A carousel of colors

By Scott Sullivan
Editor
The lakeshore showed off summer colors as sun shone on Community Pride Week festivities in Douglas June 1-4 and Fennville poppy fields in full bloom.
The fifth Community Pride Week feted diversity of all people all people with an array of fun including drag bowling, book-burning panel talk, Care-A-Van car parade plus two days of live music, food, drinks, classic cars and vendors at downtown Beery Field. Crowds were large, convivial and all colors you could see.
A drive east to west of the Fennville Cemetery offered quieter, although no less vivid, spaces.
Pleasant Hill Farm owners John Van Voorhees and Joan Donaldson’s annual poppy plant — a memorial to their son Mateo Donaldson, who returned home from a tour of duty in Afghanistan with traumatic stress disorder and took his own life, plus family friend Analilia Salinas, who died of cancer at age 19 — was bursting in reds, purples, whites, unexpected and hues still not invented.
Admission is free but all are asked to park carefully and not trample the abundant blooms.