Final “Totality in Tupper” plans reviewed at Friday’s planning session

by Dan McClelland

Seth McGowan, president of the Adirondack Sky Center and Observatory, has for more than a year directed much of the planning for Monday’s “Totality in Tupper.” He presided over the final planning meeting Friday. Joining him in the board room at L.P. Quinn Elementary School that is the main staging area for the eclipse event, were 15 or so members of the community and representing different organizations here who have been working with Seth for the past year, meeting monthly.

Joining Mr. McGowan that morning for the final wrap-up planning session were Natalie Zurek of the Adirondack Sky Center, Evie Longhurst of Tupper Arts, Michelle Clement of ROOST, Free Press Publisher Dan McClelland, Police Chief Eric Proulx and Sgt. Travis Farmer, Town Councilman Tim Larkin and Rick Godin, Leeanne Favreau, Nick Corcoran and Anna Stuckey- all of the Wild Center.

Others who have been involved with the planning but who were not present for the final session were the library’s Courtney Carey, Tupper Arts President Susan Delehanty, Sarah McGowan, Mark Moeller, Leslie Karasin and The Wild Center’s Hillary Logan-Dechene and Nick Gunn.

Mr. McGowan began the discussion by looking at the digital clock on his web site being streamed which showed ten days, four hours, 47 minutes until what he called “go time.”

“That’s the Totality time, but by now everyone is also amped up with their own activities that are part of the weekend-long event.

The Adirondack Sky Museum has dozens of activities planned for this coming weekend at its staging area at L.P. Quinn Elementary School. So does the Wild Center. An entire schedule of events is published inside this week.

Also planning events are the Goff-Nelson Memorial Library, Tupper
Arts at its headquarter on Park Street and the new Tupper Museum, which is staging an advance opening to show off its spiffy new quarters on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

“My purpose this morning is to bring everything back around to where we started. That is: creating an event that is fun, safe, educational and just a fantastic experience for the community so that people can come in” and be impressed at how well Tupper Lake has done this “and plan to come back and enjoy our community more when they have more time and when it’s not so crowded.”

“That was the premise of this whole group. Everyone had their compartments to deal with- the sky museum had its role to play, the Wild Center had its role, and no one was the overlord of this event, with the exception of The Almighty, himself.”

He said the sky center’s schedule of events for Sunday and Monday is complete. That too is found inside our issue this week.

He screened a map of the L.P. Quinn (also printed inside) that showed the various locations of the activity and merchandise tents, the food trucks, the locations of several media sources which are coming. Aerial drones will be flying above the event to gather what he called “future footage” for planetarium exhibits when it is built here in coming years.

Mr. McGowan said about five food truck operators have been engaged for Sunday and Monday.

“We have our speakers ready to be set up; our volunteer army ready to go!”

He said the school district and its very able building and grounds superintendent, Pierre St. Pierre will be running power lines to the various exhibitors on the fields around the school building this week.

There will be a solar telescope set up for public viewing, “as well as our live feeds to NASA.”

NASA officials are expected to be in attendance at the event.

In addition to the live feeds of the event to NASA, Good Guy Productions of Saranac Lake will also be streaming footage to the NASA channel, Mr. McGowan noted.

The video company’s live screens will also be set up on the grounds Monday.

“So we’re ready to go!” he told his volunteer board that morning.

“All of the equipment is starting to be moved to this building.” He praised the Tupper Lake Board of Education for its support of the solar event there- giving him, the former superintendent of schools, what he called “free rein” of the building and grounds.

“Any room, field or space we needed, the district has gone above and beyond to provide it to us!”

The complete sky center schedule of events is on its web site, with live links to what every activity is, he explained.

Most of those events are listed too on our inside pages this week.

“I hope everyone out there in the world has started to plan their own experience. We’ve been promoting not to wait to come and make a decision what you want to do when you get here, but instead look before you come through the events we’re doing, the events the Wild Center is doing, and make a plan in advance where you want to be at that ground zero moment!”

