This is a big weekend for the Round House Cafe, a landmark time for Lisa and Scott Carrino, who have been fighting for several years now to keep their community cafe in our small town of Cambridge, New York.

Like so many other rural communities in America, our town has been challenged, in some ways ravaged by globalism, the migration to the cities, the loss of factory and manufacturing jobs, and the abandonment of the family farm by economists and government bureaucrats and politicians.

No one here is really shocked by the presidential election, not if they’ve been listening. Small town downtowns have been devastated by box stories and online retailing. Scott and Lisa decided to put their finger in the dike and open a community based cafe, the kind of open and friendly gathering place that is the foundation of community.

They hoped to buy their building, but that didn’t work out. They did not give up. The Carrino’s launched a gofundme project that raised nearly $70,000, much of it from the readers of this blog, and they are using the money to build a new cafe right next door, on the ground floor of the Hubbard Hall Arts and Education Center.

Our community is grateful, and intensely relieved. Every Friday night, local musicians play here. High school kids perform and play their music and read their poems at Open Mike Night in the winter. Pizza night has become a cherished community tradition. People bring their laptops and work at the cafe, street people are welcome to come in for hot coffee in the cold.

Maria and I are there a dozen times a week, often for their fresh and wonderful soups and salads. Tomorrow, the first iteration of the Round House will close. Sometime in the next few weeks, the cafe will re-open in Hubbard Hall in a beautiful restored space four times the size, with a full kitchen and a retail store selling baked goods and bread and the works of local artists and artisans.

Scott and Lisa are exhausted, but happy. And they are excited. Their dream is about to come true and we are all cheering for them. And grateful to you. We will be at the Round House at 3 p.m. tomorrow to celebrate the new and bow to the old.