Rain? But I'm not ready!

It's never all that easy. It's probably Disney or some other cultural mythos that makes us think life can be so rainbowey and full of love...there are the occasional moments of joy and satisfaction. Mostly it feels like we have to talk ourselves into feeling okay with things. I like the Four Agreements because they tend to stick in my mind where things like the Fifteen Cognitive Errors of Negative Thinking are too hard to call up when needed. We refine them over time to fit our own needs, but the Four Agreements are kind of simple: Be Impeccable, Don't Take it Personally, Don't Make Assumptions, Do Your Best. Maybe too simple.

I keep that stuff on my refrigerator, as I am a visual learner who has to see things frequently to keep them foremost. Some of the fifteen errors come up so often they are identifiable as personality tendencies, as in, I do tend to Personalization (it's all about me), indulge in the many fantasies of Control (blogging being one I suppose), and believe the Fallacies of fairness, justice, you know what I mean. We all have many areas of our lives where we are just indulging in wishful thinking.

Like ignoring the weather reports. Yesterday it did indeed rain and if I had bothered to heed the warnings I would definitely have taken the booth instead of the two shade umbrellas with their many drip edges and other inadequacies for a day in the park. I did not feel like the experienced craft professional who is my best side. I didn't do my best, and I made assumptions. It wasn't as bad as Tuesday when I knocked my entire display into the aisle during set-up...narrowly missing a fellow worker and coming dangerously close to wiping out our Market's founder. I can just see the headlines: Market Founder Killed by Booth of Usually Kindly Elder. "I thought I knew what I was doing," the experienced craftsperson explained, "but I tried something new...."

New things happened. I have been experimenting with fitting into my fountain space at the Tuesday Farmers' Market: it's a narrow one so I have a long display with my bags and the hats on top, and shade for me and my customers and the dyed bags which will fade. I knocked it over trying to put up the second umbrella without really watching what might happen next. It was stupid, like pretending it never rains in the summer. I have my excuses, but they don't amount to a hill of beans when someone almost gets hurt.

I've also been having a problem of people stepping into the fountain while looking at my hats, so this week I tried hard to solve that once and for all by a different set-up, and indeed I think I succeeded in that, but was so focused on solving the one problem I didn't cover the others. Weather isn't so serious, though. I had some wet things, which will dry today, and weren't ruined. It rained on me again while I was leisurely unloading and unpacking at home, but it felt kind of nice at the end of the day.

Emotionally it has been rough around the Market, and the resentments and disappointments are still simmering. It grates on me that I am not seen as I am, a human trying from within my limits to improve and one struggling in the very same ways as everyone else on the blocks. People resent me selling the hats, which were grandfathered in some years back with two other hat-decorators, after the Standards Committee and Board passed a rule banning decorated commercial hats. Beth had to come to me at Holiday Market and tell me I could no longer sell my best-selling product, which had been overlooked, as at the time I was not selling on Saturdays due to being a single mom remodelling my house while working for 4J. Couldn't do Saturdays, but just HM, for about a decade. It was a shock, and she wisely allowed me to finish out the HM with them and bring them to Standards after the season ended. That was a relief, but then I had many weeks to stew over it.

Of course I got defensive and hurt and spent countless hours preparing my arguments and getting all up into my fears and self-righteous ego flights. I have been a member since 1975...was there to sign the Articles of Incorporation, was there in the extreme budget crisis we had in the 80's, the personnel crises, all of the tough times we had as we attempted to step up and set a firm foundation for our organization, coming from our limited skills to make something that would last and keep us all alive. We weren't all that good at it, and lots of people got mad, hurt, and some went away, but we all learned together how to treat each other and live as a community, a family even. I have a huge sense of belonging from that continuous effort, but I certainly have never received any special favors for it. I had to bring my little products down and spread them on the round table and try to keep the tears in as I explained why I thought I should be able to sell them. None of my history was relevant. I was just a craftsperson doing a craft that looked different from the current Market realities.

In those days the discussions were held with the craftsperson present, so I understand the current system that allows the committee to deliberate confidentially on these issues. It was really hard to hear my family members make their pronouncements on my future. For the record, my justifications were that I was really selling my body of work, my sense of humor and writing abilities, my graphic arts abilities and my screenprinting expertise, all hard won over time with constant effort. They happened to be concentrated on a commercially made product, a carefully chosen high-quality one, which was quite difficult to print, and I had been selling them for about a decade at that point. No one was even trying to handmake a baseball hat, much less screenprint on one, so it wasn't direct competition, like a felted or straw hat with a fabric flower applied to it would be to a person who hand-blocked their hats. My arguments were good, the committee was kind to me, and they grandfathered the three (the other two were tie-dyers) of us in, in what I thought was a good decision, regardless of the benefit to me.  Not everyone on the committee was happy with the decision though, and some have never acted warm to me since. I can't say I have let it go completely either, but I have tried hard to separate their committee service and opinions from them as people, tried to still buy from them or chat with them, or at minimum accept our different opinions as just that. It would have been highly inappropriate to tell a member their product was all of a sudden not acceptable, but I had been making them since before the days of screening each new product and the Market was changing, trying to be more professional and supportive of real handcrafting. I could see that it wouldn't be good for Market to have a lot of commercial hats with minimal decoration, and I still feel I have to upgrade my product and raise my artistic contribution to keep it really compliant. I'm convinced it is, but like the printed t-shirt, someday it might be judged unacceptable and I will have to live with that.

Change brings personal challenge, and I may end up on the other side of that in the current OCF struggles, may end up as part of a body telling juried-in crafters they are now juried-out. That's still a long way down the road, but I'm just making the point that we don't know how things will change. We are, a lot of the time, in reaction mode to the unexpected wrinkles of our lives. We all get caught up in the folds and start to thrash around, but we ought to attempt to have a few thoughts for those we thrash upon.

