This note went to our newsletter group on 5/5/12.  Its message about community is valuable to me, and I’m posting it here to remember the message.

Greetings Friends,

As I write you, folks gather for the Haw River Festival and for the first Saturdays in Saxapahaw event, signaling the start of a heightened energy in the village that will last through the end of August.  As folks visit us from “out of town” — Saxapahaw’s hinterlands of Graham, Burlington, Mebane, Chapel Hill, and even a little beyond — I am thinking today of my gratitude for the folks who call Saxapahaw home, and who have committed to forging successful businesses here.  I appreciate the artists, the baristas, the river guides, the health and fitness specialists, the winemakers, the puppeteers, the farmers, the cooks, the designers who make Saxapahaw an interesting place to visit and to live.  If you have been to Saxapahaw General Store or her sister The Eddy Pub and enjoyed a good meal, it is in part thanks to these many folks that we can do what we do. As a village who’s enjoyed some growth in the last few years, we’ve met our requisite questions to answer about how to live together:  where will we park?  how fast will we drive?  how will we share our collective spaces?  where will we walk?  how will we share the benefits of press?  how will we work together to create a rising tide of economic, social and environmental success for all?  It becomes resoundingly clear to me that the best means of living and working together successfully is by sharing our vision with one another.A teacher once shared with me, if you know someone’s story, you cannot help but love them. I have tested this notion and find it true.  It is in that spirit that Saxapahaw General Store and The Eddy Pub wish to use our business spaces to allow the sharing of visions between business owners, community organization leaders, and those who live in or visit Saxapahaw.  We invite you to Community Supper on Thursday, May 10 at 7 p.m. to have this time; we’ll serve a buffet supper ($12) at 7, and at 715, each business owner/community organization leader in Saxapahaw who wishes to share (we’ve invited dozens!) will spend five minutes giving us a picture of what they’ve been doing, why they love working in Saxapahaw, and how others may become involved.

We’ll gather in the Amphitheater below The Eddy Pub and the Haw River Ballroom, and we’ll serve supper there.  If it should rain, we’ll go inside.  Don’t feel you have to buy supper to come for the sharing.

If you’d like to come, please respond to this message with your name and how many folks will come for dinner.

We’ll hope to see you Thursday; if not, we’ll look for you around the village, and we look forward to learning more about your story, and sharing ours, in months and years to come.

With care,
Cameron