Equity Out The Window

 The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is located in a beautiful mountain town in Ashland, OR. The town used to be somewhat of a hippy sanctuary with new age thought and ramshackle art all over town. There are hints of its past, but mostly it is a town full of millionaires and billionaires. The rental cost is on on par with LA and New York. There is very little housing available. I live in a cute trailer park actually just out side of town. Enough so that I do not get to vote for the Mayor of the town. 

So how can a theater located amongst such socio-economic disparity claim to be fighting for equity? There is a phrase on the West coast you will hear "manifest". Most of the folks are paid well at the theater that work in production with much need for wardrobe and backstage folks to get a pay increase across the board with inflation going up and the cost of living being such a burden. 

I have strong thoughts on sharing my wage in a work space along with my knowledge and being a fighter for equity in that space. I feel as a human it is important to insure that work load and responsibility are a reflection of pay. Yesterday all of the people under the same job title as me told each other our pay rates and there is no equity.

No Equity, the person with the highest pay rate carries the lightest load and only works four days a week while getting paid around $4 dollars more that the least paid person in the room. The second highest paid person said they did not negotiate their pay but just was assign a rate and assumed everyone was making the same money. The next tier of pay two people get the same amount myself and a coworker that has been working there longer than anyone else in the room. The fifth person doesn't even have the proper title and has more skill than I do in a variety specialties. They get paid the least.

I want to be clear that I am not mad about the amount of money I make as I am not a capitalist. I am mad about the inconsistency and seemingly lack of clarity of why folks make different rates. It is emblematic of bad management from the core. I am sad because I thought the company was moving into a more just working style. I am also not mad that folks make more than I do, I just want it to make sense.

Please make it make sense.... 

A Step into the Future

 Well it has been a while with a pandemic of never ending proportions. I have to pay my dues for being allowed into the middle class for a year. I moved into a sweet vintage trailer (1964 New Moon) on the edge of town in Ashland, OR. I was working at the what I considered to be the top of my field painting and dying costumes for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I had a great year from September 2018 till March 2020. I made the most amount of money in my life and did the most amount of traveling. I was flying high on the hog.

In November of 2018 I went to Thailand and saw a beautiful country and beautiful people. I should have just stayed there! I drove across the country to get the dogs to Ashland. The vastness of the dessert and wildness of Wyoming, so awesome. My wonderful friend drove back with me and we stopped in Santa Fe and saw a 365 degree sunset. We also stopped in San Fransisco and I had the best crescent of my life. 

I learned so much my first year as the only painter/dyer at OSF. I used a large format vinyl cutter and mastered the airbrush, did some screen printing and designed fabric digitally to be printed. So much that I had only touched on in the past of my theater work. I was just starting to really feel in control of my work environment when all of theater was shuttered in March of 2020. I went from $24 an hour to $29 and hour with in a month of working after I realized that the company had hired me to do all of the work and there was no else to learn from. I was doing the job description for the higher paying position (When I applied I thought I was applying for the lead painting and dying position as there where two positions listed in their website.) The job descriptions where unclear and of course the pay amounts where not listed and I was douped. I hate not being in Union and having to fight for yourself all of the time....but here we are?Sweet, Sweet America...

  

The Home Hunt in Ashland

I moved across the country to look for housing for a month? Thank goodness my job is not too crazy right now because there is no way I would have time to look for a place and work. Here is my housing response to a guy that teaches green building. Also this house needs a ton of construction and I would have at least one roommate. This shit is crazy. all I want is to be able to bring my dogs and do a bit of gardening. People abuse power all the time in their own special ways.

I think it is also illegal to ask these question in regards to housing.

To be considered for the property please share three paragraphs about 

1) your experience and interest in construction

2) your interest and experience in agriculture

3) your thoughts about climate insecurity and your ideas to build resilience.

1. I have experience through going to art school and building my own frames for screen printing with a wood shop. I have experience with plumbing and car mechanics through growing up poor and needing to figure things out. I am mechanically inclined though I honestly lack on sight construction skills I do not know how to construct or read blueprints. I have hung doors and helped put in some water pipes into friend’s houses. I am not a contractor or a construction worker, but I am a problem solver I also think it is fun to build things. I have assembled and rehabbed many old looms that are most built with Ash a hardwood. I know a little bit and have a lot of room for growth.

2. I grew up in southern Illinois with a garden that my Mom planted every year. As a children we would go a pick the vegetable for dinner. So I have always know that a pickle is a cucumber because my family fermented, juice and canned. My parents bought a plot of land with a small house on it and created their catholic hippy utopia. All 11 of us were vegetarian for a while and we all knew about alternative medicine and health practices. I was not raised with health insurance. My dad sought out local honey and the same juicer on your counter in the house I also own. (Champion)

My knowledge is based more in gardening than agriculture. Small scale. I have no idea how a tractor works nor do I think mono-cropping is a good idea. I know people that have farms in the Midwest both organic urban farm and crazy dairy farms for corporate. The human experience is a hard one and people try the best they can at good in the ways they know how. My friends husband the Dairy farmer still worries about his cows and loves them but  I think the practice is wrong and the supply and demand chains have a gross corporate structure. The structure is gross not the individual.

