Rain, rain go away. That chant has been heard throughout western Pennsylvania this summer, and nowhere more so than at the Blairsville Diamond Days festival, which reported a slight drop in attendance this year thanks to the raindrops that keep fallin' on our heads.
Mel Woodring, Blairsville recreation director and a member of the Diamond Days committee, said that overall attendance for the musical acts at the festival was probably up a little over last year.
But "it seemed like whenever one of the bands would get to their last number it would start to rain again," Woodring said. "That's when the vendors do most of their business," but not when fairgoers are running for cover.
But there were more booths with crafters this year, Blairsville artists were spotlighted in a separate display and Woodring said the committee made a little money. "We would have made more if not for the rain," he added. When it was suggested that Diamond Days always has bad luck with rain, he replied, "Nobody's having luck this year with rain. It's terrible."
Meanwhile the sounds of "Temike" (welcome) echoed over Nowrytown as the Thunder Mountain Lenape Nation staged their fifth annual, and by all accounts most successful, Native American Festival in a remote area outside Saltsburg.
The Nowrytown site where the group hopes to build a cultural center is not easy to get to, and an expected road improvement didn't materialize, but the people who did attend came away much impressed, and more aware of Native American culture.
Mollie Elliott of the Thunder Mountain group said that the total attendance for the two-day festival was somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000. "It's hard to judge exactly, because a lot of the people who attend are families," and no head count kept of children.
But attendance was definitely better than the previous year, the first year at Nowrytown after three previous years at the Conemaugh Dam. Terrorism fears made that site off-limits.
Now the success of the festival is raising money for the purchase of the Nowrytown site. Once that purchase is complete, the Thunder Mountain Band hopes to secure grant money to build a "long house."
