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*cino at the annual Water Festival

Water Festival 2010
Each June, the Three Rivers Area Chamber of Commerce sponsors the Water Festival, a three-day event with carnival rides, live music, fireworks, crafts, children’s events and SO much more. This year, for the first time, *cino had a presence with the non-profit booths to publicize what’s happening at Huss School, including the community garden. The garden folks put together an amazing display, including huge stand-up veggies and some of their very own monstrous radishes that everyone kept mistaking for beets!
Rob, Paul and I had a good time hanging out in the park for a couple of days introducing people to the vision for the old school. One thing Paul found interesting as he talked with folks at the booth is that everyone knows where Huss School is, which affirms what a landmark building we’ve inherited. We acknowledge that the task of stewarding an historic building with so much community memory invested in it is a special task indeed, requiring a lot of care and community involvement.
We also witnessed some of the negativity that has plagued the second district neighborhoods–too many people simply have no hope for the place and were surprised when, for example, we said we hadn’t had any vandalism to the community garden yet. We look forward to inspiring imaginations to the contrary!

Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma

Kirstin is a member of the *culture is not optional core community and is the Head Caretaker at GilChrist Retreat Center.