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Speaking Out
Country Fair opens
stage to speakers.
By David
Kupfer
As an
institution, the Oregon Country Fair is approaching middle age. There
is a generation or two of family members and attendees who may not
have a keen understanding of what came to pass to create the progressive
social environment that many now take as a given. Several years ago
I began conversations with former Fair General Manager Robert DeSpain
about the idea of bringing California-based counter-cultural figures
to the Fair to help remedy this.
As a writer, I have been privy to befriending several
heros of the culture that was born out of the 1960s. I have been lobbying
Ram Dass and Paul Krassner to journey to the hippie haven that is
the Country Fair for awhile. I am pleased they both have found the
time in their schedules to join in this weekend's fun.
Paul
Krassner
Paul Krassner, (who coined the term
Yippie) co-founded the Yippies (a radical political party) with Abbie
Hoffman and Jerry Rubin in 1967, in order to inject some humor into
the youth movement and help overcome the police presence of that time.
Using humor to get people to acknowledge and deal with the truth,
Krassner has been on the forefront of irreverence and political satire
since the 1950s.
His magazine The Realist (1958-2001), was,
according to Wavy Gravy, the official organ of the underground counter-culture
for more than 40 years. As a publisher, editor, comedian, social critic
and activist, Krassner has contributed to our culture mightily, while
skirting the law and some might say, good taste as well. Krassner's
autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures
in the Counter-Culture, published several years ago by Simon and
Schuster, sold more than 30,000 copies. Krassner's writing has appeared
in the Village Voice, Mother Jones, Utne Reader,
Penthouse, Spin, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and the Nation.
He has a monthly column in High Times.
As Fugs co-founder Ed Sanders once told me,
"Krassner interlaces current events with culture and politics in a
manner not previously done. He is always on the side of personal freedom
and personal destiny. Paul dares to be a part of the history of his
era."
According to Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole
Earth Catalogue, Krassner's role was pivotal. "The Realist
inspired most of the development of the underground press in the
'60s and '70s, including a good portion of the Whole Earth Catalogue."
After several years of my pleading and constant coaxing,
Krassner is coming to this year's Oregon Country Fair — his
first — in order to experience its whimsy and joie de vivre.
He will be speaking on Sunday. His latest book and album have just
been released.
DK: Since this is for the Eugene Weekly, are
there any strong memories you have of that town?
PK: Mostly of hanging around with Kesey and Prankster
friends. I also think of Eugene as being the epicenter of political
correctness — in the best sense of the word — such as,
for example, recycled toilet tissue.
dk: What is your strongest memory of Ken Kesey?
pk: One that comes to mind: On the hill across the
street from his place in La Honda, there were speakers used for music
during big parties. One time, not during a party, a couple in a car
parked on the road between the house and the hill were arguing loudly.
Kesey walked back to the house and put on a romantic Frank Sinatra
record, which blasted from the hill. The couple stopped arguing, listened
for a moment, then drove off.
dk: For the uninitiated, what role did The Realist
play in broadening consciousness to irreverence and political intrigue?
