The melodies of “The Nutcracker Suite” are ubiquitous this time of year: Undoubtedly, over the next few weeks, you’ll hear strains of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and “Waltz of the Flowers” piped through speakers in just about any public space you care to navigate.

The original 1892 ballet suite by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is a kind of soundtrack of the season — and next week, Yellow Springers will have the chance to hear that soundtrack in a new way.

String super-group Mr Sun will bring their reimagined version of the suite to the Foundry Theater on Thursday, Dec. 11: A string-band take on the suite based, in part, on Tchaikovsky’s original, but mostly on the 1960 big-band-inflected reworking by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn — a reinterpretation of a reinterpretation.

Mr Sun — fiddler and longtime string-band innovator Darol Anger, who visited the Foundry earlier this year with Bruce Molsky; mandolinist and vocalist Joe K. Walsh; guitarist and educator Grant Gordy; and Scottish bassist Aidan O’Donnell — has built its reputation on genre-blending acoustic Americana. Between them, the four have worked with everyone from David Grisman to the Gibson Brothers to modern jazz stalwarts, and have shown up at just about every major roots festival in the country.

In speaking with the News last month, guitarist Gordy said the group’s foray into bringing another dimension to Ellington and Strayhorn’s version of the suite began, as so many things do for touring acts, while shooting the breeze on the road.

“We were talking, and I think we all just agreed that the best music to put on around the holiday season is Ellington’s ‘Nutcracker,’ because it’s a record that we all, separately, revere and love,” Gordy said. “And like probably 99.9% of the population, these melodies are so much a part of life that it’s almost like they’re not even there — and yet, even though it was recorded in the ’60s, [the Ellington/Strayhorn recording] still sounds fresh and urbane, a really interesting take.”

As musicians who “absorb a lot of different influences,” Gordy said Mr Sun’s members are great lovers of “lots of different kinds of jazz.” And as the group traveled, someone “maybe made a joke” that the group should consider its own interpretation of the Ellington/Strayhorn record.

“Then suddenly it became, ‘Well, actually, maybe we could do that.’ Then we started to talk about it,” Gordy said.

Mr Sun applied for, and was awarded, a grant through the nonprofit Freshgrass Foundation to record a new take on the Ellington/Strayhorn suite. The group headed to Mass MoCA’s North Adams, Massachusetts, studio to write and record in March of 2023, and debuted the suite at the Freshgrass Festival that September. This year marks the third winter season that Mr Sun has toured their refreshed “Nutcracker Suite” for audiences.

Ellington and Strayhorn’s “Nutcracker Suite,” of course, swings hard in the Big Band style, replacing violins and harps with brass and woodwinds. In the same fashion, Mr Sun’s recorded suite translates the jazz version into the language of an acoustic string band, using fiddle, guitar, bass, mandolin and banjo to weave together classical ballet, mid-century jazz and modern Americana.

Gordy said that in working to reinterpret the suite, the band broke the Ellington/Strayhorn version into its extant pieces, with each band member taking a couple to work on. Because the band was already translating the pieces to work for a string band and the members’ own ears and voices, certain templates for reinvention were laid out for them.

“Already, there’s some stuff that’s going to happen,” Gordy said. “It’s going to be unique to this situation.”

In some cases, Mr Sun stayed fairly faithful in transliterating the Ellington/Strayhorn adaptation for strings on the recorded album; as the band wrote on their website: “Some crucial musical statements by giants such as Johnny Hodges and Paul Gonsalves were transcribed directly and played in their spirit.” Famed dobro and steel guitar player Jerry Douglas, who performed at the Foundry last year, appears on the album with his take on a trombone solo from Ellington/Stayhorn’s version of “Waltz of the Flowers.” Gordy said his arrangement of the “Arabian Dance” movement, which he cited as his “favorite movement from the original,” stays “closer to the Tchaikovsky” in presenting its “long, sinewy melody.”

In other places, Mr Sun left room for wide interpretation and improvisation — and a good deal of fun. Banjo player Alison Brown features on a version of the suite’s “Russian Dance” that, while it begins similarly to the Ellington/Strayhorn version, quickly takes a turn, shifting unexpectedly — and humorously — into bluegrass.

