The Yellow Springs Kwanzaa Planning Committee has announced plans for the 2025 celebration, which will take place Saturday, Dec. 27, at the Foundry Theater.

The evening will begin at 6 p.m. with a Kwanzaa Vendors Mart, followed at 7 p.m. by the annual Kwanzaa program. Hosted by Basim Blunt, the program will include readings by young people of the seven Kwanzaa principles, the presentation of the Nguzo Saba award to a Yellow Springs resident and performances by local artists, followed by a potluck meal.

Kwanzaa was developed by activist/educator Maulana Karenga, Ph.D., in the 1960s to introduce and reinforce seven basic values of African culture that contribute to building and reinforcing family, community and culture among African American people as well as Africans throughout the world.

The seven Kwanzaa principles, or Nguzo Saba, are associated with each day of the holiday, which begins Dec. 26 and ends Jan. 1: umoja — unity; kujichagulia — self-determination; ujima — collective work and responsibility; ujamaa — cooperative economics; nia — purpose; kuumba — creativity; and imani — faith.

Donations to support the program may be made by going online at the365projectys.org and clicking the “Kwanzaa” button. For more information, send an email to the365projectys@gmail.com.

When federal SNAP benefits stalled this fall, Yellow Springs’ safety nets snapped taut in an effort to catch as many affected folks as possible. Among those nets, and often helping bind them together, are the YS Police Department’s Community Outreach Specialists Florence Randolph and Danny Steck.

Responding locally to a nationwide crisis is part of the work for Randolph and Steck — but as they said in a recent interview, most days, their job involves responding to individual needs and the kinds of emergencies that don’t necessarily make the news.

Randolph, who has been in the job since April 2018, said the kinds of work she and Steck do overlaps with what a social worker might provide.

“We have a variety of needs that people bring to us,” she said. “People come to us with needs for food, utility payments, things like, ‘My car broke down, I broke my glasses’ — everything, anything. So we have a list of places we refer them to for resources.”

Contact information for all those and more resources can be found in the bevy of free pamphlets lining a wall in the lobby of the Bryan Center.

Police departments around the country have been inching toward similar models for years, collaborating with social workers or embedding social work positions within their departments, but news coverage and published research have illuminated an uptick in such efforts in recent years.

According to a 2022 study from the Brennan Center for Justice, incorporating social workers and other community outreach positions has become part of police reform, particularly in large cities, following the 2020 murder of George Floyd and public outcry over police violence. A 2023 study published in the Journal of Forensic Social Work notes that though there isn’t a unified model or approach to integrating social services into a police department, most involve creating pathways to resources to mental health, substance use and housing services.

In Yellow Springs, Randolph said, the department modeled its early program on a Boston precinct that employed a team of psychiatrists, nurses and social workers. Local resources don’t allow for the same approach within the YSPD itself, so the community outreach specialists collaborate with other organizations, including TCN Behavioral Health, the Mental Health Recovery Board, Miami Valley Community Action Partnership, United Way, the Senior Center, the YS Community Foundation, the schools, the John Bryan Youth Center, the YS Food Pantry, the Beloved Community Project and the “Who’s Hungry?” soup kitchen.

“We kind of are the go-between liaisons,” Randolph said.

Steck added: “We’re essentially working as connectors.”

A lifelong villager and 2017 YS High School graduate who joined the department this spring, Steck has several years of related nonprofit work behind her, having worked for Dayton’s National Conference for Community and Justice, or NCCJ, in suicide and bullying prevention in middle and high schools in Montgomery County. She said her work included leading the Mobile Opportunity Center initiative, in which she and others drove into neighborhoods in Dayton to provide support similar to what she and Randolph provide for the Yellow Springs community.

“We parked at the homeless shelter and worked one-on-one with clients to meet the needs they had,” Steck said.

When the Village of Yellow Springs opened up a second community outreach specialist position this year, Steck said she jumped at the chance to work in her own hometown.

“I thought, ‘How great would it be to do what I’m passionate about in my home?’” she said.

She pointed to her love and knowledge of the local community, as well as her own experience with need growing up, as fueling fires for the work she said she now feels privileged to do in the village.

“We struggled, but it didn’t always feel like we struggled — like, when the zoo trip came up every year and my mom couldn’t afford it, there was always somebody who paid to let me go on the trip,” she said. “The way that community comes together here, the ways that my family received help and the connections, that made me want to be part of that system that is helpful to people who live here.”