I can plant and grow things and I can fail and try again the next year in a different spot with more or less sun.

As an adult I have gardened for the past 5 years as access to land has only been available at that time. I planted two fruit trees a sour cherry and an apricot from dwarf trees. I planted carrots, turnips, tomatoes of all sorts, radishes, zucchini, okra, greens of all sorts my favorite being mustard.I can plant and grow things and I can fail and try again the next year in a different spot with more or less sun. I can figure out which plants like each other and which one deter witch bugs from eating them. I know there are smarter better ways to plant and grow food that is both sustainable and beautiful. I love the idea of an edible landscape. Because blueberry bushes are very attractive plants.

I will attempt to address my ideas or climate change and food insecurity: Climate change is directed and exactly cause by humans on this planet. Climate change make many things horrible. Weather patterns have become more unpredictable hence more forest fires in southern OR/Northern CA. More tornadoes in the midwest Joplin MO. More scary Hurricanes for anyone living by an ocean and the earth is about 75% water.. It doesn’t matter where you live climate change affects everyone by changing food grow seasons which impacts markets and humans food needs as well as their pocket books. It is all fantastically connected.

I don't know what the global solution looks like though global action is what is needed. China is going through their industrial revolution which equals tons of pollution. The United states did the same nasty thing. There is a trash dump on fire just north of St. Louis that is heading towards Nuclear waste. People that bought houses there were not told about the nuclear waste that is being spread via waterways and I think is most likely in the MIssissippi. Also, I have notice that the worst climate crime are always made where the poorest people live. it is a big socio-economic puzzle that leads to me concluding that much of the worlds problems were instinctually formed through greed.

Well, that is about all the doom and gloom I care to share on that subject: Fixing the problem is beyond me as an individual. I do not have enough idealism to believe that I personally will make much of a difference to the earth or humanity as a whole. But I do believe in small community and creating your own personal paradise and fighting for what is right. I have been to so many protest on the streets of St. Louis I could not even count them all.  Ashland is a much different place than I am used to but I would love to continue to preserve the fights that have already been won for agriculture in this area. Climate insecurity is something of our generation We will need to be ever adaptive in order to cope with the on going changes.

PS Sorry for the novel. I clearly have too much time on my hands

Bridget

 

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Summer Breeze

Just a hot day in WI summer, not to be compared with a hot day in St. Louis. The sun is sharp but the air has a sweet coolness in it.  Lovely to feel the vitamin D flowing through my skin.
I want to write something sweet that communicates the love I have for this place and time. A theater in the woods and people working so hard to to bring it all together. The magic friendliness and openness that I have never seen anywhere else.  Is the source hidden in the beautiful landscape or was it transplanted here but vigilant individuals that are more than self serving workers in a machine.
Maybe it is the extra oxygen in the air that wipes away the tired beat down feeling that I normally feel. Perhaps it is a supportive and highly functioning group of friends.
Friendship and proximity are key features for a lovely 7 weeks in Spring Green WI.

Look at that hair, But that straw is disgusting.

Have you heard the Boss/ Bruce what was happening on the Grateful Dead tour. Tell me about your tattoos. trying so hard to get some action this Sunday night in Ashland, OR. This cynical lady now lives here. how do I acclimate to what seems like a no problem simple town?

The poor are transient white people mostly in their youth... how do I feel knowing that things are harder elsewhere? I am not the person to say get a job but you look like a white male to me? All of the world is made for you to prosper.I can dig it if you don't want to but the thick reality is that I have no pity in this situation right now. I live in Oregon. I did this to myself. I just wanted health insurance and mostly full time work. Though you all know I have no love for the 40 hour work week.
I need to find my people here. I know it will take a while nothing happens as quickly as we would like. Wish me luck 

Free Beer

Orange Sweater, Merino Wool, Lands End                                                              ( Fancy)

Green and Aqua Dress, Cotton Polyester Blend, Handmade from Vintage Pattern (Poor Lady)

Black Cherry Faux Corduroy Leggings, Lands End (Oooh Expensive)

Large blue cotton undies, From the 6 pack, Target (Utilitarian)

Slightly Lacy Black Underwire Bra, Ordered Online Brand Unknown ( Boobs too big for stores)

Nice Hiking Socks Cotton Polyester Blend, Made in South Korea (Clearly a gift and Strange)

Hiking Boots, Brown, Ahnu
 (Girl thought she had money for a second even signed up as a member of REI)

*I go to the Lands end warehouse sale of returned products every year.
*I guess I had enough time to make a dress from a pattern a friend gave me one time.
*I am not sure if these are legging or pants or loungewear for old woman while playing Bingo
*These socks are really nice and I love them
*I had to start buying the big underware my bits were falling out of the other kind. I am not sure when my body went through the Change.

