A Page Turned

Happy July. I'm up early for a Saturday, but not as early as I'll be up 2 months from today.

By this time on that Friday l'll have been at Crown Center for an hour already. Our Executive Director, Keli O'Neill Wenzel will be there hard at work...you'd think she'd never left the night before. And our site crew will be there, most of our planning committee will be there. And all the members of the board of directors will be there.

Pat O'Neill will be shepherding around news crews and radio remotes. Ed Follis will be directing in the various restaurants and food vendors as they prepare to feed the masses. Ed Scanlon will be dotting the i's and crossing the t's on our myriad permits, making sure we're all legal like. Ronan Collins will be setting up our beehive of an office, readying it for what we'll all be hoping will be a very busy weekend. Mary Alice Beebe will be helping Shawn brace herself for the thousands of eager kids who'll be swarming the children's area in just hours. Patti Aylward, in her bright green Chuck Taylors, will be preparing the gates and their crews for the tens of thousands of wonderful guests who support this event every year..and she'll be making sure that the Crown Center fountains are just the right shade of green. Rory O'Connor will be overseeing the construction of the cottage, the cross, the pub front and everything else that needs constructing with his practiced builder's eye.

I might be putting up the stage backdrops. Or placing sponsor signs, or the Irish 101 displays, or any one of the hundreds of big and little things that will need to get done before the first fest goer walks through the gates, before the first pint is poured, before the first note is played, exactly 2 months from today. Mostly though, whatever I'm doing, I'll be grateful to all those busy, dedicated, great friends around me, and thankful for my place in this festival that I love so much.

Two months to go. I just can't wait.