Saturday was Farmer's Market Day and for those in the know, it was a perfect day to either be a Walla Wallan or to be visiting here. The best the community has to offer was on display and for little to no expense.
The Balloon Stampede offered up more than a dozen hot air balloons into a clear blue sky. Watching costs nothing! If you were up early enough to take that in, then a trip downtown to the Farmer's Market was also in order. There is no expense to that outing, either, unless you choose to buy early season vegetable like asparagus and 'salad' onions, or feed yourself on omelets, bbq, Italian fare, bakery, and more, or feed your soul on the music offered up (for free!) at the corner of Main & 4th (catty corner from the historic Dacres Hotel, the site of the Stine Hotel, once-largest brick hotel in all the region outside San Francisco).
It was a fabulous sunny day at the Market and people turned out in droves to enjoy the weather, each other, and the friendly ambience that has developed there. It's my job to pass out '$1 Off for All Adults in Party' coupons, so that as many people as want to can enjoy Fort Walla Walla Museum. By 1:00 pm when the Market generally begins shutting down, there were still 100s of people in the area. In all, I distributed 261 passes ... by my reckoning, that involves meeting close to 800 people. My pal Don, our Operations Manager at the Museum told me Sunday that we'd received quite a few passes back already, as well as similar coupons passed out by our volunteers at the Balloon Stampede. Cool! While we need to turn a dime to pay for all that the Museum offers, it should never be the cost that keeps people from a visit. I'm pleased we can make it so easy.
To that end, we give out quite a few free passes during the year, too. We partner with the schools to make sure that kids from economically challenged families get a view of their heritage. We also contribute free passes to a cross section of the community's social agencies like YWCA, Christian Aid Society, Children's Home Society, and more.
Underlying all this is the belief that people who are connected to the community's heritage make better citizens ... imagine voting without knowing the roots of this or any community: the past is our only roadmap to the future. When we include the community's children, we're talking about tomorrow's leaders--we'd like them to be fully versed in what makes the town tick, right? And for the many kids who arrived only recently with their families, this is their heritage, too. When you live here, you get to stake a claim in the past, because what we are today is what has been building for generations.
BTW, I met a couple from the UK, as they called it, home being "north of London a bit." I also noted in our guest register book that we'd received visitors at the Museum from 17 states and two countries in the first week of May ... isn't that astounding? People come from all over the world just to see what we keep in our backyard!
On the construction front, the crew brought in a giant crane Friday and began moving roof trusses from outside the security fence to inside the growing structure. It's my guess that we'll see the trusses going up this week, another benchmark to be noted along the way to completion of our new Entrance. I missed getting a crane pic, but won't miss out on the roof going up!
Today's photos are from the Farmers' Market on Saturday. The boy pictured is attempting to make the 'Jacob's Ladder' toy work. The simple device is an engineering marvel. The toys we bring to such venues are truly 'kid magnets;' I like to tell them that these are the "Game Boys" of the 1880s. They offer great hand-eye coordination development, as well as 'small-motor skills' development. The second picture shows why we celebrate Mother's Day.
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