 This is Dennis McMahon, welcoming you to Positively Vermont, and my special guest today is Alex McCracken from Gateway Festivals, who is going to be speaking with us about the Alburg Totality Festival coming up in beautiful Alburg, Vermont. Welcome, Alex. Thank you, Dennis. It's my pleasure to be here today. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. Yeah, I'm here on behalf of Gateway Festivals. I am the board of the chair for the nonprofit that's putting together this amazing event for Alburg, Vermont. We couldn't be more excited. We have a full three-day spread of events planned to celebrate the eclipse from April 6th to April 8th. We're going to be on the shores of Lake Champlain here in beautiful Alburg. We have live music. We have vendors and drinks and food. It's going to be a really incredible time for people of all ages to come out and join us for this truly once-in-a-lifetime celestial event. We're pulling out all the stops to welcome Vermonters, out-of-staters, people from all across the world to join us in Alburg to celebrate the first total solar eclipse to be visible in North America since 2017, and the last one to be visible here in this century. So we're going to be very excited to celebrate this with everybody. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your organization. Yeah, absolutely. I'd be happy to. Well, without me personally, I actually came to Vermont the long way around through the Midwest and through Oregon. So I was in Oregon for the last eclipse in 2017, which was such an incredible experience to see that firsthand. And I feel very lucky to be here on this coast for this one. Gateway festivals started this year. It is a volunteer-led and volunteer-organized nonprofit here in town. It is entirely based on the ideas of community engagement and economic development for Alburg. We are very focused on bringing events into the town that will help foster economic development, foster community growth and engagement. We really see a bright future here in Alburg, and we feel that our organization can help be a catalyst for some of that growth and change that people want to see in our community. We're made up, like I said, entirely a volunteer board. And we also have folks from town leadership who have been engaged with us as well. And we're, excuse me, we're very excited to have such a wide group of people that are really committed to making Alburg the best place it can possibly be, and to bringing these events in for the community. We're hoping that this is going to be the first event in a long-term series of events for gateway festivals. We're hoping that the Totality Festival will be just the inaugural event for many years to come. Tell us a little bit about the town of Alburg. A little bit of its history, geography, location, and how do people get there? Yeah, absolutely. That's great questions because I know a lot of folks aren't super aware of us. We are just a stone's throw away from Canada up on the Lake Champlain Islands. Originally we were actually a very bustling rural road town and had a lot of industry here with shipping coming up to Canada, but also over to New York and into mainland Vermont to our east. We're a peninsula actually, so we are part of the islands, but we consider ourselves a little separate because we are a peninsula coming down from Canada. As such, we have an identity as kind of the gateway town. We are the first stop in from Canada. We're the first stop in from New York. We're the first stop in from Franklin County. When you're coming into the islands, you're coming into Vermont, Alburg really is the gateway to all of it. We've had such a strong history of economic development based off that in our past. It's been a hard stretch for a little while for Alburg and for small towns like Alburg and Vermont. We have about 2,000 people. It's a very small town. The development that we have seen in some other parts of the state hasn't always reached up here to more rural areas of Vermont. Part of what we're hoping to do with this project is bring more folks up to see everything that Alburg has to offer to get folks coming up to the islands to explore what we have going on up here all year round and to kind of foster some of that economic development here where we have an amazing opportunity to do so with our geography and also with our spirit of community that is really indelibly Vermont. It's a hard working, very strong community here. Tell us a little about this eclipse that's going to happen and actually how does Alburg fit into that? Specifically on the scientific level. This is going to be the first total eclipse since 2017. Tell us a little bit about the eclipse and the background of that. Yeah, absolutely. I'd be happy to. This is going to be such a cool event. It is a major celestial event. It happens very rarely where the moon is going to completely eclipse the sun and everything below in the zone of totality will be in complete darkness for a few minutes. It is really, really, really cool. Day becomes night. Animals react. Things are going to be really, it's a very strange environment, but it really is such a once in a lifetime experience. As you noted, the last eclipse to hit North America was 2017, which ran a very different