Month: June 2024

This is Michael at the beaver festival in 2013. He’s the little boy dancing with the beaver who is  the wife of Greg from the  Urban Wildlife Project.
This is Michael in 2024, a member of scout troop 429 who worked at the festival and is posing with Marina the beaver from the Martinez Chamber of Commerce.

I will have lots to say about yesterday eventually. About how packed it was and how positive. About Amy’s amazing artwork and all the thankyous from parents and old timers. About the mayor and her family enjoying the event. About the outstanding musical performers and the helpers who made it all happen.

But for now I’ll just show you a young man who has grown up with the beaver festival. Because every city deserves one of their own.

Amy starts her grueling amazing 2 day mural this morning. I read about her talents in an article about a Napa historical project. She had done a number of drawing for that event, one of which was  a darned accurate looking beaver. I tracked her down and wrote some buddies about it. Rusty Cohn was pretty sure  that sometimes her husband and her watched beavers at the creek.

Say  no more. That’s all I needed. I wrote her with praise and told her our story. At the time we were in the old park and our event was in August. I  told her about the new park and how impressed we were with her work. She said she was interested but couldn’t come in August.

I wasn’t convinced about moving parks or moving dates. But the beavers had moved upstream and Amy was interested in coming in June. So we took a leap of faith.

The last free day before the whole thing starts. Amy comes tomorrow at 8 am to start her chalk art and Jon needs to be there to help snap the lines. Then we need to set up the park a little. Then he needs to go rent the Uhaul. Then he needs to go to John Muir to borrow tents. Then he needs to pack pretty  much everything in our house to put it in the Uhaul and drive it to the park.

And then it’s saturday and you know what happens then.