Not Gonna Keep Quiet

I can't keep quiet...I give the credit to the song going viral that you can no doubt easily find...some women singing beautifully in the midst of Saturday's organized resistance. (Sorry to say the original video of it is a tough image and not as uplifting, so consider yourself warned.) I've been quiet. I've felt silenced by my own grief and fear, and haven't wanted to discourage anyone with that. I read a powerful essay about going into that darkness, which as writers we have already pledged to dwell in...but I didn't want to write about it.

My son broke his ankle the other day. Not that long ago, in 2012, I broke my heel, and had to spend 3 months with it elevated. To say it was traumatic takes it into a distance not available at the time. This was an unknowable, severe setback to my mobility and life, but of course as is my way, I spent a lot of energy in ignorance and denial and it took many of the weeks to understand the limitations and the most effective responses and adaptations. And I was lucky.

For a combination of reasons, I feel traumatized in the same way, responding in some of the same ways. My delayed response is typical for me...today I am in tears much more than last week or any time since the election. Only now am I feeling some of the deeper terrors and anxieties of that time. I read up online and see how rare my injury was, how debilitating, and I guess I'm glad I didn't know. It took me an entire month and the help of a dedicated friend to work up a plan for taking a bath...all I have is a clawfoot, a deep one. I was so unstable on crutches and painkillers I got a walker, which helped a lot but made me an instantly old lady. I was so emotionally vulnerable I emailed my whole family and lots of my friends with a series of TMI descriptions and details that did not gain me peace of mind but made me more vulnerable. Not that they didn't help me...I got lots of help, way more than I have given in return before or since. It is not an easy thing to see your people when they are compromised and need your patience and support, but my friends came through for me repeatedly and I am very grateful. 

And of course with your child the emotional morass is deep and wide. He's an adult with a wife...he doesn't need his mom to sweep in with all my advice and the remains of my damage...this is not the same pain and not the same situation. I'd feel lucky if he follows a small portion of my advice. It's his ankle, his life, and he will have to learn the same hard lessons I learned, about asking for help, understanding what you don't know and how to operate within that. But I'm his Mom, and there is no terror as deep for me as thinking about damage to my child.

Because clearly with medical and physical issues, you don't know so much, and neither do the medical professionals you'd like to depend on. Everyone is constrained by their positions and worldviews...to the urgent care folks in the ice world of the PNW he was an ordinary client...tons of people fell down and hurt themselves. In my case you couldn't see the break in ordinary x-rays, as it was hidden in the complex structure of the foot. Fortunately there was one highly skilled doctor at Urgent Care who got out the book and persisted in training the technician on angles and anatomy until they could find the break. But no one thought to tell me how to ice it, how to proceed with the next step, how to imagine surgery and its effects, how to take care of the rest of my body. At my age it was assumed I knew a lot more than I did. It was my first broken bone, at 62. I didn't google enough, didn't ask the right questions of the right people, and made a lot of wrong assumptions that made the situation worse. I'll spare you the details, but living alone, I crawled around doing dozens of things before the surgery, thinking I wouldn't be able to do them after it, not realizing I wasn't able to do them then either. It took me a long time to learn that I didn't know anything, and all that time I felt a level of helplessness.

So I do have some cogent advice and I sent money right away. I know he thought he'd be in a walking cast and back to work the following week...ah, no. Google it. It seems easy to get around on crutches, as you see plenty of people doing it. What you don't think about is how do you carry a cup of coffee to your place on the couch? How do you get yourself up and down stairs? I developed a whole array of adaptive behaviors, using tote bags, well-placed furniture for support and flat places, and worked it out, but not without a lot of people helping me and not without a lot of resistance and insistence on my part that I was fine. And it was hard to sleep with all of that anxiety.

I was traumatized. I didn't know as much about it then, so my foot was my teacher for that year. After three months of elevation, I couldn't walk normally, and I still can't run. I still can't stand on concrete all day without a lot of pain. I had no idea what arthritis was and that it would be coming...I'm so stuck in that experiential learning space. I've put a lot together since then, and he will too, and because fortunately I did not transmit trauma and my damage to him when he was a child, at least not overtly, he will have an easier time of things (I hope, I hope) and he will recover and be fine. But it's not like I'm not worried every damn minute. 

And as you know if you have read here before I am a bit of a political radical. I've been quiet...I truly thought my values were good solid human values that were on the rise, and couldn't be compromised, so I got struck by the shock and awe. I can see now how thoroughly the set-up was prepared for the surge of patriarchal, authoritarian values, but I had a lot of assumptions about how things would actually go. I "misunderestimated" the thinking skills of my nation. And well, the election was hacked, so there's that. It was the long hack, of the gerrymandering and the voter IDs, and I knew about it, but it added up differently than I expected, with betrayal by the FBI and the Russians. Silly me.

So yeah, traumatized. I walked downtown the other day and halfway there realized I didn't have my keys. I had left them in the door, on the outside. Pretty much offering my entire life of possessions to anyone who happened by: my car, shed, shop, house, identity, all of it. Did not mean to do that. Feeling triggered and vulnerable makes me put all of my awareness on the wrong things. I had decided to wear a pussy hat downtown...this was Friday. I was mailing a contribution to a social change organization, thinking about that. I was putting together a care package for my son, thinking about that. I was not thinking about my own survival and safety on the planet.

