At the State House with the Mass Cultural Council

Drove out to Boston today. The Massachusetts Cultural Council announced the recipients of this year's Gold Star Awards. The Gold Star Awards honor exemplary projects funded by Local Cultural Councils across the state, and the Easthampton Cultural Council had nominated Easthampton City Arts to receive an award for the Easthampton Bear Fest. Six awards were given in all, and ECA was honored with one! Fellow ECA Coordinating Committee member, John Polak, and I attended to accept the award on behalf of ECA. Marcia Morrison, from the Easthampton Cultural Council was there too. For those of you who don't know, I am the Coordinator for Easthampton City Arts (yes, I work too! btaylorquilts has not gotten me to "Quit Your Day Job" status yet! ... and not that I'd want to either, it's a great job and I love it!!) Hall of Flags - In the State House, this hall displays City and Town flags from across the Commonwealth. It's beautiful.

It is the room where the MCC Program was held. There were over 100 communities represented in the room, many of which got to meet individually with their state reps. to discuss their needs and plans for the coming year. In all, there are over 2,400 volunteers that operate the Local Cultural Councils around the state, one of the largest networks of its kind in the country (according to Rep. John Keenan of Salem. Cake. We also got to do a little exploring around the State House. The whole building is decorated in mosaics just like this one above. This motif fills the room in the photo below all around the edge and the center of the room. There are large displays of flags in this area and they all had an amazing history, one of which still has the blood stains of the infantryman that carried the "colors" into battle.

John's got a spaceship landing on his head! Oh no!

This is me in the House Gallery. This is where the Representatives meet and vote. We also snuck into the Senator's Gallery but you cannot take photos in there, darnit.

Represenative John Scibak announcing Easthampton City Arts
Here's Rep. Scibak after the announcement, with our award!
It was too quickly over, and we had a freezing walk back to the car. Here is the Frog Pond Skating Rink in the Commons. It was snowing out and raw but people were still out skating.

John at Emmet's on Beacon Street....they have excellent shepard's pie!