Archive: Opinions

EditorialGoing to a festival is like turning on the lights.  You flick a switch and the lights go on.  You go to a festival and the festival happens.  It is effortless and seems like magic.  But as any electrician can tell you, making that happen is anything but simple.  And electricity is only a small part of the challenges that festival organizers have.  Full disclosure:  my wife Karen is the chairperson of Lansing Harbor Festival.  But that has given me a ringside seat as she and the Lansing Community Council conceived of this community celebration that many said would never happen.

I guess the most impressive thing is the buy-in from the community.  When the storm hit last Friday, people just showed up to clean up the devastated Myers Park, unasked.  If that festival could still happen the next day, by golly, it was going to!  But safety concerns about damaged limbs falling the next day along with an unpromising weather forecast meant that after a year and a half of planning, Lansing Harbor Festival would have to be either canceled or postponed.

Lansing being what it is, cancelling the festival was never a serious option.  But even rescheduling an existing event within a period of a week is a major undertaking.  The park had to be available, and it had to be safe.  The performers had to be available.  The vendors had to be able to come.  The volunteers had to be able to make it.  And those that couldn't come needed to be replaced.  New posters had to be printed.  Signs had to be changed.  And the public had to be notified.  The pride that the Parks department has taken in restoring the park to the pristine condition it was in before the storm is clearly evident.

The storm was so local that many didn't realize what had happened here.  There was a line of people coming to Myers Park for the festival all morning Saturday.  If that is any indication, the festival tomorrow is going to be grand.  Certainly Karen has been working hard and non-stop to make sure it works out that way.  But her cohorts on the Community Council have been equally hard working, with meetings, phone calls, and non-stop hard work.  We may go over our family plan cell phone minutes this month, something we never do!

The most moving piece of this is that the phone here has been ringing non-stop with calls from people who learned more volunteers are needed and have generously offered their services.  The community has rallied, and that is the Lansing spirit the festival was meant to celebrate in the first place.  Lansing Harbor Festival has become a symbol of itself, the embodiment of a caring, involved, energetic community that bands together to make things better.  That kind of community buy-in is going to make Saturday awesome.

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