Fall Festival Redux

  Last Sunday was the Fall Festival at St. Mary. Unlike the past 3 years, this year I wasn’t on the committee to help plan and while I missed hanging out with the other people on the committee, I’m pretty busy with work and my chess endeavors so it was nice not to have all the meetings, responsibilities, and worries over the weather, etc... I had volunteered to take money on the day of the festival like I had the past 2 years, but instead I was asked to take pictures of the Festival. It sounded like a plum job and I quickly agreed.

  Ben was finishing up his service hours for confirmation by working at the festival all day, so we drove the 6 blocks to the church at 9 in the morning to help set up. It was good to see people like Greg Konrad and Jack Kessler who helped set up for the Fall Festival each year when I was on the committee. Greg had succeeded me as a chairperson with my friend Peg Brown. Peg and I were original members of the Stewardship Committee and she was Matt’s confirmation sponsor. Peg also spent many years as the St. Mary business manager and is really good with a buck so I'm sure the festival made as much money as possible.

An empty gym at 9am turned into a packed house by 1pm.

  Unlike the last 3 years, it was raining on this festival day and that required a lot of changing plans. The games were moved into the school gym from outside. All the Hispanic food was being prepared under a tent but the customers would buy their food and take it to the gym to eat when the rain was more than a drizzle. We moved tables around and set up games and occasionally I would sneak away to take pictures of the progress of the pork loin meal being prepared in the church basement as well as the Hispanic food being cooked in the street. Then Ben and I were assigned the task of setting up the PA system for the afternoon live auction. We managed to find the speaker wire hanging behind a curtain and hook it up to the PA system. The Ben and another fellow hooked up the PA system to the wireless microphones and everything was A-OK. I took another break to take some more pictures and head to the Jiffy for a cup of coffee and get Ben a Sierra Mist with ice. When I got back to the church, I didn’t have my 2009 Yankee World Series Championship hat. I looked all over and didn’t find it, drove back to the Jiffy and didn’t find it, and went back to the gym and still didn’t find it and gave it up for lost.

  Around 11:30 the first wave of kids and parents started arriving to play the games and eat meals. I made my way around to the church basement for the pork meal, the street where the Hispanic food was being served, and the gym where the games were and took more pictures. It had stopped raining and I took a break and ate a fruit cup (watermelon, cantaloupe, and cucumber) while I hung out with my friend Dennis outside the Hispanic food stand while he was eating his lunch. Dennis’ wife Tammy was on the committee all 3 years I was and Dennis would hang out a lot and help on the day of the event. Dennis works at the scrap metal yard and last year I had a case of temporary insanity and challenged him to an arm-wrestling contest. We started and he yawned for about 30 seconds while I managed to move his arm 2 or 3 inches before slamming my hand almost through the table in less than a nanosecond. He doesn’t play chess, but I bet I could beat him in a Cheetos-eating contest. Dennis was missing his favorite team, the Super Bowl champion Packers play the Carolina Panthers to hang out at the festival today and we would check the score occasionally on my amazing iPod. The Packers were losing at the half 13-7 and I told Dennis it was his duty as a Packer fan to hustle home and root his team on to victory. He left and the Packers did win 30-23 so if they end up making the playoffs by a game I’m expecting to be voted a playoff share for my contribution.

Pork Loin, potatoes, vegetables, and pie on the inside; Fruit cups, tortas, tacos, and other Hispanic food outside. But not a Cheeto in sight...

  I made another round of picture taking and helped put up a huge tent so the band could have a dry place to perform and then it was time for lunch. Last year, people would buy $1 food tickets and then pay for their food with them, but this year you bought a ticket saying what kind of food you wanted and then gave the ticket at the food stand. It was a great idea and I’m jealous I hadn’t thought of that. Not only does it keep the food preparers from having to add up food prices, but it also keeps the food line moving because everyone already knew what they wanted since they already had the tickets. I bought a $5 ticket for a torta which I can best describe as an Italian Hot Dog with steak instead of the hot dog part. I could watch people make food all day and had a full view of the cooks preparing my torta. When I lived in Florida, I used to eat at the Waffle House and I’d always sit at the counter and watch the people making eggs, waffles, and hash browns. I ’m so old I was a customer when the hash browns could only be scattered, smothered (with onions), and covered (with cheese); but now they can also be Chunked (Ham), Diced(Tomatoes), Peppered(Jalapeno), Capped(Mushrooms), Topped(Chilli), and Country(Sausage Gravy). You can see the menu here. I was born too soon!! My video was interrupted once when I had to stop and pay off a persistent raffle ticket salesman, but I did manage to get 2 minutes of Torta-making at its finest.