We all operate with these old hurts driving our thoughts and present actions. I noticed in a discussion of alcoholism and addictions with my son that tons of old stuff came up for me, the many people I have seen die slowly from the self-hatred of addictive behaviors, the ways the addictions still operate in me despite my knowledge and work to dispel them, the ways our lives are formed almost without our awareness. I once told him that every lame thing in our lives came from alcohol or drugs...a too-simple view of things that shaped us, but I wanted to get the point across that if he was hurting from something, the pull to addiction in its many seductive forms was going to cause unexpected injuries on top of the original hurt. It's hard to free ourselves from the many levels of this, and many blog posts could be written. I'll just make the point again that when we thrash around, we don't really see all the damage we cause.

So while you may be in distress and feel up in your own cognitive errors and you are stuck at #9 Blaming, and are blaming me, or any other person, for that matter, quit it. It hurts. I have given and am still giving and have a lifetime of giving, and if I have a few gains from that, I have earned them. I don't sit in judgement. I'm in the group that is working on the details, doing the paperwork, hauling the heavy stuff down and opening it up. I'm the witness at the meetings, I'm there to record it as accurately as I can. Yes, I get paid to do that. Members of SM can know that I get paid $10 an hour to record the meetings, take notes, and type up the notes for the public record. I do it as a volunteer for OCF and have done it as a volunteer for Market too. Now we have the means and desire to pay a little for it, to see it as a job for staff and an important enough job to have a consistent, more-or-less professional finish to it, and I would point out that there are not many people who would want the job. It's really quite hard sometimes to listen to the recordings and try to put a coherent layer of organized thought over what is sometimes just emotional discharging and at other times important life-changing progress.

I hope everyone takes a step back this week and thinks a little more about the downstream effects of their anger and the pain they express. Like my cascade of booth parts and the rain that sneaked down into my bags, sometimes disaster is narrowly averted and things fall over that you hadn't meant to tip or drip. Simple physics can apply: every action causing an equal and opposite reaction, matter not being created or destroyed, but transformed, and so on, everything you do and say has an effect you might not have anticipated. You are responsible for this, though you may sidestep and not even notice the aftershocks. Somehow you have to find the time and gain the skills to walk through this life with kindness and much more compassion than you think you can find within. You have to dig deep. That is what makes life a little bit more tolerable, a little less filled with terrifying change, a little less painful.

Nobody gets it that easy. We really have to work to lift each other up. We really can make powerful change, and to our luck, that sometimes happens as an after-effect too. We could make it a little easier on each other. Let's keep that in our minds as we enter the harder seasons of autumn and winter. You don't know what is being carried by others, but don't make the mistake of thinking that their hands are empty. At minimum, they have a piece of the truth.

Which is why we have learned to work as a group, with the process of attempting to find consensus, if not perfect agreement. We find something we can live with. If you don't feel that you are an equal part of the group, doing the same job as all of the rest of us, start there. If all you see is a Them in front of you, walk around and look from a different angle. See yourself as Us.

Then what will you do to help us? It might involve some hard work, some time, some selflessness, some learning, some stretching. You might have to shed some denial and some pride or whatever keeps you feeling superior or isolated. It might take your whole life to learn how to do this, to belong.

I'm still working on it, obviously. I appreciate your efforts as well. Hope everyone gets some time off from their many labors this weekend. And now I will go and hang some hats on the line.

All of us in the basket

Some of the favorites-grew the garlic from some I had bought 

I'm on of the ones who gets triggered by suicides, my little niche of PTSD that comes up now and then to remind me that mental illness is a spectrum on which we all reside. Everyone's perceptions are flawed for their own protection; our coping mechanisms of believing ours is the one true reality are sometimes just as non-functional as others: organized religion, obsessive control fantasies, and so on. I won't say a lot about it, but just recognize that lots of people walk around in fragile states every day, and it doesn't show, or you don't recognize it.

I know that when I get in that fragile state I need reassurance. I've learned that I have to work on those occluded, hidden memories that still give me messages from my earliest childhood, so I know what to tell myself, know how to identify my state, and after all these years of working on it I do feel like I have some control. But man, I can see it when people don't feel that control, can't find it. It is terrifying, especially for them, even if they are in that numbed frozen state between fight and flight. It's as real as the tomatoes in the garden, and at the same time, it is unreal, because it isn't tangible, can't be touched or seen clearly. There are tragedies every day, and insurmountable pain, and all the lesser degrees of that too. It's profoundly affecting, so we humans spend a lot of time looking away, glad that isn't us. We grab our straws of functionality and keep on working.

We feel fairly helpless around it, and embarrassed and blocked by that. We don't think there is anything we can do to help. Sometimes we are helping without knowing, though, reassuring without contact. Sometimes you can feel the need pulling you, and you can resist, not being willing to touch it. Sometimes you can just be soft with it, allow it without engaging. Once in awhile you can actually do something to fix a small part of it. You can touch the person, you can offer the reassurance. Often that is what I feel we do every Saturday on the Park Blocks. Our constant, joyful presence provides the reassurance that beauty can be created, new ideas do come, and some things remain the same. We are grounded in our traditions and we are open to all the change that we can fit within our blocks.

Many many people come to feel that joy and constancy. We call them regulars or customers or tourists or friends and neighbors, but as the community gathering place we welcome them and are changed by them, as we change their day and try to add something to their lives. It's humbling and I find a few tears nearly every week as someone lets me see inside. It is no easy task to bring all that openness and compassion downtown every week. Some of us do it twice. My Tuesday Market buddy brought all of herself down this week and didn't make a sale, and she needed the money. I wasn't able to give her a pity sale, because I was in heavy self-protection mode, waiting to see if my reaction would occur, if it would be heavy, how long it would last. I was in hypervigilance, and she was too. I was grateful for her presence and her awareness, and I hope we made each other feel safe. We talked quite a bit about depression and death, and choices, and of course that isn't so conducive to sales, so maybe she can add that to the reasons she didn't sell well. Subtle currents run deep, and apparently no one saw that she needed them to buy her work, or they had pools of their own to keep treading water in. Surely Saturday will work better for her.

Steel Web earrings, moss agate

I was going to write about honesty and honor. I lied a lot as a kid, which I read yesterday is a typical part of childhood trauma, a tactic to lessen fear and confusion. A couple of adults in my life tried to help, gently or brutally, in the 50's way of thinking, which wasn't too evolved. I can look back now and see how hard it was for them to know what to do. They were sure I would need honesty in my later life, so felt compelled to install it, with whatever tactics they knew. While washing my mouth out with soap definitely got my attention, I so wish I had the kind of adult who would have hugged me and reassured me that I would always have enough, that my fears would lessen, and who could bring me back to feeling safe. I am always brought to tears when I see parents who know how to do this, and my hope for the future is high when I view that type of evolution.

