First, the weather report. We’ve gone from winter to summer. After a long cool spring that had near-freezing overnight temps into the third week in May, I expect I will be complaining about the heat any day now. Probably today. The car thinks we hit 91 degrees today. Naturally I expect the authorities to issue an excessive heat warning any time now.   

Having established the weather, on to the happenings.

To my ears, “Community” is an overused trigger word. Depending how it is bantered about, I struggle to understand what community is being referenced. It is my humble opinion that people too frequently use the word to describe … well, something. Sort of.

As much as I dislike the word, this week I’ve started to think that I do, in fact, have a “community”. Or maybe communities.

Community shows up in little ways and big ones. In little ways, the people who choose to make this area home collectively shape our shared experience. The coffee shop and shelter in downtown Laporte. The small meat counter and grocery. The guys at the dump who are always so kind. The gas station that doesn’t have a lot of pumps, but always has diesel.

Saturday night in Laporte can sometimes include dinner at the Popple Bar “in town”. The Laporte city sign states that it has 134 residents, so we’re using “town” a bit loosely.

But on Saturday night in this town, our server is a person also named, “Daphne”. Our neighbors who operate the winery next door were also at the Popple for dinner. And the music act booked for Sunday afternoon at the winery next door is a two-man band from the next town over.

Sunday morning we worked in an even smaller community, our own. At the front house we moved the adolescent chicks into their bigger coup. The converted “mini-goat barn” still needs interior work before winter, but it’s good enough for now. The flock is outgrowing the smaller, official chicken coup by the day, so mini-goat barn it is – ready or not.

Achieving the chicken move we stopped by the winery next door for the aforementioned live music. Here, in this space (to use another term of the day), the community included hearty, even if graying somewhat, travelers still singing the optimism and hope of the 60s, still believing that we can be better, the way the crochet-clothed crowd did before the 80s hit. Still wearing tie-dye. I’m not a member of that community, I am solidly and stereotypically Gen-X, but I can see it and I can see its members recognize each other.

And there are the bigger, more intentional ways. Today, Monday, May 25, 2026, I got to be part of a community that never forgets the sacrifices of others. On this Memorial Day, like most of the Memorial Days in my 47 years, I will go to the same cemetery, in the same woods, to listen to the same hymns and poems, all to memorialize and honor the same souls — those who gave the ultimate sacrifice in service to their nation and their communities. Memorial Day is a national holiday experienced locally in all sizes of cemeteries in all kinds of communities. It’s a reminder that we can, individually and together, be better and bigger than ourselves. More magnanimous. More loving. More gracious to others. At least until Tuesday morning.

This year it’s also the 100-year anniversary of the Ladies Birthday Club. For 100 years the Ladies Birthday Club has supported the Leader community by catering events, weddings, and deaths for a free will offering. The profits are donated to maintaining community assets like the Leader Hall.

As much as I dislike the word, and as much as I’ve overused it here, the dedicated members of this local community have, through their service to each other, very much earned and built community.  

With that, I sat down, sort of shut up, and enjoyed my white bread egg salad sandwich. In community. And that is the news from Laporte this week.