The Garlic Festival

I am heartbroken over the news of still another mass shooting, this time at a garlic festival in Gilroy, California.

I'm heartbroken at our inability to stop these shootings.  I'm heartbroken having experienced, as a sort-of spectator (from a few blocks away) a mass shooting in the community where I live, Binghamton, New York, on April 3, 2009.

There is one way in which my work community of Binghamton, New York and Gilroy are connected.

Garlic.

Each year, the American Civic Association (ACA), where our shooting took place, hosted a garlic festival each August.  In 2009, there was no festival.

But in 2010, it returned, and I am repeating my 2010 post, without editing.  The festival has been held every year since 2010.  This year, it is August 17, and I'm sure many of those attending our garlic festival will be thinking of Gilroy. 

But it takes more than thought (and prayers) to heal a community, or those who lost loved ones. 

In doing some research, I found that Gilroy is close in population to Binghamton. One of the innocent dead (two of the three dead were children) went to college less than two hours away from Binghamton.  More connections. 

What else can be said that hasn't been said hundreds of times? I will not try.

Here's my post from August 2010.

Healing Wounds One Garlic Plant at a Time

No, this post isn't about the medicinal uses of the garlic plant.  But if you came here by mistake, please stay and read anyway.

I'm talking about a totally different type of healing, healing psychic wounds of a community.

Yesterday we went to the ACA's Garlic Festival on the edge of downtown Binghamton.

After a one year hiatus due to the horrendous shooting of April 3, 2009, we welcome the festival back.

We weren't going to go until today, but the weather report, combined with a one hour postponement in an event we were supposed to go to yesterday afternoon, combined in us making the trip yesterday.  We didn't have too long to say, so didn't go inside to purchase garlic food.  There were lines and we didn't have time to wait.

Just think, going inside, into a building that some might say was haunted.  But how fitting that laughter filled that space yesterday.

Outside, the mood was just as festive.  A number of booths were selling...well, what else, but garlic.  Spanish Roja, White German, Music, Elephant, and many more, hung braided, sat in bags, or loose, next to plates with pieces cut up for pre-purchase sampling.  We bought a couple of bags of spouses' favorite, Music.  Another booth had local pestos- spinach, sun dried tomato, red pepper, and more. Still another booth had pesto made from garlic scapes.  (Garlic scapes are the top of the garlic plant, just as the seed area starts to form.  They are delicious but you have to get the plant at just the right time or they become tough.)

Still another vendor, reminiscent of the New York soup man Jerry Seinfeld modeled his "Soup Nazi" after, sold his genuine Pennsylvania smoked sausage.  If you looked at him wrong, he told you to "Go to the back of the line!"  (No Garlic for You!)  But it was all in good fun, the crowds gathered to enjoy his banter and we bought some sausage from him, too.

Local food, local garlic, even garlic ice cream (which I didn't try in 2010, but have tried since). 

A good time was had by all.

Postscript - my hope is that Gilroy will, in their own time, hold this festival again.