Randolph and Steck said there’s no such thing as an “average day” on the job, as they respond to needs wherever they might arise. The weekly exception is Tuesday, when they serve as victim advocates. On those days, they support victims and witnesses, act as liaisons with prosecutors and help lead folks through the court process and their rights. They also make referrals, keep victims updated on court dates, assist with impact statements and help secure protection orders when needed.

“We help that person navigate the court system and advocate on their behalf to the prosecutor and the judge in the court,” Steck said.

Every other day is a little of everything: phone calls, walk-ins, referrals from officers, sometimes assisting officers on calls. Steck explained: “If there’s a mental health crisis, or if there’s a death or something like that … Florence or I could, if the resident wants us to, respond to those calls and just provide emotional support and resources.”

The two often provide Tom’s Market food vouchers, Greene CATS bus tokens to get someone to Xenia or Fairborn or coordinate with the Wellness Center to provide shower access to those who need it. The most recent Village Manager’s report, presented at the Dec. 1 meeting of Village Council, noted that, from Nov. 13 to 24, Randolph and Steck provided five bus tokens, 43 food vouchers and three gas cards to folks, and provided assistance with housing to seven people, rental assistance to three people, utility assistance to 23 people and mental health assistance to 30 people.

Steck and Randolph’s work isn’t limited to those who live within the village — “We handle all the services for people who live, work and visit Yellow Springs,” Randolph said — and sometimes the work means helping someone rebuild trust with a family member or neighbor.

“You’ve got to get to know the person,” Randolph said. “You’ve got to ask a lot of questions.”

Many of the resources to which Steck and Randolph refer their clients — particularly in the arena of mental health — rely on state and federal funding. Earlier this year, the Department of Justice eliminated nearly $90 million in grants that would have supported mental health and substance-use programs and police health collaborations nationwide. In an op-ed for The Columbus Dispatch, Newtown Police Chief Thomas Synan Jr. urged federal officials to reinstate the funding, writing: “Police officers cannot do it alone. This is a model that works. … When communities have only law enforcement tools but lack essential services, people fall through the cracks.”

Randolph said funding losses, whether or not they’re directly tied to the DOJ cuts, have had local effects, particularly as funding for TCN Behavioral Health was “cut steeply” in recent months. In late July, TCN announced that funding cuts would mean the end of a number of Greene County crisis services, including its 24-hour crisis line and crisis intervention team outreach and follow-up.

“So now, the walk-in services that we used to be able to refer out to, we can’t,” she said.

But Steck said community support remains steadfast in the village, which she observes in the everyday generosity of folks who drop off coats, food, bikes — whatever someone needs.

“That’s something that not all communities have,” she said.

And Randolph said she continues to find joy in helping people meet goals, whatever their size.

“A goal might be just to be able to pay rent and utilities for one month without having to get any help — that’s a success,” she said. “It’s challenging, but it’s very rewarding.”

She added: “I’m built for this job, and my heart is in this.”

To reach the community outreach specialists, call the YS Police Department’s nonemergency line at 937-767-7206, or visit the YSPD at the John Bryan Community Center.

Right around the turn of the new year, the Yellow Springs Development Corporation is expected to close on the purchase of two downtown buildings: 252 and 254 Xenia Ave.

Once a purchase agreement is finalized in the coming weeks, YSDC will buy the two adjoining properties for $630,000 — money loaned to the quasi-governmental nonprofit and certified community improvement corporation from the Yellow Springs Community Foundation.

The three-story building at 252 Xenia Ave. previously housed Yellow Springs Hardware on its ground floor until the business closed earlier this year; on the second floor are four apartment units; and the third story is uninhabited storage space. Next door, in the building at 254 Xenia Ave., is the Yellow Springs Toy Company, and above, two more apartments.

These properties went up for sale earlier this year following the 2024 death of previous owner and local property magnate Bob Baldwin.

As previously reported, YSDC members say they want to acquire the mixed-use buildings ahead of any out-of-town developer, whose intentions for the properties may have been incongruent with local values and development goals for Yellow Springs’ downtown business corridor.

“Local control is really what we want,” YSDC member-at-large Lisa Abel told the News last month, emphasizing that YSDC’s primary aim is to preserve the two historic buildings for years to come.

While a month has passed since YSDC’s public announcement of its intentions to buy the two buildings, only the path toward acquisition has emerged; what happens after remains unclear.

