For the last few years, Cheryl has been on the board of a local charity called Comprehensive Child Development (CCD), which provides day care for the children of low-income families in Long Beach and San Pedro. Each summer they have raised money by participating in the Long Beach Bayou Festival, with Cajun and Zydeco music, food, and other celebrations of Louisiana culture; last year they took over responsibility for the whole thing, which increased the amount of money they raised but also increased the amount of work they had to do to organize and run it! At this year's festival, Cheryl brought Mark and some friends along to help at the ticket counter for the two days of the festival, held this year at the Queen Mary Events Park.
The bands this year included some of the big names in the world of Cajun music, flown in from Louisiana. Their fans were quite eager to come hear them; here is the line outside the entrance, well before the gates opened.
Both days were sunny and hot but with a pleasant breeze; we were happy to have a shelter set up to shade us. Here are Cheryl and Lily in our high-security enclosure; we had to stuff money, credit card slips, tickets, and coupons through the wire fence.
Attendance was even better than last year, with bigger-name bands and increasing word of mouth (not to mention some favorable reviews from last year). This is a small fraction of the crowd inside, with craft and food booths in the background and a large stage and dance floor under the tent to the left.
Here we are with Lily, Ken, and Dana taking a break on the first day of the festival. Cheryl and Dana (who is also on the CCD board) are wearing the event T-shirt that attendees could purchase; Lily and Ken are wearing the solid-color variant issued to volunteers, and Mark borrowed Cheryl's volunteer T-shirt from last year.
The second day of the Festival we were joined by Greg, here with Dana, Cheryl, and Mark. (Mark is wearing the current T-shirt this time!) In the background (with sunset colors showing, after a long day of pushin' tickets) are the Queen Mary and the dome that used to house Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose wooden flying boat. These gave us something to look at through the wire fence between serving customers, but we didn't have much time for that until late each afternoon; it was a busy weekend, but we helped raise a lot of money for a very good cause!
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to Photo Albumnew 17 December 2001, revised 2 September 2002