Planet Earth Celebration

I am always a fan of any massive festival where I can take the kids. This year they coordinate the Grand Opening of the Nature Research Center with Earth Day.
The outside activities were great and bountiful. The inside of the museum addition was designed well.
On the inside of the museum I have mixed reviews, but do to the massive crowd I have to save final judgement about it later. Even some of the directors of the labs, and people that worked in the museum (red shirts) mentioned how they were just given the go ahead to move less than a week before the grand opening. I would say half of the interactive displays did not function properly, or were just turned off. The projectors were broken, so they had makeshift displays set up, that were broken as well. The labs didn’t have their equipment set up, so we couldn’t get a real feel for the labs. As I walked through the museum I wold see a panel that was laying on the floor exposing wires, bags of screws laying out, or trim just laying on the ground. I don’t think they did a walk through to make sure the building was ready for thousands of people to come in.
But, I will be back later just to see all of the exhibits after they get them fully functioning.
For anybody that is wondering, since the rest of the building obviously was no where close to being finished, I was told that it was office space. Office space or not, it looked horrible for a state wide Grand Opening as the backdrop as the Governor was speaking.

The first local Earth Day festival I attended a few years back was fun. I was working at Algonquin, and one of our authors — Richard Louv — was in town as a special speaker on getting our kids back in touch with nature at the Museum of Natural Science. I came out to support that but stuck around for the fun festival activities: earth-​friendly clothes for sale; a strolling magician; a one-​man junk band; and meeting THE Burt of Burt’s Bees fame.
In the last few years, the festival has grown even more supporting lots of live musical acts, a cute kid’s parade where they march downtown with instruments and outfits constructed from recycled materials, even a large-​scale bowling game with a giant PeeWee Herman-​esque ball of trash knocking into empty water cooler ‘pins’. But the coolest part of the festival — and the reason I look forward to it every year — is the Burt’s Bees tent sale. This annual event is their way of purging old inventory. And It. Is. Fabulous. They have aisles by prices ($ 10, 8, 5, and 2 — yes, two bucks!). And down each aisle are bins filled with goodies. The best scores are the gift packs, which you can stock up on at 50−75% off. But I also loaded up on cheap soaps, chapsticks and travel-​sized baby oils for my guest bathroom. Great value and great products: not to be missed!