The Big Bus will hold its annual “Sip in the School Year” fundraiser on Thursday, Sept. 17, as the mobile education program prepares to expand its services to more students and families in the Westerville area.
The fundraiser will run from 6 to 8 p.m. at Meza Wine Shop in Uptown Westerville. For $40, guests can choose four curated wine tastings or two glasses of wine, with $25 from each purchase benefiting The Big Bus. No advance ticket is required.
The event comes just days before The Big Bus plans to launch a new location in the Huber Ridge neighborhood Sept. 21. The expansion is intended to serve more students and families while increasing access to educational resources and support, according to promotional materials.
The Big Bus brings educational programming directly into neighborhoods, offering children homework help, literacy activities, STEM projects, and support from volunteers. The organization says its programs also help students build confidence while providing a safe place to learn.
“Behind every stop The Big Bus makes is a student discovering confidence, finishing homework, learning to read, or finding a safe place to belong,” a promotional graphic says.
The Huber Ridge location is part of a broader effort to expand the organization’s reach during the school year. The Big Bus also plans to increase its Pre-K programming to three days a week and offer programming for students in Huber Ridge and Minerva Park, according to promotional materials.
Proceeds from the fundraiser will help support those efforts.
That neighborhood-based approach is central to the organization’s model. Rather than requiring families to travel to a traditional education center, The Big Bus brings activities, resources, and volunteers closer to where students live.
Organizers are encouraging supporters to attend the fundraiser as the new school year gets underway. Those unable to attend can donate directly through The Big Bus website.
Green Grape Report Update - “pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate”
It’s unusual that a 14th-century friar and philosopher would make his way into The Green Grape Report at The Westerville News.
After several days of conjecture, theories, and the sort of amateur produce-market analysis normally reserved for commodities traders, the mystery of Meijer’s 50-cent grapes has been solved.
The culprit was not a collapse in the international grape market. It wasn’t a sinister loss leader. No shadowy cabal manipulated the price of seedless reds.
It was seven pallets.
The store normally receives one pallet of grapes. This time, it received seven. The warehouse told the store to keep them, leaving it with seven times its normal supply and the rather immediate problem of finding homes for a small mountain of grapes.
So Meijer did what any store staring at far too much perishable fruit might do: It marked them down. Way down. At 50 cents a pound, the grapes were selling for almost exactly one-sixth of their normal $2.99 price.
Which brings us to Occam’s Razor, the principle that when several explanations are competing, the one requiring the fewest assumptions is generally the place to start.
In this case, perhaps we should call it Occam’s Grape Shears.
Sometimes the explanation for mysteriously cheap grapes is not a conspiracy.
Sometimes somebody just sends you seven pallets of grapes.
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