Monday, June 15, 2009

Let the Fireworks Soar!

Nothing, nothing, nothing tops summer celebrations in the Lakeshore and surrounding communities. Not only do I get to sleep with open windows, and wake each morning to the rockin' robins outside my bedroom, but I know that each weekend, and sometimes mid-week, I can have tons of fun at festivals, picnics, concerts...there is no end to warm weather fun around here. We've got a great farmer's market, and now we get to go once a week in the evening! Last week we had the garden show...great!
Upcoming events include MetroJam, Acoustic Fest, the new and improved Riverwalk (forgot the the new name, sorry)...there's music in Washington Park each week, music at the Rahr-West mansion, and Music Under the Stars in Two Rivers. If you're not tapping your toes, singing a little song, or whistling a happy tune with all that music in the air, then I guess you are just an old grouch.
We have fishing derbies of all sorts, art events, sports events, oh, this list never ends. How will we fit it all in?
If that weren't enough, we have only to travel a few miles in one direction or another to find even more fun. Milwaukee, of course, is Festival city. Bob Dylan will be at Summerfest this year ( maybe I'll get there and tell you all about it), and after that run, the city parties with a number of ethnic festivals. This Saturday, I am headed to the Lakefront Festival of the Arts. I can't begin to describe how huge, amazing, colorful, wonderful, inspiring, fun and funky, head shaking cool this art fair is. I haven't been able to get there since I opened the store; that means I have missed twelve years of this huge, amazing, colorful, wonderful, inspiring, fun and funky, head-shaking cool art fair.
Head a little past Wapaca and you will find a resort area called King. Stop at Clear Water Harbor on a Sunday afternoon for lunch on the deck, and enjoy a band or two playing on the barge a few feet away.
Heading North? Peninsula Players get my vote. I am looking forward to their first production called "The Lady with All the Answers," a one woman show about Ann Landers. Their entire season looks tempting.
How can anyone be bored? I finished Dog On it. Chet, the canine detective, narrates the story of how he and his person, Bernie, solve crimes. Chet has a neighbor dog friend named Iggy, and they have a Waltonesque good-night ritual. Here's the passage:


I'd never seen a real swan and was wondering how catchable they might be when I heard Iggy's bark. Iggy had a high-pitched bark, an irritated-sounding yip-yip-yip. I barked back. There was a brief silence, and then he barked again. I barked back. He barked. I barked. He barked. I barked. He barked. We got a good rhythm going, faster and faster, I barked. He barked. I --
A woman cried "Iggy, for God's sake, what the hell's wrong with you?" A door slammed. Iggy was silent. I barked anyway. And what was that? From somewhere far in the distance came an answering bark, a bark I'd never heard before. It sounded female, although I couldn't be sure. A silence. and then - yes: she barked. A bark that sent a message, a she-message of the most exciting kind. I barked back. She barked. I barked. She barked. And then : yip yip yip. Iggy was back. He barked. She barked. I barked. He barked. She-"
If you have a dog, you understand that passage, right?
After watching the Tony's last week, I decided it was time to read a play again. Rabbit Hole, David Lindsay-Abaire's 2007 Pulitzer Prize winning drama has been shifted to the bottom of my must -read pile over and over. Not a happy play, that's for sure. One critic called it an "anatomy of grief" focusing on a young couple working through the accidental death of a child. The playwright uses no inflated soap opera technique here, just the realistic dialogue of people too stricken to put words to their sorrow.
Next up? The Wonder Singer. I choose this book for the cover - profile of a beautiful peacock balancing atop a ladder back chair near a curtained window. So far, an aging (I suspect a has-been) opera singer has been found dead in her bathtub leaving the ghostwriter of her autobiography unsure of what to do next.
*****"Dilly-dally". Let's all try using that word at least once this week, shall we? "Plinth' is a fine word also.

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