I was of course a flawed parent, but when my son was in his deepest existential struggle, I said we would only have one rule: we both had to be honest. It was hard! I had to address my drinking, my relationships, my personality, my own existential struggles, and I had to really step up for him. I hope he learned to trust me more. I hope it gave him the ground to stand on that I wanted to provide. He does seem to be a secure and honest person, but then there is all that genetic stuff that he will have to discover for himself...I'm still terrified on that level. I always want to go to him for reassurance in my triggered state, though I have learned not to.

It's funny to me, but I wanted to go to Beth as well. She is like the Statue of Liberty to me, she provides the ultimate reassurance to me that people are good, ethical, honest, forthcoming and loving. At the Board meeting, at the end, she said something I have heard her say before, that is profoundly touching. She said something to the effect of: "Let's keep everyone in the basket."

We have to keep everyone in the basket. It's not just a symbol of the variety of our crafts, it's the metaphor for our lives. We're all crammed in there with our leaves intertwined and our flowers shedding pollen on each other, waiting for the bees. We can't throw anyone out, we are all us. We need each other. I can't have a Saturday Market down there by myself, no matter how dedicated I am. I need all of you there.

I know I said that in my last post, that we are us. I don't think many people really feel that, in either SM or OCF, but that is what provides me with the greatest reassurance. We all feel left out sometimes. I can't go to things on Saturdays unless I am willing to give up a lot, so I miss out on the picnic and people's parties and weddings and writing conferences, and sometimes those sacrifices don't pay off. My sense of belonging, though, really hinges on my weekly participation in the community gathering. I love isolation, so I need that forced interaction. I've thrived within the basket for forty years, and I plan to stay in it.

It is one of the places I learned and practice honorable behavior, where I care about my reputation and all of my actions. I can't hide there. It's one of our core values: we run the Market on the honor system. I don't know if people are taught to be honorable, if modern young people think it is important to be honest and dependable and do what is right. I'm not sure how I learned it, but for me it is a weekly practice and I barely think about it. I always pay my true booth fee, no rationalizations. I don't feel that all the money I make is even mine. I owe Market far more than ten percent of my sales.

So it is easy for me, because Market made me who I am and I am so very grateful for it every day. I've been honest with Market for 40 years and Market is honest with me. The fine and generous people who volunteer respect me, and all of us, enough to be gentle and firm and loving, and ask only for a fair share, to keep going. All of the Market income comes from our members. We pay all of our bills with it. We don't get grants, or even many donations, we work for our pay and we invest in ourselves for our longterm health and for our very existence.

Earrings by Gila Fox

It hasn't been so many years since the City hated us, the farmers hated us, the activists hated us, and the public didn't trust us much either. Over the decades we have had to earn the trust and respect we enjoy now, but it isn't something we can stop working on. We have endured because we come down there every week and put it all out there to be seen. We are honest about it. We are as authentic as it gets.

That keeps us strong and alive and allows us to be there for our community. We are so much more than a celebration or a marketplace. We are so important, in our small corner of the very big universe. We are essential, and we need your honest participation to continue to thrive.

So don't rationalize and pack early and cheat on your booth fees and hate on your neighbor. Those behaviors don't become you and you don't want to become them. Follow my one rule, to be honest, and meet me down there day after tomorrow. We're still growing and developing and working on our childhood pains, all of us, and we need each other to do it. Don't opt out, come in. We want you in the basket.

And don't worry about me, I am fine today, the little storm has passed and my strategies worked one more time. I feel safe. If you don't, I hope you know I care. A lot of people do. Try to stick around and feel it.

Do it, thoughtfully.

I can't seem to just get to work today. I worked yesterday, on my day off, and now I need a day off. I do not like to be this busy and it seems opposed to the weather and the lovely summer which is passing quickly as I watch. I did take a photo of my load last week, as it looked really cute to me. So organized and balanced, so neatly piled. I know it must look strange to see me pedal by, but I'm proud of how well I have this part of it dialed in.

There's a lot to do! My few customers all seem energized to order things, big and little, and I am pushing ahead on my bag ventures. I've now dyed some of the new locally made bags and they look pretty great, so today I am printing some of them for sale tomorrow at the Tuesday Market. My plan is to sell off the cheaper imported bags and go to all locally made, though it will take quite awhile to get there.

This is now the time for home improvement projects, too, and I decided to switch out the table in my project room, which led me to remember that it needs painting and this would be a great time to get those baseboards put on at last. I went and bought the wood and paint, and now have chaotic piles of tubs and boxes in the living room again, just like pre-Fair. Not conducive to relaxation.

My brother announced he is getting married in April (post-Jell-O Show, thank goodness) in Sydney, and I am challenging myself to go. I really don't want to fly around the world and go to exotic places. I've never been all that adventurous to begin with, but I do want to be there and it would be a big life experience, and a chance to go on an adventure with my son and his wife, as well as my Mom, who wants to go too. I'm trying hard to talk myself into it. It's a bit daunting, though I know it really isn't all that far from my comfort zone. They do speak English there. You don't even need any shots to go. I'll be turning 65 right about then, too, so all the more reason to do something big.

It's okay to feel overwhelmed. I just tell myself I don't have to go today, don't even have to decide today, though I have to get started on getting a passport. Thank goodness for the internet, because all stupid questions can find their answers online. It can just be one step at a time.

Market is going really well. I had my biggest sales day of the season this week, and wasn't even expecting it. There were a lot of tourists, and I don't think they had anything to do with track. It's probably predictable that during sports events I don't sell anything with Oregon printed on it...they get plenty of that over by campus. People do kind of like things with Eugene on them, though. The bags are selling fairly well, but this week it was almost all hats. People were in the sun and needed a hat, or were wanting gifts to take home, but gifts under $20. People liked my sense of humor, which is a big part of what I sell.

