We joined up with Kaz Gamble of worcesterlove.com to capture the fun at stART. Kaz visits with festival attendees, Jacob Berendes of HBML Junk Shoppe, Sarah from imfromworcester.com, and WCCA-TV’s Snow Ghost. Kaz also visits with his dad.

It was a lot of fun to make this video. My very favorite thing about it though is the way all the bloggers interacted that day. It was really good to meet these people and (in some cases) become part of their own postings on what they saw.

Check out the postings and you’ll see the different points of view.

Anyway, we had a great time with Kaz (THANK YOU!!) and at the festival (THANK YOU START FOLKS!!).

I can’t wait for September!

9th Annual Worcester Firefighters Memorial 6K Race, originally uploaded by Claudia Snell.

We went out to the 9th Annual Worcester Firefighters Memorial 6K Race at Institute Park yesterday. There were a lot of people out there despite the very hot and humid weather.

Everyone seemed to be having a great time. Lots of activities and food. I got to catch up with one of my “Facebook buddies”.

Sarah got her picture and fingerprints done by the Molly Bish Foundation. They were providing free booklets to parents that include the photos and fingerprints. This is an important service they are providing. They do need support to keep doing it. Go to their web site for more information.

If you somehow haven’t heard of this event, maybe you’re new to Worcester; The Firefighters Memorial 6K Race is an annual event that raises money for local charities in the names of Paul Brotherton, Timothy Jackson, Jeremiah Lucey, James “Jay” Lyons, Joseph McGuirk and Thomas Spencer.

This year they were raising money for:
The Molly Bish Foundation
Alzheimer’s Association - Massachusetts Chapter
Connecticut Burns Care Foundation
The Firefighters Memorial Fund

They did have a nice spray set up at the finish line but it must have been rough running in that heat! I was just walking around and chatting with people and thought it was bad

The kids also enjoyed that spray a bit.

EcoTarium, Worcester, MA, originally uploaded by Claudia Snell.

Local lizard, Tycho, is horrified by unkind comments made about lizards and I don’t blame him. Tycho was so upset that he asked his human to post his plea for lizard tolerance. BTW - the photo is NOT Tycho. It’s the same type of lizard but this guy lives at the EcoTarium.read Hyphoid Logic’s post. Very funny stuff.

While you’re there, you’ll have to check this one out too. HL is on a roll today, making me laugh - and think. This second post is Hyphoid Logic’s take on the fairly recent increase in exorcisms being performed.

And in a completely different direction, Wormtown Taxi posted a scary link this morning. He found a story on the New York Times site that made me a little sick honestly. I am also sorry to say that I’m not really surprised by it. Basically, the story is about a few Harvard child psychologists that have been very involved in promoting the increase of putting kids on drugs for psych. problems not properly disclosing how much money they’ve made in consulting fees from drug companies. Like, millions of dollars worth were not disclosed for years, according to the Times. And now they are being investigated for conflict of interest. Wow. These are people who are supposed to be providing good information to the medical community so parents and doctors can do what’s best for children. How are parents supposed to trust the “experts” and be informed when this is what they do? As a parent, I send a big “thanks “to Wormtown Taxi for pointing out this article. I wouldn’t have found it otherwise. My next question though, what are parents to do to make sure the advise we are given is driven by what’s best for the kids and not by how much “consulting fees” the experts got?

This is the first video I’ve gotten done. I have some other really fun stuff to post but I don’t have those videos edited yet. For now, this is some of what happened at stART In The Park.

Wormtown Taxi has a great post about the festival. It was indeed a very cool event. The park was a great place to have it. It was nice to get out there and see people and enjoy the beautiful weather.

I expect to be posting more video from the event including parts of the soon-to-be-famous “Worcester Love” song (see Wormtown Taxi’s post for explanation).

Here’s links to the web sites of people in the video:

• Mississippi Jon Short, Have Blues Will Travel
• Tina Zlody, stART In The Park
• ActionGeek
• Scott Holloway, Painting Loft
• Scott Boilard

Other posts about the event

• “Made In Lowell”, stART from an artist’s point of view
• worcesterite.com has posted the “official stART In The Park aftermath thread. It’s a place for all the Worcesterites to post links to their stART stuff
• 4-rilla is for real! has some cool pix of artist, Erik Nasinnyk’s

work

blue fire, originally uploaded by Claudia Snell.

Date / Time: 5/30/2008 7:00 PM
“The Eclectic Word” Hosted By Victor Infante

poets Mark Doty and Dave Keali’i