On Sunday during the 25th Annual HarmonyFest in Downtown Three Rivers, our little store celebrated its 15th Anniversary! During those 15 years, our faithful volunteers have spent more than 31,000 hours running the store and connecting our community with artisans and farmers from around the world. To celebrate, we gave away 15 prizes throughout the day, served special treats in the store, and commissioned our friend Elisabeth Wenger to write a poem, which she read from the main stage at 6:30 (see below). Thank you to everyone who helped us celebrate … and here’s to 15 more years!
World Fare’s 15th Anniversary: An Exhortation
A store is never just a store.
While it’s true that a business is not a person,
no matter what our government says,
A business is made by people,
peopled, populated and conceived
of, in minds expansive and strange.
Make a choice—to what business
will you give the strength in your arms,
the branching electricity in your brain?
To what group of people,
with what dream,
will you go?
And the work of the people of the business
takes on the life its been given,
as long as the people keep caring.
Fifteen years these people have cared for a store!
Remember fifteen?
The hot passion, the standing up for what you believed in
with the thrill of standing for justice,
with the strength of a David
facing down Goliath. Impossible.
Magnificent. Teenaged energy
and clear sight, acknowledging the impossible
and attempting it anyway.
May the people who people this store
keep dreaming, keep the passion.
May they imagine new worlds
or ways to be, may they fight
with fifteen’s fervor for an impossibility,
And, most of all,
may they remain people,
individual and uniquely strange,
caring about people.
