August has come, the fix-it time of year.

A month has slipped by and although I have had many thoughts, I didn't feel like doing the usual overview and analysis and scrutiny needed to wrap things up and make statements about them. I still don't, but I recognize that I am enervated and need fun things to remind myself what I love. Like writing.

The wedding/family reunion/OCF sure happened and it was intense and exhausting, and pretty darn fun. I wish I could have slowed it down. Having a video of the wedding is great, and it captures the moments very well. Lots of grins and warm feelings all around. It's hard to go back to normal.

 Normal means things like death and depressing house repairs and big projects I have no desire to begin. The roof on the shop needs replacing, and not just the shingles, I have to repair the plywood where that angry raccoon tore it up last year. I'll have to move that up on the priority list. I hope no mice moved in...I heard strange noises today. The roof on the shop isn't the only thing that needs to be fixed out there. I still have plenty of post-OCF sorting and repacking of things I don't even really want in the first place. I guess I wanted them at some point. I suppose I still want to be in the retail t-shirt business. Maybe tomorrow I will want it more than I do today.

I made myself go back out to the Fair Site several times and spent three days on a ladder re-shingling my little roof facade out there. It was fun, I realized about halfway through, so I slowed down and tried to enjoy it. Certainly I love spending time out on the land, with the birds and my solitary thoughts about the politics and the people and the complicated production that is Fair, and I like making things and solving problems, especially when nothing much is on the line. It doesn't matter a whole lot what I do to the booth, as it is built to rot 51 weeks of the year and look rustic the remaining week. I left some teeth of the old shingles to vex me in future years and get me back out there to work on it some more. It served me to have that new project, with cedar shingling which I hadn't done before and which is satisfying to do, but now it's done and I have projects at home that do matter. Maintenance and repairs have gotten a bit ahead of me in the last year what with the foot and all. And it hurts. Didn't like the ladder. I get a little depressed by my foot pain, even though on the scale of pain it is so minor and so not a problem like most people have problems. Still, it's more or less constantly getting in my way.

 Depression is an odd state for me. Maybe I flirt with it, as I really don't go that deep, usually able to distract myself with some project or other. My cousin, actually my Dad's cousin, Michael, died last week. He was only five years older than me, and I didn't exactly feel close to him, but I am much more affected by his death than I expected to be. It brings up all of my discomfort with death and illness, and that helpless feeling that comes with the grim options connected with the process. I know we will all go some way or other, I know it is part of life, all of that, but it's a big adjustment for the people left behind to regret and wish they had done better. I could have done a lot better by Michael, and some others I'm thinking about, so I'm kicking myself a little, which is probably a good trigger for depressing feelings and I guess I should find a way to stop.

I suppose I did the best I could at the time. When I feel too vulnerable I am not much good to others, and I tend to run scared and hide. I was a bit afraid of the emotional issues brought up by my Dad's side of the family and everything associated with that, and still wanted some answers from Michael which of course he couldn't give me as he was not holding those answers. No one is. I wish I would have tried harder to see what else Michael had to offer me outside of his association with my Dad, but I don't know if that would have been any easier. So I feel bad that he up and died and now I can't do better for him.

Of course the healthy thing would be to do better for someone else, someone who is in my life and could benefit from that. I'll try. Doing better for myself would also be smart. I could get that massage I need and make my friend Pamela a key lime pie for her birthday. That I could do. That would feel good, plus Pie!

I feel better already. All we can really do is try over and over to do the best we can when we get the chance. It helps if we know what those actions are...but mostly they are about being present and listening and paying attention, even if we are bored or not interested or feeling selfish or panicked. I can do better with that.

