Ruth Anne Wolfe and the Coffee Cup that Changed a Neighborhood
Along Montgomery Road in Pleasant Ridge sits a charming gray house that, more often than not, is bustling with activity. In this building, countless conversations have occurred between neighbors and friends over steaming hot cups of coffee, cocoa, and tea. This is the home of Community Happens Here, a local nonprofit on a mission to connect people. Its founder, Ruth Anne Wolfe, spoke with us about how Community Happens Here started, the power of conversation, and why she’s adamant about saying, “Hello.”
Interview by Ginny Taylor. Photography by Stacy Wegley.
First, I have a confession: I’ve driven past Community Happens Here many times on Montgomery Road but never really took the initiative to learn about it. So please tell us what Community Happens Here is all about.
In its essence, at its core, we work to connect people across differences. That can be all kinds of differences, big and small, that keep us from initiating conversations with each other. We’re interested in how to start and deepen a conversation with somebody you don’t know yet.
What was the inspiration?
The original impetus for this came from when my daughter attended Pleasant Ridge Montessori. I was involved in lifting up that school with many other people. When she went to seventh grade, I noticed that Cincinnati's high schools are extremely economically and racially segregated. That really bothered me. I also noticed that the next time we saw kids from families with lower incomes from Pleasant Ridge Montessori, they were working part-time jobs at a young age. There wasn’t a school that these kids were going to. They were spread out across the city. I was so sad to lose the connection.
And I was mad. We worked very, very hard at Pleasant Ridge Montessori to build infrastructure there, build a school that now people are moving into Pleasant Ridge to be at. But what I found was something I had been pressing up against but didn’t understand: You can gather people at a place – you can get 200 dads in one room, you can get families together in an auditorium, all looking at their children on the stage – and they never talk to the person next to them.
So, yes, you have an integrated school, but no, you haven't changed anything. People will only interact if encouraged. Granted, I am an extrovert, and I was intensely interested in this idea. I had this flash of inspiration that I would call Radical Sidewalk Hospitality. [Editor's note: Radical Sidewalk Hospitality invites folks passing by to sit and chat over drinks and an activity.]
I cannot ask someone else to come to me. I must begin in a vulnerable place. I'm an educated, old white lady, and if I can't do it [bring people together], who will ever do it? If I can't do it in Pleasant Ridge, where will it ever be done? So I got a bunch of cups, and I went down to Bi-Okoto Cultural Center, which is in Pleasant Ridge, and asked them, “Can I put up my cups and tea here?” And they said, “Of course!”
They ran a cord out the window for me, and I started my little tea and began drawing on the mugs and talking to people. One of those little girls wrote on a little cup, “I drink tea, and it changes me.”
Why did you choose mugs and teacups?
I built on this idea that I had started at Pleasant Ridge Montessori back in the day – a coffee shop entrepreneurship program. It was an effort to keep all of the kids there. So 12 or 13 years later, I am still teaching once a week in the after-school setting. All the children are eligible for it. In three sessions, we teach about 75 kids yearly how to run a business. Then on Thursday mornings, we have a coffee shop. What juices me up is that if you give a child a thing – “Okay, here's your order sheet, you're going to put on your apron, and you're going to ask somebody to take an order. Would they like coffee? Tea?” – then they do it over and over, and they become more confident.
How did Community Happens Here officially start?
I started looking for property. This building had been vacant for ten years. Finally, the woman who was the daughter of the original owner put it on the market. It's commercial property. So, of course, I knew nothing about [renovating] commercial property. I’m a lawyer, so that does help – or hurt – because I know that I have to know things. But I got it. I started the nonprofit in October 2016. I was downtown, and there was this advertisement about Duke Energy: “We make community.”
No, we make community here. The only place you can make community is between two people – two people at a time. I bought this building on October 3, 2019. It was harder than birthing a baby. So then, I had to learn how to run a nonprofit. It wanted to kill me for the first couple of years; there was a lot of experimentation. But it has held that question and that idea: “How do you get conversations started, and what activities do it?”
My intersecting “joy place” is handwork of some kind, food, and conversation. A little coffee because it gives you this opening:
“Would you like to put your name on the mug?”
“Oh, I'm not an artist.”
“You can write something.”
They can't do it without sitting down. Then they sit down and meet the coffee cup kids. The class comes here on Saturdays to learn how to serve, and they love helping people. When the kids get a little older, I poke them, “Okay, now go introduce yourself and practice.”
Politics, the city council, or the school board is fraught with conflict. Sometimes, I lose hope. I had to get here where I could at least see something real. So we work on handwork, like the sculpture you saw downstairs with all the photographs; each one of those people touched one of those leaves and sewed on it, whether they knew how to sew or not.
I'm a very big believer in learning to do something you've never done before. The other day, this woman came, Raquelita Sotelo Luna. She did this process [tile making], which takes more than a second to finish. So if you are doing that, you have a small chance of making a connection, especially if there’s someone else at the table.