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Oregon
Country Fair
Speaker
schedule*
*Information provided by the
Oregon Country Fair website
www.oregoncountryfair.org
Friday, July 12
1 pm Jim Goettler,
Chez Ray's Speak Kesey Stage
1 pm Cynthia Wooten,
Front Porch Stage
2 pm Dan Merkle,
Chez Ray's Speak Kesey Stage
3 pm Sheri Herndon,
Chez Ray's Speak Kesey Stage
3 pm Stephen Gaskin,
Front Porch Stage
4 pm Christine Payne-Towler,
Chez Ray's Speak Kesey Stage
4:30 pm Ina May Gaskin,
Chez Ray's Speak Kesey Stage
5:30 pm Christine Payne-Towler,
Chela Mela Dome
Saturday, July 13
1 pm Jim Goettler,
Chez Ray's Speak Kesey Stage
1 pm Sheri Herndon,
Front Porch Stage
2 pm Damian Bradley,
Chez Ray's Speak Kesey Stage
3 pm Cynthia Wooten,
Chez Ray's Speak Kesey Stage
3 pm Ina May Gaskin,
Front Porch Stage
4 pm Ross Krinsky,
Chez Ray's Speak Kesey Stage
4:30 pm Stephen Gaskin,
Chez Ray's Speak Kesey Stage
6 pm Christine Payne-Towler,
Chela Mela Dome
Sunday, July 14
1 pm Jim Fournier,
Front Porch Stage
1:45 pm Ram Dass,
Main Stage
3 pm Damian Bradley,
Front Porch Stage
3 pm Jim Goettler,
Chela Mela Dome
3 pm Paul Krassner,
Chez Ray's Speak Kesey Stage
4 pm Paul Krassner,
Chela Mela Dome
4 pm Cynthia Wooten,
Chez Ray's Speak Kesey Stage
4:30 pm Ina May and Stephen Gaskin,
Chez Ray's Speak Kesey Stage
|
pk: By using satire to communicate rather than lecturing,
people's defenses were down, and they laughed because they realized
a truth in the process.
dk: Can you describe the underground press when it
was at its peak?
pk: One function of the underground press was to report
the difference between what happened on the street and the way it
was covered by mainstream media. Weekly alternative papers in cities
across the country served as a vehicle for a sense of community for
the counter-culture. The spectrum ran from the Berkeley Barb,
which was very political, to the San Francisco Oracle, which
was very psychedelic.
dk: Wasn't it always the hope that when the baby boom
generation took the reins, there would be big changes in the US society?
pk: The devil never sleeps.
dk: What is the mood and spirit of people you have
encountered with your recent touring around the country?
pk: A hunger for humor about the serious things going
on.
dk: How do you view the mainstream culture's gradual
eclipsing of the counter-culture?
pk: Co-option is the name of the game, but there's
always more where that came from. And, after all, didn't we always
say, "Join us!"
dk: Do you believe the Bush administration had some
making in the events of 9/11 and have you been suprised by the mainstream
press's (initial) lack of digging behind the story to ferret out the
truth?
pk: I believe the Bush administration knew that something
was due to happen, and welcomed the opportunity to build a police
state in the guise of security. I think that the media see what's
happening from Internet sources as well as government spin doctors,
and so the rate of acceleration from underground to mainstream keeps
increasing.
dk: In terms of things like freedom, democracy, and
security, are you more of an optimist or pessimist after the reactions
to 9/11?
pk: I waver between hope and despair. Although the
terrorist attacks were inevitable, the tragedy is so much human suffering
because of the nation's karma.
dk: Tell me about your new book and album.
pk: The new book is Murder At the Conspiracy Convention
and Other Absurdities. It's a collection of my pieces from the
last few years, with an introduction by George Carlin. The title piece
is about an actual conspiracy convention I attended. I learned that
conspiracy research has evolved from "Who killed JFK?" to "Who fucked
a lizard from outer space?"
My new album is Irony Lives! It was taped five
months after the terrorist attacks, and it was a challenge to squeeze
satire out of horror. Dan Castellaneta, who does the voice of Homer
on "The Simpsons," introduced me in Homer's voice from an offstage
mike, but Fox TV lawyers wanted to hear the whole album before granting
permission to include the introduction. They finally refused. You
can hear it, though, on my Web site, paulkrassner.com ... but who
ever thought that Homer Simpson would some day become an intellectual
property?
dk: What are the social political causes on your mind
right now?
pk: Everything from medical marijuana to suicide bombers,
from abortion rights to corporate welfare, from free speech to educational
poverty.
dk: How concerned are you about the loss of democratic
rights in America?
pk: Extremely. It's like negative alchemy, watching
the development of a police state in the guise of security.
dk: What gives you hope these days?
pk: Activists. The success of Michael Moore's book.
