UMass Walk to Cure Cancer

Today I photographed for the UMass Walk to Cure Cancer...and was very grateful that it merely misted instead of poured! I had both cameras, the turbo pack , and pockets full of extra equipment. If it had gotten too wet I'd be in trouble. They had me stay for 3 hours, in which time I got to watch the set up, registration, stage entertainment, and walk kickoff. I saw several people from Worcester State that were walking (a 5 mile loop), but was impressed overall with the spectacular turnout. The walk happens rain or shine...with great gusto! I got to witness a bizarre little bit of girlishness that I had forgotten about. The cheerleading groups that came were there when the main act came out on stage (Michael Damian and his band)...and the girls went NUTS. Michael Damian is an actor from "The Young and the Restless" (soap opera), sings, and has also been in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat". I have some vague memories about having crushes on soap stars at that age, and it was weird to see it all play out that way! Entertaining, but weird! They LOVED him! So funny.

stART on the Street

The stART festival yesterday went REALLY well! We were all there at 6:30 am to get things ready (the festival didn't open until 11). I set up the timer camera on the roof of Biagios (takes a photo every 5 minutes...all day long!) and then headed up to the check in area (Doherty High School) with Sarah. She organized it differently this year, and we had two lanes of traffic coming thru at a time, instead of one. Much better!!! Also, the cars were given hang tags as their "pass" to get onto Park Avenue, which made it really obvious which cars were allowed in (we shut Park Ave down between Pleasant and Highland Street). Once check in was thru, I walked around with the camera to get some shots to use for festival promotion. Here are a few...