It’s Holiday craft fair season.

A wonderful, community-strengthening way to shop eco and local instead of creating waste, pollution, and speediness this holiday season. I’ve gone to craft fairs most weekends, back on my e-bike (which was stolen, as you may’ve heard, shortly after election day, from Nude Foods Market—our wonderful police amazingly found it a few weeks later, much worse for the wear, the electrical cut, stripped of locks and all, but while some of the gears still don’t work again, it’s 90% back in action now).

Winnie, my rescue pup from SoulDog Rescue, just turned 1. He’s troublemaking, sweet, feisty, fully of energy, and enjoys daily playdates with fellow neighborhood puppies. (Note: Two dear friends of mine heartrendingly just lost their pup after she swallowed an avocado pit—please take extra precaution for your best friends).

Back fully involved in my company, Elephant Journal, I’ve had the honor of interviewing people doing good things for our world, including, most recently, writing teacher Julia Cameron of morning pages fame.

Meeting with Matt Benjamin, Tara Winer, Tina Marquis, Mayor Aaron Brockett, Ryan Schuchard, and hopefully the rest of our wonderful new council, I’m looking at joining a few more boards (I’m already involved with Nude Foods, and the New Local) and finding other, more focused ways of serving our dear town. I genuinely enjoyed cheering on Mayor Aaron, Tara, Tina, Taishya, Ryan…my “compatriots” at their recent swearing-in the Council chambers—while I may have lost, my healthy showing (by far the most of any candidate independent of the best-loved slates) made it easy to cheer on these good humans who will hopefully work toward solutions rather than slate-infighting (though respectful, enthusiastic debate is helpful!). It was also wonderful to be able to hug Junie, Rachel, Bob, our departing public servants.

My experience on the local campaign trail just deepened my love for this town and my conviction that we can, mostly, work together to find solutions to our many challenges—fire mitigation, Xcel, affordability, homelessness, and crime—along with helping our dear local businesses, which brings me right back to those craft fairs. Support local! And, as Lele (the potter in photo) and I did, please bring your own bags and reuse packaging, and ideally bike or carpool there.

I’ll keep writing my waylonlewis.com newsletter, about Boulder issues we care about…so if you’d like to help get this out to more than 194 folks, please forward it to a friend or 20. Go to waylonlewis.com to get it.

Yours in Boulder,

Waylon Lewis

PS: as a sort of consolation prize, the universe got me invited to play an incredibly minor role in The Nutcracker at Macky, which I love with all my heart. Support local arts, too!

PS: I’m looking at bringing back live local Elephant talk shows—we’ll feature local issues, wonderful local forces for kind community, and local public servants. Stay tuned.