Coming on January 24th–a Family Fun Day to build community!
These images show some of what our next celebration by the Friends of the CCG Hall will provide–fun, dancing and food on Sunday, Jan. 24th from 3:00 to 6:00.
Instead of focusing just on raising money for projects, we’re hoping to raise community as well–especially including building bonds with our neighbors in Berlin. As regular readers know, we are getting tax exemption for the Grange Hall put on the Berlin Town Meeting ballot. We want to make a push to get more Berlin families to visit us, and see the potential for us to serve as a “Community Hall” for this spread-out town. In return, we are asking Berlin to join all the other towns in VT which give Grange Halls a tax break.
Our “Family Fun Day” will feature a community dance, designed to get everyone out on the floor, led by veteran caller David Kaynor, with music from Vermont’s own VT Fiddle Orchestra, which he leads. David has been calling dances for all types of crowds for decades, and will make sure everyone has a good time.
Besides dancing, we’re going to provide (as the pictures suggest) fun with balloon animals and facepainting–and then dinner featuring home-made macaroni and cheese, plus VT-grown root vegetables (carrots, onions, potatoes, beets and more). All made by two of our great Grange cooks, Alison Forrest and Gail England. Plus cookies–bring some more to share!
While we are eating downstairs,we’ll also be showing some short, family-friendly movies upstairs.
All of this is available cheap–we’re asking $5 per person for whatever you want to enjoy, or a maximum of $20 per family. Our goal is to welcome folks to the Hall and cover our costs, rather than trying to fund a big project with this event–but as you know, donations are always welcome!
On Sunday, Dec. 13th, Patty Giavara (chair of the Friends) and I went to the monthly meeting of the Executive Committee of the VT State Grange, bearing a check written to the State Grange by FCCGH treasurer Carol Noyes. In the photo above, Patty and I are passing the check over to Nancy Perkins, Secretary of the VT State Grange.
This completes the story of the construction financing: the State Grange gave us an interest-free loan for half of the project’s budget, since we would not receive the grant until the project was completed. We’re very grateful! Without this loan, we would have had to borrow that amount from a bank or begging for loans from the Grange community–this made it much easier (and cheaper) to get this project going!
The State Grange is very supportive of our efforts to improve our Hall and increase our involvement with the communities around us–and very supportive of our efforts to get tax exemption from the Town of Berlin–where we’ve been part of the community since 1952!
- Saturday Jan. 9: Contra Exchange dance series continues–Luke Donforth calling with Cardinal Direction, plus waltzing and instruction with Gina Sonne.
- Saturday Jan. 16: Grange meeting at 4:30, with a potluck dinner at 6:30! Followed at 8:oo by theCDU contra dance, Bill Olson calling, and the Dead Sea Squirrels playing.
- Saturday Jan. 23: Fundraiser and concert for the NE Heritage Music Camp, featuring performances by staff and campers
- Sunday Jan. 24: See above for details on our first Family Fun Day and Dinner
- Saturday Jan. 30: 3 CDU dances this month–this one will feature Mary Wesley calling, with old favorites the Clayfoot Strutters playing!
- Saturday Feb. 6th: a new month starts with Swedish dancing from 12:00 to 3:00, with a Grange meeting at 4:30, potluck dinner at 6:30, and then the CDU dance: David Kaynor calling, with George Wilson and David Guertin playing….
And it keeps on going, keep checking the Grange Calendar for more info: https://capitalcitygrange.org/