Festival Was Too Good For New London
By Steven Slosberg
Published on 2/21/2006 in The Day
Was it all a dream? Hordes of disciples and fanatics cheering and crowding along the railroad tracks in New London as a train carrying not Gandhi, but Rachael Ray, the Food Network's personification of bubble and squeak, pulled into Union Station.
Peter Benchley, the lately departed Stonington resident and author of “Jaws,” upstaging his pet creation, the carnivorous Great White, in regaling festival folks from aboard an even more imposing Great White, the Coast Guard Barque Eagle.
The barrel-chested and mightily gifted Rick Bragg holding forth, in his Alabama drawl, inside a tent overflowing with admirers on a billowing September afternoon, as waves rippled across the harbor behind him and breezes teased both tarps and sails.
On or about the premises that weekend, as well, were Frank Deford, Tom Brokaw, Jacques Pepin, Luanne Rice, Dominick Dunne, Carol Higgins Clark, Tony Horwitz and the children's favorite, Avi.
Was it all a dream?
A mere three years ago, for three days in September, New London was in the national lens, or however much of an audience C-Span commands. But more than being honored with such notable exposure, the city made an absolutely enviable spectacle of itself, hosting the third annual Boats, Books & Brushes Festival.
And sure enough, New London awoke from its gaudy dream of capturing grandeur and good feeling, if even for a moment, and shot this beautiful thing to pieces.
“On a hiatus,” is what Jane Glover, the city's deputy mayor and president of Sail New London, the festival's sponsoring organization, had to say last week about reports of its demise.
