge family, because it includes every person who happens by as well as those who intend to be there. 

It is not easy to focus on any one thing, and I keep getting distracted with the upcoming future events of OCF, and of course, now, the wedding. I have been delegated to make some Jell-O Art for the bride and groom and of course I have an elaborate plan that I cannot begin. 

I also have a big and growing pile of work, the kind I make money from, which is a delightful change, although I don't quite know how I will fit it in. I am hilariously devoted to my highest priority, the Jell-O Art Show, and that is just the fact of my life. All else pales.

And anyway, I can't do much about most of the other things, and my living room is full of Jell-O, posterboard and markers, so I might as well keep doing it until it is finished. I don't want to drop too many things off the list, especially my own exhibit. So maybe sleeping and eating drop off the list...reading already has.

But I thought I would say hello. Market people, just keep working, and hope for good weather, but we will all be there whatever the weather for the first selling day in months. Try not to worry about things that aren't really in front of you. Whatever happens with the city and the county and the farmers and the developers and all of that, we will still do what we have done for over forty years (!) and show up with our handmade wares and our smiles. Those things will settle out around us and we will still be smiling, I am sure.

Country Fair seems like a big deal and it is...but again, it will roll on like it has for years and despite changes, will be dependably ours. Some things don't change as much as others. We love our *unique retro-hippie atmosphere* and will preserve it because it is us...I doubt I could really project much else at this point.

Except maybe *unique retro-hippie Jell-O Artist mother-of-the-groom* complexity. I'll still look the same, maybe more worried and more smiley. Dancing all the way....

Weddings and Lists

My son is getting married! I'm getting pretty excited about it, and had a laugh on myself yesterday when I noticed the visual representation of my response. We haven't even met to discuss their plans, and preferences, and ideas, and dreams, and what they actually want, but that didn't stop me from doing what is pictured here.

My dependable organized self started a list, with a calendar, and every little detail I could think of, in sort of priority order. With a big space at the bottom labeled "My role." None of these are filled in, because I am telling myself very strongly to keep quiet until asked! This is not about me! They get to design and choose the wedding they want.

My equally dependable creative self just drew out a monogram for them, practically without trying. Their first initials fit together unusually well. The two of them fit together unusually well, too. I think they will have a very successful and happy marriage.

And I'm sure their wedding will be perfect for them, and I will be able to juggle this desire to keep everything in neat lines and columns. I recognize this pattern of control, this desire to make sure everything in my life is neatly ordered and archived.

In all of my organizations, I quickly volunteer to chronicle their meetings, to take notes and compile them, to keep everything on paper and filed in an organized fashion. It's something that feels good to me. I presently take minutes for four groups, and have taken on that role in the Jell-O Art Show as well. It's not just that it feels good, it is that I have this skill set and am happy to offer it to those with whom I am trying to create something. All of them also feed my need to be visually creative, making things for them to sell, things for them to save, things for them to marvel over. I need to see things on paper, in the real world. I love words and letters and love translating ideas and events into clear language. I want to pin down all the details.

It's such a strong life pattern that I usually don't even notice it. It's just what I do. I don't resist it.

In the case of my son's wedding, however, I feel like I have done my work for now, and can now wait for them to express themselves in their fashion. I'm resisting as hard as I can all the emotional stuff surrounding weddings that I am sure it is my duty to impart and maintain. The traditions. The rituals. The trappings of convention and the thwarting of that.

I myself have never gotten married. I was in one 10-year-plus relationship, the one that generated this young man, but we didn't formalize that commitment with a public declaration. There was never a good reason in our minds, and looking back, I see that we didn't have the emotional commitment, though we are friends and all that. The situation was really more about me having a child, which of course I am extremely grateful that we did. We were good partners, but it never felt like we were really building a life together forever.

My son has been here to surprise and delight for 23 years, and this is just another delight. I don't really care about any of the details on that list. I just want them to mark the special day, to celebrate their special type of courage and dedication, and to have the wedding that makes them happy. Whatever I can do to make that happen, as easily as possible, I am here to do.

So I have a list. I expect other people have lists, or items to put on a list at least.I hope they do.

 They want to have their wedding at the Fair, which is a sweet tradition and perfect for them. They met through Culture Jam, an OCF program, and it is certainly part of their beings. John has been home at the Fair all of his life. It represents some of our happiest family times, and we feel very attached there.

Of course I am kind of busy at Fair, selling my wares, but I think I can fit this in. Because it is not my party, and I don't have to be responsible for all or even any of the things on this list (though no doubt I will be, for some.) And really it won't take that long, if we are organized and ready. I hope I will be free enough of work for that stretch of time that I can fully experience it, and concentrate on the joy, the beauty and promise of it, and pack a lot into that momentous occasion.