I'll get to that roof problem. Today I can't even make the list of things I have to do next. Maybe the list will be easier to make tomorrow, or even later. I do have some lovely purple tote bags on the line that I dyed last night and this morning and that could make me happy. It rained a few drops, which was different. I notice the neighbors have not only taken the tarp off the cob house in my view, but have taken off the roof as well and it looks like they broke up the pond surround and I am hoping they filled in the pond. I can't really see into their yard that well but it looks like they took off the front of the house too, and maybe it will not be a cob house anymore. If they don't reroof it it will soon be a heap of mud and straw. Maybe that is what is making me sad, since it is not something I can control at all, yet I have it in my daily view and have loved it for almost twenty years.

It is reminding me that when I was building this house they built the cob house, spending two months on it one summer when I was doing foundation work on my fifteen-year project. John and his friend Martin, who were around five, found the foundation work next door much more fun that what I was doing and they got just covered with mud. It's a happy memory. I should show the new neighbors the pictures and tell them what I know of the history.

It's all making me think about my own house again and all my research that needs finishing and further development. I do want to write that book. Perhaps I need to assign myself some kind of creative schedule so that time is built in for writing, as fun. Like bike riding used to be. I need some fun.

Fortunately the Slug Queen Coronation is this Friday and the laughs are guaranteed. I probably won't think about death or roof repairs or t-shirt sorting or anything like that on Friday night, and if I motivate to make that pie for Pamela, I can look forward to the taste of that. Those tricks should work.

Okay, I think I can go on now, I have tempted myself back into enjoying my life. Really, one little blog post is all it takes? Amazing, the wondrous human mind. Guess I can stand looking around to see what else is wondrous and delightful. Might even be surprised.

Weddings and Ruffles

In a week I will be giving my son away in marriage! Weird concept for someone who has not married herself and isn't even thinking about it. Some rituals are frightening just because they will tickle our senses...in this case my sense of loss comes to mind. I hadn't associated loss with this wedding at all until I found out that I will be walking him through the labyrinth and then handing him over, as if I were giving up the nurturing role to his wife, with all they symbology that goes with family succession and the dominance of the future over the past. Another reason to have a good cry before the day of.

It has been all about gain for me, solidifying a relationship with a stupendously amazing daughter-in-law, being proud and always surprised by the growth of my former little boy, getting a family reunion thrown in for good measure, plus having the overlay of the concentrated ecstasy of the Country Fair, which is like all the holidays rolled up in one sweaty sensual package. It has started to sound like fun, now that I am finished printing, have a handle on all the shade needs of the booth and the people, and have my stock more-or-less filled in and ready to sell.

I'm still working on my *steampunk* costume, which will not be very steampunk I don't suppose, since it will be too hot to wear the Victorian black dress even though it is split up the side so I can get into it, or the brocade robe I had planned to embellish. My sewing machine is still in the living room, next to the table I finally put up to manage the many Jell-O hat ornaments I have in progress.

I'm making things for the hats of all the wedding attendants, Bride and Groom, flower girls, etc. I also plan to have them for the guests, and myself if I get busy and make one for me too. I will. These things are still on the list to complete.

I am trying to clean and de-clutter my whole house (my whole life?) in preparation for my family, most of whom have not seen the house I built and the life I have here, centered around crafts and art and Radar Angels and Saturday Market and the Fair. I want it to look as polished as possible, but of course I don't have time for spring cleaning now. I have a list of excuses, though, starting with my year of the broken foot when a few maintenance kinds of things got away from me. I am just going to appear a bit messy and disorganized, a bit in the classic artist mode. I just can't cover all the bases. It makes me feel old and triggers my sense of loss...and makes for way too much stress.

I guess if they think my house is too tiny and cluttered they probably won't say anything. I'm still proud of it. I call it my first draft house...I haven't had time for the edits that would make it ready for publication. My whole life is kind of like that. It's moving too fast to keep all the loose ends tied up. Sometimes we just have to hang on and do the best we can.

So here we go for a few more days of that before we launch. I will get finished! I will show all of my polished facets and most of my chipped and flawed ones will be kindly overlooked. This is life at its peak for the next week or so. Nothing will be under my control. It will be fast and fleeting and full of all the emotions there are (maybe we can skip horror and dismay and dejection and such) happening all at once.

