Good Sports
by Budd Glassberg
Reprinted with permission from the Zionsville Times
Sentinel on April 25, 2007
Z’GreenFest First Annual Event is a
Booming Success
One of the most enjoyable aspects of
living in Zionsville is the community’s ability to work together toward a
common goal. We have seen it countless
times where groups of our village folks will gather their collective talents to
make something where nothing existed previously. Such were the cases of youth soccer, the Boys
and Girls Club, the Hussey Mayfield Memorial Library, the Zion Nature Center
just to name a few. Most recently, I had
the honor of working with ten others from Zionsville to plan and organize Z’GreenFest, the celebration of Earth/Arbor Day this past
Sunday at
While the event was catered to a
younger audience of activities with a very popular “I Spy” activity put on by
the library, a sawdust scramble, moonwalk fun, and a fun run for the kids,
there were other activities and entertainment geared toward all ages. Guided nature walks, several clubs exhibiting
earth friendly demonstrations, hybrid cars were among the many things to see
and do at the festival. The approximately
five hundred attendees were treated to entertainment provided by a magician, a
puppeteer and the fabulous strolling strings.
I was particularly taken by Dennis Sizemore, a brilliant Native
American, who graced us with stories and magnificent wooden flutes that he made
to sing. Dennis has resided in
Zionsville for many years and is a treasure that our community will be losing
this summer when he will move to
We were blessed with ideal weather for our first Z’GreenFest, bracketed with snow the Saturday before our event and heavy rains two days later. It is always such a risk to hold an outdoor event in the spring. The weather holds the trump card as to whether the event is a flop or a booming success. While we had backup plans in case of rain, we all felt so fortunate that the sun shined on us last Sunday and graced us with its attendance throughout our festival.
The group
of people planning the event will begin plans for next year’s Z’GreenFest next Saturday.
We would love to see this event grow.
It may do so with more community involvement. If you have ideas, suggestions, a group that
would like to participate, or if you would like to volunteer to help us, please
contact Therese Burkhard at 873-9830 or taburkhard@aol.com
There are too many
individuals who volunteered their time and effort to thank individually. They helped make the festival work. To all who helped, thank you. To all who came, come back next year and
bring your neighbors.
Budd Glassberg is a resident of Zionsville who is active in the local running community. Visit www.runz.com for reprints of all his columns. You can reach him by email at budd@runz.com.