“And even when we boil it down to just touring as a four-piece, as opposed to playing with auxiliary musicians, we’ve figured out a way,” Gordy said. “So it’s a real balance, and then some of it is just wildly reimagined.”

What manifests on the band’s album is a clear admiration for the works that came before their interpretation, coupled with a big dose of Mr Sun’s hallmark vibe — which, true to their name, is sunny and light, with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

“We all really respect the craft and obviously hold Duke and Strayhorn and Tchaikovsky and John Coltrane and Bill Monroe — all these people — in high places of reverence,” Gordy said. “And we can’t really deny that we’re just kind of silly people, too.”

He added that fiddler Anger often describes the band’s approach this way: “We’re basically just trying to crack each other up.”

“There might even be an audible laugh somewhere on the record,” Gordy said.

Even before hitting “play” on the first track of “Mr Sun Plays Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite,” listeners can get a sense of the band’s crack-wise nature through the album’s track listing, which itself pays tribute to Ellington and Strayhorn’s sense of play. What was “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” for Tchaikovsky became “Sugar Rum Cherry” for Ellington and Strayhorn, and for Mr Sun, “Sugared Rum? Spare Me!” Another well-known tune, “Reed Flutes,” became “Toot Toot Tootie Toot” for Ellington and Strayhorn. For Mr Sun? It’s now “Reedy Rootin Tootin Pipey Gripey Waltz.”

On top of all of this, Mr Sun’s “Nutcracker Suite” diverges from Ellington and Strayhorn’s by adding one wholly original piece inspired by the ballet’s Act 1 snow scenes, filtering three musical themes through the “dawg music” style popularized by mandolinist David Grisman. Mr Sun calls the piece “Shovasky’s Transmogrifatron.”

Foundry Theater audiences can get an idea of what the upcoming Dec. 11 performance will sound like by listening to Mr Sun’s album — but, of course, a live performance will come with its own attendant particularities and surprises.

Gordy said the Nutcracker project is unusual for the band in that they still keep some music on stands — “We’re getting closer to being off-book,” he said — but the more familiar the material becomes, the more they can let it breathe.

“We know the music, and the mid-20th-century, swinging Big Band vibe, and everything that entails — dense harmony and wide, dynamic range — is something we love and respect so much,” Gordy said. “And yet we’re approaching this from the standpoint of being an American string band, which is not completely unrelated, but it’s another tradition.”

He added: “So what do you get when you mix all these things together? I don’t know — you get Mr Sun playing Duke Ellington’s ‘Nutcracker.’”

Mr Sun will perform at the Foundry Theater Thursday, Dec. 11, beginning at 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 for general admission and $5 for students, and may be purchased online in advance at http://www.bit.ly/MrSunNutcrackerFoundry25.

Yellow Springers may know drag queen Ms. Demure (sometimes known as Darryl Bohannon) from her appearances at the annual YS Pride events: In 2024, she debuted “The Purple March” to highlight ongoing struggles for reproductive rights and diversity and inclusion. She’s also been a judge for YS Pride’s annual YS Pride Spirit Award.

But in the wider Miami Valley, Ms. Demure has been a name for a quarter of a century as the host of “Harper’s Bazzaroworld,” a program on Dayton’s public access station, DATV, since 2000, and purportedly the oldest LGBTQ+ public access variety talk show in the U.S.

This month, Ms. Demure will host a live holiday program on DATV featuring a number of guests — including Yellow Springs’ own Mayor Pam Conine — in celebration of the season, Ms. Demure’s 60th birthday, and 25 years on DATV’s airwaves.

DATV launched on March 1, 1978, the brainchild of media pioneer Roxie Cole, with a one-room studio and a shoestring budget. At a time when cable was still finding its footing, the public access channel offered a broadcast home for local voices and the conversations they wanted to have. In 2025, the nonprofit station — from the Dayton Leo Street studio where it moved in the 1980s — continues to offer the same freedom of expression to its members, who have access to recording and editing equipment to tell the stories of their community, in their own words.