So I had to skip the march. I'm so proud of the 15,000 of my neighbors and friends who went, in the rain, in their anxiety. I had to remember what triggers me, and why, and what kinds of things I have to look out for, the subtle signs that I'm not thinking well, the obvious ways my body is trying to call my attention to my adrenal glands, and I have to choose self-care. Most of the time I find myself having to do this, and most of the last year, as the Trumpism ramped up, I have been in this state. Many people are.

But I don't want to write about that, I don't want to confess my weaknesses in "public," no matter how many brave writers tell me I have to, how many readers I feel waiting for some kind of companionship here with me. I did feel that for many it was important to experience the march and feel the strength of our community and how powerful we are, and am grateful that I know what that feels like and do trust it. I have gotten that from the photos, and don't feel like I've missed a lot. I was in DC in my twenties for the moratoriums, and did my part to end the Vietnam war and to begin to liberate myself and others in the liberation movements. I know what it feels like to experience the angels of the common good.

Part of my trauma comes from there, being 2o in DC, of course. I feel that a lot of it is centered on authoritarianism. I think that one of the central issues that we are struggling with here is that between the strongman and the egalitarian. We, the dominant culture, the American  majority, we have evolved a notch toward egalitarianism. We don't want Dad in charge of us anymore. We like the Mom/Dad team, or the strong independent kid, or the collaborative small group, or any number of structures that don't model the God at the top. We thought our conviction of the present being more like that, than the 50's, was more solid than it apparently was. Add in the "alternative facts" universe and we got taken to the floor. For a minute.

But as you can see women won't go back as far as it would take to make those changes in our culture that the GOP et al want to see. Apparently a lot might, if they are lulled and fooled enough to believe that any change is good change, or whatever else they were led to believe, but I still have a lot of faith in the real dominance of a more caring set of values than the trumpians espouse. We don't actually value getting yours at the expense of everyone else. We don't actually espouse tough love on the streets that allows people to die from preventable conditions. We don't actually believe that God chooses whether or not to rain on our parade.  

And we're not going to keep quiet, and we recognize what causes our fears and what we want to fight against. We don't like bullies and we won't live in fear of them. We do know how to fight back against our wish to cower in the corner, to normalize what we are going through. We will keep working to overturn this electoral mistake and get back to valuing the common good and devaluing the power of the selfish and greedy. It is a setback, but it is also different from other times, other setbacks. 

I see trauma because I live in it still. Other people don't see it, don't have to, and they are so brave and inspiring and tireless, and they're doing it. There is plenty I can do and am doing and will do, and it isn't all on me, so we'll be okay. It's not quiet out there. It's not exactly safe, but it's safer than I thought. Now when people bully others, they get called on it, sometimes by three-year-olds. Life is better now. People are kinder and gentler (and not in the Poppy Bush way) and people are seeing through the dissembling and the lies and calling them lies. Our bubbles are connecting and there is a lot of strong inspiration out there, lots of solutions, lots of help.

And, the sun is out, and soon spring will be here. The wonderful world of Jell-O-Art has opened for the season and we will be taking our bruised and unbroken hearts and making them into art. It will help. There will be lots of help. And I don't have a broken foot. This is now. Monday morning. A good time to file a lawsuit. Or even do laundry, which is so much easier now that I don't have to hang up the clothes on crutches.

Let's Handle This and Keep Getting it Done

As a response to feeling like I was played in the national political arena (not alone in that, but I still take it personally) I tasked myself with learning more history and more social awareness. This is not the easiest road I have traveled recently. It's making me feel more like a chump, initially, reminding me often how I have chosen to live in a pleasant bubble characterized by some self-righteousness, some faith in my core values that may not fit the times, and my own addiction to escapism.

Yes, I'm being really hard on myself lately. This weather is isolating and reinforcing my chosen mode of solitude, so I'm kind of happy in here, but the knowledge I am gaining is brutal. I want to be shaken to my core, to have to rebuild some sense of peace with it, and to emerge stronger, but I can see that this is going to be a long process and is going to make me work a lot harder than I want to. I hope I stick with it.

The facts of the slave-breeding industry that built the wealth of the white man is devastating. (I'm reading The American Slave Coast.) It galls me that we can so easily dismiss this, as white people, as something of the past that we fixed. It is not fixed. Reading Between the World and Me got through to me the point that a person's body, the one most vital thing, can be profoundly not their own. At first I was comparing this to being a woman...yeah, me too, men think they can own me...and now I see this as a pale defensive reaction to the reality of the level of brutality that was used. Sure, it's sometimes difficult to be a woman, and being the easy victim of a violent crime is a very sobering reality, but I also get all those layers of condescending protection and reverence that although thin and a lie, do grant me some avenues for building my life that people of color certainly do not get. I'm also reading Lies My Teacher Told Me to understand the framing that led me to this bubble and right to the edge of knowledge, but not into it.

It's emotional content that weighs so heavily on me I find it staggering that I could have gotten to the age of 65 without really getting a grasp of it. I'm shocked at my own compliance at building my bubble. I am someone who reads! I am someone who does think about things! Yet, I am someone who has been part of the problem much more than part of the solution. And I expect to continue in that, for my lame reasons and pale, flimsy excuses.