Phil Donahue returning to TV.
dk: What is the most surprising thing we might find
in your closet?
pk: My awards from Playboy, the Feminist Party,
and the Cannabis Cup, which I recieved in Amsterdam, where I was inducted
into the Counter-Cultural Hall of Fame, something that has been an
ambition of mine since I was three years old.
Ram
Dass
Ram Dass assisted in the turning on of an entire generation,
through mainstreaming rediscovered spiritual means and by way of validating
the benefits of LSD. In the words of longtime prankster Paul Krassner,
"He has played an invaluable role as a holy man because he is so down
to earth and honest and not afraid to reveal his foibles. He has inspired
countless people by being himself and changing his views as he has
grown. His using LSD as an acronym for Love, Service and Devotion
has put his words into action."
In an effort to convey some of the cultural history
from which the Oregon Country Fair was born and evolved, I have been
lobbying Ram Dass for years to come to the event, and this year, with
pleasure, he agreed!
He was born in 1931 as Richard Alpert, son of a wealthy
lawyer who was the president of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
Railroad and founder of Brandeis University. After studying psychology
and earning an M.A. from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. from Stanford
University, he taught and conducted research at Harvard University's
Department of Social Relations and Graduate School of Education from
1958 to 1963.
It was during his time at Harvard that Ram Dass's
personal explorations of human consciousness led him to conduct intensive
research with LSD and other psychedelic elements in collaboration
with Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, and others. Because
of the controversial nature of this research, Ram Dass and Leary were
dismissed from Harvard in 1963. But the word on the mind odyssey represented
by acid was out to the youth movement and a national trip had begun.
In 1967, Dass traveled to India and met his spiritual
teacher, Neem Karoli Baba. While studying under his guru's guidance,
learning yoga and meditation, he received the name Ram Dass, or "servant
of God." Since 1968, he has pursued a variety of spiritual practices,
including Hinduism, karma, yoga, and Sufism.
When he returned from India, he assumed the role of
spiritual teacher, a Western messenger of Eastern wisdom. Charismatic,
a great storyteller, a born teacher, he wrote books, traveled the
world, and created organizations to help prison inmates, the aging
and the dying, and to promote awareness of environmental issues.
Ram Dass is also a cofounder and board member of the
Seva Foundation ("service," in Sanskrit), an international organization
dedicated to relieving suffering in the world. Among its efforts,
Seva supports programs designed to help wipe out curable blindness
in India and Nepal, restore the agricultural life of impoverished
villagers in Guatemala, assist in primary health care for American
Indians, and bring attention to the issues of homelessness and environmental
degradation in the United States. (www.seva.org)Ram
Dass has written a dozen books on spiritual topics. His first, Be
Here Now, published in 1971, has sold more than one million copies
and is now in its 34th printing. It has become a classic spiritual
guide. He most recently released Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing,
and Dying, a sequel of sorts, in which he details his journey
back from a debilitating stroke.
It was in February 1997 that Ram Dass suffered a stroke
that left him paralyzed on the right side of his body and initially,
without his ability to speak or to understand words. Doctors gave
him a 10 percent chance of surviving and were waiting for him to die
— until one of them saw something in his eyes and rewrote the
prognosis. A medical team mobilized to fight for his life while thousands
of his fans, friends, students and followers offered their prayers.
Gradually, Ram Dass recovered.
Five years after that life crisis, Ram Dass is teaching
again. His lectures and workshops keep him traveling; in the past
four months he has traveled from his Marin County home to LA, Illinois,
Austin, Sonoma, Monterey, Raleigh, NC, Denver, Vancouver and Cortes
Island, B.C. Today, while his speech is sometimes slower and deliberate,
interrupted by pauses as he searches for the right words 'to clothe
his ideas,' as he puts it, his teaching is as clear and powerful as
ever. For a man who experienced such a serious setback, he is amazingly
peaceful. It is evident to those around him that the wisdom he's been
teaching to others is working on himself.