Hope you can share it with me! Wish I had time to upload some pics of the Jell-O. It is going to be an amazing, overflowing hoopla! With ruffles!

Following up a little

My last post got a lot of readers...I hope it served to inform rather than inflame. It helps me to remember that everyone has an opinion, and feels that it is equally valid. One of the main points that I hear from my fellow small business owners is that people with an economic stake in the issue ought to be the ones making the decisions. Visionaries are great to bring out the possibilities, and Dime a Dozen types seem to find endless ones, but the decisions should be in control of the neighborhood users, the ones who will live or fail to thrive with the results.

The Working Group, which is meeting regularly to talk over the possibilities, functions well. It's a tough process to take groups with essentially opposite views and bring them together into some kind of agreement, or at minimum, understanding of the entire picture, so that all stakeholders can have a voice. Representatives are one level removed, of course, so it is critical that the representatives don't get too fixed into position without regularly checking with their interest groups. That is, of course, difficult during the Market day, and practically impossible outside the Market day.

We were rocking all day on the west block, with no time for anything but what we came there to do, which was to offer our wares to the many wonderful tourists, track fans, students, graduates and their families, and local people shopping for themselves, their Dads, and their whims. It was pretty great for some, marginal for others, and mysterious in all the ways it always is. We didn't even have much time for our usual hi-jinks. Unlike the previous week, however, my side of the blocks was not all abuzz about the street closure. That was a relief.

We people who sell are natural family members, no matter where we are located. Our issues are more similar than different. Our affinity grows over the years and we get boundary issues...we fail to see them after awhile. We're close in an odd way, intimate for a day every week, but not having a lot of knowledge about each other outside of that interface, unless we make those efforts, and most of us have. It's rare to find someone who doesn't feel a part of the community, though of course for some it takes awhile, or they go away mad, never really getting the feelings.

I'm thinking that some of this plays into the issues some vendors seem to repeatedly have with our favorite Fair in the woods. We aren't there long enough to really feel a part of the life that goes on pre-Fair, and we don't always feel included. We work on the weekends when most of the volunteers do their volunteering. So often our "feedback" comes out of our frustrations and feelings that we don't belong, and it comes out as complaining.

I regret my part in this dysfunctional type of communication over the years. It's way too easy to complain and not do the further work of understanding the situation from other viewpoints. Even when you try to understand it, you sometimes come from the opposite side of the issue, and rarely do we have the time during an interaction to listen to other sides, to really feel them. Email, so often one-sided, can add to the distress. I apologize for all of the vendors who have fallen into this trap, who can allow the frustration to add up until it gets to the ranting stage, which of course prevents the next stages from happening. Tired, overworked people so often just lose patience and go to one of their defensive positions, generally the most familiar one. Feeling the victim is all too prevalent, and bullying can also emerge.These are not the better sides of our natures.

We all have to watch out for this. We all have to ask ourselves what would make us feel more a part of things, would enrich our experience, would help ease whatever problems we run up against. Pretty generally it is not something that can be done by the other, by "them." It has to come from "us". That translates to "I have to do it."

I started volunteering for OCF a few years ago when I felt that I wasn't "seen." I had some mishaps and some anger and worked through it to figure out what parts were mine to own. Pretty much all of it, I realized, had to be fixed by my own efforts, and by changing my attitudes. It has not been easy, but I did find that the response was positive whenever I offered to actually do something, or when I expressed my thoughtful opinions. People who pitch in generally gain a lot more respect than those who observe. There is always plenty to do, and you can find a fit for your particular talents.

The volunteers get tired of pointing this out. Everyone works hard to make it all happen, and everyone certainly has their level of self-interest, but to a true volunteer, the common good is always more important that the individual effort. People who love the Fair are really genuine about this. The social change, the economic opportunity, the chance to relax and have fun and be openly creative and enthused, the intensity of positive energy, all of these are real and essential to thousands of participants. Reducing it to a weekend of making money is way off from the real value of the giant spinning peach.

