This year’s first Alive After Five event will happen tonight from 5-9 p.m., and will be a pared-back version of prior years’ events, which had been held on Thursday evenings.
“This will be our very first Alive After Five of 2020,” said Shari Miller, co-owner of Made to Love, a fair-trade store on High Street, and an organizer of the Alive After Five events. Businesses in the High and Main Street areas will be open.
“We were a little tentative about doing it, but we felt like the businesses need the business, people want to have somewhere to go and feel safe,” Miller said. “We’re asking people to wear their masks and keep their distance. I think it’ll do pretty well. I think people are used to doing those things anyway.”
“We decided this year — this was even before the pandemic — that we needed to shake up Alive After Fives,” she said.
Thursday-evening concerts at the RiversEdge amphitheater were a large draw to the downtown area.
“So we decided to move it to Fridays, just to allow people to have a little bit more experience after Alive After Five,” she said, so people could visit places like Tano Bistro, Municipal Brew Works, Casual Pint and Basil 1791.
Exhibit about women gaining right to vote 100 years ago
Also opening, in conjunction with First Friday, is an exhibit at the Butler County Historical Society, that tells about women winning the right to vote, which happened in August of 1920.
The historical society in February asked Butler County people to donate family photos and other information about local efforts to win voting rights. At first, information about local efforts for women’s suffrage were scarce. But then volunteers, led by Mary Royer, Sara Butler, Rich Piland and Sam Ashworth began looking through local newspapers from the 1910s through 1920 and found a trove of information.
They found such a bounty that they have put together a booklet that soon will be sold, telling local stories, including about a 95-year-old woman who registered to go to the polls and was thrilled about the opportunity.
As it turned out, “a lot went on” locally, Butler said.
The exhibit will be at the historical society, 327 N. Second St., in Hamilton, from 5-9 p.m. Friday, and after that by appointment. To make appointments, call 513-896-9930.
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