Many of the exhibits at the school will be on the large soccer field behind the school and bordering Park Street or on what has been dubbed “the Artemis Field,” which is the one below and beyond the parking lot.

Many of the sites at the school have been named for celestial or solar terms.

The school’s playing fields below that field next to the parking lot will also be available for people to gather- depending on how many come, he added.

The school and The Wild Center will be connected for this special event by the bus transportation route and by a primitive road and the fields that connect the two sites.

The Wild Center’s Leeanne Favreau said she and her facility colleagues will be using parking signs that ROOST furnished to guide visitors between the two places. Those signs will be erected on Thursday of this week, she expects.

“Most of our festivities begin on Saturday but we do have some starting on Friday, she told the group.

A list of the Wild Center events is also carried on our inside pages this week.

She said Wild Center video photographer Rick Godin will be live-streaming their events on You Tube all weekend, with links to the Wild Center’s various social media networks.

“The You Tube events can be embedded on any web page,” Mr. Godin explained to the group that morning. “That way when someone goes to one of your web pages, the You Tube footage is there.”

Ms. Favreau said the Wild Center’s Marketing Director Nick Gunn will be on site some of the weekend and she’ll be there when he isn’t to help “the streaming people” and others with their jobs.

She provided Mr. McGowan with several portable radios so he and others can be in constant contact with the Wild Center staffers through their new mobile communications system.

Cell phones will also connect officials at both sites, as a back up to the radios, it was noted.

Ms. Favreau said there will be medical response teams through the Tupper Lake Rescue Squad at both the Wild Center and the school on Monday.

“We are sold out for Monday for pre-registered tickets,” she was pleased to report that morning. She predicted the crowd Monday could be as big as the one that celebrated the opening of the Wild Center several decades ago. The opening day crowd approached 7,000 people.

On recent summer days, and especially since the opening of Wild Walk the facility has seen crowds of over 2,000 people a day. Monday’s sell-out event will at least double that. Saturday and Sunday will likely see a typical summer-time daily attendance, she thought.

Ms. Favreau said it is not uncommon for the crowd on any given day at The Wild Center to double or triple the pre-registered visitors.

“This event will likely be our largest event in our history, aside from our opening day” many years ago. “So this is super exciting!”

“We’re open 10a.m. to 6p.m. to the public on Monday. Our staff people will be coming on site starting at 6:30a.m. so we can prepare.”

She asked that the bus loops Monday not have a stop at The Wild Center until the 10a.m. opening, and Michelle Clement of ROOST, who developed the parking and bus systems, agreed to that.

Mr. McGowan thought too that was a good plan not to have guests arrive before the day’s opening.

Ms. Favreau figured that many of the early birds to the Wild Center might stop first at the school, since the “Totality in Tupper” starts there at 8a.m.

Natalie Zurek assured her the volunteers at the school wouldn’t send any visitors down to the Wild Center until 10a.m. that morning.

The bus routes conclude at 7p.m. and so there will be an effort at both places on Hosley to get visitors on the bus back to the various parking lots in advance of 7p.m.

“We will be announcing throughout the day, in addition to messaging from our greeters here, the importance of people knowing where their cars are parked and which bus route-blue or green- they should be on to get back to their vehicles, Mr. McGowan noted.

He said when the eclipse is over, the buses leaving the school grounds and the Wild Center will be going to the parking lots that are the farthest out first, like the Tupper Lake Golf Course. “These will be express buses, and they won’t stop on their way there through town.”

Mrs. Clement said “all the transportation information and maps are out there” on social media and the ROOST sites,” as well as by scanning the postcards the promotional agency had printed, which is also reprinted in our paper this week.

Mrs. Clement said signs have been printed and will be posted prominently indicating there will not be parking on either side of Hosley Ave. and the Country Club Road- to make room for buses on two of the major corridors of the new bus routes.