route than this one. The zone of totality for this upcoming eclipse stretches in a band from Texas all the way here to New England. For folks who are in the band of totality, we are going to get three and a half minutes of complete darkness. That is going to happen at 326 p.m. on Monday, April 8th. We in Alburg are right on the line in the zone of totality. We have some of the longest period of darkness of anywhere in state or anywhere in the world. We really do get to say, and this is such an exciting thing, that Alburg is going to be at the center of the universe for three and a half minutes on April 8th. We are really excited about that. It is an incredible opportunity for our town, for the whole region. The amount of people that we are expecting to come up for this is really extraordinary. We are expecting historic numbers in Vermont and in the islands that are really blowing away some of the other events we have had in the past here. We are hopeful that we will be able to welcome a really large amount of people from out of state, from other parts of Vermont, into our community to celebrate this. We really could not be more excited about it. Well, who put this all together? It sounds like an amazing effort. It must have started with some idea, and I am curious as to who came up with all this, linking Alburg into the eclipse. Yeah, well, I mean, a lot of folks in town have been thinking about this for a long time, because we have known for a little while that we were going to be in this path. But the Gateway Festival's project really started with myself and Josie Henry and a few other dedicated volunteers, who now sit on our executive board, who have been in these conversations for months now, putting together the groundwork to do something really incredible for the town. You know, opportunities like this don't come around for a small town like Alburg very much. So we really have been pulling out all the stops to try to make everyone in the community feel engaged with the project. We've got folks from the Legion Outpost to the library who are putting on events for the festival. We're engaging a number of businesses in the area as our peninsula partners. We also have some wonderful partnerships with businesses in town who are helping us put together this festival on a real shoestring budget. And it's been really incredible to see the work that everybody's put in, the dedication from our volunteers, from the folks in the community. It's really been a whole community effort. And it's been really incredible to see, and we're so excited to be putting this together, to be putting something that is so representative of our community and being able to share that with Vermont and with the rest of the world. We're tremendously excited about that opportunity. And we're going to be putting something together that's really professional. And, you know, I think that's part of what we're hoping to surprise people with. When folks think about Alburg, they don't necessarily think about a really professionally put together operation. And so what we want to do here is show them that we have a lot here in Alburg to contribute, and we have a lot to share with the rest of the state. And we hope that going forward, we'll have folks coming up here from out of state, from other parts of Vermont to engage with our festivals for years to come. About how many people do you expect to attend? It's a moving number, but I can say that the state of Vermont as a whole is expecting at least 200,000 people. That amount is going to be centered in the Northwest. And St. Aldens is expecting 60,000 people. Based on the information that we have, I'm hesitant to provide a number, but I'm hoping that we'll get somewhere in the realm of several thousand people. Well, how is the viewing of this going to be set up? Well, when this event occurs, are people going to be on stands or are they just going to be looking up at the sky, like one of those close encounters movies? How is this going to go? Firstly, I'm a big fan of that movie, so I love the reference. But I'll say, Dennis, that the nice thing about the eclipse is that it's visible from pretty much anywhere if you're in the totality. The sun is unobscured from all parts of our festival grounds. So we've tracked where it'll be roughly at 3.26 in the afternoon. We've set up a few viewing areas for people to consolidate and watch the eclipse. But also it's going to be amazing no matter where you are on the peninsula. So we've set up several suggestions for folks to see it from nearby state parks on the peninsula. We have the center of town and the parade grounds. We're going to have excellent viewing. And we also have our friends at Green Mountain Fireworks who are preparing a finale fireworks show after the eclipse. And so they'll have a nice viewing area where we can direct folks to view the fireworks at the tail end of the eclipse. One thing you always hear about when we have an eclipse anywhere, precautions about viewing. Are there any precautions that are going to be in place? Or can people just look up at it? And you know what I'm referring to. So do people need special visors? Yes, absolutely. Well, firstly, we are doing our due diligence to make sure we're messaging proper eclipse safety