Ms. Demure’s tenure with DATV spans more than half the station’s life. In an interview with the News at DATV’s headquarters this week, Ms. Demure said she started her drag career “kind of late” in her life — “I was 32 when I became a drag queen,” she said — and was inspired by on-screen presences like Elizabeth Montgomery of “Bewitched” and other women from classic film to create her drag persona.

“Those women from the 1930s and ’40s were tough, but they were very stylish, and then ‘Bewitched’ from the ’60s — all those women I took a little bit from, every last one of them,” she said. “And then Ms. Demure, she was born.”

It was only a few years after stepping into the drag community that DATV came onto Ms. Demure’s radar. It was the late 1990s, and she said there was a gap on television for drag personalities when VH1’s the “RuPaul Show” went off the air after two seasons. Flipping through channels one night, she said she landed on DATV and saw a colorful melange of filmed community festivals, off-the-cuff talk and neighborhood oddities — “All these crazy things,” she said — and recognized a place where drag and community issues might share the same frame.

“And what I learned about this channel is that it’s the original social media,” she said. “I mean, it’s like a handshake — everything is in person.”

It seemed like a natural fit; Ms. Demure had already put in time at Dayton’s International College of Broadcasting, studying radio and TV in an era when, as she put it, she “didn’t have the look” for commercial media. Public access, by contrast, didn’t ask her to fit a mold.

“I just like the freedom that you have down here,” she said of DATV’s studios. “You can be inspired by yourself and be inspired by the community.”

“Harper’s Bazzaroworld” — named, Ms. Demure said, for the fashion magazine, Superman’s Bizarro World and the open-air bustle of a bazaar — debuted in 2000, and has maintained a variety-show style over the years, striving to be both camp and current. She’s followed pop culture and pride parades and politics, mixing sock puppets and green-screen musical numbers with long conversations about everything from film and TV and tai chi to voting rights and local organizing. Just this month, Ms. Demure interviewed a member of Dayton’s Black Panther Party, and the hour-long conversation covered police violence, racism, community initiatives and the ever-growing threat of ICE, among many other topics.

“These are all things I’m concerned about, and that we’re all concerned about in this moment,” she said. “And I just feel like I always want to be current — not so much about being trendy, but about life issues. I want to use my platform to help people.”

Behind the scenes, Ms. Demure edits every episode herself on DATV’s hardware, stitching together studio shoots, Zoom interviews and podcast segments. Often, she’ll incorporate brief “throwback” segments from her archive of past shows — an archive she said she’s still working to digitize from tape — layering in older dance numbers, program promos and bloopers.

“It’s very real,” she said of the work. “And I feel like I’m a real drag queen, because I’m authentic in that sense. And I wouldn’t change anything about my journey here; it’s probably been the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

Ms. Demure said that in its time on-air, “Harper’s Bazzaroworld” has picked up ripples of national attention — a “Talk Soup” clip of the week, festival appearances, a Manhattan cable slot — but it remains a program focused on Dayton and the Miami Valley, including Yellow Springs.

In years past, “Harper’s Bazzaroworld” had been part of the Community Access Yellow Springs line-up, but Ms. Demure said it disappeared in the late-aughts when Channel 5 was reorganized under Village government management. In 2023, she said Mayor Pam Conine put in a good word to help shepherd the show back onto Yellow Springs screens — and so it seemed natural to invite Conine to appear on the 25th-anniversary special. The show will be aired and streamed live — Ms. Demure’s first live show, she said, in more than a decade.

The special will air Thursday, Dec. 11, 7–8 p.m. Ms. Demure said the program’s set, hosted in DATV’s large studio, will feature an inflatable Christmas tree and a running gag in which each ring of the studio “doorbell” will signal another well-wisher entering frame to say “Merry Christmas,” “Happy 60th” or “Happy 25th anniversary.” She plans to wear her now-signature penguin costume, which she said was inspired by the current administration’s tariffs on uninhabited islands near Antarctica earlier this year, and which she has worn at marches and rallies as a tongue-in-cheek reference to what she considers the absurdity of the political moment.

