What a day!
Everyone is still too exhausted to send me photos yet, but these are from Susan and Erika and can get you started, In addition to being very successful it was very pleasant; Full of good feeling and good people and palpable feeling of good will and hopefulness. I can’t explain it better than that, but everyone was talking about it.
I’m going to sum it up with two little stories. The first about a teen that was attentively going through my Martinez beaver scrapbook. As she poured through page after page I noticed she had on shirt from the Methow project. I had to ask how and she said that she had volunteered with them a lot over the years because of a family connection where she lived in Washingt0n.
i asked her what she was doing HERE and she said visiting her grandparents; Poor girl, growing up working for beavers all the time because of her mother or uncle and finally getting the summer away which her grandparents kick 0ff by bringing her too a BEAVER FESTIVAL! hahaha. She was much more gracious and said she loved seeing the story of Urban Beavers and learning about what a difference they could make in cities too.
The second story comes from our very helpful scout troop who assisted with set up. There was one teen, 14 year old Michael, who was particularly bright and helpful getting the sticker treasure hunt arranged and even the parking lot signs. While I was thanking him his mom for his very fine service his mom came beamingly over and said “I just have to show you this”.
The photo was from our 2013 festival and appeared in the Contra Costa Times. The dancer in the beaver costume was the wife of Greg Kerekes of the Urban Wildlife Project in San Jose who was loaned the costume by the Guadalupe River Conservanvcy who were big beaver supporters back then.
And that little boy she was dancing with, was Michael.
I said that that photo was famous and very popular. I used it all the time with my grant applications and he had helped the festival get a lot of funds over the years. Then he and his mom both beamed.
It was just that kind of day.
Okay the fencing arrived and the bathrooms arrived and Amy arrived. It’s all really going to happen, Is happening, has begun. Don’t miss this. Don’t miss the end of the chalk art the bats or the filling of the giant tank or the birds or the snakes or the children;s chorus or the parade or the largest gathering of beaver believers in one place and the longest standing and most beloved beaver festival the world has ever known.
Today is the calm before the storm. The lovely idyllic day where we meet Amy in the park for the first half of her 16 hour chalk mural. Jon will start out by helping her grid out the area and making sure she is well supplied in pastels and coffee and then she sets boldly to work. This year she is doing a clever :before/after look at the world with beavers and without. The “Just add beavers” side will be wider and tackled tomorrow. Today is just the dry bleak world we would all have without beavers.
