Nature doesn’t always smile on festivals
My heart goes out to the wonderful people who organize and put on CumberlandFest. They worked so hard to put on a great two-day public festival in a beautiful town park to raise money for youth athletics in their town and then last weekend happens. Talk about being a victim of circumstance!
Saturday’s weather forecast was a real stinker. The National Weather Service declared a Flash Flood Watch for the whole day, and the forecast itself predicted a 100 percent chance of rain with a possibility of 1 to 2 full inches of rain.
You just couldn’t get a more pessimistic forecast. However, the actual rains being described in that forecast fell well to the north and well to the south of Cumberland. Still, the crowds decided they’d come on Sunday, when the forecast was far more encouraging.
When Sunday arrived, its forecast didn’t change much from the version issued the day before. When I arrived to start the radio broadcast reports which had been postponed to Sunday from Saturday, the sun was shining and it was warm and muggy. In fact, the truck driven by the pyrotechnics for the postponed fireworks display was the next one behind me. But within 30 minutes, it was starting to rain. And then rain harder, and harder still until I was soaked to the skin. By the time I had made the entire circuit around the park and completed my interviews I practically had to swim to my vehicle.
Vendors who were present all day Saturday told me Saturday’s rain was as nothing compared to Sunday’s down- pour.
Organizers did their best. You just can’t win when Mother Nature pulls a switch, as she seems to have done this past weekend. I think they got a raw deal, and I wish there was something we could all do about it. It may be there is nothing we can do except take the whole matter under advisement and remember the important work these fine people tried to do. When the opportunity presents itself in the future, we can pitch in to help all we can.
Outdoor fairs and festivals are always at the risk of the weather, and nobody knows this better than the steering committee of the venerable Autumnfest, which will see its 40th anniversary this year. Yes, over the years Autumnfest has suffered the same bad weather luck as CumberlandFest did this year. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it is indeed memorable. Sometimes it seems to us that poor weather happens every year, but it doesn’t. Statistically speaking we have good weather far more often than rain-outs. When they do happen we survive and move on to the next year. Plans for this year’s Autumnfest are coming together very nicely.
Last week, there were major announcements that two headline entertainers have been booked for the main stage. On Saturday evening, The Blues Brothers Revue will bring the music and antics of Jake and Elwood Blues to our stage. This performance, and indeed the players themselves, have been selected and endorsed by comedian Dan Akroyd, who played the original Elwood Blues on TV and the movie, and the widow of Dan’s partner John Belushi, Judy Belushi, as well as the original music director, Paul Schafer. In other words, this is the real deal, folks.
On Sunday night, as the crowds gather for the Autumnfest Fireworks display, Woonsocket’s nationally-known songstress Emily Luther will sing for her hometown friends, family, and admirers as she sang so ably on the NBC-TV show “The Voice.”
A last call has gone out for bands and floats to participate in the 10-division Autumnfest Parade. This, my friend, will be an Autumnfest to remember.
You may wonder why I have spent so much time talking about these two community events. Well, they are intertwined in my mind so tightly together that I cannot separate them. I remember when the folks from Cumberland came to the Autumnfest volunteers to ask for advice in establishing CumberlandFest at the beginning.
Like the October festival in Woonsocket, they built CumberlandFest on a firm foundation of community support which will make them strong enough to not only survive the weather circumstances they experienced last weekend, but to thrive well on into the future.
Remember, my friend, life is 10 percent what happens to you...and 90 percent how you take it.