viewing for everybody. That's very, very important. Do not look directly at an eclipse that will cause permanent eye damage. We will be reinforcing that message more and more as we get closer. I'm sure everybody will be sick of hearing us say it by the time we're there, but don't look directly at an eclipse. We have eclipse glasses. So we have several thousands eclipse glasses that will be distributing for free at the festival. We're currently in the process of procuring more and we have additional vendors who are going to be coming in to supply additional glasses. So we will have a wide variety and assortment of eclipse glasses and viewers that people can use at the festival. But we always recommend that folks bring extras, grab an extra pair, make sure you pick one up. People are going to be giving them out pretty much constantly from now until the eclipse. And I believe there are also resources through many towns and organizations like we've been able to procure glasses through the state. So that has been helpful for us to make sure that we have those resources available for everybody because of course, safety and health are always our number one priority. Those are factors that we're bearing in mind as we continue eclipse planning and setting up logistics for the festival. Safety and security are always top of mind. And what about the scientific community and schools? Are they being involved in this in any way? Yeah, well we've been in talks with a few scientifically oriented folks from professors to meteorologists to kind of our local eclipse enthusiasts to put together some talks and educational workshops. So we're definitely going to be prioritizing the scientific and educational component of this. We've got some folks who are going to be coming to talk to the community about those things and we're really excited to hear from people who know a lot more than I do about all of this. And we're certainly very excited about that. Excellent. And are there going to be exhibits or different booths or other venues where merchants and organizations will be on display besides the eclipse? Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things we're most excited about is the ability to showcase our local and regional economy. So on top of our partners and vendors that have already come to work with us, we're really excited to be able to showcase the local businesses in Alberg, the folks on the islands and in Franklin County. We are going to have a wide variety of vendors and a whole marketplace set up for folks to showcase their goods and their products and their businesses. We're really excited to be able to include as many folks as we possibly can. We've got a pretty large parade ground, so we're able to accommodate a wide assortment of businesses and organizations. So we're encouraging folks to get in contact with us through our website. If you have a business that you'd like to sign up with us as a vendor or a partner, we would love to hear from you. We have a really exciting event going on here. We've got a lot of cool stuff planned and this is really an opportunity for folks to showcase what they do on not just a stage for the entire state, but a national and global stage for this event. This is really going to be a historic moment for Vermont and at the moment we are the only three-day festival planned for that weekend. So we really are intending to be Vermont's premier eclipse celebration for the weekend of April 6th to 8th. I know this is always a concern with such events, but tell us about some of your partners, so to speak, in security and law enforcement and parking and how are you going to accommodate that kind of thing? Who are you working with? Yeah, well, again, I think this is another place where having the whole community effort has been really crucial. We're a small community, everybody knows everybody, but we can really come together to accomplish some incredible things. Our local fire and rescue folks have been engaged in this process, local town leadership has been engaged in this process, our town planner, our town moderator who is also helping to coordinate security. We have just kind of a full community buy-in on making sure that we're taking care of the things we need to take care of to ensure a safe and successful event. So we have already made the arrangements necessary with emergency transportation, with parking and traffic direction, with sanitation and trash. The less fun things that you always have to think about putting on an event like this, but what's really made it happen is the community. And for every need, there's somebody here in Albert that knows how to fill it. And we've just gotten an incredible amount of buy-in from the folks here in town who want to see this happen, who want to really participate in something that is such an amazing and unique opportunity for Albert. And so we're getting everybody involved that we can and an incredible core of volunteers. Great. What about follow-ups? What's going to be happening after this in terms of Albert's interest in economic development and contacts with the rest of the world and trade and communications? What's going to be the follow-up? Yeah, that's fine. That is a great question because that's really what a lot of this