IDAHO KITE FESTIVAL 2009 UPDATE

Kite Festival plans continue to grow, and all events are free thanks to a grant from the Japanese American Citizens League legacy fund!  Here are some additions:

Cancer Support Group Kitemaking – September 15, 5 pm, PMC Oncology

The Portneuf Medical Center cancer support group will make kites to celebrate survivors and memorialize friends.  Last year the group made beautiful breast cancer and war kites.  This year kites from both years will be flown at the Festival in a special memorial fly.

Fall Children’s Festival – September 23, 4-6 pm, College of Southern Idaho

Already on the schedule is kitemaking at the Asian Students Organization cultural arts festival in Twin Falls. 

Marshall Library Kitemaking – Oct 1, 113 South Garfield

Already on the schedule is a workshop at Marshall – register at the library or call 232-1263.

New Location for Flies

The flying field on Thursday Oct 2 will be the church park adjacent to the Portneuf Library, who hosts kitemaking at 2 pm (register at the library or call 208.241.3215).  After the workshop we’ll parade to the park.  If you already have a kite please join us and fly!

The flying field Oct 3-5 will be Tyhee School each day until 2:30.  Soccer will take over the field at 3 pm, and we’ll move to afternoon workshop sites except for Sunday when the Festival will end at 2:30.  Kitemaking with Tyhee students TBA.

Kitemaking With the Veterans - October 3, 7 pm, Memorial Building, 300 S. Johnson

Come one, come all to make a kite with vets.  Celebrate your favorite vets or memorialize a war, then fly them at the Festival in a special fly.

Flying field schedule:  This will include the veterans’ and cancer memorial flies, the teddy bear parachute jump, the fighter kite battle and other demonstrations, the 100 kite train flying over the Festival, and some prize contests for kids and kids at heart.  Because weather will be the biggest factor, we’ll have several days to put on events rather than the one shot we had last year (when it snowed two inches).

The schedule will be loose so we can hold flying events as wind and weather allow.  This gives us more opportunities to offer all events, so come out and be surprised and amazed!

FUN FLIES THIS YEAR, or THE TRAIN IS COMING….

The JACL Picnic Fathers Day Fly in Blackfoot

The first flight for our IKF 2008 kite train:  30-some kites flew easily over Veterans Park

Auntie Ruth’s Birthday Party in Ontario OR

Second flight for kite train:  55 kites were prepared to fly, but the wind was so strong we brought the train down after putting 40-some up!

AARP Summer Picnic in Pocatello

Winds were a faint breeze but we managed to fly kites specially decorated for AARP!  The train was grounded that day.

Nisei Club Picnic in Twin Falls

The breeze barely lifted a single kite, so though 80-some kites made up the train in progress, none were flown.  Nisei Club kites flew briefly!

The complete 100+ kite train will be flown at IKF 2008 every opportunity the wind gives us.  Come out and see the amazing sight of this many kites flying on one line!  Dean Turnblom of Sunrise Kites in Idaho Falls and I have assembled this one.  You can help make the 2009 kite train – just let us know you are willing and we’ll show you how!

Coming soon the Idaho Kite Festival information can be found at www.idahokitefestival.com.  We're excited about this move and hope you'll check us out.  I understand parents' concerns of our website on MySpace.  This new site should be better on many levels!

Happy Independence Day! 

NEWS FLASH:  We're starting SKY - Sunday afternoon, Kites, and You - every breezy Sunday in a park near you!  Bring your kites and fly with us!

larger view

I learned how to build a kite train at the last WA State International Kite Festival.  The train consists of small Malay kites hooked together to trail across the sky.  Once you get a good number (100 is my goal) you can also make a kite arch, tacking down both ends.  It’s breathtaking to see the arches on the beach, and I want Idahoans to see that sight in Pocatello this fall.

Okay, not really.  More like postal employee bitten by kiting bug.  But I thought I'd chat about interesting Post Office stuff, since in real life I'm a city carrier at USPS.

First, do you know you need never pay more than current rates for your letters?  Since the Forever (liberty bell) stamp was issued when rates were 41 cents, stocking up on them has been one of the best bargains at the post office.  They will be good FOREVER as a first-class stamp for a one-ounce letter (approx 4 pages).

And did you know that semi-postal stamps such as the Breast Cancer Research stamp are also good for current rates even if purchased prior, and need no additional postage to use?  LOVE that - I'm not only making a donation to breast cancer research but won't need to add a cent to use them.

Now, as a carrier I can offer some self-serving tips to make both our lives easier:

- Check your mailbox with clean hands.  When food gets on your mailbox, birds, spiders and wasps are not far behind.  True fact.  If you wonder why your mailbox has these pests and your neighbors don't - hel-lo.

