After talking with several people who read my post about some sort of music festival in Wetumpka, I have come to the conclusion that I am not the only person who’d like to see something like this happen. If you were going to be involved in the planning of something like this (and you can be), what sort of direction would you like to see it go?

What sort of acts would you like to see? What sort of vendors? What could a festival in Wetumpka be called? I would love to hear as many ideas as you can come up with. Just remember, we really want it to be unique. Not just a carbon copy of the same things everybody else does. If you’d rather not post here, email me at wetumpkanews@gmail.com.

Don’t forget about the Power of Purple 5k benefiting the American Cancer Society and Relay For Life coming up this Saturday at 10 a.m. Registration and number pick-up will be from 8:00 – 9:30 with the race beginning at 10. Entry fee is $15 for pre-registration and $20.00 on race day.

For more information contact Jeanne Dulaney at 294-1583 or Julie Bridgman at 567-6639.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been thinking that Wetumpka, downtown Wetumpka specifically, would be a great place to have some sort of music/arts festival. Something that would be sort of like Montgomery’s Jubilee Cityfest or Birmingham’s City Stages, just smaller. And maybe even better.

The last time I went to Jubilee was a few years ago and that was to see only one band, the Zac Brown Band. So I paid the $25 for a ticket, watched the hour or so long show and left before Foghat went on.

Not that there’s anything wrong with Foghat. Or L.L. Cool J. or Hinder or The Lost Trailers. My favorite times at Jubilee in years past were spent watching performers like Sunpie Barnes and the Louisiana Sunspots, pre-hit single fame Zac Brown Band, and Beth Nielsen Chapman. How cool would it be to be able to say you saw the next band that’s destined to make it big but hasn’t yet right here in Wetumpka? I always preferred the artists that you don’t get to hear on the radio a million times a day and see on the cover of every entertainment magazine at the bookstore.

There’s just a certain…I don’t know…atmosphere that seems to be missing these days from the festivals I mentioned. Or maybe it’s just me. Either way, I think our city is a wonderful place for a new festival of some sort to be born.

With as many outdoors enthusiasts as we have and with our resources, my initial thought would be for it to revolve around some of these activities, existing or new. We’ve got mountain bikers, road bikers, whitewater for kayaking and canoeing, boat races, road races for runners. There’s no reason I can think of that would prevent us, whoever us is, from tying some of these things together and turning them into one big weekend event, lining up some good regional talent with maybe one “headliner” and just having a big time!

Think of it: downtown Wetumpka from Gold Star Park on down toward Company Street lined with food vendors, artists of all kind showing and selling their wares, with maybe three or four stages of music. I had the opportunity one evening to spend a few minutes at Coosa River Adventures with Chris and Therese and about 25 or so others while a guy with a guitar played and sang. It was a great atmosphere for a hot, summer Friday night. An artist doesn’t have to be famous to be entertaining. Many of us have heard extremely talented, entertaining bands and musicians that we’d not heard before or maybe even heard of at all. Incorporate a 5k or a bike race or both and you’ve got a party on your hands!

Maybe it’s a pipe dream but I just think that with all of our resources that Wetumpka is a prime spot for a festival that is different than anything else going in the River Region. I mean, who would have thought five years ago that our first Mardi Gras celebration would be such a hit in its first year. Shannon Fontaine and all of his people did a great job in putting it together and the people came out. It will only get better every year. Enlist some of the same people who made that happen and we could have a bang-up event that brings people in and shows off our wonderful, beautiful little city. Just my thoughts. What are yours? Anyone interested?

Collateral damage – noun: Unintended damage, injuries, or deaths caused by an action, especially unintended civilian casualties caused by a military operation.

The tea parties were a success. As long as we define success as lots of people showing up at an event to express their displeasure over a particular issue. In this case, too many taxes. It is beyond me how any right-thinking person can look at the current tax structure and believe otherwise.

But, as a society we have grown apathetic and comfortable. Sure, we make signs and attend rallies and then when election time comes, the time we can make a real difference, we elect the same career politicians to do the same things they’ve always done. What those things are I can’t say. Because I don’t know.

What I do know is this: With all the promises made by those we send to Washington to represent our interests, and with those we send to Montgomery for the same reason on a local level, nothing ever changes. Sometimes we fall victim to slick commercials and slogans. Sometimes we are lied to. Sometimes we elect good men who may try to do the right thing but fall prey to the old “when in Rome” mentality, maybe without even realizing it.