The only thing better than watching the torta being made was eating it!

  I sat down by the band and ate my torta (which was 5-star quality) and then took some more pictures. I got a video of the band playing a song and made my way back to the gym to shoot some videos of kids playing games and the live auction and raffle prize announcements. 2 years ago I won some Long John Silver gift certificates and a car wash, but this year was another wipeout. Once the auction was over, it was time to clean up. I took apart the PA system and when I put it back in its big wooden box, there was my Yankee hat! I must have put it in there when I was fumbling around with all the wires. I helped put some tables and chairs away and it was time to go.

The third eye doesn't lie! At the 25 second mark, a kid is going to swipe an extra bottle of soda at a ring toss game until he sees the glare of the camera.

  I’ve never gotten to walk around at the fall festival before. Every other year I was either taking money or hanging out with my kids at the games. I liked the freedom being the ‘official photographer’ afforded me and I hope the 4 CDs worth of pictures and video are useful. This year’s edition was a top-notch event despite the crummy weather and I hope all the planners are proud of their efforts.

Measuring Success

  Today is the day of the St. Mary Fall Festival. Yes, it is still summer, but some other committee picks the date of the festival. I thought about suggesting changing the name to the Almost Fall Festival, but decided to hold my tongue for a change.

  As I’ve written before, I’ve been the chair person of the festival committee the last 3 years by appointment after I was late to the first meeting. I learned from running chess tournaments that the management style that suits me personally is to personally and quickly take responsibility for the hardest tasks or the tasks that the other people don’t want to do, assign other tasks to capable people, let them do their jobs without micro-managing, and have as little to do as possible with people who want to help by telling you what you are doing wrong.

  This year’s festival planning was almost effortless. The same group has been together for 3 years and knows what to do and how to stay out of each other’s way. I’ve just been marking the completed tasks off on my little list, passing it out to the committee members, and writing announcements and calling some of the volunteers. Today I'll be handling the money outside for the second year in a row. It was easily the most complained about job 2 years ago, so I told everyone that that would be my job from now on. Then if anyone else complained, I could offer to trade jobs.

  The first year the festival raised $9,000, but after the festival, we were told that the church finance committee had budgeted for $11,000 so we were all disappointed. Since I did not make a budget, I shouldered the blame for this failure. The second year I asked what the festival had been budgeted to make and was told $14,000. In our committee meetings, I made sure to ridicule this budget number as much as possible and stress that we should not tether the success or failure of our efforts to some number on a piece of paper. We had a very well run festival and made $11,000 to boot. I considered it a success but not because of the money that was raised, but because we had a well run festival.

  This year, I didn’t even ask what the budget number was. One of the committee members mentioned last week that we had to make more money than last year. I’m not sure what number we will raise for this year’s festival. A lot depends on how much money the auction will bring in, but I expect to come very close to last year’s numbers. When I agreed to serve on the committee, I committed to 3 years and this is year 3. In my mind, the festival is already successful, regardless of whatever today’s chaos of ‘game day’ bring. It may even be a favor to the next group of committee members to fall a little short in the money raising department to give them an easier act to follow.

Free at last...NOT

  In the 3rd and last year of my chairing our church’s fall festival committee, I really wanted to try having games for free. The games are basically cheap amusements geared for little kids. There is a bean bag toss, kick the soccer ball through a goalie painted on a piece of plastic with a hole between his hands, a candy walk version of musical chairs, etc… We also rent a ‘ring the bell with the hammer’ game, and there is pumpkin painting. The price to play any of these amusements is a quarter each. The kids get the money to buy the tickets from the parents and then play and receive some sort of trinket or candy for playing. My premise in wanting to have the games for free was that a) We take in around $300 for the games vs. $2000 for the food that is outside, b) The money not spent on games would be spent on the food instead, and c) free games could be advertised to the whole town and we would get even more money for food and raffle tickets.