Yet money is made and should be. We can quibble about the details and we can certainly refine the process and the growth and the future possibilities, but we are all there for more than that, or we would be somewhere else that weekend. We can, and must, speak up about our experiences and our ideas for the refinement, but whenever we go to the "us vs. them" territory we need to back up and take a reality check.

If you don't feel part of the "US", then figure out what is holding you back. If you hear yourself saying "They did _____" then ask yourself who "THEM" are, and go further into what they might be trying to do or thinking about regarding the situation. You can believe that you are not being targeted for anything. Nobody wants to make your life harder for any reason. There is always a deeper goal, and with OCF and my other organizations, it really seems to be true that underneath there is the real, deeper goal of the common good. I believe this about all of the groups I am part of.

Really. And furthermore, I believe that this can be found underneath most movements for change, even if it is traffic change we are discussing. I think that is why people get so entrenched and offended. They do think they are working for the common good, and they are hurt when they are told they are wrong in whatever way this happens. If they have the crusader archetype working in them, they sometimes feel like they are the only one working for the common good. They sometimes fail to see what is really happening around them.

My feeling about the situation at 8th and Oak is that we must first really define the common good in detail, and then we can promote it. Next we have to learn to trust each other, and that is really hard until we find out our similarities and identify our differences. This takes research, and time, and words, and the physical presence of each other in the room together. And of course it takes honesty, some humbleness, and a lot of real work.

As one metaphoric example, I rushed out of the shop to the WG meeting without getting the ink off of my hands, and the garden dirt out from under my fingernails. I worried about this until I looked around the table at the other hands, and they were pretty much all dirty hands, working hands. This wasn't the type of business meeting with suits and ties and expensive fountain pens. We had a lot in common, and it was the dirt. The land, and its fragments. 

We all need to remember what we have in common and look for more. The way we are going to find the elegant solutions is by working deeper, and the way we work deeper is that we follow the consensus-seeking process. I am so committed to this after a lifetime of learning it, that I will not probably understand someone else's need for majority voting or solutions that require a yes or no. I see that as cutting out the sometimes inefficient, ponderous process of listening to all of the people who will be affected. All of them, the ranters, and the thoughtful, the visionaries and the practical ones who just want to get to work. Everybody has to have a voice.

So if we are representatives, we need to know if we are speaking for our interest groups, and we can't just allow ourselves to get fixed into position. I knew last week at Market, by the many, many conversations I heard, that my position represented my interest group and had in mind the common good. I felt confident making that blog post, and carefully tried to make my point, but I hope I also conveyed that it was only a slice of the big picture.

The big picture and the elegant solution are not yet set. They are fluid. The spinning peach is not a rigid and unemotional thing. The streets downtown belong to everyone, the public. The users, even if we pay for the use, are not the final word on the matter. We need to know what the customers think, what the officials think, what the drivers think, what the property owners in the neighborhood think. We need a broad discussion, and we need to find the consensus. If we fail to go through the process, we will spawn the complainers, and we will fail to find the elegant solution.

It's a neighborhood, what happens there on Saturdays. Just go look at it on any other day, and you will see a different neighborhood. One of my issues is that I want all the people who use the blocks, including the drummers, including the cops, including the farmers and the hippies and the car people and the cyclists, to feel enough a part of the neighborhood that they will want to speak up about their experiences and will want to be part of the solution. It is difficult to speak for those who refuse to pitch in.

And so I come around to the complainers. I joke about my frustrations with my organizations and I sometimes lampoon and poke fun with my art. I've called it the Annoy-Again Country Fair and laughed loudly. I've tried, in recent years, to add a bigger portion of love into that formula. When I criticize, I am pointing out my failure to communicate in a more productive manner. I've tried to suppress my complainer and unleash my hard worker and pitch in and make the change I desire to see, in as loving and participatory a way as I possibly can.