Abel told the News earlier this week in another interview that two possibilities are ahead of YSDC should the sale go through: stay involved as an owner, or consider reselling the properties to a buyer of their choosing.

“At this point, we don’t know,” Abel said. “We’re going to explore both options. It comes down to how we can finance the properties if we elect to keep them, versus playing the role of ‘middle man’ and selling it. There are no definite plans for either option yet.”

These were the possibilities Abel and her YSDC colleagues — other local leaders and elected officials — discussed at the group’s most recent public meeting, Tuesday, Dec. 2.

First: due diligence

From the meeting room in the Miami Township Fire-Rescue station, Abel told her fellow YSDC members that, in order to successfully close on the purchase of the properties, the group must first complete the “due diligence” phase — mainly, conducting site surveys and property evaluations.

Abel explained that this 60-day phase began last month on Nov. 10, when the properties went under contract.

As of press time, YSDC has completed a structural engineering assessment of the properties, and still underway are asbestos testing and potential abatement, as well as inspections on the buildings’ plumbing, electrical and fire safety systems. Abel added that the county health department might also inspect the properties soon.

Conducting many of the buildings’ physical assessments and helping YSDC envision future site plans is Dayton-based architecture firm Earl Reeder Associates, Inc.

According to the firm’s online portfolio, Earl Reeder Associates works on residential and commercial spaces, and specializes in historical renovations. That portfolio includes the restoration of the Dayton Masonic Center, the Moraine Country Club and other historic buildings around Dayton. Of local relevance, Earl Reeder was tapped in 2019 to rehab portions of the historic Antioch Hall.

That focus on historical redevelopment could prove useful, should YSDC acquire the downtown properties.

According to county records, the three-story brick building at 252 Xenia Ave. was built around 1853, and is one of the oldest buildings in Yellow Springs. The adjoining structure at 254 was built sometime in the following decades; a Yellow Springs insurance map from July 1895 depicts both buildings in their current locations.

Past News reporting on the corner building notes that it once housed a college bookstore, an art studio, the area’s first library and, at one point, a hotel — one that may have had some connection with the abolitionist and liberation movements in the 19th century.

Both buildings have fallen into disrepair since then: A property appraisal that the Baldwin family had contracted earlier this summer notes that both 252 and 254 Xenia Ave. “have not been maintained” over the years.

“The interior surfaces are very dated and worn,” the appraisal, conducted by the Dunham Company, reads. “The exterior needs paint, tuck-point repair [on cracks in walls and foundations], at a minimum. The HVAC systems are archaic.”

The appraisal also states that the third story of the corner building is unlivable in its current condition.

At a town hall meeting last month — which drew around 100 villagers to the Bryan Center to hear YSDC’s preliminary plans for the structures — some attendees mused about the potentially high or prohibited costs of making those needed repairs.

“The question is for the audience,” mused local resident Dave Chappelle at the town hall, “If they say we have to tear it down or spend more money, what’s more valuable to you?”

Others there for the public gathering suggested the buildings were too important to ever demolish.

YSDC secretary and Antioch College history professor Kevin McGruder spoke to the buildings’ possible historical significance; he said that YSDC may have future inroads for state or federal funds for historical preservation.

For now, though, the full extent of the buildings’ needed repairs and how exactly they’ll be addressed remain to be seen. While the due diligence may offer YSDC and the community some answers, Abel said, untold “unknowns” about the viability of the buildings remain ahead.

“We’re not a deep pocket developer,” Abel said. “We’re doing this because the buildings are important to the community — they’re worth saving.”

Next: a property manager

In addition to completing the 60-day due diligence phase, YSDC must also hire a property manager ahead of the anticipated sale closure later this month or in early January.

Abel told her fellow board members at last week’s meeting that the job of property manager — a position for which, Abel said, there are currently several candidates recommended to YSDC from the realtors involved in the sale — will be to oversee the terms and conditions of occupancy for the buildings’ existing tenants.

Presently, there are seven tenants: six residents split among the upstairs apartments, and the Yellow Springs Toy Company on the ground floor of 254 Xenia Ave.

By the end of the year, however, YS Toy Company is expected to close after eight years of business, according to a recent online announcement from owner Jamie Sharp.

In a social media post, Sharp cited the broader economy, changing consumer habits, tariffs, the anticipated sale of her building and dropping sales all as reasons for her decision to close up shop. Reached for further comment last week, Sharp declined, stating a need to focus on wrapping up operations during these holiday weeks.