I think as an old white lady I do need to beat myself up a little about this stuff, stopping short of completely demoralizing myself, but really driving home the message that this IS MY PROBLEM. This world situation, this political chaos, this economic injustice, this sexism, this racism, these leaders, these citizens, are ME. It seems I have constructed so many excuses for not only my own selfishness, but that of everyone else. I blame the system. I blame the stupid people, I blame the fake news people, I blame the ones who tune out and don't work for progress, I blame the complexity of the problems, and it all amounts to me letting myself off the hook.

I guess this is how we survive emotionally, compliant like slaves, though that is an insensitive comparison. Most of the statements I can come up with at this stage are insulting and insensitive, and I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm not wanting anyone else to let me off the hook, or enable me, or try to convince me that I have been doing the best that I can under the circumstances. I have not. I have been compliant as I was trained to be, and learned to be, as the easiest way out. I have wasted many of my resources.

We use our resources for entertainment...we take rich celebrities as heroes and project all kinds of holiness on them, and we spend hours studying them as they play these fictional roles. We grieve for them when they die as if we actually were friends with them...we put them in the place of our friends, who can't measure up to that kind of grace and wisdom, which we tend to forget is a projection on a silver screen. We take the glitter for granted and forget that it is massively wasted resources that people need desperately. We allow entertainment to be our drug of choice and we use it with passionate religiosity. And those of us who like to travel often use it the same way. 

We "do" Paris, or rafting the Yangtze or wherever. We frame it as personal growth (valid), as collecting experiences instead of things (also valid, if you believe that we are also not addicted to things), as any kind of rationalization structure we please. We aspire to it. We, as a culture, are bankrupt.

So to me, this election of the prime bankrupter, the agent of chaos, who happens to be a gilded celebrity, is a cynical manipulation decades in the making, and should not surprise us in the least. We had Reagan and  Bush, also not diplomats, not inspiring public servants, but simply smooth-looking managed celebrities we wanted to bring into our homes and families. Many of us cynical survivors of the 70's revolutions did see through this, but we didn't really take the opportunity to frame it as a long-range game that we would ride to here. Our attraction to drama was fed and we worked around it, still trying to keep to our progressive values of making a better world for everyone. We did some good. We dropped the ball often and we had our excuses.

I wasn't planning to watch the PBS show the other night about Boomers, as I dislike being put in a group of mountain beavers and don't always agree with the generational assessments, but I did end up agreeing with some of it and though I missed the beginning I got the gist. The point seemed to be that our core values were formed by what our parents brought back from World Wars, where they worked together in deathly conditions to find a sense of foxhole equality. Something shifted there to give a framework for us all working together for shared goals and that stuck with most of us as we moved into our lives. All of the liberation movements of the 70's, as they were developed and refined, gave us a solidarity that other generations didn't get in quite the same way. What I found most interesting is that of course, like all bubble qualities, the result of this is that we are surprised and shocked when other people do not share our values. We were sure everyone did, because we had thoroughly proven the truth and justice of them. Thoroughly! 

And to a certain extent that was true, but we raised our families and perhaps failed to transmit some of those, as I know I failed, and gradually we made our compromises and fought for our individual gains and as things grew more chaotic and desperate, we almost didn't notice the erosion of our values. "Common decency" is no longer a known quantity. Our kids do not necessarily agree with us on the way forward in this life, and I can't fault them completely...they live in a different world, where it is less safe, there are fewer good choices, and often the people with strong values are put in the position of being chumps. That was how Hillary supporters were portrayed and public perception is so much stronger than any other reality. We were spun. We're still reeling. That won't help us, though.

Kids who grew up with all the dramatic renderings of the apocalypse and future chaos expect that now. I think they kind of welcome it, as the gritty reality of work and death is not lit up and attractive unless you have the beaucoup bucks to consume in an upscale fashion, and they are simultaneously locked out of that. I don't buy the idea that it was parents building up their egos that caused it. My experience was that I desperately wanted to frame a positive model for my child as I didn't observe that he was seeing what I thought was true. He wasn't going to have access to the so-called and mythical American Dream. He was MIT material, but we didn't have the means and he didn't have the drive, and I didn't know how to make him want it. Plus I knew that many types of science-based positions were not going to be good for him...he could build robots for the military, he could work on tech gadgets for the intelligence industry, and so on. I couldn't work hard enough to create a scenario for him that would justify me allocating tons of borrowed money to set him up for a huge and devastating disappointment when his degree did not get him anything he wanted. It was a gamble that turned out to be some valid thinking...at least he wasn't caught up in the student debt crime, too much anyway. But it left him in a deficient position along with most of the rest of us. Which is why we blow the bubble and step so willingly into it.

I wanted him to be educated, but I probably transmitted too much cyncism. I tried to make him care about others, but I think that might have backfired when we had to hang out in my social service job at his school. He didn't see a lot of hope and change in there. I don't think he has ever really gotten caught up in political action, and I don't fault him for that. You have to be quite the idealist to dedicate your energies to that.