- Pick up your mail regularly or put it on hold.  It concerns us carriers to see mail in the boxes day after day...week after week (really).  We wonder if you are okay, or have moved.  And we have to clean out the box when it fills, hold it ten days and return it to sender.  Not good, if you are still there and want your mail eventually.

- Give us easy access to your box.  This includes cars, garbage, dogs - the whole gamut of stuff that tells us you don't care if you get mail!

- Thank you for all your kindnesses, compliments, patience, and friendships.  I love my job and it's all because of you, the public.

Micki Mommy Mailcarrier

For the annual Community Environmental Fair (CEF) on April 26, the challenge for The Sky’s The Limit! volunteers was to create kites from recycled and reusable materials.  Of necessity and curiosity, since I started making kites 4 years ago I’ve grabbed any plastic or paper around the house to fashion a kite.  So the practice isn’t foreign to me, but refining it has been more a trip than a journey! 

The Fair and kitebuilding lasted more than 4 hours and the kites were flown in a park surrounded by large buildings.  This calls for simply constructed, easily flown, lightweight kites, so I adapted some of my favorite newspaper and shopping bag kites to lighten them up.  We made nearly 200 – Old News(papers) – New Kites, Go Green with the Red White and Blue (former tablecloths) for the VFW, and My Kite’s My (shopping) Bag were this year’s choices.  Please come again next year for more ingenious kites!

The City of Pocatello is the main CEF sponsor, and local businesses, offices, and organizations such as the Greenway, recycling centers, and kids’ crafters all volunteer to help put on the Fair.  This year’s theme, GO GREEN, emphasized hands-on demonstrations, green exhibitors, live music, free green activities for kids, and entertainment throughout the day. 

The rest of the participants hope for a sunny, calm day – I hoped for and got a light breeze to fly the kites!  And we all hope for lots and lots of folks to attend every year, learn how to implement green practices into your everyday life, and have fun!

A big thanks to our volunteers Joan, Chelsea, Marie in Pocatello; JoEtta from Paul; and RJ from Boise.  Your tireless kitemaking with The Sky’s The Limit! was impressive and over the top!  Thanks also to the VFW for partnering with us again – see you in the fall at the Memorial Building for another workshop, Come Fly a Kite With a Veteran. 

Registration is now being taken at the Portneuf Library for our next workshop June 5!

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In these simple workshops we use a geranium to practice bonsai techniques since geraniums are more forgiving and less expensive!  You will learn tips on care and feeding, how to shape it to appear more exotic, how a plant reacts when potted in a tiny bonsai pot. 

In the spring workshops, your plant can become a deck display. 

In the fall, you will rescue geraniums in your yard or in your hanging pots.  Instead of letting them frost and die, we repot them for elegant indoor winter flowering plants.  Then in the spring, you can take cuttings to make your own outdoor plants!

A spring class is scheduled at Portneuf District Library May 28.  Register there, and bring 3 stones the size of a man's thumb.

A fall class will be held at Pocatello Coop, TBA.

Our schedule for workshops leading up to the Idaho Kite Festival Oct 2-5 2008 is growing fast.  See below for free kite workshops.   I',m hoping to hear from libraries throughout Idaho, and will try to fit in a workshop for you on my day off (in real life I'm a city mail carrier).  Our goal at The Sky's The Limit! is that everyone has a kite to fly at the annual IKF!

The focus of many of these workshops is making kites from recycled, reusable and household materials, celebrating Earth Day Every Day.

Idaho Kite Festival 2008

Calendar of Workshops and Events

Oct 2-5:         & nbsp; Idaho Kite Festival 2008

This Fair sounds fun and this is the first time I've had the day off work to participate.  My community volunteers, called The Sky's The Limit!, will be in the activity tent.  Look for Maxine with her facepainting table, posters for our Portneuf District Library partner, flags from another partner VFW - we'll be around! 

If all goes as planned, we'll have several different kites, so come at the half-hour and join in.  Kites include:

Old News - New Kite (a newspaper kite)

Our VFW spring workshop:  Go Green with the Red White and Blue - a kite from recycled tablecloths from a cancer survivor event

My Kite's My Bag (kite from recycled shopping bags and other reusable plastic- bring your department store bags and we'll make kites of them at future workshops - anything but grocery bags)

Come Fly a Fish - more shopping bags, with fins and fused tails

We'll make kites till we run out, and fly them if there is a breeze! 

ALSO - watch EVENTS postings on TheJHub.com and check www.myspace.com/iskf to stay up to date about kites!