So I type things, arrange tiny black marks into some kind of order to transmit some kind of thought into being. I organize, I witness and document, as impartially as it is possible for me to be, as imperfectly as I must. I presently take minutes for five different bodies. It's a hell of a lot of time, though thankfully most of them only meet once a month. I attend and participate in the meetings, and if they last two hours, that means I spend at least another two hours listening to the recording and trying to make it organized and communicate the sense of the meeting. Then send it out, make sure it is made part of the public record, and make sure it gets to all of those who want to know about it, if that is within my power. I humbly am corrected many times and often am helped to a more clear, more careful communication.

I only get paid for two of those groups, and my sacrifices include not having enough time for my creative writing, my weeding, my getting ready for selling, my relaxation and my life. This time of year I can despair about it, but I want to stop short of complaining and point out what many people do for others. All of those people who are out at the Fair site this weekend are working for me, and it makes me happy that they are enjoying it. Most of them have regular jobs for money and they work weekends for the common good. They bring their particular talents and they put them to the common goals of having a safe, happy event that promotes awareness, spiritual and human growth, highlight artistry of all kinds, and is a heck of a thing.

We all benefit. We all could pitch in a lot more. We all want to belong, to feel good about our work, and to make something wonderful with our efforts. Maybe we are envious of how fun it looks to drive a Gator or walk the eight endlessly, maybe on Saturdays downtown we wish we had strawberries to sell instead of earrings. We really have to learn to appreciate the efforts of others, to respect them, and to feel our kinship instead of our frustration. Step back and turn it around. We all need the relief this will bring.

Develop your trust for your own relief and happiness. Work around those you don't feel you can trust, check out what is preventing your full participation and see what you can do about it. You.

I know you are busy, or shy, or inarticulate, or frustrated, or cynical, or hurt. I hear you, I am trying to see you. Please trust that many, many people are trying to see you. Allow that, and express yourself as kindly and as respectfully as you can, and you may get your needs met. You might have to work a long time to make that happen, but the time will pass anyway, and the frustration hurts you a lot more than the participation will.

Let's all try a little harder, especially now that we are working so many hours and have such important deadlines. One of my favorite pitch-in people wears one of my favorite hats this time of year, one that she gets in exactly the way I created it. It says "Just keep working" on it.

Gotta go. Today I have three sets of minutes waiting, and about twenty steampunk with Jell-O Art hats to create. I'm dyeing two loads of bags and hoodies, and the raspberries need water but my foot hurts too much to drag the hose around the yard. This is my day off. I'm guessing not many of my readers are sitting around with their feet up. This is the busiest time of year for many of us.

So this is the time of year we have to have the most patience, the most compassion, and work the hardest internally as well. It will be worth it. There will be a lot to celebrate. Trust that.

How to Change: Don't Put up Roadblocks

Institutional memory is a precious resource but it can sure get ponderous. Sitting in the same spot at Eight and Oak for 43 years has created some powerful stories.

And when I say Eighth and Oak, I am guessing you think: Saturday Market. You think that, for one reason, because in the last 40-odd years Saturday Market has spent just about a million dollars advertising that one essential phrase: 8th and Oak. It's our home, and notwithstanding that it is a city/county park used by thousands of other members of the public, it is still unalterably a home to me, and Saturday Market history there is my history. And there are dozens and hundreds of members and former members who feel that way. We go there every week and do what we do. Thousands of times, each one different.

I asked some tourists this week about their experience, since I had overheard them saying: "There it is, just like on the website." They had seen one of my fresh new hats, *Grateful Dad* pictured in the new products which Kim, our Promotions manager, documents so frequently. They said they didn't know their way around Eugene at all, but just went for Eighth. Eighth, Eighth, Eighth.

