Jamestown 400th Anniv

We went over to Jamestown for the festivities yesterday. Some of it was good. Some of it was bad.

The Good things:

• The grounds were spacious and clean. The area provided probably could have handled 50,000 a day. Actually, the area was so large that the arrangement was kind of confusing. It looked small on the map, but you walked and walked. The four performance stages had to be a quarter mile apart.
  
• The entertainment was very good. We got to see a combined performance of the Virginia and Richmond Symphonies, including the premier of four works commissioned for the festivities. Three of the composers were there to introduce their works. The combined group also did Dvorak's "New World Symphony". The finale was choreographed with a fireworks display. On the flip side, we were allowed to sit through speeches by Governor Tim Kaine and Sanator Jim Webb, while waiting to hear from Sandra Day O'Connor.
  
  As we were leaving that, there were some folks trying to snag people to attend another performance at one of the smaller stages. Someone's performing now, after the Symphony? After 10pm? Yes, some little kids from
  Dillon Montana (pop. about 5000). The "Dillon Junior Fiddlers." Apparently they were supposed to perform earlier, during the Symphony, but something got snafu'd (like anyone would have attended then.)
  
  Anyway, we and quite a few other people felt bad about it, and went over to see them. The thing was, they were quite good, and fun. There were about 10-15 kids that really played (3-4 that could solo), and then about 8 to 10 more kids they had doing line line dances in costume. (Just ignore the few adults in the background backing them on piano, bass fiddle and guitar.) We all made sure they got rousing applause after coming so far, and potentially getting stuck with no audience. We left after about 15 minutes to catch our bus, but we could have stayed longer since the buses were only moving about every 15 minutes.

The Bad things:

• There weren't very many people there. The grounds could handle at last 50K a day, and they we hoping to sell 30K tickets a day, and yesterday under 20K showed up, spread over a 14 hour period. Hopefully, there will be a lot more on Saturday and Sunday.
  
• The bus drivers to the remote parking lots had no idea where they were going, and had to keep asking the passengers for directions. Never a good sign.
  
• Everything closed too early. After the concert that was it, everything was closed.
  
• The USPS had a postal substation there to sell first day covers and stamps. They were running out. At 4 pm on Friday.
  
• Do you know how annoying it is to see that the employees of the event sponsors get to sit in air-conditioned tents and eat from white tableclothed tables with uniformed waiters while you sit on the ground outside eating your Indian taco?
  
• Or, that they've reserved all of the real 'seats', up in front, for these people to listen to the concert? Chairs for the peons were available for a $3 rental (w/ additional $7 deposit) fee. Thankfully, they eventually realized the sponsor's employees weren't going to fill things up, so they let us in to use the extra seats.