A r t s & C u lt u r e
Christ Episcopal Church Hosts Free Weekday Community Meals Selena Frantz Located at Christ Episcopal Church, Oberlin Weekday Community Meals strives to provide free hot dinners for all members of the Oberlin community. The service prides itself on a “no questions asked” policy, meaning the organization welcomes everyone, regardless of their possible reason for attending. Monday through Friday, from 5 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., anyone can visit the church to pick up a freshly made meal. According to Andy McQuery, who serves as rector of the Christ Church parish, this organization is unique to the area. Though there are other food distribution centers in Oberlin, none operate with the regularity of OWCM. “Most of them are at most once a week, maybe once a month,” McQuery said. “But nobody’s doing 80 meals a day every day, 50 weeks out of the year.” The program started as a sit-down group meal, but due to the pandemic, the church shifted its services to takeout and drive-up options. In addition, the program offers delivery services to Concord Manor, a low-income housing complex. People are also welcome to take multiple meals for others if needed. “You walk in the door, you tell us how many meals you need, we will give you what we have until we’re out,” McQuery said.
On account of the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of meals necessary to serve all visitors has greatly increased. Making these meals, though time-consuming, is a source of enjoyment for the two cooks, Tabatha Watson-Brown and Luis Allende, who run the parish kitchen. They spend hours a day finding, buying, and cooking fresh food, most of which is sourced from local farms and markets. The creativity and hard work put into each meal is always appreciated by the community members. “I knew that they enjoyed [the food] because of the flavor that we put into it,” Watson-Brown said. “And besides flavor, we put love into it. We both love cooking.” Allende, who previously worked at a food truck, shares Watson-Brown’s passion for cooking, as well as a love for community service. “[We help] the people that don’t have ways to eat,” Allende said. “We can make it for them if they can’t cook it.” Individuals from all spheres of the Oberlin community benefit from this program, and McQuery highlighted the variety of reasons that bring people to each meal. “It isn’t just people who are necessarily struggling to make ends meet, although that is a part of it,” McQuery said. “There are some folks in the community with various disabilities, for whom
shopping or cooking is either difficult or not really within their scope. And we’ve got some senior citizens [who come] too for the same reason.” Christ Church opened its doors to the OWCM program in 1983. Though it is a church-run service, the staff works to make the space available for all community members, regardless of relation to the church. “In terms of recruiting volunteers and for members of our advisory board, this is something we really wanted to be Oberlin generally, not just Christ Church,” McQuery said. Over the next few months, the program plans to expand its services even more in time for its 40year anniversary in 2023. “I think [the expansion] will diversify the communities we can serve [and] give us greater reach and opportunity,” McQuery said. Eventually, Oberlin Weekday Community Meals would like to reopen its sit-down services, as well as continue its drive-through and takeout options. “Part of its mission is that we understand that for the human condition, being fed is more than food,” McQuery said. “Companionship and community is important for the soul, too.” Oberlin Weekday Community Meals also welcomes any college student in need of a meal to stop by and grab one.
Campus Makerspaces Underutilized, Lack Sufficient Crafting Supplies Continued from page 10 or equipment for large numbers of students to use it simultaneously, but Abby Aresty, the technical director and lecturer for TIMARA, says that the space is “slowly scaling up,” while also making an effort to prioritize safety and cost-effectiveness. “Our goal is always to increase the accessibility of the space, but to do so in a way where we don’t completely overwhelm ourselves,” Aresty said. “We have a sewing machine, an embroidery machine, a knitting machine, a 3D printer, a desktop mill used for circuit fabrication, and more recently, we purchased a laser cutter, which can be used for fun projects like paper speakers or flexible circuits,” she said. “That’s the range of tools — everything from electronics to more craftbased stuff, and ideally we kind of blend them together when possible.” Aresty highlighted fascinating student works that exemplify this blend of the technological and the tactile. Take, for instance, a “pillow synthesizer,” which makes a range of noises when pressed in different spots.
Fourth-year TIMARA major and makerspace Teaching Assistant Gabriel Baskin has been involved with the space since fall of 2019, although his involvement in the beginning mostly involved cleaning up student messes. Baskin said that his time working in Aresty’s labs has helped him develop skills in different technologies in the space, motiviating him to lead workshops in some of those techniques. “I think having exposure to tools and techniques broadens the horizons of what you can envision yourself doing,” Baskin said. “I think even the fact that an embroidery machine is available will inspire students to make embroidery, … and that can be said for many of the tools in here. … There’s a lot you can come up with on your own, but you cannot be introduced [to every tool] yourself. I think spaces like these are really the locus of education.” Thinking about other makerspaces in the area, Aresty recommended that students with access to transportation make use of the Fab Lab at Lorain County Community College
The TIMARA makerspace hosts a mill and 3D printer.
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— about half an hour away — and the Sears think[box] at Case Western Reserve University, about an hour away. Both of these facilities are free to use and have considerably more hours of availability than Oberlin makerspaces do. As far as on-campus resources, Aresty admitted that they are “dispersed,” but she excitedly encouraged interested students to reach out to professors or get involved with some type of crafting space as an entry point into learning more about other crafting-related opportunities and resources. “The more that people interact with that sort of ‘hands-on’ world, the more they can make connections and build up different skills,” Aresty said. Second-year College students Elijah Freiman and Sean Norton are determined to do exactly that; they want to make use of all crafting resources openly available on campus. According to Norton, they were turned away from the Studio Art and Theater fabrication spaces, only to find that the makerspace in Wilder Hall was stopping operations. Then, by scouring
Photo by Erin Koo
the Oberlin website, Norton found mention of the fabrication lab in the Physics Department’s Wright Laboratory. Norton reached out to Professor of Physics Jason Stalnaker, who oversees the fabrication space in the laboratory, and asked if he could be trained in order to use the space. Stalnaker agreed, and both Norton and Freiman underwent a nine-hour-long shop training. “Eventually, [Stalnaker] showed us the list of people certified to use the machine shops, … and there were only two people other than us,” Norton said. “One of them had graduated in 2018, and the other had graduated last year … It was a totally underutilized space by the student body.” So, what did Norton and Freiman do once they’d been certified to use the space? They made a cider press, of course. Now Freiman’s dorm room has become an apple cider factory, and they are giving away gallons of the stuff to their friends. “[Stalnaker] made the point today that we could have saved ourselves lots of man hours and a good amount of money by purchasing a juicer,” Freiman said, laughing. For makers determined to persevere after having difficulty accessing resources in certain departments, there are fabrication labs available for use and mentors willing to help. However, limited hours, finances, and amounts of physical space can make it difficult for makerspaces to widely publicize their resources and for less persistent craft hobbyists to get involved. Norton, Freiman, Aresty, and Baskin all expressed a desire for these barriers to entry to be lowered and for access to makerspaces to be expanded. Oberlin is a campus full of creatives, and more accessible makerspaces would mean more opportunities for exploration, experimentation, and self-expression, and would allow imaginative people to bring their eccentric ideas into reality.
