Game Night, Outer Space, Music by the River

Picture the last night of a class here in Batavia. No test. No grade. Each person stands up, alone, and talks for three minutes about what their life is supposed to be for. Some of them are high school athletes, saying it out loud in front of their own teammates. The man who teaches that class works upstairs on Wilson Street. I found him under a pop-up tent at the farmers market.

Welcome to Batavia This Week, the family edition. Game night on Tuesday, a mom and son trip to outer space on Friday, and this very afternoon, live music by the river where a picnic blanket counts as a seat.

I'm Gary Ricke, and together with several students at Batavia High School, we're building bataviail.co. Here's why. Batavia has around twenty-two hundred businesses, and there's no one place to find them all. So we go find them. We stop at the tents, we walk into the shops, we ask the people behind the counter what they're up to. Then we come back and tell you.

Fourteen East Wilson Street. Right next to the Comedy Vault, up a flight of stairs, there are forty-five hundred square feet that most of us have walked right past. That's Eighteen Thirty-Three Leadership. And the man who runs it, Jeremiah Chaney, is about as Batavia as it gets.

When I stopped at his tent, it took about a minute to figure out I already knew his son. J P made the video tribute to Coach Dennis Piron. And Jeremiah? He played for Piron. In the nineties. Back when the coach was just getting started.

So when Jeremiah talks about what one adult can do for a kid, he isn't guessing. He was the kid.

What he teaches is servant leadership. The goal, in his words, is moving relationships from transactional to transformational. Less, what can you do for me. More, who are we becoming.

Here's how it works. A coach or a business sends a group, twelve, fifteen, twenty people, and they go through a ten-week class together. One week to get started. A week on each of the core virtues. And then that last night. Every person stands up and gives a three-minute speech about what the impact of their life is supposed to be. Think about being sixteen and saying that out loud, in front of your whole team.

This past year that was Batavia basketball, Batavia football and Geneva football. Wrestling joins this fall. A coach in Greensboro, North Carolina is running the curriculum with his team, there's another coach up in Michigan, and they've even done training in Ethiopia, where his daughter teaches fourth grade. Three years in, it's still a grassroots nonprofit. As he put it, they're just trying to get their feet on the ground.

Now, the catch. You can't just sign up for the class. Not yet. It runs on trust and a little vulnerability, so groups usually come in through a coach or a leader who already knows the people. But I asked him if he'd ever open it up, and here's what he said. If he's got fifteen kids who want to show up, let's do it. Let's try it.

So here's your door in. Start with a workshop. Life Mapping You is seventy-five dollars. You look back at the moments in your life that actually meant something, and you find the handful of things that give it meaning, no matter what your job title says. The Personal Impact Statement workshop is fifty. And Thursday mornings, six thirty to seven thirty, there's Men's Fellowship, which Jeremiah describes as just dudes coming together, trying to figure out how to be better husbands and fathers.

Go to eighteen thirty-three leadership dot org, fill out the contact form, and tell them what you're curious about. And if you know fifteen kids who'd show up? Tell him that too. He meant it.

Here's your Sunday afternoon, and it's free. At three o'clock, the Batavia Community Band plays the Peg Bond Center, one fifty-one North Island Avenue. That's your neighbors, playing music for the town. Bring lawn chairs, blankets, a cooler, and food. Then at four, head over to the Sidecar Supper Club on North River Street for Bluegrass Sunday. Local and traveling bands play by the fire or right out on the street. Blankets and camp chairs welcome there too. Two shows, one river, zero dollars. Bring a jacket. October gets honest once the sun drops.

Here's a night where the only thing anybody's fighting over is the last card. Inclusion Game Night at the Batavia Public Library is board games and card games for teens and young adults of all abilities, plus their families and their friends. No tryout. No skill level. Nobody sitting on the bench. You pull up a chair and you take a turn. Tuesday, six thirty in the evening, in the Founders Room at the library. Bring the friend who always wins. Then watch them meet their match.

Moms, your son has been to outer space in his head about four hundred times. Friday, take him. Well, almost. The Park District's brand-new Mom and Son Night Out is a space-themed evening at the Eastside Community Center, fourteen North Van Buren. Music, games, crafts, activity stations, snacks. It's for kids three to twelve with their grown-up, and the dress code is jeans and sneakers, so nobody's wrestling anybody into a collared shirt. Friday, six thirty in the evening. Tickets are twenty-four dollars, and the parent buys them ahead of time. Go. He'll remember it longer than you think.

Saturday morning at the farmers market, somewhere among the tents, there's a table where the thing on offer is math. Stay with me. Vanguard Gifted Academy runs a free kids table to kick off Global Math Week, hands-on puzzles a kid can solve standing up while you're still deciding on tomatoes. No sign-up. No worksheet. And Water Street Studios has a free family art activity at the MainStreet tent the same morning, so it's numbers at one table and art at the other. Saturday, starting at eight, at the Batavia Farmers Market on North River Street. Free. Fair warning, the puzzle might get you instead.

That's Batavia This Week. There's a whole lot more we couldn't fit, and it's waiting for you at bataviail.co. Here's my ask. Pick one thing you heard today and actually go. And when you get there, tell them you heard about it here. I'm Gary. See you down in town.