The readers of the Gazette will please bear with us this week for the lack of extended news of local affairs.
Come dusk tonight, the Victorian gingerbread houses at the Camp Ground in Oak Bluffs will be a magical fantasy land, aglow with light from lanterns.
On August 20, the Camp Ground will turn into a fantasy land of Victorian gingerbread houses and hundreds of paper lanterns hanging from porches. Welcome once again to the Grand Illumination.
At dusk last night a single lantern lit by Gordon Long and his son Roy made its way down the center aisle of the Tabernacle in the Oak Bluffs Camp Ground. There was a collective gasp from the large crowd gathered inside the Tabernacle and around blankets and picnic baskets on the lawn.
Kennith Kirk tugged the hem of his mother’s dress. Over the screams and laughs of his two twin siblings, Maya and Robert, Kennith’s question was barely audible to all but his mother.
“Why are there so many moons?” the three-year-old wanted to know. Maya, seven, whipped her head around and said “They’re lightbulbs!”
Excitement filled the soft summer evening long before the first lantern was lit in the Camp Ground on Wednesday night. Runabout children with glow sticks and the constant flash of cameras created a parade of lights as early as 7:15 p.m. at the Tabernacle, where a large audience had already gathered. The growing crowd seemed almost to be in competition with the stunning summer weather as to who could deliver the best performance.
Illumination Night Rocks Gently
It’s August and some of the heaviest hitters have come aboard. There’s the Agricultural Fair, the Oak Bluffs Fireworks, some guy from Washington, D.C. is rumored to be heading our way, and a host of other big name panels, readings and discussions are all in full bloom.