Today is the day I left the house and should not have quickly noting my inability to fit in with young professionals. A meeting about art and tech....

Enter building and find where free beer is located. Wishing to be blind to find the beer. I need the Beer....Lost in a sea of grey well kempt smiling..networking...faces.  The beer is a lose. The path leads me back to my car and my clownish unmatched self . Run and never be seen again. Drive away, the terror that almost ate me through the promise of a free beer.

Rich, Whitewashed piles of shit,This is offensive

I am actually amazed this country made it through the civil war at all and did not completely eat itself with greed and hate. I am surprised the North won . The south and the slavery and the economic greed of hurting people for the gain of the few rich seems to be the desired need of this America I live in. Fund the rich while the concrete crumbles and the poor are bled out with rising sales taxes. Lets get regressive and feel good about it by pretending the community wanted it. Lets put community in the name of action and try to trick the poor once more in to believing gentrification is good for them and diversity comes in all forms. We need the neighbors that can afford 1,200 a month for an apartment.. aren't we inclusive... lets not leave out the median earner of 55,00 a year they need a place to stay too. The persecuted median wage earner has a hard time.

Riding my bike through the city streets of St. Louis and knowing without any doubt that the poverty and racism has been meticulously dictated and lovingly condoned by elected officials makes me sick but there is literally nothing I can do about it. Small groups of enraged neighbors can make hundreds of calls but people who have never known poverty will still have all the power to decide what progress look like. Progress looks white too rich, too white

Well, it looks like a white pile of white rich shit exploding over an otherwise lovely neighborhood. How is this white subway tile or these white light fixtures or this white flooring or these white painted walls. Well it is all whitewashed

Whitewashed politics, Whitewashed society pretending in progress together as they underfund the pavement from under their own feet.

A building is built where nothing was needed so a politician could get a child's badge for doing something false first. Community is a false word when used to represent only the people that have the luxury of going to meetings. Those people don't have real jobs but are cute little tokens of society that have deemed their opinions to be the best and most important of all the smiling white dudes.


This is offensive                 

I Don't Have Faith and I Don"t Need Your Levi's

I just want a little more than survived.

The government cheese came and the canned peanut butter, the consistency of the inside of a peanut butter cup, tasted really good. I even enjoyed the canned pork stuff with the awesome graphic of a pig on the can.  The donuts from St. Vincent De Paul's food pantry were stale and occasionally we would get an entire stale sheet cake, so good. We never had snacks. We were not the poor family with Tommy Hilfiger polo tops and red tag Levi jeans. We were for real. There was not a loss of priorities it was just basic desperation . There was actual pride in the words when my lovely mother said we had survived and a sense of thankfulness that could only be possible through faith.

I don't have faith and I don't need your Levi's.
 I never have considered god to be compassionate and I have a great sense of style that never needed societies markings of a name brand.  I little ego and a lacking in faith goes a long way I guess after all I survived.


There were barrels of broken toys for Christmas...don"t give broken trash to the poor they don't want it and do not have the means to get rid of it once they have it and which leads to the stereotype of poor folks being lazy slobs surrounded by trash. Just guess where all that garbage came from and guess who's car is broken and who doesn't know how to recycle or trash said broken objects. If something no longer has value then it no longer has value and is not magically useful by someone that has less money. If anything it is harder to maintain an object and more expensive it is made poorly or already broken. rehabbing and refurbishing are for the rich really poor folks should only have the best as they do not have the money to maintain crappy goods. Unfortunately, quality is hard to find and impossible to afford.

$15 is better than $12

Starting a new job is hard and the facts are simple $15 per hour is better than $12. Actually "better" is the wrong word. Humane is the correct word. Unfortunately and, much to my dismay and hope for humanity, the amount of money a person makes directly effects how people are valued. Life and living is not a simple protected beauty pageant. People's wealth is worn on their external and internal selves in a way of capital decay.

Missing teeth: I am positive that no one wants to have oral pain or teeth pulled due to not being able to afford a filling. Money is the reason people are missing teeth. It is not cool or fun to be disfigured. People are judged by their smiles.
Disease, cancer, death occurs too soon for impoverished and marginalized folks. Poor people have death marketed to them. Cigarettes and Cheetos

I have been trying to stay at the $15 or better wage for quite a while now and it is next to impossible.  The minimum wage is a joke in this country and the amount of money you want to pay people is a great descriptor of how you view humanity and human worth on a whole. So next time you are in a job interview, just know that the company may or may not be viable but they should not be able to take you through the dirt with them.

Khaki making my ass look that way.

Tight wrong flesh fabric clinging to my thck thighs.
Workin'
Shit this shirt looks bad,
Like a powdered donut all lumpy but blue

Hot grime creepin' out the cement
Flesh clouds of condensation
Why this sticky?
Moist money, need me some gloves