Latest Winterfest is largest one yet
After the holidays are long gone, during the midst of 15-degree weather snap, the Garden City Bird Sanctuary/Tanners Pond Environmental Center (GCBS/TPEC) held its annual Winterfest celebration earlier this month. Members of the community gathered together over an outdoor fire and hot chocolate to celebrate the Winterfest ceremony during the twilight hours of a recent Saturday afternoon.
Even in the bitter wintry weather, members of the community gathered to celebrate the Garden City Bird Sanctuary’s seventh annual Winterfest, which is an exclusive holiday for the bird sanctuary and for its volunteers who value the conservation of their environment along with preserving ecological aspects of it.
Winterfest 2015 was initiated by about three dozen participants congregating and filling birdfeeders and distributing them throughout the Bird Sanctuary, while other members decided to decorate trees, drink hot chocolate, munch on little desserts and walk around the trails.
GCBS President John Cronin welcomed everyone with his introductory remarks. Event attendees gathered for a candle lighting ceremony that featured poetry being read aloud along with commentaries on the community and accomplishments at the GCBS over the past year. Adding to the festive air was how everyone in attendance wound up being festooned with Mardi Gras necklaces.
“I’ve been thinking a great deal about community and what it means. Just as family is composed by the bonds of love that transcend bloodlines and include all those dear to us, so too communities are not a simple geographical aggregate of people,” Cronin said.
According to Cronin, the Winterfest is an opportunity for members of their community to have communal hope so that the new and fresh year will enable them to be more unified as a society.
Members use three principle characteristics to celebrate the Winterfest, environmental dispensation, volunteerism and hope.
Each year at the GCBS Winterfest, awards are presented to volunteers for their outstanding work along with their immense contributions and services. This year GCBS awarded Bernie McCabe as volunteer of the year, while Maria Bevilacqua, Emma Ryan and Victoria Grover were awarded for inspiration and leadership.
Environmentalist and nature lover Robert Alvey is the founder of the GCBS. He is also an EPA geologist whose mantra is, “Volunteering isn’t what you give or what you get, it’s about who you become.”
The bird sanctuary has been in Alvey’s care for about 20 years, during which he has engaged the services of more than 10,000 volunteers from Scouts, local schools and community groups. According to members of GCBS, it was Alvey who decided to call the GCBS January winter event the “Winterfest.”
“This is the biggest turnout we’ve had and it’s nice to see people interested in coming out,” Alvey said, while he was filling a number of bird feeders.
“We all fattened up on Christmas time and we want the little birds to have a little extra food now so they can fatten up in January,” he quipped.
In addition to reflecting on life at the GCBS and its celebration, a list of names was addressed for persons whom trees were planted for at the GCBS site in honor or in memory of dear ones who have passed. In 2014 trees were planted in memory of Pasquale Ingrisano and Allison Mahoney and trees were planted in honor of Alexis and Suzie Alvey, Philip Flax, EPA, Mike and Christina Levchuck, Thomas Ferris, Daniel McElroy, Joseph Monaco and Joseph Lo Re.
To bring closure to their Winterfest ceremony, participants collaborated and held up candles and together they said, “All winters must come to an end.”