I'm so happy to have such a great product. I feel a bit conflicted, as I am using a commercial item and decorating it, using a craft technique that takes a lot of skill, but my items are not handmade like some people's. I'm not sewing the hats, and while I do dye and sew on some of the bags, I'm not handmaking the bags either, like some do. I'm well aware of the grey areas of crafting, after a lifetime of doing it in many forms. (I started at Saturday Market in 1975.) I'm not on the Standards Committee, but I take minutes for them, so I am involved in all of the intricacies of the decisions they feel called upon to consider. It is the hardest committee! I'm not on the Board either, but again, I take minutes, so I am involved in the consensus-seeking, decision-making process. I speak up if I have something to add.

Some of the decisions are really tough ones. The recent push to advance the artistry of jewelers by restricting the use of commercial charms and representative beads is a good example of a decision that has to be worked on periodically. Many jewelers find that the kind of low-priced items they can make with the charms are their bread and butter. Like my hats and bags, these items, priced around $15 or less, are what people want to buy a lot of the time. Of course we want to be known as a place where one can find the finest and most artistic of crafts, but we also need to be dependable for people on a budget, who will default to corporate crap if they can't afford anything at Market. I personally don't think we can make the restriction fly in its current form. There were at least two jewelers in my neighborhood who would find a huge portion of their items disallowed. Letting them continue to sell them for a year does not help. They still need low-priced options if they are going to be able to make enough at Market to make that 12-hour day pay off.

I'm less sure about requiring people to print their own shirts. I believe in the concept that people should have to be using a craft technique or two to sell at our Market. The Maker is the Seller. It shouldn't be the practice to make a phone call and have your craft items arrive fully formed at your doorstep, even though you designed them, chose the colors, and have to haul them down and pack them up. I feel at the same time that if you are standing there next to your work, as the artist, you are presenting the type of art we want to present.  Those two stances are contradictory in the matter of printed garments, so I don't know where I stand on that one. On the fence I guess. I suppose that not letting any more people join who don't print their own shirts is an okay solution, but I have helped a lot of artists get started by printing their shirts until they could find a way to print their own. Under the proposed rule they would not have had the chance to work their way up to where they are now, and a couple of them are really important members of our Market. So I'm undecided. I need more discussion and more time to consider it. I trust there are others who need more time, and I know from experience that our Market seldom moves very quickly. We take the time to consider. Part of the consensus-seeking process is that you almost don't need a vote, because you have talked it out. If you need a vote or the vote is close, you probably aren't yet at the elegant solution you are looking for.

If you as an artist go to the level where you are not really making the craft anymore, and having employees sell it as well, clearly you have left our definition of a handcrafter. Yet in today's economy, to support a family with your craft, you almost have to form a small business that you manage, using some number of employees to make your production work. Ideally you would still be using some craft techniques to do finish work or something on each item, but practically, you may just be the designer and visionary of the line, and not really the maker. Somewhere in there is a line you must be on one side of to qualify as a craftsperson.

We are challenged at OCF, where I am on the Craft Committee, to address this issue and find that line. It is going to be a difficult struggle I think. I think it is possible that we will have to go all the way to changing our bylaws to permit small businesses and designers to stay within the Fair. Clearly we have a number of them, maybe a large number. Saturday Market already decided that designers aren't qualified, unless they still hand-make every item they bring to sell. Technically this is the stance of OCF as well, but practically, the volume of sales there makes it probable that not all items sold at OCF are handmade by the maker. They might still be handmade, but they might be commercially made, too. It's difficult to tell. We have to decide how much this matters and just how to determine the limits of it. There will be meetings.

And meetings are full of people, usually a lot of people in a small, warm space, looking at each other around a roughly circular space. My main goal in the upcoming difficult discussions this month is to keep remembering and reminding each other that we are in a circle for a reason: it makes us equal. We are all us. We are working in a consensus-seeking manner. That means we all, respectfully, have to speak up with our pieces of the picture and all work together to make the best decisions we can.

There is no room in that small heated space for anger and hurt. There is no need to defend. You must challenge yourself to come with trust that you are welcome, you will be listened to, and there is no one in the room who wants to hurt you, personally or economically. If you feel that the rule, whatever it becomes, might hurt you, you will want to enter the process to make it a rule that won't hurt you, or others. But you have to do that without anger and fear.

Hurting others is never the goal. The goal is improvement for all. If a rule is clearly not going to bring improvement, it will not fly, so let's just work together toward our goals without the pain. Let's trust each other. That starts within you, so take some time before you attend, or before you write your letter, to clarify your fears and own them. Don't bring them with you unless you can take the fear part out and identify the real concerns.

Afraid of the future? Aren't we all at times? Feeling poor, and like you need every penny you can find? Lots of people are in the same boat. Feeling like someone is out to get you? I am here to tell you that is not correct. I have observed absolutely no one in the process with a personal axe to grind. That stuff is identified right away and doesn't survive group process.

Trust me, as I am a witness to the process when I take minutes. If you can't trust me, trust Beth, who as GM of SM, has the highest ethics and commitment to fairness possible to carry. She will not stand by an unfair decision without speaking up. I believe that an unfair decision will not happen in our inclusive process. So trust the process. Work to trust the people. At least work to treat them with compassion and respect. Work hard on it.

When good people gather to do good work, most fears are dissolved and not realized. Are you coming as a good person? I will too. We can work together. See you at the meetings!

Post post

After two solid days of work

We seem to be stuck in a moist cloud this morning, just like last Sunday. Main difference for me is that this is my first real day off after the major push of work to get to Fair and back again. Getting ready for Market was hard but well worth it, as I re-establish my routine and shift gears into summer.

Everything I brought back from Veneta was damp, so I spent the week hauling it all outside, drying it, and putting it all back into the tubs and boxes. We use excessive amounts of fabric out there and each item I took was either dusty or damp or both. I did successfully tarp my booth with a 20x30 foot white tarp I bought after the mud fair a few years back, motivated my helpers to get it up Saturday night so when the big drops fell on Sunday nothing was ruined. I think I packed that giant tarp up clean and dry for the next time, rolled for ease of unrolling. I felt smart having that protection when all reports were for hot and sunny all weekend.

