Eva writes: This was truly an extraordinary cookout season. Of course there was the glorious weather, complete with a double rainbow on the last night.
And of course there was fantastic food. Adamant cooks are a rare breed. What was truly extraordinary though was the level of generosity, the recognition that the cookouts don’t happen by arcane magic, but by an unbreakable web of communal effort and caring. Maybe that's real magic. When one person was sick or had a family emergency another stepped in seamlessly. What one person couldn’t physically manage another carried.
People who had never volunteered before showed up, goodies in hand saying, “We love this and just want to give something back.” People who had just arrived in Vermont washed dishes for 8 weeks in a row. Over 68 individuals helped to set up, cook, serve, make things beautiful, add up peoples’ tabs with lightning speed sans calculator, shop, encourage, grill, keep the store open...
Thank you all--you brought the magic!
PS. Friday Night Cookouts began as a neighborhood solution to an open social calendar. The first year involved burgers and dogs, a few salads, a dessert or two, and about 20 people. Very chill.
Then word got out and people from as far away as Montpelier showed up. More tables were set, salads tossed, blackbean burgers flipped, and double chocolate brownies cut. All of this done by volunteers: ittakes14 volunteers to orchestrate a cookout.
Our neighborhood has grown, and Friday Night Cookouts are now as much a part of summer as the cornfields lining the backroads. The funds raised help keep the lights on at the store in winter. And the human connections help sustain us through the cold and the snow and these uncertain times.
