Folk Fest Summary

Well the Museum just got done with the General Sam Houston Folk Life Festival. It could have been a better success.

1. It rained Monday and Tuesday. By rained I mean poured so that meant there was hardly a chance it would clear up and be dry for the weekend, especially since it was fore casted with 30-50% chance precipitation all week. Yet I put my foot down and it said it wasn't going to rain and it didn't rain until Sunday morning.

2. Sunday morning it poured early in the morning. Nothing could be done about it. It just affected the museum grounds. Which had already been affected by the rain earlier in the week and the people walking on the grounds. (I'll talk more about the grounds in a minute.)

3. Because of the Swine Flu or H1N1 Flu as it is more professionally known, there were NO kids on Friday. Which is set aside as the educational day for the festival. Of 39 schools that scheduled to attend, 26 cancelled within the 2 days before. (We only found that out because I was tired of waiting in the Rotunda on Friday for kids to show up that never did.) The schools were required to cancel because from higher up the ISD's all school activities outside, field trips and extra curricular had been canceled. So of the 5,000 students expected to attend, maybe 500 showed up and this is being generous with the number.

4. Webb society decided to do a bake sale again this year which I get myself into heading again. Made enough cookies to sell some 200 bags turning a $1 profit for each bag after taking out the 46 that I spent on making the cookies and such. Well there are bags sitting on my dining room table right now. Since the kids didn't come we hardly sold any of the cookies. We even resorted to 2 bags for $1. I don't know how much we even made off those.

5. There were twice the number of food vendors this year as last because the person in charge of food vending didn't put a cap on the number of entries. So there was already going to be hostilities there. Well when the kids didn't show up, not only Webb, Folk Fest, and the Museum lost out of money but so did the food and craft/ product vendors.

6. Webb also spent money on binding cook books. I think that possibly 6 were sold, out of 50. Assuming they (the ones selling the goods and books) were able to keep up with the tally sheet I gave them. Also had left over coloring books from last year that we tried to sell, I'm not even sure we sold one.

7. The grounds looked amazing before; no I'm not sure that there is a correct way to describe them. They look awful because of the rain.

8. That reminds me, the Gulf Coast Boys were supposed to be here all weekend to pick up the trash around the grounds. Well after the lack of turn out on Friday they decided not to come the rest of the weekend. At least they told Folk Fest about it but that meant that the Volunteers had to pick up the slack.

9. There weren't as many volunteers as we would have liked there to be had we had the large group. But there wasn't so it really didn't hurt us this time.

10. Haven't seen the ducklings....

The bright things about this weekend:

1. There was no rain Friday or Saturday or Sunday afternoon. We are only open in the afternoon on Sunday. The sun was out. Heck it was hot and muggy but way better than it could have been.

2. Saturday wasn't as bad as it could have been with the Swine Flu. People still showed up and the weather was nice. There were things being sold and spirits were higher all around.

3. Sunday some of the food vendors didn't bother to come back. That meant that the ones that were there were able to scrap off a profit, if hardly.

4. I now have a new duty as assigned as a photographer. Last week I went around taking pictures of the grounds as before shots. I did some during on Saturday. (Side note: got an excellent one of port-a-potties underneath the Sam Houston Memorial Museum: A National Historic Landmark Sign.) Those were more of how the damage is caused. Trackers, vans, trucks from people driving in to set up. The high traffic areas, that sort of thing. Then there are the after shots... big divots in the ground, mud everywhere. It doesn't look good at all.

5. Friday turned out to be relaxing with out the school groups there. Saturday was as well for the most part. I heard the same about Sunday.

6. Thursday all of the tours for this week called to cancel because of the ISD's being grounded. That gives us more time to work on getting the grounds and our heads back in order for tours.

7. Some sodas were liberated for the Museum.

8. The dutch oven cooking was amazing. Amazing as always. We even started a Donation tub that I heard racked in some money.


This really isn't a plus or minus just more of a thing. Got the kitchen cleaned out. Then spent some time working on getting the kitchen cleaned and the stuff in the kitchen, like the crockery and the dutch ovens. We rinsed them off, scrubbed the dirt off and then ended up rubbing them down with shortening. My hands are fairly exfoliated now.

And Palmolive works wonders. Hands covered in grease, ashes, dirt, rust, etc. I turn on the hot water obviously to help get it all off and grab the dish soaps, it has to help cuts grease right. At least a little bit. Well let me tell you that stuff does work and it works wonders! One go with a glob of it hands were spot less. Helen and I even went into the office to show Mike and Rebecca the before and after to praise Palmolive.