Above Sharp’s store are two residential apartments — both approximately 500 square feet outfitted with their own kitchens and bathrooms. Above the former hardware store are four considerably smaller living units — each ranging from 195 to 295 square feet, with a shared bathroom and kitchen. The six apartments garner $375 to $660 each in rent per month, according to the Baldwins’ summer appraisal. 

Potentially becoming a landlord of all these units would be new territory for the nonprofit, Abel told the News.

“Our mission is economic development, not housing,” Abel said. “But here we are. We have a steep learning curve ahead of us.”

The fate of the six tenants took up a sizable portion of YSDC’s round-table discussion last Tuesday, and some members expressed greater trepidation than others.

“How did this become our elephant in the room?” asked YSDC treasurer Marilan Moir, who represents Miami Township on the board. 

“How is that we’re now responsible for the wellbeing of a situation that, really, I believe is that of [Bob Baldwin’s] heirs and children,” Moir said. “We’re not only purchasing this building and going to incredible lengths for funding — a big risk — and now, we’re being asked to care for these years-long relationships between Bob and his tenants.”

New YSDC member Christine Monroe-Beard — representing the Chamber of Commerce — recommended that the new property manager abide by the existing lease agreements.

“We also have to follow basic landlord-tenant rights,” Monroe-Beard said. “We acquired this building with humans in it, and now we’re landlords — we’re responsible to uphold tenant rights per the Ohio code.”

Aside from the day-to-day oversight of the tenants’ well-being, the future property manager may one day encounter a difficult crossroad — where will the tenants go if the buildings require significant renovations and reconstruction?

“If all this goes forward, there’s going to be construction, and these folks may have to move for some time,” YSDC member and school board representative Rebecca Potter said.

Moir stated that, as someone who herself had been forced to move out of rentals unexpectedly and suddenly, she’s sympathetic for the tenants of 252 and 254 Xenia Ave., but contended that their living situation may be beyond the scope of YSDC’s endeavors.

“So, do we pay for their housing to get them out for six to eight months? Are we taking on the responsibility to house these folks at that time? I don’t think we have to,” Moir said.

All those present for last Tuesday’s meeting agreed that, at this point, those possibilities and questions will have to remain unanswered. 

“Just give us some time,” Abel told the News in her follow-up interview.

“The best case scenario [for the current tenants] is that some alternative housing gets identified that’s suitable for their means and accessibility,” she said. “But right now, I just don’t know. We’re going to continue meeting with the community and continue hosting town halls.”

‘What would Bob do?’

Whatever happens in the months and years ahead, one tenant of 254 Xenia Ave. said he just hopes he and his neighbors get taken care of.

“My concern is not only for me, but for the other tenants up there,” Tom Sain, a six-year resident of 254 Xenia Ave., said earlier this week. “I don’t want to see people removed before they’re capable of figuring out something new. I love all my neighbors. I’m good friends with all of them.”

Sain said that he got his apartment above the toy store in mid-2019, during a moment of duress. A former Antiochian and a longtime village resident, Sain said his previous living situation was unexpectedly taken away from him.

In a chance encounter, he met Bob Baldwin — also an Antiochian — and the two immediately hit it off. Not long after, Sain moved into his new downtown digs, paying an affordable rent that Baldwin would occasionally discount when Sain performed odd jobs and tasks around the property.

“I miss the man all the time,” Sain said. “He prorated my rent. He prorated my deposit. He gave me work. Bob was just such an optimist, and I think he saw the same trait in me.”

Sain admitted that he’d prefer not to spend the rest of his days in that downtown apartment — noting that the “Frankenstein” electric and gas systems that connect the living quarters can sometimes be irksome — but for now, at this point in his life, it’s an ideal home for Sain.

“I certainly can’t speak for the other folks, but if I was told I had to leave, I’d need about six months to a year’s notice,” he said. “I think that’d be ample time to get my affairs in order and find a new place to live.”

With his characteristic optimism, Sain said he looks forward to working more closely with YSDC in the coming weeks and months, should the group purchase his and the other building from the Baldwin family.

“I hope they work with everyone who lives here with their best interests in mind,” Sain said. “I think that’s what Bob would want. I think that’d hold true to his legacy.”

He added: “And maybe I can help. I know construction.”

The next Yellow Springs Development Corporation regular, public meeting will be Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026, at 4:30 p.m., in the Miami Township fire station’s meeting room. The group typically meets the first Tuesday of every month.

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.

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