The guest list for the special will be eclectic: Mayor Pam; Pastor Jeff Perkins, of Dorothy Lane American Baptist Church and his partner, Michael, to “bless” the broadcast; past guest Phoebe the goat, returning for some on-air goat yoga; singer-songwriter Rachel Rosen, with a “Joni Mitchell–style” number; and, if schedules align, a few fellow drag performers. There will be a large sheet cake decked in pink glitter, pink roses, a holiday tableau and sparklers for all three milestones — holiday season, birthday and anniversary.

“This special is just saying ‘thank you’ to my viewers, ‘thank you’ to DATV, just ‘thank you’ to everybody,” she said. “I want everyone to have such a good time watching this live show and feel like they’re included.”

Even as the internet and social media have reshaped how people watch and make TV during the life of “Harper’s Bazzaroworld,” Ms. Demure said she sees public access television and online platforms less as competitors and more as collaborators. Episodes stream on DATV’s website and on her YouTube and Vimeo channels; shorter podcast versions go out via Facebook. She and other DATV members can check out cameras, reserve podcast and video labs and book time in the same studio where “Harper’s Bazzaroworld” films.

“Oh, my God. I mean, this is such a great platform,” she said. “You have so much control here to create your own product, and it’s only $50 a year. And you have the power to change things.”

In its 47 years in Dayton, DATV has seen a number of changes, with its first studio tucked into United Theological Seminary on Salem Avenue, later moving to a Time Warner building before moving to its own autonomous station across the street. In the studio now, robotic cameras have replaced some of the older gear, and a new generation of staff and volunteers covers podcasts, churches and community meetings. But for Ms. Demure, the space still carries the muscle memory of her first day on set.

“Every time I come in here and film a show, to me, it’s like that first day I’m climbing up on the ladder and I’m doing the lights,” she said.

A quarter-century after that first climb, she said she’s still here because of what public access allows her — and anyone else who walks in the door — to do.

“I have so much freedom down here — it’s like my safe space,” she said. “I’ve been so lucky to be able to do this for 25 years. Isn’t that crazy? 25 years!”

“Harper’s Bazzaroworld Presents the Ms. Demure Show” will air its live anniversary program Thursday, Dec. 11, 7–8 p.m. Dayton viewers can catch it live on DATV’s Spectrum Channel 5; villagers can livestream the broadcast at http://www.DATV.org/watch, or catch it later during its typical Community Access Yellow Springs Channel 5 broadcast at 10 p.m. Saturday.

By Chris Wyatt

Oct. 24, 2025

We have had two days of ground frosts, and all the crops are in.

Well, except for the loofahs. We had no idea just how long it takes for loofahs to ripen and so put them in way too late. They have got to an appropriate size — they’re massive — but remain a healthy dark green. They need to turn the color of an over-ripe banana before we can turn them into bathroom exfoliating scrubbers. Still, we’ll find out whether they are frost resistant soon enough.

It’s early, about 7 a.m., and I’m heading to work to grab and grade cardiovascular physiology exams. Once that’s done, I’ll check on Karen. She is out at the Hall and seems to be having a great time. The fire has been lit two days running and The Hall is cosy. Bob went out and joined her last night. He is reading Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel at the moment, so it is probably best that he is far away from me. I find philosophical conversations with Bob difficult, as I really don’t care about the topics. Karen just tells him to shut up.

I came second in the people’s choice award at the chili cook-off. Not bad given how spicy I made it.

Nov. 1, 2025

Adventure time. Today is a celebration for my friend Robb’s 60th birthday, and his closest friends have organized a roast for him. Robb is a playwright and an actor, and a surprise gathering has been arranged for him at the Dayton Theatrical Guild.

I am currently seated in Branch and Bone Brewery putting the finishing touches to a short monologue that details how Karen and I first met him. It is, of course, all lies. It should make people laugh though, as it is rude and irreverent. However, you never know, people may be aghast at my affrontery — this is the Midwest after all.