I'm mostly afraid it will be over too fast, and I'll miss it. I'll put my customers first and my drive to make money and keep that giant aspect of my life under control, and I'll fail to really live inside this happening. It's my only son's wedding. It's a big deal to me, on many levels. First thing I did was call my own Mom, and her advice was good.

But for now, it's just my job to think and feel and do what I need to do to prepare, so here we are. I write and draw and write about that. Since it isn't about me, I want to get all of my stuff out of the way, so I can concentrate on listening to them and hearing what they are willing to tell me. I have to strike some level of being maternal that will fit what they want and what they need. I get to provide something, but I don't yet know just what it will be.

But I do like something to look forward to. Weddings are the fun stuff. You get weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, and funerals. We're having way too many funerals these days. It's no wonder I am so excited about this wedding. To Life!

Winter to...more winter

Tucked some pea plants into the garden...there's an act of faith. I planted starts as the little tiny slugs never let the sprouts get a start when I put in seeds, and I suspect the crows and jays watch me plant and then go collect the peas and beans. I'm so tired of cold.

One thing I notice as I start to slow down a bit, is that the house maintenance projects just start to get away from me. My list is more-or-less permanent and I'm avoiding the big ones like a plague. Maybe I know too much. The shop will need a total rebuild at some point, when it is ready to enter domesticity again. All of the plumbing needs washers and things...and I am my own handyman, so that can be a problem. There's too much for one person to do to keep a life going these days, so you have to have money to hire people to do for you, and there I bring up one of my main challenges, so let's change the subject.

House research has gone up a notch since someone hipped me to the Geneological Society research room. I found a five-volume set of Vaughan notebooks, and discovered a couple of excellent details. They might have the census records not available online, like the 1900 one that is illegible. I need that one.

I have come to the realization that what I want is intimacy with these predecesors of mine. I want to know little things about them, what they canned, what they sewed, how they talked to their families. I enjoyed finding out that the Davis family were devoted Quakers, a group that was often persecuted, which partially explains why they never engaged in killing native people, though they did help themselves to their camping grounds. I suppose people thought it was inevitable progress to use land that looked underutilized, to populate the powerful new nation that was such a huge romantic fantasy for them.

And there were slaves here, too, though most had been freed. There is a racist subtext to much of the local history, people avoiding the Civil War, people wanting it to come here, Columbia College being burnt down several times...I am afraid some of my Vaughans were not very tolerant people. It turns out that William Tyler Vaughan, our original settler, wandered off from his family and made a few trips here, earning the title of Captain Billy and heading a few wagon trains. He spent some time participating in gold mining, and some time at "Hangtown" participating in corrections...lynching people for various reasons, it seems. His wife Phoebe was revered for her long-suffering generosity and they saved a lot of people, too.

They named their sons after famous people, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy, George Washington, and even William Tell and Marquis Lafayette! That makes it not much of a mystery where Floyd got the idea to name one of his sons after the Bilyeu family. Floyd Governor was the one I'm interested in, their third son. I think he did the majority of farming while the two older sons ranged around with the Captain, going off to mine gold and adventure. They had at least 12 children.

I found out that his first wife, Angeline Baber, was blind, which helps explain why they had a housekeeper. Miranda Freeze Haskett had four children when she married Floyd after the buggy accident that killed Angeline. I can't find out anything about what happened to her husband, and I speculate that her infant twins could have been fathered by Floyd G. If there was a scandal, there might be a record of it, but all of the pioneers made practical decisions about life and death all of the time. You certainly couldn't make it alone in those days, but many women were as good as alone when the men went off to prove up or get in on the gold rush. I'm sure it was no picnic to be a kid then, either.

Have to rush off but be assured that I am hot on the trail of the most intimate, heart-warming details available about the lives of these women and children and decorators and builders. I am bringing everything old into my heart and turning it over to see if someoen scrawled "I was here" on it in fading pencil lines.

I'm finding my own gold. I'm not likely to bury it in the yard under the peas. Somehow, I am going to make it relevant to my life, wrap it in the words I love to manipulate, and polish it up.

Just waiting for the sun to come out...and the strawberries, the perennials, the new bird-planted trees I have to unplant. I have a bird nesting in the wreath I made of sticks on the front porch...I think it might be a towhee. I'll have to find a way to watch it, and watch for eggs. Guess that's one holiday decoration that will stay up for a bit longer.

