It’s the Friday before what should have been our 14th beaver festival. Friday had become one of my favorite parts because it was the day Amy Gallagher Hall graphed off the pavement and started her beaver masterpiece. Jon and I would come to hang signs, bring lunch and offer moral support while we enjoyed having her talent unfold before us. It was a great day, and god willing when all this is over it will be again.
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Saturday of course would follow with it’s sleepless night, early morning awakening, crazy cast of characters, with all our wonderful exhibitors and 1000 little jobs that couldn’t be forgotten. Then the wonderful musicians and endless streams of happy curious children. The beaver festival was a glorious, insane. Am impossibly folded day. Like 12 days in one. And then the tents are packed up, everything is carried upstairs and put away, the Uhaul goes back and we sleep for a week.
This year it all seems like a dream but there is one SILVER thread of compensation for the glorious festival we cannot have. Last week, after my grim photo shoot, I wanted to do something right. Inspired by Lisa Owens Viani recent success I worked like a beaver composing and editing an Op-Ed about what beavers could do for California. On Friday I sent it out and was immediately rejected by the LA Times. I was sad for an entire weekend then the San Francisco Chronicle expressed interest and I was over the moon. They asked for a few more edits and some fleshing of references and then we were good to go. The truly wonderful thing is. It will run in TOMORROW’s newspaper.
That’s right. On the day of the missing beaver festival California will get the FIRST EVER beaver benefits oped in a major newspaper. And who knows who’s staffer will read that or what reporter it will inspire. This time tomorrow the secret be out. Now you and I both know that people are very stubborn and will continue to ignore beavers for as long as its possible to do so.
But something tells me this is a big deal.
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