It’s been a bizarre clanging bell-ringing week for beavers.
I dreaded Monday because it was the artificial date I needed to decide in my head whether we were going to be beaver hermits again or try our best to put together a beaver festival. But I tried to face it bravely. Two weird acts of fate helped. The first was a phone call from the secretary from the county fish and game commission making sure that our grant application was the same as the one from last year which never was allowed to happen. She kindly said that we were likely to be approved. 
And the second was a completely unexpected large donation arriving from Mitch Wagoner the retired lawyer who argued the friends of Lake Skinner beaver case. He’s been a great mentor and support over the years but I certainly wasn’t planning on his help. What a difference that man has made in his life!
On Tuesday I received an email from the festival artist Amelia Hunter who said she’d be glad to help us again this year and adapt her California beaver summit logo for the festival. Almost immediately after that I got a note from Bay Nature magazine saying that the schedule for ad space in the Spring issue where we usually advertise was due by friday. And she offered us a discount for our usual quarter page ad.
It was around then I realized I needed to hear from the other festival champion Worth A Dammers and hear their thoughts about a festival. We are zooming this morning to discuss. But suffice it to say as a collective body we are all over the map on the issue, from the very hardy “ABOUT TIME!” To the meeker cautious “Maybe we should” to the wary “Only if kids are masked” folks and the stalwart “Not for me” folks. Maybe most surprising of all was the adamantly hardy “I will only do it if there are NO restrictions on participation!”
Beaver advocates are a mixed bag. I’ve said it before.
Where am I now? Wednesday? By Thursday I had decided to pay for the ad because the california logo is educational to look at whether there’s a festival or not, but I was beginning to think that if there was going to be no festival I really had no real purpose and maybe it didn’t matter to Martinez anymore anyway.
Then it was Friday, and the french American artist wanted to arrange a donation and loan of beaver items for her art show in Beverly Hills, the East Coast author writing about beavers is ready for galleys to be printed and wanted some references for the festival for her endnotes, and a reporter from public television wanted information for a report she is doing on beavers and climate change so there was a lot to talk about.
The very definition of a crazy week. But one that reminded me, you may or may not have a beaver festival, and even if it’s not time yet you still have important beaver jobs to do. Just what I needed to remember.
I have always said I don’t have good luck or bad luck. I have GREEK luck. Very dramatic and fit for the stage luck that leaves nothing to the imagination. As if God herself is winking at me and saying in a stage whisper, “Well Heidi, did ya get the signs I sent you?”
Stay tuned.
