OK, so we did miss the show…but we finally made it to Woodstock!

A long weekend in the Catskills included a Sunday afternoon excursion to Woodstock, NY. Whatever the town was like in the ’60s, today it seems to be a bustling arts and tourist mecca that was packed with people and cars. There is plenty of memorabilia referring to the music festival that made Woodstock famous and a wide variety of more contemporary goodies as well. It’s definitely worth a look if you’re traveling in the Catskills.

The Ohio State University Agricultural Extension Service sponsors an annual event called the Farm Science Review which is located in London, Ohio. I learned of this by happenstance while helping my students, Kesley Lynch and Jaeryn Flanik plan part of their project of photographing towns in Ohio that are named for cities in Europe. I expected this event to be a modest sized trade show with some educational seminars and lots of food vendors—much like a county fair, but without the carnival rides and games.

However, this is a HUGE event with a trade show that included every kind of farm equipment and technology currently on the market, and a few things that are, shall we say, “out there.” Imagine a control system that will drive a tractor over a field automatically to plant or harvest crops using a GPS guidance program with no operator intervention.

Seminars and demonstrations included everything from bee keeping to full scale demonstrations of plowing and harvesting equipment. The event site covered over two thousand acres which provided ample space for field demonstrations, the equipment show, and parking for what looked like about 10,000 pickup trucks (and a few cars as well). The main exhibition area was laid out in a grid of nine “streets,” each about a quarter mile long. A pair of good walking shoes is highly recommended.

Two of my photography students have started a project on Kickstarter.com to seek funding of a photo documentary project. They would like to photograph about a dozen small towns in Ohio that just happen to be named for major cities in Europe.

The idea for the project came about when the two students, Jaeryn Flanik and Kesley Lynch, were unable to participate in the international photo course that Lakeland offers each summer because of the high cost of the program. I pointed out to them that, while taking a trip to Europe certainly would be a valuable experience, excellent photography can be done anywhere and that documenting life in the small towns of Ohio could be a very interesting and socially important project. They soon realized that a collection of images coming from this idea could be the basis for an exhibition and a book that could be published in traditional printed form and also as an e-book that could be viewed on tablet devices and computers.

Thus the Kickstarter project was conceived. Please take a look at this on Kickstarter.com and, if the idea sounds good to you, you might want to support their project with a small donation. The students also have a Facebook Page for the project where you can view many more of the photographs that have been done so far. I do think this is a worthwhile project and have confidence that Jaeryn and Kesley can produce some interesting and valuable work. Please check it out and consider making a donation to fund the project. This kind of “crowdsource” funding may be the future of support for the arts. It’s great to see Lakeland students taking the initiative to create a project like this. Your support would be greatly appreciated.