It was odd to be checking the weather reports and rain probabilities online from the woods, but we were wired out there this year. Even  my Square worked, though the password-protected channel got overloaded on Sunday. There was no general announcement but lots of people owe a big thanks to Clif Cox for getting the wifi set up in that daunting setting. My needs were met.

That was my first thought as I made notes for this post on Monday and Tuesday as I shuffled stuff: Fair is the place where we can all get our needs met. This concept is something I have been working on since the big rain showed me that I was doing something the wrong way, as my needs were not met and I felt unseen. I went within to see what I could change, and the first thing was my thinking that complaining and assigning responsibilities to others was going to help me. This transformation continued for the next several years as I stepped up to join the Scribe Tribe, taking committee meeting minutes, and then joined the Craft Committee.

The year of the broken foot and then the wedding last year deepened my understanding of how things really work at Fair (and in Life) and I no longer feel any "They" out there: just Us. My level of appreciation for the whole scene this year was a hundred times what it used to be. I felt the love, and the hope, and the sharing and the family that is our Fair community. Considering that this involves around a hundred thousand people, give or take a few, it is a remarkable feeling.

I had some people rant at me about their various difficulties. I've heard these rants before and now certain things ring false really loudly. Everytime someone makes a category of "them" and assigns some groupthink or behavior to them, I bring up the fact that all of the "thems" are just individuals trying to get their needs met and help others in the family. Outsiders put themselves there. There's not really a privileged inner circle that holds any power, but rather a large group of persons willing to work together for common goals. Lots of the goals are connected: having an event, regulating the event, selling at the event, living at the event, making the event meaningful beyond its three days of public presence. Each individual is creating a slightly different event, shaded by their goals, and these all happening at the same time create a rich tapestry that cannot be imagined, fully viewed, or fully known by the individual. It's huge and spinning and spontaneous and planned, and can be overwhelming and you can certainly get chewed up by it if you do not understand the flow.

No one person creates it, and not many of the decisions are made by one person either. I had a craftsperson tell me that some of the "they" (which group happened to include me) did something completely unjust, which was fixed by some of the other "they" who are really the ones in charge, and this person's view of things completely supported their version of the Fair reality. This is how we get when we forget that we are individuals in a participatory process. His version was not my version, and they were almost opposed in view. We also had tons of common ground from which to work, though the timing was not such that we could find that and work forward from it right then. We were already working as hard as we could work.

That will be the job of the post-post Fair. We have some giant philosophical and practical issues to solve, and we will have to go way back to re-establishing our common ground and our initial agreements. We may not end up with the Fair we started with. The amorphous event has grown with participation and gone in directions on its own, and created some unique problems. For example, I don't know of any other Fairs that grant lifetime ownership of a craft booth, or have artisans who are grandfathered for over 30 years now. We are different, and we have some adjustments to make to carry that into the future.

I sold logo bags for the first time this year

I believe in the elegant solution and I am convinced that given the time and patience we can find ways to adapt our policies and processes to ease some of the problems we have grown. We will all have to have a similar evolution in thinking from the us vs. them paradigm to get there, so everyone can just start working on that now. You are the Fair just as much as I am. I don't want to impose anything on you just as I do not wish to be imposed upon. Little shifts are all that are needed.

Another example is that I was having a problem with the idea that the volunteers were on the site working to serve me, the artisan. I don't want servants. I want people to admit they are participating to get their own needs met (for summer camp, for fun, for belonging, to enjoy the work) and I want the volunteers to believe that they are working with me, to get all of our needs met. We are working together. That means you can ask me for certain behaviors or commitments and I can ask the same of you. I want respect, you want respect.

This takes some questioning. Do you need that particular thing you are asking of me to make your job easier? Is there something I need to know to fully cooperate? Am I being realistic with my own requests? Are they really requests, or demands?

When you really look around, you see some of the issues you might not be realistic about. For instance, Traffic crew does not work on Monday; Pre-post Security steps up to get us all out safely. Those people in the shirts may not know anything about traffic flow or what you have always done or what you want to do. They are likely just as tired as you are. Turn off your engine and enjoy the last few moments on site, as it will do no good to complain about the inept qualities of Traffic Crew. You are way off base. You're seeing a narrow view of what you think is reality.

My biggest complaint was a shortage of open bathrooms and adequate tissue at Shady Grove both pre-and post-Fair. Can I go farther into this issue to see if I am asking too much? Can I bring my own tp? Can I walk down to Politics Park, really not much farther, really not much impact on my day? Could be the crew members who cleaned toilets for a week are feeling like they have done enough. Maybe they have jobs to go to on Monday, and limiting the number of open bathrooms gets them out a day earlier to resume their other responsibilities. I could find out about this, instead of just bitching about standing in line when I need to poop. I could refuse to take it personally and feel hustled offsite, and try to understand how and why the decision was made. It most definitely was not made to inconvenience me personally. Person Me was not there and was not part of the decision. You can extrapolate from this to apply this type of thinking to your own favorite complaint.

So these are my tired thoughts about how to function a little better as a group. The appreciation of the safety and nurturing that goes on there increases as you assume your needs can be met, if you increase your participation in those common goals.

One delightful moment showed me one of the gifts we bring to ourselves. A young mother set her three small children on the evening path and shooed them. "Run away, run away!" she called after their little flying bodies. She went with them, of course, just in case, but it reminded me how safe it is to explore our site. One evening when my son was smaller, he stayed out a bit too long in the scary dark of the woods and I had to go find him huddled at the Main Camp fire trying not to look frightened. He's on Security now (worked a midnight to seven shift), grew up testing his own boundaries on the Site, and has the skills to help others now. There was no avenue for him to learn these skills in our town life. Our community empowers our young ones.

And then they go and create things which amaze and change us, and we learn we can also follow them. I miss the dark woods, now supplanted with LED toys of every description, and while I still take flashlight-less walks at night, I see my twenty-year-old self in the roaming bands of youthful friends promenading. It's not the same, but it's still good. I go to bed listening just as I have always done (no longer sleeping under my big ash tree, alas) and I get waked up to beauty and creativity each morning to work some more. I do it for love, and for money, and for participation in a most remarkable community. I really feel the Us. I hope you do too.