  The other reason I wanted to try it is because it is not the type of thing that is normally done (much less thought of) and probably would never be tried in the future. The rest of the committee thought I was nuts at first, but I eventually won them over with my brilliant logic or at least wore them out with sheer persistence and by the beginning of May it was a done deal or so I thought.

  Unfortunately, at the very next meeting a committee member showed up for their first meeting of the year. When I went over all the decisions that we had made, the first time attending committee member managed to talk everyone out of having the free games. Since you can’t lead where no one will follow, I dropped the idea. The main argument seemed to be that once we ran out of trinkets and candy to give the kids, they would have nothing to do. I tried to point out that the kids could still play the games for free, but the general thought of the group was that kids won’t play games without getting trinkets or candy. I’m really hoping that the kids won’t want to get minimum wage for playing the games. If they do, they may be able to file for unemployment after the festival.

The Third Year

  Our church is in the planning stages of the annual Fall Festival. This is my 3rd year as chairperson of the committee, which was given to me when I was late to my first meeting in 2007. We have had 3 committee meetings this year and have not had the entire committee together once. At the meeting last Wednesday, we only had 3 members at the meeting (myself, Monica, and her husband Eldon who gave me the broken pawn you see at the top of this web page). In years past, I’d have been really upset at such disinterest, but now I see this as the typical fruits of the 3rd year.

  When I took over the Iowa State Chess Association’s scholastic chess department in 2006, I was received with great enthusiasm. At the time, I thought it was due to my energetic and dynamic personality, but my main advantage was that I was not the last scholastic director (who many people had a lot of issues with). I made quite a few mistakes in the first year, but they were barely noticed because I was not the last guy. The second year on the job was my best work. I had learned from my mistakes, understood the technical demands of the job (scheduling, communications, etc…) and I was still not the last scholastic director. There were some small rumblings of dissatisfaction, but attendance at our tournaments was back on a upswing and I did not pay any attention to the rumblings as I was gearing up for an even more successful year ahead. In year 3, I was as technically adept as ever and attendance climbed even more, but the rumblings had turned into thunderstorms. The other IASCA tournament directors would run competing tournaments against the state scholastic events, people on one side of the state wanted to host the tournaments I had in the other side of the state and vice versa. At one tournament, trophies were awarded to the top 3 scores in each grade. When kids would tie for the third place trophy, I would award the trophy to one of the players on tiebreak and order trophies with personalized nameplates to be given to the rest of the players, instead of the normal practice of giving the tiebreak winner the trophy and saying tough luck to the rest of the kids. Even this started to backfire when the parents I was getting the trophies for would complain that their son’s trophy wasn’t the same size or had some other imperfection. I left the position after my third year and never had a chance to become as disliked as the last scholastic director.

  I’d been assembling my church newsletter for 8 years. Most months the newsletter was 4 pages, but if there were only a few submissions 2 pages would be printed. I had changed the format a couple times when asked and last year Father Jim gave me some newsletters from other churches. They all had lots of pictures and all were more than 4 pages. I mentioned that the newsletters were very nice and I could duplicate the formats if people would send me more pictures. At our March Stewardship meeting, Father Jim mentioned the last newsletter wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on, had no value for the Hispanic people of the church, and the staff was ‘pushing-back’ on even printing it. He said all this in a matter of fact way, not insulting at all, and I wasn’t insulted either. It was just a case of ‘Year 3’ coming in ‘Year 8’. I finished the April newsletter and served notice that this would be my last newsletter. I even dropped off the Stewardship committee since my main contribution to that effort was the newsletter.

  I talked with a co-worker who had been on the job for 3 years. He mentioned to me how he was feeling less included in major decisions and meetings than he used to be and he was wondering why. I told him it was just his cycle and he should look for a way to re-invent himself so he can start another cycle in the same place rather than having to switch jobs. My conclusion is that in the cycle you start by being appreciated, then taken for granted, and finally reviled for the same qualities that got you appreciated in the first place. I managed to avoid that at the job I’d had for 13 years by converting our software to new technologies so I wouldn’t be reviled along with the old technologies.

  I don’t think this year’s fall festival will be like pushing string up a hill. I am of the view point that the committee members know what needs to be done and will get on task when necessary and no earlier. All the same, I’m very happy I said in 2008 that I would only be on the planning committee for 3 years.

Everybody's doing it...

