In early Hub days, we had the luck to work closely with Brittany Sampson, who we simply called “B.” A veteran community organizer and deep of heart, so many of her insights have followed me along in this work: they are road markers that I tend to go back to when I...
Hub Happenings in the Milan / Berlin / Gorham Region
Previous Events
The Village Fires Still Burn
In “The Layers,” beloved poet laureate Stanley Kunitz writes, “When I look behind, / as I am compelled to look / before I can gather strength / to proceed on my journey, / I see the milestones dwindling / toward the horizon / and the slow fires trailing…” A seminal...
One Vast Glowiing Empty Page: Spring 2025
I saw that my life was one vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted. -Jack Kerouac There’s a special kind of magic that bubbles up when the opportunity to tap into pure possibility arises. All too often, we see the borders of our realities as...
I’m Going to Show Up
Sometimes, community building can feel overwhelming. Observing our communities, the dire needs alongside the diversity of belief systems and ideologies, it really can feel like there’s no way to find a seat at the table for everybody. Yet, a key tenet of the work we...
The Hoping Machine
The Father of Folk, Woody Guthrie, says “...about all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine.” It’s no accident that hope followed on the heels of calamity and terror when Pandora opened that infamous box. Hope is what gets us up in the morning and keeps...
Woven Together: Working with The Milan Village School
The Milan Village School is a community hub in its own right and the school as a whole works incredibly hard to be active contributors to the community. The sixth grade class, in particular, complete Community Service Learning Projects that they work on throughout the...
Arcana: Art Show at The Three Sisters
What began as a passion project among friends became a true example of creating a shared experience across a wide variety of community members. Local metalsmith Laura Jamison and sometimes artist, mostly community builder Mandy Bernd collaborated on an interactive...
Trunk or Treat, Milan and Berlin 2023
Mandy participated in two Trunk or Treating events during the Halloween Season. Berlin Elementary School’s PTO hosted their Trunk or Treat at the Heritage Park in Berlin on October 24th. Milan’s Recreation Department hosted another at Milan Village School on October...
Berlin Porchfest 2023
This event draws from the collective efforts and contributions of many to provide an experience for all.
Berlin’s 2nd annual PorchFest was held on September 22, 2023. From 4 in the afternoon until 10 in the evening.
The roving concert was spread out among streets in Berlin’s “Irish Acres” neighborhood. There were eleven performers whose musical stylings ranged from acoustic folk ballads and fiddling, on to popular rock hits from recent years. We were pleased to have seven PorchFest hosts who opened their properties for the duration of the event, some hosting musicians while others hosted food vendors.
PorchFest is a phenomenon that occurs in multiple locations across the United States and Canada, having begun in Ithaca, NY. In Berlin, this event truly creates a unique space in which neighbors and local musicians collaborate to provide a free and accessible event for the city at large. Beyond the shared experience of music, PorchFest attendees have ample opportunities to connect with one another as they walk to and from concert locations, get dinner from a vendor, or watch and dance to the music. Within PorchFest, there was a sense of camaraderie and the development of new relationships, alongside potential for collaboration on future events.
Here, we see that every person holds value (whether donating their spaces, time, musical abilities, or participation in the crowd) and whose presence adds special value to the community.