Nah, it’s funny and thankfully short. I’ll be done in less than five minutes.

Nov. 2, 2025

An epiphany is a manifestation of the divine. I think these happen every day, all the time. People are sleepwalking through life; we do not register the things around us. I relish the sunrise and I adore the summer rain.

Many of my epiphanies have occurred while immersed in watching live music. I saw Jeff Buckley back in ’94 and I have seen Mogwai many times. Mind blown. However, most of my epiphanies have come from learning something new. Something small and simple. Something that might help us.

We are surrounded by a maelstrom of noise and I’m glad I have the age and ability to filter and critique. I still need to retreat to Patterdale Hall where my epiphanies will be regarding the lifecycle of moles, rather than the quantity of hate that can be held in a human heart.

With that said, I had an epiphany yesterday. I saw a group of friends come together to celebrate the birthday of somebody they loved. They gathered and they loved that person in a way that they knew would delight him. It was beautiful and very, very funny. Community touching and lifting each other is an epiphany in and of itself.

Mind you, I had an epiphany the first time I saw Chappell Roan sing “Good Luck Babe,” so maybe my epiphany threshold is quite low. If you see me wandering around Yellow Springs with a beatific expression on my face, I may simply have epiphanied — give me some space.

Nov. 12, 2025

No updates for a while. I have been in a work hole with four classes simultaneously. Karen has now moved out to Patterdale Hall and is essentially living there full time. She is happy as a clam, and the great room is now a crafter’s paradise. She is surrounded by threads and fabric, and I will bring her food and split wood for her. I have never seen her happier.

I’m happy as can be at home, cooking for the boys and popping out to split wood for her. She really does need to learn how to use an axe though, it’s not hard and the wood we currently have splits easily. When the deep cold hits I’ll bring down some leggy walnut trees and cut back the apple tree. This will be wood for next year’s winter; it is too wet now.

I thought I might miss Karen as she is now out at the Hall, but I see her twice a day usually, and she has a phone now so she can contact me any time. She is so happy; we did the right thing.

Nov. 13, 2025

A crystal morning: cold with clear skies.

Archie has been walked and coffee has been drunk. I shall pop out to the Hall in a moment and deliver a phone charger to Karen. There is little point in her having a phone if its battery is dead.

Then a morning of meetings with students and an afternoon of lecture design. I’m going to take the immunology out of a class and replace it with autonomic physiology and pharmacology. The autonomic stuff is more my wheelhouse and will certainly prepare students better for medical school.

*Originally from Manchester, England, Chris Wyatt is an associate professor of neuroscience, cell biology and physiology at Wright State University. He has lived in Yellow Springs for 17 years, is  married and has two children and an insane Patterdale terrier. “The Patterdale Hall Diaries,” by Chris Wyatt, is now available in book format via Amazon for $11.99.

On a cold and blustery morning last month, Village employees Tanner Bussey and Preston Harris took the wood forms from around a rectangle of freshly set concrete.

Villagers Kevin McGruder, Len Kramer and Antonia Dosik applauded as Bussey and Harris’ work revealed a plaque detailing the history of Dayton Street as the primary district for Black-owned businesses in the 20th century.

The reveal of the plaque signaled the launch of a new self-guided Black history tour around Yellow Springs, which aims to make local history more accessible year-round, expanding the reach of an effort that began nearly a decade ago with The 365 Project’s guided walking tours.

The self-guided tour, a collaboration among The 365 Project, Livable/Equitable/Age-Friendly Yellow Springs, or LEAFYS, the Yellow Springs Community Foundation and the Village of Yellow Springs, is working to pair permanent markers with an online map and historical notes designed for residents and visitors to follow on their own.

The self-guided initiative complements The 365 Project’s mission to promote “diverse African-American heritage, Black culture and racial equity, 365 days a year.”

Since 2016, that work has included the youth-led “Blacks in YS” walking tours designed around a variety of topics, including Black businesses, Black women leaders, Black landownership, the Black history of local schools and Antioch College, among others, woven through more than 200 years of local Black history.