I, of course, am still that idealist, and I'll stop talking about my particular son because I am guessing he is a lot more committed to my values than I know, and is in the time of life when he gets to answer to his own values. And he is not bankrupt, and he does read, and he does think, so I know he will come to useful conclusions on his own throughout the course of his life. He was not ruined by me telling him he had everything he needed to succeed. He, as a tall, good-looking white male, with intelligence, has all the right stuff to do anything he wants. I'm speaking of him more as an example of "our kids," basically anyone younger than myself with a similar genetic makeup.

What life offers him (them) at this point, is mostly surface glitter and the pursuit of more money in a never-ending struggle that isn't winnable. When I see kids of his generation spinning their wheels I do not think it is their fault or my fault, or their own parents or their wives or friends. They got the same raw deal all of the common people have always gotten, with the varying degrees of horribleness that get portioned out according to the luck of birth. He got a bigger pile of cards, and if he wants to play them in particular ways, he can get some wealth and power, or at least the means to fuel his addictions to entertainment and experience-collecting. He can be a man of his time. Or he can have principles and probably be a poor person with high ideals, which is not really a terrible choice, all things considered.

But to me today, being a man of your time is not something to be proud of but a trap that is code for being willing to adopt whatever bankrupt values are offered, as it is not a coincidence that this is the term used for people who used to breed human beings to use their bodies to build wealth at negligible cost. I don't really want him to be a man of his time. I hope instead he has found some models for building a life that is meaningful to him and others, that satisfies his basic needs with some surplus to share, and a life that will make the world a better place, somehow, at some times, in some really true and just way.

That's my boomer-value-system speaking. I can't provide a huge amount of help to him to get there, or even to help him want to get there. I can't assume that is what he wants. I have suicide in my family, and mental illness, so maybe all I can want is for him not to have that in my family in the future. Maybe all I can want is some simpler kind of emotional survival that feeds some of his needs. Maybe all I can want is to get to see him once in a while and get along fairly well for those hours. It's not something I can control.

So leaving the younger generation to their collective fate, what can I do? I can read books forever, as there will not be an end to my self-education, and I hope I can move through the beating-myself-up stage to a more hopeful stance. I can use that education to spread what really is truth, and not buy into this post-truth bullshit. I can stand with the many people of my generation who do hold my values, and know that dedicating ourselves to the betterment of all people really is a worthwhile and real goal, for real truth and  justice. We will have to work together to construct a better story about the American Way, as that is truly bankrupt and we should stop pretending it isn't. We all know that a huge part of the group who don't vote simply refuse to use that compromised method for working forward. We hope they do it in other ways. We hope that putting chaos in power will be a way to defeat it and restore some better type of order...that may be our calling at this point. We may be able to communicate and restore our values to those who want values, are desperately asking for values. Suicide, which now takes the form of murder first, is a message of the desperate wish for something better, without the means to articulate it. We can continue and increase our efforts to communicate what a better world will be built with. We can bring out our tools and use them in modelling the way we want the world to go.

So I have to agree with people who are saying we should ignore the Twittering, stop finding so much pleasure in the drama and humor of it, and hold ourselves accountable for really doing our best. We can continue our work or start it, begin to think about our values or step up the way we live them. We can all make one better choice, one at a time. It will matter. It does matter. The zombies aren't here yet, and the bubble can stretch to be a bit healthier and more inclusive. Step by step, little by little. Start anywhere. Do what you can with what you have. What you do will help you and help the world. 

And if it doesn't, well, like I said, reality is grim and gritty and then you die. Whatever. Meh. I'm going to get high and enjoy this beautiful if inconvenient snowy Saturday. Fuck it. But I will pick those books back up later and keep working. One thing I am sure I did transmit is that nothing matters more than hard work. If you can handle it.

Park Blocks Vision

Yes, Saturday Market has one, a quite detailed one in fact. Our task force worked on it and I went wild with post-its and glued it up last night. Our idea was that this would be a template or suggestion for some willing architect or graphic artist to translate to a shiny 11x17 flyer, or some portable version that we could share with city residents and others who have ideas about the park.

Since we use it so thoroughly every Saturday in the season, any changes will affect our footprint and each one of the little squares on the blue map at the bottom represents a business owner. Sure, a micro-business, but if you are the owner, you are invested, sometimes rather heavily, in your location, your display configuration, and your equipment. So it's understandable that we Saturday Market members are wary and worried about substantial changes to the south Park Blocks.

My observations of the Project for Public Spaces folks who came to view us twice was that they were good people, working hard to do what they were experts at doing, which includes re-imagining how spaces are used and thinking about the big picture of re-animating public open spaces. They told us several times that Saturday Market was the best thing going downtown, that we were doing everything right, and they wouldn't want to change a thing about us. I did try to take them at their word, and as far as I know, that's the city plan as well.

But as luck would have it, the two days they came were not the best days. The first one was one of those unimaginably hot days in August when our vendors stayed away by the dozens. We didn't look full at all. The second day they came in October, it was the monsoon day. They left, being completely unprepared for that, and both Markets closed early as well, which was unprecedented in recent memory.

So they never saw the current reality that we fill almost every inch of the two south blocks and spill over into the streets, and the two north blocks are full to bursting as well. So they might not believe that. Lots of people who come on marginal days might not believe that, but I will swear on a stack of bibles that it is the truth.