This Great Street, historically the Main Street which got the pioneers from Skinner's Mudhole to their farms and communities up the river road, was a conduit long before Sixth and Seventh became the feeder streets. Long before Eleventh was paved, long before any thoughts of bus-rapid-transit, back when people walked everywhere unless they had a horse. Farmers and craftspeople gathered there from the beginning to trade and support each other.

It is the artery of our Market, and as it runs between our two Markets, Saturday Market and Lane County Farmers Market, it connects us and feeds us and makes us inseparable.We have more than just synergy. Our institutional memory reaches back to when we were ten and created the LCFM by inviting farmers into our membership. Lotte told us all of the world markets she had observed had produce and other food within them, and we needed it too. Throughout the next thirty years we sold together with farmers in various arrangements, and it was always together that we all did our best.

We can't really cut to now and just start fresh with new solutions to what some LCFM members and some members of the community think are the essential problems with the space. We would not be wise to jettison our collective memory and follow the imaginations of new people who don't seem to see us as we see ourselves. We couldn't do it even if we tried.

The Saturday Market is not just an organization, but it is a membership, and every member is an independent, autonomous business. Each one thinks for herself, gathers facts, forms opinions, and makes her (or his) experience, different every week, responding to the conditions of the moment, but within the conditions of our collective experience that we have learned are what sustains us. This Saturday every time I walked anywhere in the Market I heard people talking about the street closure plan. We like having farmers, but this week we were having a hard time shopping over there.

We like having tourists, parking, garbage collection, hand-washing stations, staff, security, etc. We have chosen to spend a million dollars in advertising and promotion, dollar by dollar. And every single dollar we spend comes from the pockets of our members. All of our money comes from us, through the generosity and interest of our beloved customers, for whom we try our best to create a safe, fun experience.

We create it, with the kind assistance of our neighbors and friends and all of the people who visit our town and want what we want. The love shown for our two organizations is prodigious. People are as dedicated to us as we are to them.

And nobody wants to see us struggle. While members of the community have varied opinions on what will or won't work or should or shouldn't happen, our institutional memory knows that it is possible to break what we have. It is possible to ruin it. As strong and mighty as it looks, you can love it to death.

I'm happy that new farmers are wanting to join what is the premier community gathering in the state, perhaps, maybe in the PNW. Maybe we are the center of the universe as we often say metaphorically. The future of our food is beyond essential, and it seems so vital that young farmers have a way to enter the marketplace, some room, some support. No one is against this. But I am going to draw a very clear line on how growth has to happen at Eighth and Oak.

Eighth has to be open. It is our artery. The closure of Eighth Street for a few farmers' booths is not a step forward to greater prosperity. It will break our Market. No rosy vision of expansion that chokes off our lifeblood will be sustainable or positive for either organization.

It might look good for the farmers. An Eighth Avenue closure plan brings nothing for the Saturday Market members. It will break us.

It may be rude and it is not our style to point this out, but we have a huge imbalance on the Park Blocks, and that is that Saturday Market has grown organizationally to respond to the changed conditions of our marketplace. We have pooled our money through our percentage fee (we pay $10 plus 10% daily for our spaces, plus other fees) and we have rented lots of bathrooms (at an annual cost of $12,000). We have hired security teams for the hours we are there. We have hired people to put up fences, tables, rain protection and shade, to empty our trash cans, to clean up messes, to process people's credit cards and hand out change, to give little kids bandaids and to spread the word of our offerings. We have spent a literal fortune to build our enterprises together and to make them strong, and above all, safe, and we always work until we find something that works for as many of us as possible.

We have subsidized the LCFM with our money, our time, our thoughts, and our hearts for the whole of its existence. We have nurtured it and we continue to pay way more than our fair share for what happens around us on Saturdays. Thousands of my dollars have gone to clean up after the spontaneity of what happens on the Courthouse Plaza. Our staff cleans it every week. We don't rent it, we aren't responsible for it, we don't have any control over it, we just keep it clean. We do that because it is the right thing to do. Thousands of my dollars have gone to sort the trash of farmers' customers, to answer the bazillion questions about the farmers that run through the SM information booth, to do the right thing as well as we know how to do for our beloved neighborhood. We give and we give.