History professor and longtime 365 Project member McGruder, who helps research the tours and train middle and high school student guides, said the new, self-guided format fills a longstanding gap.

“We just finished our 10th year of walking tours,” he said. “I think the idea was, how do we have a presence for people who don’t get a chance to go on the tours?”

That need dovetailed with feedback collected through LEAFYS, a communitywide assessment of how welcoming and accessible the village feels to residents across all age, race, income and ability demographics. LEAFYS assesses the village across eight domains: outdoor spaces and buildings, transportation, housing, social participation, respect and social inclusion, employment and civic participation, communication and information, and community support and health services.

According to Dosik, project director for YSLEAF, the self-guided tour responds most directly to the “respect and social inclusion” domain, which emphasizes communitywide recognition of contributions, good information and activities that bring people together by being accessible. The group gathered data via a communitywide survey, and Dosik said the data showed that “many people don’t feel connected to what goes on in the village.”

“We developed a whole bunch of programming to help people feel more included, and this was part of it,” she said, and emphasized LEAFYS’ commitment to equity: “Part of what we wanted to do was programs that had an equitable quality, and we thought this project would help people feel included and really reflect [Yellow Springs’] history and commitment to equity.”

McGruder said that, with so many local sites connected to local Black history, it was a challenge to narrow the self-guided tour’s focus — “When we were trying to figure out what was reasonable for walking, we couldn’t have 30 different locations,” he said — but ultimately the group’s planning committee selected 10 sites.

Liz Robertson, a 365 Project member and graphic designer, helped put together a website that includes a map of the suggested route through all the stops on the tour, as well as historical context and photos for each site. The stops on the tour represent a cross-section of civic, commercial and religious history in the village, with the route beginning at the intersection of Xenia Avenue and Corry Street, noting former and current Black-owned businesses, including the first Black-owned Cassano’s Pizza franchise, Gabby’s Pit BBQ and YS Toy Company, among others; the inception of the Elaine Comegys Film Festival at Little Art Theatre; the protests held when barbers at Gegner Barbershop refused to cut the hair of Black men; and the location of a historical marker honoring author Virginia Hamilton.

The tour continues down Xenia Avenue to the building that formerly hosted First Baptist Church, originally the Anti-Slavery Church; then to the former Davis Street location of Com’s Restaurant; to Central Chapel AME Church on South High; the Stafford Street home of Gabby Mason of Gabby’s Pit BBQ; an Elm Street schoolhouse that taught Black students before schools were integrated in the late 19th century, and then onto the Dayton Street Union Schoolhouse; philanthropist Wheeling Gaunt’s Walnut Street home; the Dayton Street business district; and a final stop at the bronze statue of Wheeling Gaunt near YS Station.

Thus far, the self-guided tour’s physical presence is anchored in two plaques already installed, marking the beginning of the tour at Xenia and Corry and its end on the bike path. Each plaque includes historical text and a QR code linking directly to the self-guided tour map. Grant funding from the YS Community Foundation supported the website, design work and initial materials.

Len Kramer, who helped connect the LEAFYS effort with The 365 Project, said the groups aim to place plaques at all the stops on the tour, but that the group is still raising money for that purpose. In the meantime, even without plaques at every location, the map and website allow visitors to follow the full route and read about each stop.

“Understanding the rich history of African Americans in this community, we want to make sure that’s preserved,” Kramer said.

“This is right out here for anybody to see anytime they’re here,” Dosik said. “It kind of elevates it, broadens it and sends it out into the world.”

McGruder noted that the work remains ongoing — not only the tour itself, but the broader project of documenting a history that, for a long time, wasn’t documented as it is now, in The 365 Project’s “Blacks in YS” encyclopedia and in the content of the walking tours.

“We’re all learning,” he said of the community’s awareness of local Black history. “A lot of our history is not in documents, it’s in people’s memories, and that’s always growing.”

He pointed to The 365 Project’s Black History Month effort this year to lead all Mills Lawn students on walking tours, focused on the legacy of Wheeling Gaunt.