So lots of the ideas pitched by the public were not realistic or applicable to Saturdays in that location in the selling season of April through mid-November. A play structure for kids? Great idea, but it would have to be removed every week for safety and spatial reasons...they need the right surface under them, the right amount of space around them, and so on. A water feature that kids can play in? Well, maybe, but it won't be only kids that use it...people take baths in the fountain all the time in our current reality. So do you really want some half-dressed adults playing in the water too? Because you can't put a chain-link fence around it and sell tickets.

We support an enhanced stage area so that more groups can use the infrastructure during the week and at other times when we are not there. Some lighting, an electrical upgrade, a covering that drains better and doesn't cause puddles to form where guitarists want to stand, yes to those. On the west block, the existing coverings have problems too, but many of our members count on the shade and weather protection and rented their spaces with the idea that those would be provided. So some accommodations will have to be made if those are removed, and the walls on that block are used and loved as well. The stairs and access for wheels are pretty lame on the west block, though we've adapted, so we have mixed feelings about leveling it, but we could probably cope with changes like that. With difficulty, though.

We want a kiosk that provides information to tourists, with maps, charging stations, permanent restrooms, and other amenities, that could include storage for tables and chairs that the city could own and lease or lend out for events. In concept it is a win, but location is an issue of course. If we could use it as an info booth and put it over on East Park and Oak where our booth is now, that might be ideal...and many, many people support permanent restrooms. 

We rent nine porta-potties on Saturday, and it's a huge chunk of our operating budget. Of course as a large event we would still have to rent some, but it would be great to get some city support to lower that cost. But yes, location is an issue once again. It leads to the thought of redesigning the southern corners of both blocks to see if utilities can be fitted in with a gain of sales space instead of a loss. Might be tricky, but if it is planned for, well, great.

Most of our other issues are small...smoother concrete in places where people regularly lose their loads from hand-trucks and dollies when trying to load into the center of the blocks, and some anchors embedded to hold down some of the booths and eliminate the 100 pounds of sand we are each required to haul down there as booth weights. Let me tell you as an older person that the weight bags are going to be the determining factor for me to attend on rainy days, maybe even this season. I can't do it without hurting myself, and of course I am not the only one. We have 600 members! On any given day in the season we fill 250 booths.

We kind of want to stay exactly as we are if the choice is a big change or none...but of course we don't know yet what the choices will be and as renters of the parks, we aren't going to be making the decisions. We are included in the process, thus the task force, thus the visioning process, but yes, the wariness too.

It might be impossible to imagine what the loss of even one space does to our system. Each member commits to a space on the basis of a complex point system that ranks us with lots of variables worked in. You can hold your space for years if you keep your points up by attending and paying on time, so many of us feel that we have permanent homes and neighborhoods. My particular space has its issues, like backing up to the fountain and in fact losing a corner to it, but I love it and have made it work for me. So putting benches or other items around the fountain could eliminate my space. If that happened, it's not a simple matter to fix. Any space I was eligible for would be someone else's unless they gave it up and I had the point order to get it. People strategize and plan for years to get the space they want, so the good locations don't generally open up. Moving my booth to another location entirely is a huge disruption for my business and my personal experience at the Market. 

Sure, it might be good, but it might destroy what I have built so patiently and with so much effort. And it we displace a lot of members with some structure or other, we might have to start all over and remap and redistribute space. Some people think that would be a good idea, but I see it as utter chaos and a plan that will involve a lot of loss, people quitting, people arguing, people hurt and relationships disrupted. It would not be simple or effortless in execution, so if anyone suggests that it would, let me give you my full rant on that. It could take awhile.

I should say that everything so far that has involved our organization and the city has worked out fine, even big things like the fountain repair last summer and the siting of dog-waste stations and signage...if it is in the wrong place, it gets moved, and we adapt. There's a pretty strong trust relationship between SM and the City staff. I don't want to set up anxiety or speculate on what horrors change could bring. I'm really here to illustrate that we are artists, so we do have a lot of creative ideas, and we generally celebrate the creative ideas of others. 

I think I've said this before, I simply do not want Eugene citizens and leaders to break what is working really well. We're here to help make these decisions work. We want the Parks to be loved and healthy and used by a wide swath of residents and visitors. We want to continue to be the well-loved gem that we know we are. We do not want to be forced to stand in opposition to something lots of people want.

So if you are interested in this process that is coming up this next month when PPS reports and recommends to the City, stay tuned, and keep me in mind if you have questions about what the Market wants. A large group of us got together and distilled that and we are ready to work together. Let's do a good job of this. It is vitally important to a number of business owners that we get this right from plan to completion. I'm ready with my post-its and my heavy notebook of all that has been said and done so far, from the Park Blocks Master Plan of 2006 to this fall's forums and presentations. I know we can all end up on the same page and I can put my notebook on the shelf at some point. I'm paying attention, and keeping a lot of people informed as well, so any discussions about the Park Blocks are not happening in theory, they are happening in a living reality, a legacy event that is a town treasure. It's the city's front porch. My rocking chair is on it.