Then the conversations start. People in the neighborhood have stopped driving by and have started coming in. Almost everyone says, “I've driven by this place so many times, but I never stopped because I didn't know what it was.” We try to keep doing something different that will bring someone else in. We did an Easter egg hunt and had 240 people sign up.
If you attend one of my events, you will get a name tag and a question card. I tell everyone who comes, “Please ask a question to somebody you don't know or talk to somebody you don't know.”
Can you talk about just a few of the people who gather here?
I hope to strengthen the number of people of color in Pleasant Ridge. I'm proud to have the Black Unitarian Universalist meeting here. I have the Black Young Professionals executive committee meeting here. I want to make space for it. I have several really wonderful coworkers who come here. Brianna, a mobile notary, is always bringing people here. She’s a young African American woman with a family, so those are the kind of people I really want to not just support but be friends with.
The question came up for me, “How do I model this, clarify the process, and begin taking it to other neighborhoods?” It is not magic, but it is a thing. You have to sit down at a table. You have to have something to offer. You have to be willing to do it. You have to pull up some chairs and talk to strangers. Anyone can turn around in a line and at least say hello. “Hello. My name is…” are the four most powerful words we can say in this world right now.
We don't know each other’s names, and until we do, the boy walking down the street is not known to you. But I know him. His name is Jacobi. And if you came here and talked to Jacobi, you would know him, too.
I’m trying to create a strong presence here and have strong support from the community. My dear friend – who you interviewed – Mary Laymon, at Tikkun Farm in Mount Healthy, she’s my spiritual guru. She has a farm with alpacas, Tikkun has a food pantry, and they do a lot. I love her. I've taught her to spin and things like that, and she teaches me a lot of stuff – energy and time are always the limiting factors. I'm beginning a campaign called Conversation Starters, trying to get 100 people to pay $10 a month just so that this can exist.
How did you become interested in sewing and embroidery?
I have a number of threads in my life. One of them is that when I was nine, my mother bought a sheep farm, and we learned to spin, and we all learned to sew. My mother was a beautiful seamstress and embroiderer. When I graduated from college with my theater and anthropology degrees, I went to Japan to teach English in 1982. I was very interested in crafts there too. There is a type of Japanese embroidery called Sashiko, a mending technique that has become quite popular. There was a big show of Boro, which is old clothing that is patched and patched and patched. I created this [pointing to two cups embroidered on her dress] because I am trying to stitch the world back together again, stitch by stitch. We know it is torn, but I will take my hand and stitch it as well as I can. It's my inspiration to say, “Keep going one at a time.” You make a whole quilt by stitching, one stitch at a time. You can't make it any faster than you can do one stitch at a time.
How can people rent and use the space?
If you want to use the space, go onto the website, and it says “space rental.” We have a Google form, and you can see whether we have certain things already scheduled. You can fill out the Google form and say, “I would like to use the space with a couple of different dates. Note, I am able to pay, or I am not able to pay.” Then we get that, and we talk to you. We want people to use the space. We want them to use it to bring people together and to do the work of the world. I don't want to be initiating all the programs. I want this to be a vessel for others to do good work.
As we get to the last few questions, is there anything you would like to add that our readers should know about you or Community Happens Here?
Well, we don't do any of this by ourselves. I am fortunate to be supported in it. I want people to know that it's not hopeless; we can be hopeful, and the best way to do that is to talk to somebody. Just start the conversation. Get to know a person's name because it's amazing how a name changes the place you live. Our children cannot be safe until we know their names. Our young Black boys are not safe until we know their names and who they are. We cannot live in a world that is not safe for so many people, so we have to try.
How can people support Community Happens Here?
Well, there are two things people can do. They can sign up to be a conversation starter. They can donate. Just the money is wonderful. We're trying $10 a month, just like Netflix. This is how you can make sure something is in your neighborhood. Because every time someone signs up for that, it makes me feel like they see this and value it a little more than, “Oh, that's nice.”
Another way is to come to something because if there is nobody to serve a cup of coffee to, there is no volunteer opportunity for a child to learn from. We need people to visit simply so we have someone to talk to. It’s pleasant, it’s fun, and it’s not hard. It's outside or inside, depending on if it's cold. We have free parking behind Walgreens in a community parking lot with plenty of parking. Bring your dog, or just walk here and come for half an hour and feel what it is like to be in a place that’s about people.
Yes, shy people think we are going to eat them up. We're not going to eat them up. In fact, many, many introverts find – once they get here, sit down, start drawing (we usually have some kind of art to do), and a volunteer asks them, “Do you want cocoa?” – it’s actually easy for them.
Who is a woman you admire most or who has been influential in your life?
My aunt Edith was a minister, a congregational minister. She graduated in 1946, and she was a minister her whole life. She was a single woman, and her tombstone says, “I did what I could.” I was very fortunate to spend a lot of time with her. She said, “There are lots of things you can do, but help the person right in front of you and do what you can.” I've been very fortunate.
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