What A View!

Mar 27, 2010 by Naomi.

Twenty four hours and one thousand festivalers later I am back at my laptop to blog again. Held as usual in Taggares high school, the festival was more successful than ever. The weather was as grand as necessary to encourage folks to take bus tours for crane watching at this annual event called: The Sandhill Crane Festival. Actually this is internationally advertised and families mark the weekend from year to year. People come from miles around to, of course, view cranes and whatever other fauna happen to cruise into view – burrowing owls and gophers among the most visible and unexpected this year. I hyped the McNary Education Center and worked with USFWS staff to get kids playing in the outdoors. Presentations were held in classrooms with scientists giving seminars worth clock hour credits to aspiring teachers. In Taggares gymnasium vendors declared their great products and abilities while volunteers entertained hundreds of kids with fun crafts. The kids made binoculars out of toilet tissue cardboard centers – they looked amazingly real, too. To the kids who held them to their eyes they were real. You would be surprised how those little round holes focus attention on details that eyes fail to pick out of a big wide panorama in a gym full of bustling people. Kids got faces painted. Little girls showed off cheeky butterflies and little boys had snakes slithering from eye to eye across their noses. The potato industry (that’s where Peter J. Taggares Sr made his fortune) furnished cloth bags to carry the colorful variety of crafted items proudly home. I am continually amazed how a tiny little kid - maybe a 30 pounder – can move their 180 pound parent off to their preferred activity by leaning heavily in a chosen direction with their feet stuck to the floor. The power of love? I spent a lot of time comparing variations of rear widths I saw dragged away. The crowd, men and women alike fit into a scale of overweight, fat and absolutely gross. It takes more than potatoes to do that. Whatever works.

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