I know this because I was so badly shaken by the experience that as soon as I got home and tossed the bucket of ice cream at my ungrateful family members who had no idea what a harrowing experience I had just endured, I ran immediately to the computer and researched like a madman. It’s not Water Lantern Festival-it’s just a water lantern festival. Was I so checked out, my citizenship so lazy, that I didn’t even know about Portland’s esteemed Water Lantern Festival? My thought was stupid.) As I made my way out of the park and toward the store where I was supposed to procure a bucket of ice cream for my mewling family, I found myself walking against the traffic of people who continued to file into the park. Was it possible that through some strange, multiple-decades-long sequence of events, I had never turned to a certain newspaper page, had never clicked the right web links, and had never overheard a conversation about the yearly lantern festival? The more I thought about this, the more I began to talk myself into the idea that this was not just possible, but in fact quite likely. I am not the most assiduous reader of the city’s newspapers (like many mid-tier cities, Portland no longer has a daily print paper), and I began to wonder if Portland did indeed have a lantern festival, but I had somehow never heard about or noticed it. Because I am an adult of great competence, however, I did what I usually do when confronted with something I don’t understand: I became disoriented and frightened. A banner read “Water Lantern Festival,” but I had no memory of lantern festivals in Portland. I could think of no particular holidays in early June. No matter where or how I looked, though, I could not discern just what the Officially Sanctioned Community Event was. I knew it was officially sanctioned because evident in great quantity were tents and banners, wristbands and branded knapsacks, the sound of amplified music, and food trucks. I assumed there would be the usual clutches of homeless people, a handful of folks smoking joints while watching their friends try to juggle exotic juggling implements the names of which I do not know, and of course people in the Dogs May Run Free and Terrorize Each Other Here area smiling in that determined, nervous way dog park folks smile, since they must be prepared for a dog- or human- or dogs-and-humans fight at any moment.īut that is not what I found at all! What I found instead was a park semi-full of people, all of them either already at, or walking rapidly toward, some kind of Officially Sanctioned Community Event. The BPRD decision drew a quick “thank you” reply from Mayor Kebler, also thanking the community members who helped clean up the river afterward.When I stepped into Laurelhurst Park in Portland, Oregon, last Saturday evening, I expected to find the park as lovely and quiet as it usually is at the end of the day. “This is due to the issues that arose with containing the lanterns during the event, as well as the lack of communication, lack of remorse and lack of clean-up efforts,” the park district said, adding: “The inaction doesn’t align with our community values.” However, Bend Park and Rec issued a statement and posted it to Instagram on Tuesday, saying they “notified organizers that any future event proposals for the Water Lantern Festival will not be approved.” Another representative said Wednesday that the cleanup "is in the process and gets better every day!" “We are working with local groups to help clean the river, and are grateful for their expertise and care for the river,” the official said. It was a very unfortunate accident that occurred this weekend during the lantern launch.” “We appreciate your care and concern for the Deschutes River. “We are doing our best to get the river back to its original condition,” she added. "We also appreciate the community members’ efforts over the weekend to remove debris that was found in the river."Ī festival representative told NewsChannel 21 on Tuesday, “This was a very rare event, as the water was just moving faster than we had anticipated and lanterns were tipping over our line of protection, causing some of them to flip and sink.” "BPRD is disappointed that the organizer’s plan to confine the lanterns to specific area was not successful," Brown added.
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