is angled towards is how do we promote Albert and ensure that we can create economic growth that is sustainable and helps this community remain affordable and remain economically viable. So what we have tried to do here with Gateway Festivals is highlight and develop the identity of Valberg as the gateway town. We are right here at the crossroads in northern Vermont. Everything comes through us on route two from New York, from Montreal, from St. Albans, up from Burlington. So for us, we really are at crossroads, both literally geographically and metaphorically in our town's development and where we go from here as a community in our identity. And so I think what we're hoping to accomplish here in a lot of ways is a revitalization of Albert. We've seen some of that already in the last few years. We've had some businesses moving into town, which is a really wonderful thing to see. And that growth, I think we're moving in the right direction and we're hoping that Gateway Festivals can really be a catalyst for that. Back in 2017, there were several towns that did a similar clips event in rural parts of the western U of S in Wyoming and Oregon, and they experienced an incredible boost from this. They found that their investment paid off significantly in economic development, invisibility, and also in folks, importantly, that had never been to their communities before, but came for this event and really enjoyed it and decided that maybe they would come back later. So that those first time visitors who plan to come back again is such a valuable and important demographic for development and for ensuring that Albert continues to enjoy economic growth in the way that I think it really can. So those are the, you know, what we're hoping to do is put together something that really impresses people, that really wows them, that really shows them that Albert has a lot of potential and a lot of growth ahead of us, and we have an opportunity here to provide a platform for that. Great. Now this is going to go from April 6th to April 8th. Give us the times and how people can get in there and maybe if they want to leave. Well, we hope they never do. Welcome. We welcome them up to town. So yeah, so it's April 6th. We're starting off the festivities with a parade on Saturday, April 6th. I believe that the parade grounds start at, I think our festival grounds open at 11. I'll double check those dates for you, but they're on our website. And we're running all Sunday the 7th. So from 9am to 7pm, festival grounds will be open. And then on Monday the 8th, which is eclipse day, we'll be opening the parade grounds around 9am. And the main event is at 3.26pm. And we'll be wrapping up with fireworks right after that. Sorry, go ahead. Well, that is wonderful. That really sounds very exciting. And are there any other organizations maybe in the region that are you working with other than the ones you mentioned locally? Yeah, well, we have a Peninsula Partners program that has been really successful so far. We have a larger sponsorship to your level for national or state organizations that have a little bit more cash to burn. But we also want to acknowledge that the local businesses here on the islands and in the Peninsula really and in Franklin County really deserve to be highlighted in this event. And so what we put together is on our website, you can find it, it's called the Peninsula Partners program, where for a much reduced rate, we have an opportunity for businesses in Grand Island, Franklin County to become sponsors with us and become involved in the festival in that way. And we are always welcoming more people to come and join us on that. So far we have several really amazing Peninsula Partners, Green Mountain Fireworks, Kramer and Ken, Brill Ford. And again, the Islander as well, I would like to plug the Islander, who is about to celebrate their 50th anniversary here on the islands as our local paper. So, we're really excited to be able to partner with our Peninsula Partners. We're looking forward to joining with more organizations and we encourage anybody who may want to get involved to reach out through our website. That's great, Alex. Give us that website again. Just say it. We're going to put it on the notes, but tell us that website. Yeah, absolutely. The website is gatewayfestivals.com and you can go there to register for the event. It is a completely free event. We don't need any money. We don't want any money. We want to put this on for the community, but we want to make sure that we get an accurate headcount. So, if you are able to register, we encourage you to do so. If you're interested in reaching out to become a volunteer, a partner or a sponsor, or if you have a business that you'd like to set up a vendor stall at our marketplace, please get in contact with us through the website. Again, that's gatewayfestivals.com. That's great. Well, thank you very much, Alex. Hopefully, you'll be getting a lot of participation from our viewers. I want to thank you for appearing on Positively Vermont. My guest has been Alex McCracken of Gateway Festival, speaking about the upcoming Albert Totality Festival celebrating the total eclipse of the sun on April 6th through April 8th. This is Dennis McMahon, and thank you for watching.