The News Review last week gave this city the big stories of the Festival – Outstanding Citizen Maggie Cahalan and the overall spirit of the weekend. This week, and possibly in coming weeks, some of the niche elements that make the Festival an encompassing celebration will be showcased. Readers will find more photos, more awards, more fun and games. There’ll be high-fives for the pet show and a chorus of yums and appreciation for the Retro Town Fair bakers, picklers, knitters and growers.
The years 2020 and 2021 almost tarnished Greenbelt’s faith in festivals. Children missed the rides and the excitement. Adults felt the loss of a long tradition. Organizations that depended on the income felt the pinch. The Festival organization was suffering. Would the world ever be the same again?
The quick and hopeful answer is, perhaps, mostly yes. The crowds came out, seeming eager for the sense of returning to real life. They were, for the most part, unmasked, and with Covid-19 new cases trending down and most people vaccinated to avoid at least the most serious effects, there was a feeling of liberation in the crowd.
The Magic Returns
The traditional rides rolled into town a few days before the Festival. Even dark and folded like praying mantises from Mordor, they added a brooding glamor to the prosaic precincts of the parking lot. Unfolded and lit, the ambience – especially in the evenings as dusk fell – was a magical confluence of light and sound that carried everybody who was once a kid at a carnival back to fun times.
Yummy for the Tummy
The Festival is not the destination for healthy eating with a few notable exceptions. But, all calories aside, who can resist? Beckoning from every side were the sweetest, most delectable, most salty, most chewy, most chilly and most luscious offerings. And who can say no to French fries made by astronomers? Only in Greenbelt would there be culinary astronomers.
Hurrah for the Committee
Three resounding cheers for the Labor Day Festival Committee, who held together through two difficult years and overcame so many obstacles, including last-minute regulatory demands by the county permit office. It took courage and big hearts to set out on this year’s roller coaster ride, knowing that the possibility existed that, at the last moment, all would be in vain. Hats off to President Linda Ivy and Vice President and Photo Show organizer Keith Zevallos, Treasurers Diane Siegel and Doreen Clower, Secretary Amy Knesel and At Large Members Donna Peterson (craft fair) and Jim Tilton (parade marshal, Radio Club). Committee members included Mona Atari, Emily Cole, Davina Johnson, Kathy Reynolds, Wayne Williams, Karen Yoho, Jane Young, Dave Zahren and Robert Zugby.
Thanks also to the City of Greenbelt, always generous with infrastructure resources. City liaisons were Jermaine Gulledge, Greenbelt Police; Di Quynn-Reno, Greenbelt Recreation; and Joe Mulhare and Matt Houchens, Greenbelt Public Works.
It took a village. But it happened.