A Few Winter Days

 Two weeks of icy fog kept me indoors and waiting for sun, but my cat Jake appreciated my presence. He had moved onto my bathroom counter next to the sink in his instinctually helpful way...it was not his first desire, which was to hide out someplace dark, but it was good to have a way to pet him every few minutes, to check in with him while I tried to figure out when to make the call to the vet. He wasn't going to improve, though he still had lots of good days. He nestled in towels and slept. I combed him and helped him keep clean, and he had his mixed feelings about me, for sure. I tried as hard as I could to honor him.

I started this post while waiting for the vet to arrive to help me figure out if Jake needed to be set to run one of his other lives...I was being all clinical and coldish about it, because I have been on this edge of a decision for two years now. He had a tumor...but he still purred, he still ate. He obviously had a headache, at least, but he would still jump up on the counter. These God-decisions are really hard, as you probably know.

The previous day was my son's 23rd birthday, a day of many memories for me, a mark on the calendar, but a quiet day. I do so remember being that age and so bent on my own life that not many other people mattered very much. They did on an emotional level, but that had to get pushed aside to make my way forward into the work I had to do. So the two days, the birth day and the death day, connected for me in deep  emotion, the kind that is mostly set aside while we do the work of separation and putting our lives in order.

I sent him the $23 check in a ritual my mother used to follow, a dollar for every year. I like it, even though I know checks are annoying to him, demanding a trip to a bank and all. I like the marking of the passing of time, just a little more each year, just a bit of a raise. I think when I hit 50 the increasing stopped, or jumped to a bigger round number. Of course at this age I don't want to take money from my mom (she's 87, or will be tomorrow) but somehow birthdays are still important. I like passing a ritual down from Mom.

Spent another day at the County Deeds and Records office yesterday running down details about my property. It's a satisfying mystery that holds onto its details tightly, and I may never pin some of them down. I did discover the exciting fact that my property was connected to the one on the corner for a long time, leading me to speculate about the builder of that one too. Wish I could take it apart and look inside the walls....

But I can't. You can't go back in time, either, and I spend a lot of time wishing I were really witnessing the farming era in this neighborhood, the cows, the horses and sheep. When the Lane County Fair is here I sometimes wake up to lowing in the morning...I like the sounds of cows. My Mom's family were farmers and homesteaders in Nebraska, and in that way have some in common with these people I am researching.

The Vaughans and Huddlestons farmed partly because that was the main work available in the early years of settlement of this area. Many of them no doubt came here for the free land and the opportunity to make a living with their skills. Perhaps some were not even skilled as farmers, but just had the broad range of handy abilities that people used to gain as a matter of course: the use of tools, working with wood, using nature to one's advantage. They had to farm to feed themselves and their children and hired laborers, as there were no cities nearby at all in the beginning. 

And they had a lot of kids, out of necessity and preference, and needed land to set their sons up, and their daughter's husbands, (the daughters by default) and in the case of the families I am studying, the widows needed homes too. Most of the men in these families died rather young, but the widows all reached advanced ages, spending decades living with their daughters and sons.

One of the theories I'm exploring is that one of those widows lived here, and put up that Greek or Gothic Revival wallpaper I'm so fond of. She probably bought it here, or ordered it through San Francisco. I doubt they brought rolls of wallpaper in the covered wagons, though they might have brought doors or at least door hardware. There were lumber mills here right away and sash and door manufacturers, so most likely all the woodwork was milled here. There was a glass factory in Coburg at one time, but the quality was reportedly weak and they closed, and likely they didn't make window glass. The one-over-one windows I have are not as old as the original construction, I don't think, and I read that large glass panes weren't available until the mid-1800's, so I think the windows may have been replaced. I kept them when I remodeled, so I may be able to glean a little more information from them. I know the "horns" that projected down from the top sash are still found on lots of houses in Eugene. These were to strengthen the glass, and as windy and stormy as it gets here, it makes sense that so many would have been used. Some sash and door manufacturer probably dominated the market here during the main bulding era of the early 20th century, but a lot of the glass had to be imported, in some cases around Cape Horn. Mine looks pretty old, but that's pretty darn imprecise.