High Drama

Such a moment we are in, historically. Good that we have our Shakespeares: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Elizabeth Warren, Bill Moyers, the writers of Saturday Night Live, the bloggers, the columnists. Writers I have not read, can barely follow, writers and speakers I so want to hear and put my faith in: they're loud, and they're easy to find, no books required. I watched PBS tonight, the War of the Roses, and I fear we have not evolved one whit. What entertains me tonight is the intensity of the irony of where we stand today, where we will be tomorrow, all of us together. It's not a pleasant folly, not a delight I take in this weighted time.

My community, my beloved alternative thinkers, thought we had evolved. We were sure the signs were clear, that our champion Obama had followed us to bring our government along. I stuffed my unease with his strength and clarity as his Hope and Change won so many of us over, and indeed he was benevolent and we nearly trusted him, many of us. Michelle was our regal and honored matriarch. It seemed too easy for him to rise, for us to cheer, for us to believe, but the lull in our personal wars was so welcomed, that we rested. We were happy and innocent. Still, he didn't free Leonard Peltier, or stop a pipeline when the moral ground was so evident and waiting for him to stand upon it. The G-8 and the G-20 continued to meet and the climate didn't fix itself, and the bombs fell harder and millions of people suffered. He couldn't do so many things, was so thwarted, and now, our hope tonight is still with us, but it's so very dramatic and so thinly spread. He's only one guy, only one part of it, and the cast of characters is vast and we can't follow the script.

Have the electors read their plays? Do they understand the hero's quest, the long roads of ambition and defeat, the psychology of abuse and domination, and why we fight for the innocent? In the show with its elevated prose, so well spoken, the battles were bloody and all the good men died. All the children had their throats cut. Everyone's sword was sharp and they thrust with great passion and conviction. And through it all strode Margaret, in her armor, so vicious and so fearless, yet at the end she was in chains, watching her son die. A good story, with the foreshadowed King Richard speaking right to us in the Cumberbatch mask, the actor of the moment, so endearing in his struggles in his other roles (some on other channels at the very same time), so convincing to us as someone we believe. Television brings us our dessert and takes us from our news to our fantasies and puts cartoon faces on it so we can trust only the Simpsons, only the actors, only what makes us laugh with recognition. We are not really amused. We are desperately wanting a laugh that rings sweetly, without a self-protecting twist of our mouths.

Now, in our modern world, still we battle, with weapons not hand-forged, but mass-manufactured. Our propaganda machines, our gun distribution networks, our fast food purveyors, rain violence upon us and we watch ourselves writhe in our horror, then snack again, to stop our disheartened bodies as soon as possible. For sweet relief we grow our buds and tend our roses, to wake and spend a week encased in ice, helpless, with no comforts save those our neighbors will share, and gladly, with us.The last roses were encased in thick ice, and will indeed rot soon, sink into mud, like the emblems worn by the actors in their chain maille.

If it hadn't been nature, the cruel irony would have been too rich. At the Fairgrounds, I and my fellows spread our baubles out, lined up the products of our tireless labor, and hoped that this would please our neighbors as it had before. It seemed a distraction, a pleasant diversion from the tragedies. We would have our Christmas. We did need our community gathering, warm and shiny, where we could lose our fears and put aside our terror, while we waited for tomorrow. The cheesecake case was almost empty for once, the tables full, the dancers wild and happy. We hugged and cried. We crammed our empathy and our impatience right next to each other and came home confused and unhappy, with one more week to manage. Frog had his best day ever, I heard. I haven't sold a single "fear less" hat, but the "I make stuff up" are flying out the door, showing our agreement with the fun side of post-truth.

It's only politics, American politics, not the world itself. The world itself was teaching our valley about ice, more things that it could do: exploding trees, iced branches piercing our roofs, thin soles of our fashionable shoes not enough to keep us from falling and breaking like the brittle bushes. My friend did that, broke her right hand, the one she needs, and at the other end of her family life her father's house burned up with everything saved from her whole life. Far more cruel fate than what was deserved in any way, seemingly random, but so lasting in its pain. Another told me of his aortic aneurysm, for which he will hie himself to the surgeon forthwith tomorrow morning. He was walking the Holiday Market knowing he could simply explode within and die at any moment. As could we all.

It's too damn much! We are prey. We have been eaten and tomorrow will likely be spit out, we hope with gentle rains to melt the ice, and with courageous men and women to thwart the bully with a further layer of chaos. And I sit and wonder if everything on the television was meant tonight to keep me from rage, to keep us all at home, enraptured with the play as we are unable to stomach the reality. Is it even real, any of it? The young people say not. They say it's all relative, it's like the matrix, it's like that movie, that story, and there is no reality, so it doesn't matter. So tempting. Then is this the quiet apocalypse, that already happened? This makes it easy not to care, and not caring would indeed be so much easier.

Traumatized people don't recognize further trauma...it feels normal. We know the abuse so well we can't call it out and make it stop. All of the articles I read in the paper today were subtly written to normalize the politics (I can't write his name either, the name of our tormentor/figurehead.) He will do this thing that is milder, he will renounce this thing that we couldn't stand for, he won't succeed, because good men and women will stop him. There are more good men and women than bad, as we could see when all of the chainsaws came out to free neighbors and streets from nature this week. We know that this is true. We all know so many good people, so many people willing to treasure our baubles, to give us the means to make art, to write, to be together here in our good town, where we are safe. That has to be the truth we seek.