She said sections of the village municipal park- especially the lawn areas which are still very wet- will be also posted for no parking.

Mr. McGowan said the school district will have personnel at the bus garage on Monday so that if one of the buses encounters mechanical trouble, another bus from the fleet can be dispatched immediately.

He noted too there will be smaller events at the school grounds after the eclipse which people can stay and enjoy. They are designed to help curb what is expected to be a mass exodus from town late Monday.

“We’ll be re-running on our big screens some of the videos we captured before and during the event and some of the astrophotography shots taken of this solar eclipse,” he gave as one of the activities planned later Monday.

“We’re also thinking about screening the 2014 movie ‘Interstellar’ in the hours after after the eclipse to keep people on site longer,” he told the group.

Ms. Favreau said the Wild Center will continue some of their demonstrations like the glass blowing by Corning and the silent disco through to 6p.m. to try to help slow the exodus.

Her facility, she reported, has received some cancellations from regional schools who were planning a field trip that day to The Wild Center because those school officials are now worried about traffic congestion here on Monday.

Eclipse glasses required for the event are available from ROOST at its office at 2608 Main Street in Lake Placid and from the sky center at the eclipse staging area at L.P. Quinn. Mr. McGowan reported his organization purchased 20,000 pairs of glasses, and they are available free at the school site while supplies last.

Ms. Favreau predicted her organization has about 7,000 glasses to provide visitors.

The Wild Center will also have available what are called “disco balls” to provide hundreds of different sun projections in all directions- one of the fun things planned over the weekend.

There is an organization called Astronomers Without Borders that collects used eclipse glasses after each celestial event and stores them until the next one. The sky center is participating in this collection process after the event Monday and there will likely be bins at the school site to collect them as people leave, Mrs. Zurek reported at the Friday meeting.

Ms. Favreau said the Wild Center would like to do the same thing, using their Americorp volunteers to collect the used glasses and package them up.

She reported that the Astronomers Without Borders has changed its strategy from past eclipses, and is asking donor groups to store those discarded glasses until the group can collect them for the next event in future years.

The sky center organization will have two volunteers on each bus on Monday, serving as tour guides.

Michelle Clement noted that ROOST is encouraging the visitors to all communities to plan doing activities on Saturday and Sunday, while making Monday all about the eclipse and viewing it from their lodgings or a designated viewing place near them.

Mr. McGowan said his group has encouraged visitors in nearby communities of Lake Placid, Saranac Lake, Long Lake or Malone to visit the sky center’s events at the local school on Sunday, when things won’t be so congested as Monday.

There will be six food trucks at the school site on Monday but only Tupper’s PorkBusters BBQ will be there Sunday. The other five on Monday only are: The MacFactor, Perk and Pine Coffee, Big Bear ADK, Love, Peace and Grilled Cheese and 876 Jerk. At The Wild Center there will be three food trucks and a bakery stand on Saturday and Sunday. On Monday there will be a fourth food truck. Most will open at 10a.m. or 11a.m. that day.

Ms. Clement said of the local restaurants that are open here this week, several have expanded hours. Several local restaurants, however, will be closed Monday.

Some are selling single specialty items from their front doors or parking lot, she noted.

Ms. Favreau said they have contacted all of their pre-registered visitors to come prepared with coolers and snacks for a possible long ride home. -And bring cash, should there be cell phone interruptions and resulting credit card processing issues.

“Yes, bring coolers of snacks of drinks and food, but leave them in your car, because you may need that stuff on your way home,” Mr. McGowan agreed.

At the close of the hour-long the volunteers that day gave Mr. McGowan a round of applause for the work he put into the planning of what is expected to be the largest event of its kind to be held in this community, since the hey days of the Woodsmen’s Days in the 1990s.

Mr. McGowan also offered “a shout out” to Michelle Clement for her contributions to the various logistics of the event.