Present: Daphne Holden (nt), Mary Louise Bachman, Grant Gelhardt, Cyndy Brantley, Jayme Harpring, Charity Myers, Connie Bersok, Rhonda Cooper, Edward Reid.
Nene Fest is on April 14th, from 3 to 9pm.
Grant will have someone open up the clubhouse to get out needed tables and chairs. He needs to check on availability of the stage. Cyndy has many tables she can loan us from work.
Charity is working on a top secret t-shirt design. She would much prefer to work with 3 colors rather than 2.
Consensus: Daphne will ask Mike Odom to get us 2 quotes for 125 t-shirts: 2 colors and 3 colors.
Daphne suggested we sell signed posters. Others said that many people have asked for them, and some have gone to desperate measures to get them: pulling them off telephone poles and even stealing yard signs (we’ll probably need to have more made). Charity is going to get a quote on 11X 17 posters. We thought we’d probably want 100 if we could sell them cheaply. Daphne will buy some frames (12) so that we can sell them framed as well.
Edward's idea: print a dozen each of previous years' posters, depending on cost for a small number.
Wendy sent a plan to have New Leaf cater and we all thought it sounded great, with the exception of having people serving shifts from 3 to 4 and 4 to 5. We thought that the earlier proposal of serving from 5 to 8pm made more sense, unless Wendy has a particular reason for starting so early.
We discussed the issue of whether to allow people to come and sell their own food, desserts and otherwise. New Leaf is catering lasagna, and the plan was to ask neighbors to donate side salads. Many people thought that we couldn’t ask for people to donate their food while others are selling it and that we’d have to go one way or the other. Edward pointed out that people making food to give to the fest supported the Fest goal of participation. Someone else pointed out that when neighbors bring their own dessert to share, there is lots of variety.
Consensus: People can bring food to sell only if it is not single-serving. For example, we will encourage people to sell loaves of bread, whole pies, and jars of honey. So that many can participate in the giving spirit of the Fest and so we will have an exciting variety, we will ask neighbors to donate single-servings of dessert and the Fest will sell them inexpensively (at a separate dessert table), with proceeds to back into the Fest for next year. We will also ask for donations of side salads to go with the lasagna, which we will sell inexpensively, with proceeds to go back into the Fest.
Jayme will talk to neighbor Suzanne Hancock (who had contacted Wendy with interest in selling) and find out what she had in mind with her baked goods and let her know how we were thinking about this.
We will post a schedule of events, including bands, food, t-shirts sales, and any other activities. Cyndy mentioned that she had some banners that could be reused and Charity suggested looking in to the possibility of using chalk board paint/markers on the banners. It looks like paint but it’s erasable. Cyndy will explore this.
Rhonda has an exciting idea for Live Action Role Playing (LARPing!) for kids. It will be designed like a quest, where groups of kids (sorted into age categories and no more than 6 per group) will find clues and have to deal with obstacles (like Marauding Moms! Desperado Dads! And Hordes of Angry Adolescents!) to find a treasure. Rhonda will work on the idea and we will solicit others’ participation in planning it via Nene Fest email. We will need a lot of adult participation (in planning, getting treasures, sentries, helping smaller children, etc) to make it work.
Consensus: Go Rhonda!
Grant and Daphne really liked the Maypole that Jayme did one year. Jayme seemed open, but did not commit :-). Jayme said that the bean bag toss was nice for kids. Daphne will ask Lia if we can use hers and we will include in email out to neighbors that we’d like more. We don’t have a central coordinator for kids activities and want to ask for a volunteer. [daphne’s note: why do we need one?]
Cyndy clarified that she has two 5 gallon water coolers.
Grant will recruit “garbage crew” for the fest. We’re thinking that we can bring enough of neighbor’s trash containers that we wont need to buy service from city. We could also just have heavy duty garbage bags available, so the bins can be emptied and a new bag put in.
We loved the “relaxation station” of previous year’s fest. We want message therapists to come. We will ask for message therapists when we put the call out for independently-own neighbors businesses to have tables. They will be able to put out donation jar or to charge set rate. What will happen if 10 message therapists (this neighborhood is full of them!) want to set up? We decided that we would ask them to share the fest time and rotate out.
Grant wants to try to put up a 25’X40’ or 30’X60’ tarp over the field—30 ft up and tied to trees –for shade. They are $60 at Harbor Freight.
Consensus: Go Grant!
Charity volunteered to make a map of the grounds to help with organizing tables and booths. Grant will see about getting neighborhood street/lot maps made so that people could write in their name and where they lived.
Puppetistas from previous years’ fest aren’t available this year. Daphne has the puppets, and previous year’s scripts can be reused if necessary. In order to have a show, we would need people who want to 1) repair puppets – most are fine but Nene Meany is in need of a major overhaul; 2) recruit and organize volunteers to don puppets and play music (if you want live music for the show).