Not everyone gets such an opportunity, so we have to treasure it. We have to work to do that. We have to work together to do that. Let us continue.

No time like the right time

I have no time left to get ready for the big show: it's all scramble from here on in. This week was so compelling that I have to take this moment out, even though it might mean dropping a few things from the bottom of the list.

New locally made bags

I got my new locally made bags! I am beyond thrilled. I ordered them from T&J Sewing in Springfield, a wonderful little family company. Saturday Market has been using bags from them for a couple of years, and this year I decided the world needs a two-handled tote that has a gusset so there is a flat bottom, but one that isn't as big or tall as the available imports. This one is perfect, and is made from domestic fabric and webbing handles, and prints really well. The quality is obvious, so I printed some up and hung them right in the front of my booth, and shoppers responded! They were even priced a bit higher, and the difference is obvious, so the savvy shoppers who didn't need to buy the cheapest thing saw just what I dreamed they would see.

This was not a small venture for me, I invested over $1000 in this speculation and it will be a long time before I sell them all. Could be a very long time. Still, I am happy to stop stocking the imported bags and gradually move to all local ones. I'm a screenprinter, not a sewer, so I can't make them myself. When you see them you realize not only do they cut and sew them, they have to press them to put in the folds, and they did a flawless job over there, in a very quick turnaround, so I could have some to take to Fair. I'm super grateful and excited.

So that's part of the good news. The rest is what happened at Market yesterday, a quietly observed but highly significant change. Beth decided to move the Information Booth off the northeast Park Block, away from the illegal and unsavory activities at the Free Speech Plaza. After last week's crimes, it seemed that it was no longer a great idea to put our staff and customers, and ourselves, at risk of our lives and well-being by using the county property. We were being asked to increase our liability insurance to an unfathomable level just to rent that 10x10 space for our Info Booth, while right next to us criminals were paying nothing to sell whatever they wanted and were attracting scofflaws of every sort to feed off of our event. We've been struggling for years to work on the space there and return it to the intent of a space for free speech.

It has been an ugly struggle. The county has not been supportive of us. Our organization is deeply committed to longterm relationships that benefit all parties and we had been spending quite a lot to clean the space at the end of the day, deal with all of the social problems concentrated there, and we don't have the money. All of our income comes from us, the members, who pay our fees and pay our bills and keep our nonprofit on her feet. We have enough to do without doing what the county has not been addressing.

So we're off the block and it felt amazing. Such a simple change but so heartening! The FSP looked much the same, and a fascinating thing happened, which may or may not have been related. All of a sudden there was extremely loud drumming on the western edge of our site, across the street, a small group of djembe players pounding with sticks, creating an unbelievable racket that completely obscured our usual sound rhythms and took over our Market for the hour or so they played at a couple of different locations within and without our event perimeter.

It was so inconsiderate, and of course drew an appreciative crowd with dollars to tip. The expertise was there (thanks to my ex- I actually know enough to appreciate technique a little) but the presentation was puzzling. So selfish, so entitled. They paid nothing to our organization for dominating our space for that hour.

It was a profound metaphor for how outside forces pressure us, how delicately we individually set up and cooperate for our mutual good, and how easy it is to hijack our event. It sucked. It was exactly what the FSP activities do to us, plus a thousand. It was frightening. At least when they came onto our site, in the grass on the south side, they came under our rules and we could hold them to the 20-minute limit for busking in a particular location. I assume they were then asked to move and we didn't hear them again. But the point was made, and I have no idea if it was intentional or completely unrelated to our move off the site.

It's weird, but the people selling and hanging at the FSP consider themselves to be members of Saturday Market, even though they pay no fees and follow none of our rules. We're such an open, welcoming group that like the YesYesYes Fair, we try to allow rather than restrict. Our restrictions come from self-preservation. We make agreements about them. We don't punish and fine our members to try to get them to comply, we use logic and peer pressure to articulate and adapt our agreements to fit the reality.

That works for most of the participants, but there will always be a number of "us" who don't follow the rules, and don't care for the organization, don't really feel a part of it. That's inside them, and I understand it, having broken a lot of rules myself and learned why it feels better to belong instead. People feel shut out and hurt by what is essentially their inner refusal to belong, to join. It's a big part of the dysfunction of our world and we all see it in many ways. The FSP problems are our microcosm.

And they're not over, but we're not playing the same game anymore. We won't give any assumed approval to what is going on over there, won't clean it up, won't try to fix it. I'm guessing people who are already hurt could feel this as an abandonment by SM. Maybe it will cause some reflection by a few of them. Maybe the LCFM and the County can work together to change things for a bit, but I'm not confident that either of them have the management to deal with any of it.

Our Saturday Market management and staff are simply the best there is. Beth has the depth of character and the ethics to make the right call every time, and the membership knows it and backs her decisions without fail. She doesn't make them in a vacuum. She knows how to work with people, take the temperature, get the facts, see who the players are and what their intentions might be...she is a marvel. She has my complete admiration, and with her in place other good people come forward. Our volunteers and members are some of the most wonderful people in our world.

My new peach design on the new bag

I know the hippie Mall of the Woods is my current love and I am spending all of my energy getting ready to make a great presentation out there, and to maybe even have a tiny bit of fun next weekend, but Saturday Market is my first love and I am just profoundly pleased and grateful. After the drumming scalded us all with the horrific possibilities of things we cannot control that hurt us, the ceasing of it left a quiet, when we resumed our natural pace and recaptured our soulful tunes and our sweetness. We had a great day. Tourists loved us, without knowing anything about our neighborhood struggles and our deep and thoughtful deliberations. Locals came with their old and loved crafts to add to their collections, brought their ancient tote bags to see my new ones. Friends came to air-kiss (the queenly ones) and visit and share the anticipation of the OCF.

All was very well. To top it off, this week, after almost two years of waiting and spending money, the Kareng Fund received our 501c3 nonprofit designation from the IRS. Our artisans relief fund is now a real, stand-alone charitable organization, there for us for career-threatening crises. It is not just there for Saturday Market members, but for all artisans in Oregon who belong to craft organizations. That's you, Fairies. Think about it. We have a fund of over $20,000, gathered by the penny from donations of our members, ready to help those who will stand with us, belong, care, and give to us. We can help you when you get your diagnosis, your accident, your misfortune, your tragedy. The word "deep" does not go far enough here.