"The stroke helped me understand aging as a stage
in life where we go from ego to soul. So when I took the stroke and
made it into grace, I was saying, 'The stroke is a mechanism for bringing
me closer to God.' Now that isn't New Age crap, that's a perspective
shift. Before the stroke, I'd find a parking space, and I'd say, 'Wow,
grace.' Heh. But I wouldn't dare think then that a stroke could be
grace."
Ram Dass has learned how to overcome the frustrations
of his situation without getting impatient and angry. "Frustration
is attachment to a goal," he has said. "Since I'm here in the now,
there's no reason to get frustrated. I mean, it's giving me space
between words, which is silence, which is where you hear God. So when
I try to speak and nothing happens, and I get tired of looking for
a word, I just start to enjoy the silence."
Aging, Ram Dass has said, is an emptying out and beginning
to experience the moment, or what's happening right now. "In our culture,
we value old people who act young. We don't value old people for acting
old, for their wisdom. For them to hear their own wisdom, they have
to experience their own silence."
In his present life form, Ram Dass has found that
dependency is an opportunity for intimacy. He had been independent
for so long, and prided himself on that.
"I've learned how to be dependent," he says, "and
that's quite a feat in this culture, which faults dependency. I think
I'm learning that there aren't really caregivers and those who are
cared for, there's just the shared experience of soul." He learned
some hard lessons regarding pride in other ways, too.
He admits, "I used to pride myself on being a holy
being. I had disdain for the material plane. In fact, I had such disdain
for the body that I didn't take my blood pressure medicine, which
made a stroke more likely. It took the stroke to change that. The
stroke made me see this plane as part of God."
The stroke also gave Dass new insight into identity.
"After the stroke I was in the hospital, and the doctors were referring
to me as a 'stroke victim.' They were thinking of me as a brain. I
said to them, 'I'm sorry, but what I am is not a material thing.'
They all looked at me as if I was crazy."
It's consciousness, and consciousness doesn't die
with the body, says Dass. "This is a hard idea to accept. We in this
culture are very materialistic, which means that we believe only what
we take in through our senses. But our soul is not sensed. It is not
a material thing. It exists on another plane of consciousness. And
when you get into 'I' as the witness, you can experience your life
as a movie. Then there is no more suffering. Because the soul doesn't
suffer."
He says as a consequence of his health challenges,
he has gotten over the feeling of being somebody special. "I really
experience the web of inter-connectedness of all beings. It's like
C.S Lewis's line, 'You don't see the center because it's all center.'
"In order to bear the stroke," he continues, "I really
had to shift my identity from my ego to my soul, to another plane
of consciousness. This is a funny thing, because I also get to honor
my body now, but not by identifying with it. The soul watches and
honors the body. And the soul doesn't get strokes."
Ram Dass feels he has been perfecting his life for
30 years. "I would say that the thrust of my life has been initially
about getting free, and then realizing that my freedom is not independent
of everybody else. Then I am arriving at that circle where one works
on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more
suffering."
With vigor, Ram Dass has resumed his teaching and
work with AIDS patients, with business, with government, with teenagers,
with people dying of cancer, with blindness — always with a
similar agenda. "Do what you can on this plane to relieve suffering
by constantly working on yourself to be an instrument for the cessation
of suffering. To me, that's the emerging game."
Ram Dass speaks on the main stage at the Oregon Country
Fair on Sunday July 14, at 1:45 pm. His tapes and lectures are available
from: www.rdtapes.org
David Kupfer is a Northern California-based writer
whose work has appeared in Adbusters, Backpacker, Earth Island Journal,
Progressive, Whole Earth, and elsewhere.
Heady Stuff
Conversation
with Ram Dass.
by
Lois Wadsworth
Ram Dass spoke with me from
his home in California in a brief telephone interview on a Saturday
afternoon in early July. He sounded relaxed. We found many things
to laugh about together. Sometimes, silence would fall. We let it.
