By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Light Show
Click goes camera, clique goes government, difference being shutter’s open a split second. Light passes through lens optics, body sensors articulate and transmit millions of color data points. When glass closes your mind sets up more art anarchic orders. Clicks are open, let in light; cliques are closed. Therein lies the rub.
Saugatuck’s latest fireworks involve swapping bomb blooms for more earth-friendly laser light shows. The city hiring California DJ House Shoes July 4 to back them musically sticks in critics’ craws especially. Who OK’d that $30,000+ budget overrun?
City law firm Fahey Schultz, which donated $2,000 towards Independence Night’s events, Aug. 1 reported its client budgeted $15,000 plus collected $13,300 in donations — $10,000 of it from the Convention and Visitors Bureau — but fell $31,250 short of their $59,525 total cost.
Attorney Chris Patterson’s 15-page review released Aug. 1 chronicled how July 4 festivities came the city’s way via the Saugatuck-Douglas Rotary Club, which after years of conducting them, parades included, this year chose to assume fellow 501c3 Cow Hill Yacht Club’s Venetian Festival at July’s end instead.
With transition comes loss and chance to refresh members and traditions. CVB director Lisa Mize applauded the city’s effort to keep these high-profile tourist events alive.
Patterson itemized hoped-for donor shortfalls, tight timeframes and concluded, “While the city did exceed its budget for the event, the expenditures incurred making (it) possible comported with the applicable procedures of the city code and charter.”
Fox meet henhouse, critics said. Though I don’t question Patterson’s probity, I recall how the city’s ex-attorney seemed to craft his counsel after the former council and staff had already made decisions. But I could have had smoke in my eyes then too.
Mayor Scott Dean conceded cost overruns were regrettable and looking forward it might be better if a private and or/nonprofit group would conduct future Fourths; should no one step up, perhaps scrap such celebrations should be scrapped.
I love fireworks. Sitting on midsummer docks or grass with neighbors and families gaping as late-sunset rockets flared, burst, spread and turned to sparks falling back to earth was indelible. I was also done with the traffic and crowds they drew, smoke and noise long ago.
Now as I drift into post-dusk dreams, windows open to neighbor-fired snap-crackle-pops, past visions like Chinese dragons flown in chauffer me into more-restful depths.
Saugatuck Township was one hoped-for donor nixing the city’s perhaps-late request. Board members said shows over Kal Lake can’t be seen from its boundaries, business benefits realized largely stay in city limits, plus combustion-based fireworks and crowds’ car exhaust pollute air and people’s ears. Maybe, with Canadian wildfire smoke choking skies this summer, it was time to create cleaner celebrations.
Breathing clear air and seeing stars through it over lakes, woods and fields made me after college in Indiana want to move to Michigan. If I could eke out a living writing, any job experience would be fodder.
Saugatuck’s Air Quality Index sucks when packed with particles that, warns the National Weather Service, can enter our lungs and bloodstreams. “The most severe impacts are on the lungs and heart. Exposure can cause coughing or difficulty breathing, aggravated asthma and development of chronic respiratory disease,” says the federal agency.
Damn agenda-driven government pseudo-scientists! “Drill baby drill!” and “Burn baby burn!” I say.
In photography, filters screen out some types of light, let in others, a translucency I can harness. Smoke takes away that option, inflicts an opacity all its own.
The local Rotary, of which I am a charter member, took over Venetian, another tourism staple, July 28-29 replacing Cow Hill’s planned “Vegas” theme with “Green Venetian.” I commend peers for being quick on their feet making changes to that labor-intensive project, but failures to communicate ensued. That problem’s persistent working with people in my field, commercial communications, too.
Singapore Yacht Club, whose boats have dressed up for Venetian parades, though in dwindling numbers lately, told Rotary word of the theme change had come too late for their preparations.
Saturday’s laser show providers, who set up on the Douglas shoreline thanks to Tower Safe Harbor Marina, may have had the impression their display was aimed at just Kal Lake boaters. Shoreline viewers in Coghlin Park, me included, were disappointed. “Damn Green lib-tards,” one nearby viewer said.
Lasers, based on the nothing I know, are established features in contained presentations such as in movie screens and in concert halls. Breamed into open skies to seen far and wide? That one may take more expense and work. Fireworks date 2,000 years back to Han Dynasty field hands tossing bamboo sticks into flames and exclaiming at sizzling embers. Adding gunpowder ensued during the 960-1279 A.D. Song Dynasty, 960-1279 A.D. A one-plus millennium head start.
How did conserving water and air turn into a liberal cause? Remember Saugatuck’s late conservation champion Patty Birkholz? Some conservatives called her a RINO, Republican In Name Only. I called her a friend doing her best, that’s all.