“Those students will grow up with an understanding of who that was and why Gaunt Park is named for him,” he said. “So there’s all kinds of opportunities to continue learning.”

The self-guided walking tour map and historical guide are available online at the365projectys.org/blacks-in-ys-tour. For those interested in supporting the project’s expansion, donations can be made through The 365 Project’s website.

Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours;
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
And cups o’erflow with wine,
Let well-turned words amaze
With harmony divine.

—From “Now Winter Nights Enlarge,” by Thomas Campion

Area residents are invited to stop by the woods on a snowy evening this Friday for the 14th annual Winter Solstice Poetry Reading.

The event, co-sponsored by Tecumseh Land Trust, Glen Helen and Tesseract Books, will take place Dec. 5, 7–9 p.m., in the Glen’s Vernet Ecological Center at 405 Corry St. Twelve local poets will read original works, followed by a wine and cheese reception and an open mic session.

Suggested donation for attendees is $10, to benefit the Glen and the conservation work of TLT.

This year’s featured poets are Bill Abbott, Steve Abbot, Jim Brooks, Rita Coleman, Amanda Nicole Corbin, Grace Curtis, Cathryn Essinger, Arvilla Fee, David Lee Garrison, Judy James, Sierra Leone and Carol Pohly.

The theme of Friday’s poetry reading is “ember” — a motif meant to keep attendees warm in these frosty winter weeks, and to kindle lasting creativity, said event organizer Matt Birdsall.

“My fire has been running low this year,” Birdsall told the News earlier this week. “This is always a magical event that I deeply, deeply look forward to — a creative spark that I need, and on a basic level, we all need.”

This will be Birdsall’s fourth year organizing and emceeing the Winter Solstice Poetry Reading since he took the reins from villager and writer Ed Davis in 2022. Birdsall is himself a poet, editor of the “Mock Turtle Zine” and a sitting board member for TLT.

Birdsall said he’s proud of the diverse array of readers he assembled for this year’s event. It’s an Ohio-grown literary lineup that includes slam poets, educators, award-winners and authors.

“They’re bringing diversity on every level,” Birdsall said. “They’re different in every way in how they write, how they read. They’re poets from their 20s to their 80s. And this diversity strengthens the very fabric of the event. Poetry can only be successful with the largest collection of voices, and that’s what we have.”

Beyond celebrating the power and wonder of words, Birdsall said the annual reading is a chance for attendees to reflect on the importance of land stewardship.

“I think there is this intrinsic connection between land preservation and poetry,” he said. “There isn’t one without the other, and this event gives a platform for both — a chance to think about other kinds of connections we can make in the future.”

Of particular note for this year’s event, Birdsall said, will be the commemoration of TLT’s recent success in securing a conservation easement on a 185-acre farm just west of the village limits. As the News reported last month, the local nonprofit struck an agreement with a family of farmers to keep that land along Dayton-Yellow Springs Road agricultural in perpetuity.

“That’s a huge reason I’m so jazzed about this year’s reading,” Birdsall said. “A lot of things have really come together for TLT. Preserving this property is extraordinarily exciting — the culmination of so many people’s efforts, especially [TLT Executive Director] Michele Burns. So many kudos to her.”

While the Solstice Poetry Reading will take place 16 days ahead of this year’s winter solstice — specifically, on Sunday, Dec. 21, at 10:03 a.m., when our hemisphere is at its farthest tilt away from the sun — the timing of the event is anything but accidental, Birdsall said.

“It’s early enough in the month to not conflict with the other things that tend to happen in December,” he said with a laugh. “We don’t want to step on Kwanzaa, Hanukkah or Christmas’ toes.”

He continued: “And with this being ahead of those events, this poetry reading can start the fire — the embers — of gratitude, of community, of togetherness that can burn through the rest of the month, and hopefully into the new year.”

The 14th annual Winter Solstice Poetry Reading is this Friday, Dec. 5, at 7 p.m. in Glen Helen’s Vernet Ecological Center. For more information, go to http://www.tecumsehlandtrust.org/solsticepoetry.

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