We didn't talk about his accomplishments, his health or his celebrity.
And while we touched on the past, he is very much in the moment.
He talked about how Ken Kesey had invited him to come
to the Oregon Country Fair for years. "This is the final time I've
got to respond," he said simply. When I asked how he is feeling now,
he took a moment to respond, saying he liked to contemplate his answer.
He was silent. Then he said, "I'm happy." It was the perfect answer,
joyous and certain. It delighted me, and I laughed. He responded,
and we laughed together.
Again, when I asked if he had any regrets about his
life, or if there were anything he would change about it, he took
his time to answer. "I don't think so," he said. "Maybe I would have
done it all from a different point of view. It's been a wonderful
saga." A subtle change in his voice signaled a deeper reflection.
"I didn't use the incarnation fully," he said softly. He spoke about
the purity we come in with as babies and how we lose it by identifying
with our ego instead of our soul. He said, "We don't keep our soul
identity as our 'I.'"
A moment later he said, "I dropped in on the incarnation,"
which brought on another gale of laughter. And when I asked if he
had made many sacrifices to pursue his spiritual path, he said, "None.
This incarnation has been heady stuff."
Ram Dass said he would advise young people asking
about a spiritual life to listen to their "inner, inner, inner heart
that is synonymous with truth. Every move you make must be true to
your inner heart. Be careful that you choose the saga that is best
for you."
He noted that psychedelics represent "just another
path." Anyone choosing that path must consider "set and setting,"
he said. Ram Dass and his colleague, Timothy Leary, insisted on the
importance of set and setting for psychedelic experiences in the 1960s.
As the terms came to be understood at the time, "set" referred to
an inner attitude — an informed psychological expectation —
about what you might experience in a state of expanded consciousness.
Implicit was a strong sense of responsibility for your own experience.
"Setting" referred to the place — a safe, beautiful physical
environment — and the other people — trustworthy companions
— who were there
for you. He said "teen's beings are malleable" and that psychedelics
should be used carefully.
Only an individual's soul knows what path one should
take, he said. "I've been teaching midwives for dying," he said. "We
teach that the pure person who's doing the dying makes the rules.
They aren't our rules." And he also has a new perspective on memory
loss. "The soul doesn't need memory," he said. "Giving up your memories
in old age is OK, because you're moving from the dominance of the
ego into soul." He sees Alzheimer's not as an affliction but as a
gift that unburdens the soul from memory.
Ram Dass has spoken a great deal about getting rid
of material and emotional attachments. He talked about moving some
years ago from his big house and packing a rental trailer full with
boxes containing old pictures, letters, manuscripts and things. "I
realized I carried a U-Haul trailer on my back," he said. So he decided
to get rid of all of it and put it in the garbage. But he woke in
the middle of the night and went out to look through the garbage.
The next day, friends helped him build a big bonfire and burn it all.
Ram Dass speaks this weekend at the Oregon Country
Fair. See the Speaker Schedule box for time and location.
Countercultural
Institution
Oregon
Country Fair is a big city with a big budget and big city issues.
By Alan
Pittman
This weekend a city of an estimated
28,000 people will sprout along the woody banks of the Long Tom River
13 miles west of Eugene.
The Oregon Country Fair began as a small counterculture
fair 33 years ago in Eugene and has grown into a world class cultural
festival with a peak Saturday population that would rank it, for one
day, as the 15th largest city in Oregon.
Running the big party and big temporary city takes
big bucks. The Fair has an annual budget of almost $1 million and
assets of $1.8 million, according to the non-profit's tax returns.
The Fair has its own water, sewer, electric, garbage, police, fire,
judicial and transportation systems and even its own medical center,
newspaper, public library, child care and cloth diaper service.