We are counting on this. As I sat in so many City Council meetings and got to know a little the public personas of the county commissioners and the mayors and other officials, and the staff people, I watched them spin the drama of where to put the buildings they will build with our taxes, and I could believe in them. They all wanted what is best for our town, but you and I both know that what is said at the meetings and reported in the news articles is only a small part of the full story. There were meetings that were not public, plans that were not revealed, deals that will be made that will not benefit the public, but will line the pockets of those who are already rich. This can't be not true, even though in our small world we might know the family that owns the timberlands that are simply resources, the gravel extractors, the people who own the fine restaurants that serve the foods we want to taste, to stimulate our bored and needy palates. Mr. King Estates will also take down an entire hill in Oakridge, for money, despite the fact that he can't put it back, can't restore the native graves and history that will be lost, and the aesthetics of the lives of all who live around it. The commissioners set them aside, and used a thin legal precedent to stand behind, angrily sliding blame aside when faced with many who did care, very much, about preserving that land. It was an ugly scene on my laptop as I watched. It was a classic drama.

And the City Council, with the end run of the supporters of EWEB, who fully believed in their better plan, I am sure, but when in ten years or so when it all sorts out and all the buildings are built and the pockets lined, what surprises did they hide in those decisions for us to lament? These things are often in plain sight. Now the City will negotiate for half the Butterfly...so who will buy the other half? Will some investors swoop in to build the Pike Place of some peoples dreams where we want our simple farmers' market? Will that happen somewhere else entirely? I don't really believe that it simply disappeared, that comprehensive feasiblity study that looked so attractive. It's not what they say they are doing, but the cynicism I have finely honed since my political awakening in 1969 has not dissipated. I watched closely, and I saw the little evasions and things they wouldn't say. I didn't get a lot of eye contact at those meetings. Is it that I am shy and come off a little eccentric, and it was me, or was there something hidden in those official proceedings? Will I know, and will I be able to help? Will it eat me? What parts are poison and which are sweet? Easier to not care.

Of course my fallback is that it was me...isn't that our fallback now, with the national situation? We were naive, too trusting, too relaxed in our Obama haze, having too much fun with all our new strains and edibles, not vigilant and not willing to believe in the power of our abuser-elect. He didn't have to lie about most of it, but remember this...in no way was it our fault. He is the rapist. He is the Bankrupter-Elect. I can see the whole cynical plan, thanks to our Shakespeares and our lie-detectors and our courageous and vigilant writers ( I do wish my key that is between the h and k would work so I could give the press their credit...)

I can see it, but I can't do anything about it as it plays out, and I can't bear to watch, or look away. It's exactly like those gritty battles tonight, with the thrusting swords and the intimate daggers of power-over. Damn, it is painful. The frozen town and domination of nature was a relief. I can say this because I had electricity and I made money with my baubles, but I will be sad to see the pause end and the real weather return, as I loved the suspended feeling that nothing would move, nothing could move, until the sun said it could. It was a fantasy of brilliant light, a treasure to see, free for all to love, hiding destruction and suffering and loss, but so achingly beautiful.

Oh, I wish for simple, for that gift. I wish so hard that in tomorrow night's news the Hamilton electors would have risen up, and our new heroes would be our ordinary ones, the ones that could see the right thing to do and did it. I fear that my idealism will crack and break again, or sadly melt as the ice does, and I'll re-immerse in the cycles of grief, and the next week will be too hard again, something Christmas won't be able to cure. But tonight I can still cling to hope as the ice clings to our trees.

We lost some very precious ones, the Zumwalt oak, the willow at the Historical Museum that was all woven together by that long-gone Fairgrounds gardener who also loved fuchsias, whose name I don't remember. We don't know all that we have lost and will lose, but we do know that we have loss in our lives. This is the same as it ever was. Grievous, crippling loss will come to us, and that is why we work so hard to create. We have to work so hard, we are bound to it, and we will all keep doing this because of the deep love that we share for what makes beauty, what makes light. The music, the tiny paintings, the flashing crystals, the tie-dyed underwear, the soft unstructured hats, the wooden spoons, we need these things. We need the books from the guy with the personality. We need the fashion days. We need each other. That's what we have that we can depend on, that we can trust and love and feel safe around.

I'm going to relish my isolation next week, after it is all done, but I am not going to be complicit in silence with those who would abuse me. None of us should let ourselves get quiet and hide when it gets meaner and tougher and more demoralizing that we ever imagined our elder years would be. We're going to make it better, make something beautiful out of it, like we have taught ourselves to do. We're going to keep spreading our peace and love. We're going to have our Christmas, and our happy holidays of whatever kind we have, and our New Year. If it comes with a big helping of chaos, so be it. We can endure the darkness, and burn our candles through it, and see those of each other. Same as it ever was. We have our hearts, ever exploding.

Someday We'll Laugh About This

'Tis the season of irrationality. People's heartstrings are getting plucked to threads and it's up and down, whirl around and then get up and dance some more. The pipeline is stopped, for a minute, and the electoral college is fragmenting, like a dream. It's all like a dream/nightmare, and the urge to escape back into that warm bed of denial and frothy foaminess is compelling.

