Had a BLAST!!

The party to celebrate and thank our sewer construction guys was a huge success! It really was a happy, lighthearted gathering, the way I have imagined Los Osos was before the sewer war took center stage (I can only imagine from what I've been told by old-timers, I came here in April, 2005). This event has started the cleaning out of the cobwebs, acrimony and muck from community sewer discourse.

There was an art show featuring construction scenes drawn and painted by adults and kids, thank-you cards from a school class, a slideshow with shots from various neighborhoods and a really cool video put together from a day's work compressed into a couple of minutes, THREE cakes (the server used a miniature shovel to dish out the pieces), lots of BBQ-ed hot dogs and a variety of sodas, table decor of succulents in sand pails, a wall of photos, a free raffle for some of the art, music by the Zongo Combo, the reading of a cool sewer poem, and some observations from key people on the project; Bruce Gibson District 2 Supervisor, Paavo Ogren Public Works Director SLO County, John Waddell Project Manager, Jim Brantley Construction Manager, ARB's Project Manager and W.A. Rasic's Project Manager (sorry, I failed to write down your names). There was a remembrance of a much loved ARB flagman Ramon Camacho.

The event was created by Los Osos artists Joan Sullivan, Barbara Rosenthal and Jan French. Celebrate Los Osos (Pandora Nash-Karner and Mimi Kalland) helped to organize the event and with getting the sponsors. And various worker bees, myself included, signed up for behind the scenes tasks.

As we used to say where I used to work (creating catalogs of products), "copy smells, pictures sell," so I will end the words with some photos that I took.

PS A much larger sewer art show will be held around the time of project completion.