We have our backs. We are us. This is no small thing. Thank you. See you on the path, and the very next weekend, see you back on the Park Blocks. Love you.

Logo bags, available at OCF booth 175

Procrastination

Just for a minute or two. I have so, so many things to do that I just can't get started. They're demanding things today: a new logo design for the OCF, more or less visualized but not on paper, and several pieces of art for several customers who all ordered on Thursday and Friday. I put way too many items on my credit card for post-Fair payment. So much riding on three days in mid-July.

I committed to buy a huge pile of locally-made tote bags of an untested design that I have a lot of faith in, and that I need a couple of weeks ago to be efficient about their decoration. I hope they sew like crazy next week down at T&J. I'm really over-excited about having locally made goods. Most of the bags I sell are made in China out of relatively cheap fabrics, and you know what their labor picture looks like. Probably the largest portion of the cost is the freight. Of course the local ones will most likely have to use imported canvas since textile production has not come back to the southeast just yet, but it is definitely a great improvement to get the bags made here. The quality is terrific.

Between T&J Designs in Springfield and Silver Linings Productions down on 4th and Lincoln, we now have two textile production factories in our area, so the next thing we need is to have a big organization to commission a hefty order of t-shirts for the 2015 event. It seems so close, just within our reach to walk our talk down to the tags. How cool would it feel to have your staff shirt say Made in Eugene/Springfield for the Oregon Country Fair?

I would love it. We could get organic fabric and make it any colors we want, now that we have run out of the good useable colors in the Royal line. Using local printers has been a huge success and has saved the Fair some money, so the next step is sourcing the garments here. An excellent goal.

I also bought 48 purple hats. Eugene is probably the only place where you can sell that many purple hats and mine continue to sell out. *Queen Bee* on purple is apparently irresistible. I drew some little bees and have been adding them to the bee series: I now have Worker Bee, Queen Bee and Beekeeper. Getting on the bandwagon, because who doesn't love bees?

The duplex next to me went this week from a jungle of about ten years of neglect to a sterile wasteland of dirt and "beauty bark." The previous renters had lost control of it though I still tried to corral the blackberries and maintain a bit of garden on that side of my house, expanding my raspberries and blackcaps to fill space. I'm way over my property line into an easement that lies between us, and when the renters left I dug up a few things left by previous renters. I knew Stacy and Rita would have wanted me to save the hydrangea and the grape vine and I wish I had gotten over my moral qualms and stolen more of the plants, as the workers were apparently instructed to cut every living thing to the ground. They killed a lilac but left weeds, took some artichokes I could have eaten and wiped out lilies and other bulbs I could have dug if I knew where they were. They'll be covered with fabric and bark and are probably already dead. I'd been watering, and probably still will water what is left. I relocated many of the rocks which were going to be taken to the dump. It's hard to watch this type of management in a neighborhood of gardeners, but perhaps they will be able to make the yard cute enough to attract some new gardening tenants or owners.

The loss of habitat is frightening. There had to be birds nesting in those thickets, and I hope they had all fledged. I won't really miss the blackberries, as I've been trying to get rid of them for more than 25 years now. They had a fine crop of bindweed too. We lost privacy, and the neighborhood lost the little children who added so much life to our street. I keep finding their little cars and toy fragments in the dirt.

All we can do is look forward. Of course we all are talking about buying the property, but though they will make it look cute, it has some problems still to fix. Some, like the siding which will not hold paint, are only temporarily fixable. It won't be a good deal. I can't recommend it to anyone I know, though I would love to be in touch with the owners for a change. But it will be fine.

And I don't have time to think much about it. The workers were all good people and they gave me countless things they didn't want to take to the dump and they didn't eat my berries the way those cute kids did. I'm sitting in a really nice chair saved from the basement. I got new stepping stones in all of my messy-looking gardens, and maybe I won't be living next to the worst house on the block now. All will be well, as I constantly have to remind myself this month. It will all get done.

I'm not going to go find any photos for you though. I have to get with my day-off program and get to work. I'll get a day off in August. It will be epic. I'll be rich. I'll probably be fully stocked for Holiday Market at the rate I'm going this month; over-production is my tendency and it kind of makes sense, and allows me to take it easier in the post-Fair season, when I need to paint the south side and put a roof on the shop. I'll get to do that kind of thing then.

Besides it's cold and cloudy. I had to wear a jacket all day yesterday. Summer doesn't really start to be full-on until the fifth of July, after it rains on the 4th. Even though we know that, we still complain. Ahh, Eugene.

By the way, no one is buying Curmudgeonland City Council, a hat I thought was brilliantly funny. I think that may be because people are thinking I am talking about our City Council, which I assuredly am not. Our City Council has a curmudgeon or two, but usually I am pretty pleased with the level of dedication and caring in our city leaders. It's supposed to be a comment on the level of self-importance in some difficult people I guess, the way they feel they should be in charge of something, or everything. Some random man suggested the idea, and if he shows up I will give him his free hat, but it wasn't meant to be a political statement. So you can buy one. Maybe someone will.

I think Eugene might just be too full of nice people. Guess I can live with that. In our discussions by the fountain yesterday we reflected on how OCF was all about people taking care of each other, as opposed to Burningman, for instance, which is about radical self-sufficiency. Slightly different tribes who can learn from each other. I'll reflect more on that as I draw my peach today. One of my biggest concerns is whether or not I will be able to finish Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch before it is due back at the library. You see how I am. Today's big reward will be reading until I fall asleep, which will probably involve one page. Maybe two. Read a novel for me this week.

Working it Through

OK, I give up. Feeling so much irrationality I've been trying to stay quiet, but the writing helps with grounding me, so here I am. Way too many things to write about, and the idea is not to increase the anxiety but to lay it to rest.