Collecting shiny things

Retailing this time of year is so rough! It looks so fun and easy to dress up in ruffles and glitter and collect Benjamins all day but all of us who do this know how hard we have to struggle to maintain balance. The days of retreat at home are essential and often we can't consume...I can't go shopping myself. I buy little things at the HM and turn my Xmas lights on every day at home and try to keep collected. I even tell myself not to write here because it makes me feel even more vulnerable. Then I do it anyway.

But the energy in our world is so high right now, it's remarkable. Many of our fears have subsided to a more manageable size in our scorched hearts, and we carefully build up our peace and joy with selective forays into the territory. Watching the veterans ask the native people for forgiveness was profoundly moving. This careful step forward to trust should be something we all echo somehow in our own lives. What can I do, what little changes can I really make that will last for me and help me navigate what may come?

Not everyone has to agree on everything. Certainly as an old person I plant my feet and refuse to participate in a lot of things, and that's not all bad. I dropped women's clothing because of fast fashion (you know what that is if you have bought anything in a chain store in the past decade.) Everything is cheap and flimsy, quality has been lost and the waste is unconscionable. Thus people are buying less and I am one of them. It does set up the cognitive dissonance while selling things. I had the crushing realization that all of my products are made of cotton. Does that still feed racism like it once did? Does everything we do feed racism in our denial and inability to cover all the bases of being a good person? Probably a little, so we can work harder to name it and claim it.

I'm working on it. My locally sewn bags are at least "made in the USA" cotton and local people have more work to do because of me spending my dollars that way. It feels wonderful and I am taking the time to explain it more to customers because they usually respond to it. My big denial area is that a lot of my products are still imported...I put my handcrafting on them, but I don't make them and that's an impossible thing to explain away. I can make my excuses...but it's still on me to do better. So maybe this winter I will put that closer to the top of my list.

Oh, the lists. Mine go in too many directions at once. While I'm doing one thing I'm feeling guilty for not doing another. I had some extra time yesterday so went to the library, read a magazine and got a few books. I have a giant reading pile already and some of it feels urgent, but I got fiction and essays that will make me feel things...I'm afraid of feeling things so I dive in deeper. It might work, or maybe that is my favorite recipe for disaster. I read The Sun magazine and am reading essays by Brian Doyle...reading a lot of essays. Crying is good relief so probably my subconscious is telling me to trigger myself. Feel stuff! Don't numb out. It's harder but it's better.

The giving up of dairy is beginning to feel good rather than depressing. Cheese and ice cream substitutes are satisfying, though I have not found a satisfactory cookie and don't expect to. There is something else that is causing a reaction though, mold or the germs of others or some other substance I'm ingesting...tempted to do an allergen test. Also tempted to do a DNA profile...I'd love to see what my heritage really is.

Technology continues to speed beyond my willingness and I know I should replace my laptop now. I went to Next Step and upgraded my TV and internet with simple fixes so I know how to do it cheaply, but then I have to get rid of another piece of toxic gear that even though somewhat recyclable, adds to the problem rather than the solution. How long can I resist a better car? How long can I not use my cellphone for everything and when I run out of checks, will I bank online? I pretty much need to be shamed into these changes or find things so difficult I make them under protest. The banking online thing will save trees, and of course reduce waste, and then I won't have all that paper to sort and store...but it makes me feel so insecure to not have tangible artifacts of what I purchase and sell. So perhaps slowly I will step toward these changes. Certainly being online for communicating has been positive...hasn't it?

I've almost grown to hate Facebook and regret giving away so much through it...but then I get to read posts from my son and articles from amazing writers and see images that are almost beyond belief...and the internet is a way to travel and be a world citizen without getting on a plane. You guessed it, I hate to fly, and in fact I have let my life contract despite knowing that the way this happens is not necessarily a healthy part of aging. I see so many fearful elders and I don't want to be one of them...but I am. I vow to be more brave. Perhaps this latest political debacle is an avenue to being bolder. Speak up! The Pantsuit Nation FB group is one story after another about people speaking up to intolerance and hatred and I want to be one of them.

So I talk to myself a lot. I try to own my fears and errors and work on them. I was particularly working on being intimidated by large men...so I tried some amusing workarounds. First, I'm the one being intimidated, so I can refuse to feel that or refuse to allow that if it is an actual behavior instead of a fear. For one guy I noticed that although he is heavy, he is not that tall. So I see myself as just as tall. Plus I'm probably faster. So maybe he is there to be my ally (he's certainly solid) and then I can see that he is doing his best to not look intimidating. He's intentionally being cute. I love him for it. One little problem solved.

One by one. Every problem has a solution or at least a path to one. I am lucky to be creative and well-practiced at problem solving. Mine are all small. Tiny. Miniscule. I have so few problems my tiny mind tries to make the ones I have look big. Plug in the lights. Think about finding more vegan recipes. Read a book. Turn off the devices and hear the quiet, watch the warblers. Wait for snow.

Remember it's the darkest time, but soon it will be lighter, and lighter, and more incredible things will happen. One guy and I had a little conversation where we found that we had the common ground of being idealists and truly believing that good will triumph over evil. Joy to the damn world! Peace to humans of good will. This may be the best of times. I want to be present for it.