With 3,000 volunteers, 800 craft sellers, 70 food
booths, and hundreds of entertainers performing on more than 10 different
stages, "it takes 10,000 people to create the village," says manager
Leslie Scott. Add that to the nearly 18,000 people expected to attend
on Saturday and, "It is one of the largest cities in Oregon."
Gleaned from public tax returns, interviews and Fair
documents, here's a look at the infrastructure, money and volunteers
that makes this big city hum and the big city issues that it will
struggle with into the future.
Infrastructure
The Fair is bigger than McMinnville or Grants
Pass. Way bigger than Roseburg or Ashland. It's half the size of Bend
and equal to about two Coos Bays or three Astorias.
That many people requires some major infrastructure.
The Fair rents more than 300 portable potties in addition to the permanent
"six-packs" of vault toilets on site. There's a major recycling effort,
but still, the Fair sent five dumpsters full of trash to the landfill
last year. The Fair trucks in tankers of drinking water from EWEB
for distribution around the site and for fire suppression. A system
of sumps collects dirty water from food booths.
A fleet of rented LTD buses shuttles up to 6,000 people
per day to the site from Eugene. A parking crew of 270 directs traffic,
more than 100 people handle garbage/recycling. Up to 700 staff and
volunteers provide security. Disputes are settled by an elaborate
grievance, mediation and arbitration process.
A contract with the White Bird medical clinic provides
on-site first aid. The Fair provides food vendors with refrigeration
trucks and volunteers and staff with showers and a kitchen dishing
out 11,000 meals.
The Fair has 800 registered craft vendors selling
everything from toe rings to dijeridoos. There's 144 that sell clothing
and 134 selling jewelry. Forty-four vendors will message your body
while 24 offer to paint it. The Fair requires everything to be handmade
by the vendor.
Money
Most of the Fair's $950,000 budget comes from
the $12 to $17 ticket price charged the public. Vendors at the Fair
also pay about $10 a head for passes for their workers to the event.
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The
Fair Costs
$800,000
Insurance
3%
Grants
/ Donations 4%
Medical Services 2%
Sanitation 4%
Buses 4%
Repairs / Maintenance 5%
Other 23%
Entertainment 8%
Salaries / Benefits 17%
Volunteer Meals 13%
Supplies 17%
Source:
Oregon Country Fair 2000 tax return
|
Unlike other big events, the Fair doesn't take corporate
sponsorship money.
In 2000, the Fair reported $922,000 in revenue. Expenses
of $784,000 left the organization with a surplus of $138,000 for the
year, according to the public tax returns non-profits are required
to file.
Salaries/benefits consume about 17 percent of Fair
costs, with the Fair manager paid $38,000 a year. Other big costs
include supplies, volunteer meals and entertainment.
The Fair reported $1.8 million in assets in 2000.
That figure included about $1 million worth of land (370 acres), buildings
and equipment and $800,000 worth of savings and investments. Fair
assets may increase with plans to build a lodge at the site.
Fair revenues have grown with increasing attendance
and ticket prices, growing about 70 percent in the last decade, according
to tax returns.
The Fair doesn't get a percentage of vendor sales
and doesn't track how much vendors make. Some crafters appear to barely
break even while some of the big food booths may bring in thousands
of dollars.
But the Fair runs on volunteers more than money. Three-thousand
people volunteer to work at the event. Volunteers get meal vouchers,
admission tickets and coveted camping passes to enjoy nighttime festivities.
Demand for camping at the Fair ensures the event has more volunteers
each year than it has spaces. "Being part of that village on a 24-hour
basis is pretty precious to people," Scott says.
Besides running the Fair, the organization reported
$29,000 in donations to community groups in 2000, with an emphasis
on art and environmental projects. The Fair gave the Fern Ridge schools
$8,200 for art and environmental education, $5,000 to the Long Tom
Watershed Council for environmental restoration, $5,000 to the Friends
of Buford Park and Mt. Pisgah for environmental restoration as well
as 12 other smaller grants. The Fair also spent an additional $15,000
on wetlands restoration and education projects.