I was in the running for Mayor of Curmudgeonland yesterday. Had a low sales day, right when everything in my life seems to be about money and how to make it work for me so I can get my goals aligned. It was humbling to remember how it feels; one of my friends even had a zero day going until I gave him a pity sale. I was thinking about buying one of his wonderful items but was trying not to spend anything...but no one deserves a zero day. I love what I chose and am so glad I bought it.

Went to the farmers to get some cherries to make me feel better: sold out. No fruit to be had over there after two yesterday. Drat my holding-onto-my-money impulses. Went to Dana's for my fave, German Chocolate: sold out. Got plain pound cake but had a plan.

Probably over 500 pounds on my bike cart

Hauled my excessive tonnage of handmade glory home, them forced my poor aching foot into the evening garden for my first crop of black raspberries for the season, managed to rummage up an entire pint of strawberries that the jays had missed, cut open the mango I feared rotten, which was still good, and still had a bit of goat ice cream in the freezer, which is not as hard on my dairy allergy as the cow version.
Had to sit down with an icepack on my foot to hull the strawberries, but put in a movie and had the most sublime dessert. Cried at the movie, enjoyed the fading of the stressful, windy day, and now it is a new one with all new potential.

I do love how balanced my load is

It was quite a week. Went to the historic meeting of the City Council and County Commission to support the farmers' plan for downtown expansion. It's the best idea they've had and I'm definitely in favor of the concept of leveling the butterfly and spreading out the farmers. I wanted to see the politicians in action and put names to faces and there was a lot of lettuce to think about afterwards. The development community was there to keep control, the bogus "Market district" trying to keep a finger on whatever the plan might be. I'm no longer optimistic, but fortunately that big meal isn't really on my plate. My farm job is just to bring the tote bags downtown and be supportive to the farmers that feed me. I'm quite happy to be out of the loop on the bigger issues.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about how a for-profit business run by millionaires gets so much city support when a non-profit incubator that keeps hundreds of poor artists alive has to struggle to keep our boat afloat, but that would certainly fill the page and up the anxiety level. Another day. I could also talk a lot about the big Mall of the Woods in which I hope to make my fortune next month and all the ins and outs of that, but those issues are also set aside while I work my skinny arms to the bone for awhile. This is supposed to be my day off, such as I have this time of year.

I did get all into my "nobody loves me" deprivation issues yesterday as I watched everybody else's shirts walk by and all those people with too much to carry who didn't want to spend even $5 on my offerings of affordable, durable and beautiful bags. It's always surprising how close to the surface those childhood issues are for me. It's mostly the overwork that brings up so many fears. I can't make my body do what I need it to do, increasingly. My foot hurt almost all day long. My back and left side are really a mess. I still have weeks of too much to lift and do and not enough time to recover. I remember how this goes when I stay in the patterns that don't work. The end result is surgical and I'm determined to change that.

How do I balance it all? Had a good exchange about people-pleasing with a customer who couldn't find a satisfactory hat, even though I brought the fourth tub with the smaller and larger hats. My neighbors Raven and Tim are always helpful with the universal messages and advice on how to counteract the errant thoughts. Focus on what is good, stay in the moment, be happy for others the way you would like them to be happy for you. Every day cannot be my day. I do so well most weeks, I think of myself as *above average,* which can be a trap. Selling is most certainly much more fun than not selling. I got into control issues, calling the crew to clean up some unfortunate vomit (lots of people on crutches from too much summer, one who couldn't manage her medications, and then there was the drunk with the shopping cart...) I had too many awkward conversations and was too focused on what everyone else was up to. It's better if you just keep handing me money, folks, keeps me out of trouble. Also alive.

Yet the day before, I scored a maple table and set of chairs from my neighbor's basement, a better set of furniture than I have ever owned. I can actually send some of the things I have to the dump and upgrade, getting furniture way more valuable than anything I would have bought. Isn't that abundance? Don't I have a wonderful garden and a fantastic place to live, and a lifestyle I can support rather easily for an oldish lady?
In a few hours I went from happy as can be to feeling like a failure. Am I really that fragile?

No, of course I am not. This is the anxious time of year, when I have to take risks that do have a high probability of paying off. I get irrational but have the self-awareness now to recognize the emotional states and know how to ease them. I rarely can be pushed all the way off my center, and I'm not there yet at all. Just feeling the potential.

Table and chairs

Turn around. Feel the other things, the softness of the summer, see the glorious colors, watch the blue jays as they carefully bite tiny pieces off the cherries, right through the nets, until they can pull the rest out and gobble them up. (Note to self: it is not worth it to net the cherry tree for seven cherries, no matter how delicious they were.)




I have to get my solitude today before I immerse in another week. I have to rest my body and not try to move that tabletop and do a profit and loss and balance sheet and assure myself that the plan is a good one. I have to get my wonderful peach design finished and print my exceptional bags and be ready to succeed. I can do all these things and more. I can stop trying to put obstacles in my own way and just keep my nose to the grindstone, smelling the wonderful aroma of good meal as it comes from between those millstones. Don't scorch it by trying to grind too fast! My blueberry design seems to be a dud, because I went too fast to get it done to have the bags ready for no one to notice. That's the stuff I want to prevent.

Everything is going to be all right. As I biked home on Broadway I started singing the Pharrel Williams song, echoing the flash mob I saw on Facebook, which took place Friday in front of the Red Wagon Creamery. I AM happy like there is no roof. I live in a wonderful town. I love and am loved. I am a good hard worker who can roll with whatever happens. I can take calculated risks and succeed or roll with whatever happens after that. It will all work out, and I'll keep learning, keep trying, and keep having my good days. Next week will always be amazing.


So there we are, I'm now ready for my "day off" such as it is in June. I already have another crop of black raspberries and Tuesday there will be more cherries. I saved a piece of pound cake for today. Kim made *Curmudgeon City Council* the Find of the Day, so the potential is definitely there. I'm ready for Tuesday because when you don't sell much you don't have to make more. There are actually some good amounts in the Accounts Receivable column.

Back view

Best part is how well it turns around in the space for easy unload.

Hope you are all having a fabulous weekend. I think it's time to move the stationary bike out to the deck so I can finish my novel (Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler) while I ride. I'll dust off my new chairs and put a free sign on something else. I'll talk to my mom when we have our usual Sunday call. Be well!