I would not take back a single dollar. I do not like to see the farmers struggle. I would love to see them have the amount of space they need to prosper. However, the space is finite, and we are already using all of it. The uses being made of Eighth Street are the historical, practical, essential uses. It is the only legal and safe bike egress to the west, particularly when Broadway gets blocked off as it was this weekend. It is the way people find the Market, get through it to park, and see what it is. One one side we have the Saturday Market, and on the other side we have the Farmers Market. This is not by accident, and it is not a casual arrangement. Oak Street lacks the intimacy and presence of Eighth. Eighth is not just a through street, it's much more.

We only moved to the Park Blocks in 1982, but we know what it was like when we didn't have the easy entry of Eighth Street. When we were cloistered up on the Butterfly, people were afraid to enter. It took a commitment. Easy entry works for us. Barriers to entry do not.

Closing the Street means narrowing access, and diverting traffic to other locations. Tourists will drive off to Fifth Street, to Down to Earth, to Oakway, and to South Eugene. Locals will find other ways to meet their Saturday needs, deciding not to fight the bolloxed traffic patterns, to take an easier path. It will break us.

And like the other things that we hold in our long memory that have not worked for us, this one will be the worst. This will be looked upon in retrospect just like what happened to downtown through urban renewal, the growth of VRC, and the Downtown Mall. The collective wisdom of the mature institution that is the Saturday Market tells us that this is not the time to accommodate, to experiment, to try out closure and see how it works.

Logistical problems may be solvable, traffic may be controllable, feelings may be consolable. It might look like it works okay for a weekend or part of a season. I'm not sure if you will be able to tell if it is working or not. I'm not sure if the anticipated drop in my  sales and our organization's income, (and the rise in our expenses, which has already taken place as we spend needed resources in meetings and staff time) will be traceable to this alteration in our circulatory system. Nobody really knows.

But we know what feeds us. We know ourselves, and we know the farmers. We know the history of the last ten years of LCFM struggle. We are not new to the situation. We aren't going to put the history aside and doom ourselves to a huge, uninformed mistake by a few people with energy.

Saturday Market is drawing the line. We oppose street closure. LCFM can not own Eighth Street. It is far too valuable.

And through our commitment to doing the right thing, we will continue to work to solve our neighborhood problems. We welcome group process. We have skills to apply to it. We care deeply about our relationships and long, deep cooperative collaborations with the farmers. We think it will break them too, this vision that is not grounded in what is already happening down there.

We are not willing to stand aside and watch this happen. We have offered at least six alternatives to street closure. There are ideas we haven't even yet explored. We have good ideas, a dime a dozen. Just ask.

Don't ask, at your peril. We have six hundred members with opinions. Some of them are grounded in the long history, and it won't be pretty when they surface. Do the work, Eugene City Government, Lane County Government, Lane County Farmers Market, and all who are trying to support small business, economic prosperity, and sustainable business in Oregon. Find the solution that will actually work to improve things.

Don't break us. We are a treasure. Listen to us and respect us. There is no other Saturday Market. Don't love progress more than you love what we have made, what we are making. Do not try to brush us aside.
We are the experts on downtown retail on Saturdays. We sing it every week: Prosperity and fun for everyone.

Can we just get back to that, please? This is the busy season! I have so much to do, to get ready for OCF, for my only son's wedding, my family reunion, my continuing recovery from my broken foot, researching and writing my book, doing the myriad unpaid and paid things I do all the time. The garden needs weeding! I do not have time to go over this repeatedly as we have for the last several years. Do not close the street. Do not close the street. Just don't do it.

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!