Stop and talk to Watt Childress (who founded this website) any day at Jupiter’s Books in Cannon Beach and you’ll hear the gospel of community. The good news that our community is full of talent and special people and that we have much to give each other if we would find ways to share. Upper Left Edge is one of those ways. The Farmer’s Market is another.
This was brought home when I visited the Market today with my kids. Our first stop was Cranky Sue’s (who’s had two restaurant locations over the last six years in Cannon Beach and now sells weekly from her booth) because she doesn’t just sell food. She sells magic. And healing. And affection. You taste all of these in her crab dip (so good that when she opened her first store I ordered it fourteen straight days), chowder, pesto chicken wraps, and crab quesadillas.
Next to her, guitarist Brian Johnstone wrestled and caressed his strings through intricate tangos, waltzes, and hymns. With face to the sky, his fingers pressed, flicked, and summoned sights and sounds of fields and vineyards, the Nativity, a Clint Eastwood western, and Spanish courtyards with jeweled ladies dancing. To sit in one of the green or blue plastic chairs in front of him was to be transported.
Then we wandered to the Nehalem Bay Pie Company booth and faced the arduous task of picking between Boysenberry, Blackberry Raspberry, Apple Crumble, Chocolate Cream, Key Lime, Peach Coconut and various other miniature pies. We picked chocolate and apple. My son said it was the best chocolate he’d ever had and the apple taste was so earthy it took me back decades to a memory of picking apples in an orchard with my grandma.
I left the Farmer’s Market with most of the cash in my pocket gone. But that was a good thing. The only reason I had the cash was because I sold a few boxes of used books to Watt. Having just moved, I needed to downsize and Watt’s store gave me the financial incentive. That money was then liberally sprinkled between Brian Johnstone, Cranky Sue and Nehalem Pies. To people sharing their passions, giftings, songs, and goods with each other.
Have you caught how special I think community is today? The Market goods weren’t just organic, local, raw, or any of the time’s popular catchphrases – they were personal. Sue doesn’t just make her crab dip and chowder as a commodity to make her rich; she makes it with love. And you can taste that. Same with Nehalem Bay’s pies. And probably with the other fine booths we didn’t taste from like The Juice Box and O Falafel and others.
Thanks, Watt, for preaching your gospel with this website. Thanks for buying my books so I can buy local pie and chowder and tip an incredible musician. The Nehalem pie man thanked us for buying his pies. But I said, “No, thank you.” Because we are the richer for having pies that delicious available to us. We are the richer for having Cranky Sue’s food. We are the richer for hearing the distillation of thousands of hours of practice in Brian Johnstone’s soaring strings. We are the richer being part of Community. And that, as far as I can tell, is a big part of Watt’s Gospel.
I’ve been accused of being a preacher, RW, but you’re the first person to refer to my ramblings as gospel. Reading your post here in the bookshop made me tear up and it made my mouth water, thinking about pies.
I wrote a lot about farmer’s markets during the 90s, mostly sermons circulated to family and friends. Occasionally they were published as guest columns in small newspapers.
One morning I was sharing a biscuit with my friend Norman Sobel at a farmer’s market in the town where I was born. An elder booster of the market, Norman understood the root value of the relationships that were being nourished around us.
“You go to the church in Germany where Martin Luther posted his words,” Norman said. “Hanging on the sides of the building are age-old tables that were let down on market days so villagers could trade.”
One of my first published pieces began as a letter to Norman during an extended visit to Cannon Beach with my soul-mate. I wrote it on the back of an old inventory list from the Wine Shack. After the trip I re-worked it into a kind of prayer for an economy where people can make, share, and exchange the best of what we have to offer.
That piece was printed in the Upper Left Edge by the Reverend Billy Hults, our founding publisher. Billy provided a forum where an aspiring writer could find grassroots footing in the economy of words.
Small is beautiful.
See, this site is magic. Without my off-the-cuff, so-so rambling on the Farmer’s Market, we don’t get that touching, poetic (there’s that word again) reply from you! Ain’t it fun! And you probably didn’t agonize over that little piece half as much as your others, right? So it’s win-win all around 🙂
Just had to comment on your final sentence, Watt.
Small is beautiful.
I’ve been dealing with this recent deal between several agencies and the hospital here where the school district will get a $5 million sports complex in return for giving up the football field next to the hospital. The city gets a cap on their landfill, and the local waste hauler gets a sewer and paved roads to their transfer station (next to the long-ago closed landfill). It all sounds great, and was reported so in the Daily Astorian, but I can’t help but think that the thinking was too big for such a small, artsy, historic place. I would solve these problems differently. The hospital expands by building up, using its facilities better, and maybe putting clinics in various empty buildings around town. Less parking, and more coordination with the local bus service and taxis. Incentives for employees to carpool, take public transit, taxis or walk or ride their bike. The school district uses the fields at their schools better and contracts out to use other fields. The field next to the hospital gets used for a community center and park, paid for by residents in a bond measure. The city mines the landfill and pays for its entire budget with the recovered material. The local waste hauler uses permeable roads, a living machine for wastewater and opens a Cartm-type recycling center and store.
Small is beautiful. How right you are, Brother Watt. Gospel to my ears.
One of the best books ever written, by E.F. Schumacher:
“Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered,” originally published by Blond & Briggs Ltd. London in 1973.
Cartm sets the green standard for a zero-waste oriented transfer station. Payment for Cartm’s services as a waste transfer facility provides the lion’s share of financing for their operations. Being a mission-driven organization with firm connections to the community, Cartm couples their transfer services with a top-notch recycling drop-off center and reuse store.
It will be interesting to see how Cartm’s approach compares with that of the improved Astoria facility planned by Western Oregon Waste. WOW is a subsidiary of Recology, the largest employee-owned company in the resource recovery industry. Recology’s motto is “waste zero.” Check out their website.
http://www.recology.com/
RW, I love your poetic waxing of the local market. I’m heading off to fiddle camp this next week on Salt Spring Island, in B.C. Salt Spring is an amazing place, with several small farms, bakeries, cheese processors, chocolate makers, wineries, breweries, and craft studios. Their Saturday market is fantastic. And the music and singing at camp is lovely. Some top-notch performers, both teachers and students. We need more models like these.
Keep up the wonderful posts — fiction, movie reviews and reviews of life.
Thanks Cartoon Rabbi Bob! Maybe you’ll give us a post -camp window into your week when you return? We could use it…