Please, Please, Come to the Stuff To Do Fair

January 25, 10 am - 2 pm at Tec Centro West!

HELLO, from my long-dormant substack! It’s 2025 now!

As my years of sending political emails have trained me to do, I will make my hard ask up front: Can you commit to dropping by the Stuff To Do Fair on January 25 between 10 AM and 2 PM?

The Stuff To Do Fair is at Tec Centro West, at 57 Laurel Street. There is a good amount of on-site parking, but if you can walk, bike, or take the bus, boy that’d be neat :)

Here’s the gist. This past presidential election, my ✨husband✨ Jordan and I knocked doors a whole lot. Drenched in sweat and periodically hungover, we wanted to do our part for our community and stop the election of Donald Trump, a real and present threat to our lives. We were activated around healthcare access, the climate crisis, the housing crisis, breaking up monopolies, and our general appreciation for a functional government.

As you can tell, the door knocking sure didn’t seem to fix the problem we were trying to solve. We cried together and held each other when we read the news that fateful Wednesday morning.

Take after take later, one of my favorite explanations for What Happened went something like this: standing up a national organizing outfit once every four years only worked when our communities were already organized. Social clubs, churches, schools, and community centers made it easier to physically find and communicate to voters via messengers they trust.

But now, we have the phones. Instead of gathering, we scroll. Instead of discussing, we comment. Instead of doing, we post. It’s caused some really important social muscles to atrophy. Small talk, for many, is a panic-inducing prospect. Spending time with people we don’t know at best or deeply disagree with at worst can be a horrifying suggestion. Trying something new for fear of being humiliated on the internet paralyzes us all.

So I started digging into some of what’s been written. We all know about the loneliness epidemic shaving years off the lives of Americans across the country. We are more and more isolated, and many turn inward to numb the pain of the very scary world out there. Our increasing physical distance from one another is changing how we understand each other and the world around us. Also, with big thanks to my pal Duncan, I dug into The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuile, which Lucille and I highly recommend.

All of which is to say, my answer to “What Now” is to convince people to get off the phones and into society by way of good old fashioned clubs. Now I personally don’t have the bandwidth to start a club, nor do I have the expertise to do so. I already boast an especially vibrant social life, with lots of birthday parties and honky tonk nights (you should come tonight! I’m singing!) and dance classes and local concerts. But I am an extremely lucky Leo, predisposed to Trying New Things and Scheduling Little Activities with my friends.

So rather than try to start a social club, I figured I could at least organize an event for others to find a class, a club, or an activity that provides some outside-the-house structure to their lives. I started making calls, and a few weeks and email threads later, I came up with the Stuff To Do Fair. My hope is that everyone who comes leaves with something new to do.

Among the laundry list of reasons I cried the day after the 2024 presidential election was that, if the climate crisis continues and our emergency response resources dwindle, along with the competence of the federal government, that no one would come looking for me in the event of a disaster. Being a member of a club full of people who share your interests – both your hobby interests and also an interest in you living a decent life – feels like a better bet than trusting our current federal government to make sure I am safe, fed, and accounted for.

So that was the logic behind the Stuff To Do Fair. I hope everyone remembers how to make new friends, try new things, put the phone down, and connect with those not ideologically aligned with us.

Vendors so far include lots of arts and crafts groups, five different dance groups, the local improv theater, the library, the local queer-owned bookstore, three cultural clubs, bikers, podcasters, rugby players, music venues, writing clubs, a game board cafe, and so much more.

Please, tell your friends about the Stuff To Do Fair. I think it’ll be nice.

And, as ever, a few parting notes.

My friend Fee’s brother died very suddenly, and her family could use some financial support as they reckon with the loss.

The Library System of Lancaster County is being DEFUNDED, which personally I think SUCKS! Please call your elected officials and tell them you HATE THIS!

If you, too, don’t care for how the 2024 general election shook out, you can think about Running For Something local in 2025 — the primaries are in May!