Huddleston's first work here was a trading post he opened in part of Skinner's cabin, which later became a bigger store that he located right on the east bank landing by the first (Skinner's) ferry. That is likely where he got the money to buy so many parcels of land, that and some gold mining he did in Yreka shortly after he arrived here in 1850 . Lots of men got caught up  in gold fever and left their families to try mining, though he was single, not marrying until 1853. At any rate he was rather wealthy, and his widow Samantha made her living selling off the many properties they accumulated when the price was cheap or free. She paid a lot of taxes. Her house was first the Mims house at 330 High (built in 1867), which was in the fashionable district at the time, and then they moved to the northern part of their DLC, at around 8th and Madison. Yesterday I found a big Black Cottonwood almost identical to the one that was cut down on Tyler, right on Madison near 8th. Now they are Huddleston trees for me, for sure. Their house down there is probably gone, though I may get around to investgating that. I don't believe they ever lived on the Fairgrounds part of their property, but it is entirely possible that one of the widows did, for a time, Samantha, or her mother, Catherine Davis. Most likely it was Miranda Vaughan, some other member of the Vaughans, or just some hired help.

This little strip my house sits on was in between some of the DLCs, (called Meets and Bounds) and was probably just absorbed by Huddleston. I know he sold it to Vaughan. Most of the sales of my property were for $10. It was only $23,000 when I bought it in 1988. Most of the sales were to relatives. Yesterday I found another relationship by searching the records, and that's one reason things are hard to trace. When you gave your son or daughter a house, or some pasture, you might not record it right away, or at all. If you were a farmer, you certainly might use or lease grazing land or hay fields if they were available, and many of the recorded arrangements sound like just a step up from a handshake. 

I'm quite sure Bilyeu Vaughan was named after Lark Bilyeu, or his family. Mr. Bilyeu was a lawyer and notary who signed most of the transactions recorded by the Vaughans. He owned a strip of land just to the south of Huddleston's DLC. Perhaps Miranda Vaughan just liked the name, as a variant of William, but I'm guessing some honoring or gratitude was mixed in there. Quite likely Lark Bilyeu gave Vaughan a lot of advice or help in his own quest to amass land for his family when they moved from Willamette Forks (Coburg) to west Eugene.

And it seems quite possible that Bilyeu did build this house, and maybe the one next door. His name is on my board. He and his brother-in-law, Grace's husband Frank Bowers, are both there, with the 1916 date. I'm as certain as I can be that he remodeled it in 1916, changing the look from Gothic Revival to Victorian, paneling the interior of the back part with the tongue-in-groove, and covering the wallpaper with Victorian florals. Miranda and Grace picked out the wallpaper, in my fantasy. And Miranda Vaughan could have certainly lived here.

But each new detail brings another little mystery. Good thing I'm enjoying the research, and the weather isn't making me feel compelled to prune my little fruit orchard. There seems to be an almost endless search out there, and it seems important to do it.

Truthfully, I see my control patterns in my desire to pin down and document every tiny detail, in the hope that it will fill out the full picture. It's better than a 5000-piece jigsaw puzzle, with some of the pieces lost under the piano. While living in the past is feeding my sense of loss and regret for things unrecorded and forgotten, it's grounding me in what's important in the present, and increasing exponentially my love for this piece of land. 

Family relationships, vital. Writing things down, essential. Continuing relationships through the generations, more important than you might think. And I did put down my cat, sadly, and added his grave to the other pet graves on  my little homestead. They're unmarked, except for stones, the foundation stones I took out of this house. Unlike ancestors, cats aren't that important, and their lives are brief, but learning comes from many directions, and my cat taught me about patience and suffering and the farmers' way of thinking. You nurture as well as you can, and then you let go, providing if you are able, and being provided for if you aren't. 

And little old ladies, living alone, feature strongly in my house drama. I'm just the latest one, and ironically the one who did the most damage to the legacy of the house, notwithstanding the fact that I gave it another fifty years or so of life. Writing the book about these people in all their insignificance will project us all a little farther into the next generations, though not much. Not many people will care like I do. 

But I'm glad I do care. Thanks, Jake, for your responsiveness, even the bitey kind. Thanks Mom, for the little growing checks on my birthday, and thanks, son, for being the best part of my life by far. And thank you everyone who wrote something down, most especially those guys who put that board in my wall. Someday someone will take the boards down and find my name, perhaps, and maybe then when they google me (though it will be called something else) they will find something interesting. I'll try.

And by the time my son pays me $10 for this property, he will own something of great relative value, thanks to all the countless other dead and living people who invested their own lives in their real estate surrounding mine. So thanks, Mike, for picking out this property and planting the seeds of revival. It wasn't the property I wanted, but now I see how perfect it is for me. 

Everybody needs a place to bury their cat, and to dig up old treasures. Sometime in the last 25 years here, I found a horseshoe. In my fantasy it was from the horse of Catharine Davis, a horse reputedly the fastest in Lane County in the 1860s. That's right. It's a priceless horseshoe.