  On the Easter Sunday Mass, Father Jim touched on the sex abuse scandal in the church. While he did say that there is no excuse for abuse, he pointed out that while it is estimated that 3 or 4 percent of Catholic priests are abusers (I’m not clear if they are abusers or just accused of being abusers), that number is slightly less than the Protestant clergy and that 10 percent of US Public school students have been targeted with unwanted sexual attention by school employees.

  I’m not a big fan of the ‘everybody’s doing it’ defense (except when I’m getting a traffic ticket, of course). If you have to bring up these kinds of facts, haven’t you already lost the debate? I was stunned to be told that out of every 25 to 33 priests, one is a child-abuser, but I don’t care about these or any other statistics. Everything I hear from the Church seems to be either (a) we’re being picked on because we’re Catholic or (b) look at these other groups who are as bad or worse.

  I ran scholastic chess tournaments for 3 years and I wouldn’t let an adult help unless I’d known them for a good long time or they had their own children at the tournament. Having someone abusing kids whose parents I was convincing to take to my tournaments was my worst nightmare. If it had happened, I’d like to think I’d be the first one calling the police to scrape up what was left of the abuser and not getting the abuser to stay away from my tournaments and help some other director with theirs.

  Tearing down institutions is what the media does to market their product and the more sacrosanct an institution, the better for the media. Politicians and celebrities have always been fair game. But at least 1 teacher (see article)
wasn’t immune from his 15 minutes of fame. In any event, these wounds are all self-inflicted.

  I do think the Catholic Church is being held to a higher standard, but I say ‘so what?’ In order to be exceptional, a higher standard is required. If the church was firing and prosecuting abusers instead of transferring them or limiting their public appearances, they would retain the moral high ground and be in a better position to point out the abuses of the other groups and maybe even help to stop the abuses of all groups. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a voice of moral authority ask why perverts get probation and time served(see article) , instead of some sort of justification that pedophile priests are just indicative of the rest of society? As so often happens, the pretense of denying the truth ends up causing more trouble than admitting the problem and dealing with it in the first place. Based on the news this week, I think the church may be finally getting it.

Wrapping up...

  The St. Mary Fall Festival is all done for another year. I spent the afternoon taking money for food and game tickets. I had heard so many horror stories about this assignment last year that I had to see what all the fuss was about. Yes, it was busy but no, it was not a horror. After the first 2 hours, I was playing chess with my assistant David Montealagre. He is just a beginner. We attracted so much attention and other kids wanting to play that I'm thinking about having a simul during next year's festival.

  My missing chess clock from the CyChess tournament was found in the playing hall and returned to the tournament director, Ames chess legend Roger Gotschall. I'll pick it up during the Ames Chess Festival in 3 weeks.

  Baseball season is over and I still don't know who the Yankees are playing. I'm rooting for the Twins, since the Yankees have always owned them in the playoffs and there is no need to see Justin Verlander and his 100 mile an hour fastball twice in the next week. Nice to see A-Rod play Mr. October to preserve his streak of 30HR-100RBI seasons. Let's see if he can be as clutch for the team instead of his individual stats.

St. Mary Fall Festival 2009

  I am getting ready for the St. Mary Fall Festival tomorrow. I have been the chairperson of the planning committee the last 2 years. I got to be the chairperson because when I was late to the first meeting due to my chess club, the rest of the committee decided to appoint me. Planning the festival is a chaotic experience. This year we have had very few volunteers sign up to help and the person who was in charge of preparing the meal (for 120 people) cancelled due to a family illness this week. People tell me that while they won't sign up to help, they will help if asked. I always thought the sign up sheet is asking.

  Our church is segregated between what is called the Anglo and Hispanic populations. I am not sure why I am an Anglo, being Russian by heritage. I would call it the English and Spanish speaking populations, since for all the talk about being one parish, all the masses and committees are separate by language. We all seem to work well together for the fall festival, although we tend to just go our separate ways in terms of planning. The English speaking group will gravitate towards the church hall for the meat and potato meal with a silent and live auction, while the Spanish speaking group will be in the street with the live band and Hispanic food. The games for the kids will also be in the street.

  We all have been working very hard and prayers for good weather seem to have been answered, so maybe we will have a successful festival. Whenever I get stressed about this kind of thing, I just imagine Jesus pulling up to my house with a pickup truck. I dump everything I am worried about into the truck and Jesus just drives away with it.