There are good men striving to do the right thing in our various governing bodies. Either there aren’t enough of them or they aren’t trying hard enough because things aren’t getting better. Change and reform is always promised but rarely realized. This is where we need to take the tea party concept further. We need a revolution.

Not a revolution with guns and violence and war. But, revolution that involves a thorough house cleaning. My contention is that things will never improve, taxes will never go down, wasteful spending will never stop, pork won’t stop being passed until everyone, EVERYONE, gets a one way ticket home from Washington/Montgomery.

There will be collateral damage. Good men who might be doing a good job will go home, too. That is an unfortunate consequence of what is necessary to get things straightened out. Things have to change. That won’t happen without the people saying we’ve had enough and we’re going to start all over from scratch. Thanks for your service, enjoy your life here in the real world with the rest of us.

Of course, as usual, I could be wrong.

Hey kettle(Fox News), yeah it’s me the pot(CNN). I just wanted to call and let you know that you’re black.

So, it’s acceptable for liberal CNN to be the extreme left wing pro-big government advocate but not acceptable for Fox News to cover a tea-party that is on the opposite side of those views. Nice.

What a maroon!

Not that anyone cares, but I went to see Celtic Woman about 3 weeks ago. Got tickets with about 50 other people to meet them. Two of them, at least. This was my quote of the day on my facebook page the day after the concert. “No one’s ever done that at a meet and greet before.” Maybe they’ll write a song about me now!

I graduated from high school in 1987. I started playing church league sports about 5 years later. I got thrown out of my first sporting event ever shortly thereafter. For those of you who have played church league anything, you know the old joke about how rough and tumble it is. I’d like to say that anyone who ever said that did so with tongue firmly planted in cheek, but if I did, I’d be lying.

I’m not sure why a bunch of guys who sat in a Sunday school class together on Sunday morning turn into a band of slightly paunchy, knee-brace wearing thugs on Monday night at the YMCA. Yelling at refs for making/not making too many/not enough calls with all the intensity of the Lakers/Celtics match ups of yesteryear. Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes it seems the refs just want to go home. Sometimes I suppose I don’t blame them. However, I have a friend who happens to be the guy who always wore the glasses with the black, elastic strap to hold them on as if he were channeling his inner Kurt Rambis. Well, one night in a particularly physical, defensive game (there weren’t many of those), His glasses, strap and all, got knocked off of his face and slid a good 15 to 20 feet across the gym floor. If I remember correctly, he had a pretty good scratch on his face from the blow. The referee called him for traveling.

That same season we played another church and somewhere around the middle of the third quarter we were losing by, oh, maybe 40 points. We had given up on playing any sort of defense about 10 seconds into the second half and were really just trying to keep the lead from getting out of hand(triple digits). One of our guys was called for a foul which inspired me to walk up to the ref and say, “How can you call a foul when we’re not even playing defense?” His immediate response was to call a technical foul on me. In church league, getting “T’d” up meant that your participation in the current sporting contest would no longer be required. As I pleaded my case over the next 1.5 seconds, I was “T’d” up for a second time and told by the ref that I was “out of here” and that I needed to leave the gym. My response as a mature, responsible, Christian man was to say, “NO, YOU NEED TO LEAVE THE GYM!” I don’t know if any of you have ever tried as a player to throw a game official out of the game he is officiating or not. For future reference, don’t try it. Because you will walk out the front door of that facility right by yourself no matter how much that ref deserved to be ejected. Turns out players can’t eject referees. I don’t remember that being covered in the preseason coaches’ meeting. Go figure.

Church leagues are rough. I’ve been in only two near-fights in any sort of sporting event since high school. When I was a senior on the tennis team in 1987, I called a player from another school’s team off their team van because he was making fun of our courts after our match. Uncalled for. Chain link and asphalt builds character. Seriously. The other near-fight was with a guy ON MY OWN TEAM in a church softball game. Don’t even remember why but I’m sure it was something very important like hitting your cutoff man.

From Bibles to blows and from communion cups to fisticuffs. The Yankees/Red Sox rivalry ain’t got nothing on First Baptist vs. First Methodist for a first round bye in the end of season tournament. Intensity is the order of the day in every church league sport from softball to volleyball to basketball. My question is this: Is taking out the second baseman/children’s minister from the Presbyterian church to break up the double play considered bad sportsmanship? An official ruling would be greatly appreciated.

Must…post…soon…

Luke 24: 1-12
The Resurrection

1On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7’The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” 8Then they remembered his words.
9When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. 12Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.