Big City
Issues
Like any big city, the Fair has its
problems.
One of the biggest ones is population control. "We
struggle with growth issues like any other community," Scott says.
"It's one of the hardest issues."
A few years ago, the Fair capped daily attendance
at 18,000 and moved all ticket sales off-site to keep crowds manageable.
Another element of the population problem is the up
to 3,000 "Fair Family" volunteers, staff, vendors and entertainers
given passes to camp and party overnight at the site. This year, the
OCF Board (elected by the Fair Family) debated measures to control
the camping population, according to meeting minutes.
A measure to require a plastic camper wrist band to
prevent people from sneaking in to enjoy the nighttime parties was
defeated by a mixed vote. Proponents complained that too many night
campers had made it difficult to find clean portable potties. Another
motion to cap the number of people camping in the central Fair loops
was also defeated. Proponents warned that vegetation in the area was
getting too trampled and young trees wouldn't be able to grow to replace
older trees. Sixty trees were lost in a recent windstorm.
The Fair is also struggling with an aging population.
A recent non-scientific survey of Fair Family members put the average
age at 44 years, with the average person attending her/his first Fair
20 years ago. This year's issue of the Fair newspaper, The Peach
Pit, includes an obituary column.
Concern about older members of the Fair Family not
being able to camp at the Fair because they were no longer able to
work volunteer jobs has prompted the board to work toward creating
an elders policy ensuring older Family members camping passes to the
event. Some Fair members objected to the "retirement" policy as unfair
and with uncertain budget, equity, and camping population issues.
An estimated 300 to 600 people (about 5 percent) would
meet the criteria of being older than 55 and having 20 years of work
with the Fair.
As the Fair ages, the group is pushing to emphasize
activities for younger people. A 200-member teen crew volunteers at
the event and the Fair plans to enroll about 40 kids in its first
summer camp this year.
The huge Fair population has made it a challenge for
the event to live up to its strong environmental beliefs. This year,
recycling advocates at the Fair have pushed for reducing the five
dumpsters sent to the landfill to one through heavy use of food waste
composting, biodegradable plates and cups, and glass, paper and plastics
recycling bins. The recycling group notes that about half the dumpster
garbage is left by Fair Family campers and urges them to stop leaving
old carpets, sleeping pads, broken lawn chairs and unsorted recyclables
at the site. "We want the 'love your mother,' 'leave no trace' attitude
to be the reality, not just the ideology we boast of," an announcement
reads.
The Fair is also working on plans to reduce its energy
consumption dramatically through conservation, solar generation, and
biodiesel powered generators and vehicles.
One of the biggest struggles the Fair has faced is
that for respect. While the Country Fair has drawn hundreds of thousands
of tourists to the state over the past decades and created an economic
impact worth millions of dollars to the local economy, it has not
received the kind of support from tourism and economic development
officials that other such events enjoy.
At times, local officials have been openly hostile
to the Fair. In 1980, county officials threatened to close the event
down and the Fair successfully sued to ensure its right of assembly.
In 1996 some Veneta business owners complained about alleged shoplifting
and vandalism from Fair-goers, but not about increased sales. In 1997,
Lane County District Attorney Doug Harcleroad, Sheriff Jan Clements,
and the local interagency narcotics squad ganged up to threaten to
raid the Fair and seize its land because of alleged marijuana smoking
at the event. Clements followed up with a demand that the Fair pay
thousands of dollars for his department to police the event.
A strict no drugs and alcohol policy and off-site
ticket sales helped deflect the threat from law enforcement and increased
philanthropy has made the Fair more than just a party.
But the respect issue endures for this weekend city
of 28,000. "There's this tendency to stereotype the Fair as this old
hippie throwback," says manager Scott. "It's really just so much more
than that. It's an attempt to show the world there's a different way
to live. A more creative way to live."
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