Bellefonte in Bloom: Project Daffodil has finished it’s fifth and final year. The Bellefonte Garden Club bought 10,000 bulbs in September, and all were handed out for free to local individual volunteers, churches and organizations.

Overall, Project Daffodil bought and distributed 111,000 bulbs in the Bellefonte area since 2003. We worked with Penn State to plant 7,000 around the University Park Airport and along Rock Road, and hundreds went along the roadways in Spring and Benner townships to sort of fill in between U. Park and Bellefonte.

When combined with 100,000-plus that the University planted all over campus, we realized nearly a quarter-million blooms in total gave us an opportunity to create a new tourist attraction that would renew itself each spring. We created a promotional program to draw visitors into Centre County, and to drive through campus and the countryside between campus and Bellefonte. Local businesses are starting to devise ways to attract the attention of those additional visitors, and we’ve seen visitors drive in from Lock Haven and Phillipsburg and other areas a bit further out, and plan to do more promotions in regional media starting next spring.  ( Download a copy of the “Daffodil Drive” brochure to see how that project is described.) .

But all in all, the project has been a success and has been well-received by the community, giving free enjoyment to everyone. And, it’s building into something that will give us a a new way to attract paying customers to local businesses.

The question now is: What’s next? Do you want to see some sort of annual daffodil project continue? Should we try to create a new spring festival around the time of the bloom (April 1-May 15, approx.) ? Or, should we just be satisfied with what we’ve got and enjoy it.

We’ve thought about this, and although we (Doug and Wilda) have completed our original commitment and need to move on to other things, we’d like to put a couple of ideas on the table, and to ask you to add your own.

1. One idea is to set up a program to solicit prepaid subscriptions, and for the Garden Club or another local organization to act as the buying agent. Buying in bulk means we’ve been able to get a very, very good price on each bulb — well below retail for much higher quality bulbs than you can get at most garden stores. It’s possible that any organization that takes this on would want to add a small markup as a fund-raising idea.
2. A second idea would be for this to be sponsored and organized by local businesses, as an investment in building tourism in the spring, when there are few other activities other than the Blue-White game to bring in visitors.
3. A third possibility — which might just be a one-time project — would be to partner with the Centre County Cancer Society to sell bulbs for $5 each in memory of a loved one, with a public space preserved somewhere for the bulbs to be planted as a memorial garden. This would be primarily a fundraising tool for the Cancer Society, but could also provide some revenue for a local co-sponsor. The Garden Club and the Cancer Society have discussed this, and both are interested, but nothing has been decided yet.

But these may not be the way to go, and we’re fine with what everyone else decides.

So, what do you think Bellefonte ought to do about daffodils in the future? Do you want to keep it going? This blog is a place for public discussions like this — brand new — and it is a way to have a virtual town hall about subjects of general interest.

To contribute your ideas, click on the “register” link down there in the right column and set up an account. You don’t have to use your real name, but it would be a good idea to make your identity known, especially in order to keep the conversation going out in the real world.

We’re looking forward to hearing your ideas and getting this conversation going.

Please forward this URL to friends, family and co-workers if you know someone who has an interest in daffodils, Bellefonte, and/or the Daffodil Drive, too.

Doug and Wilda Stanfield
dwstanfield@bellefonte.com

Picked up this little (big?) factoid at a conference last week. There are currently approximately 9 exabytes of stored information out here on the internets. And that estimate is disputed by some who think it’s much larger.

Not being familiar with that term, I looked it up. Caveat: The amount of data transmitted over the internet is increasing at exponential rates, so what was true at the beginning of this sentence 5 seconds ago (I type slowly) is no longer so.

Wikipedia:

“The amount of information people upload, download and share on the Internet is growing (due in large part to video, audio and photo applications) at an exponential rate, while the capacity of the Internet, its bandwidth, is limited and susceptible to a “flood” of data equal to multiple exabytes. “One exabyte is the equivalent of about 50,000 years of DVD quality video.”

50. Thousand. Years.

My daily personal data footprint is nearly 9,000MB, if I’m an average user.

And people are reporting that they’re overloaded and want us communicators to be more precise.

Oh, on a related note. … Contributing to this issue is the estimate that there are 75 blogs created every minute, worldwide.

74 are never posted to more than once. No idea if this is true or not, but one of the speakers made the claim.

The Bellefonte.com community website has just undergone a redesign and reorganization. More tweaking needs to be done, but we would like to know what you like about it, what you dislike, what’s missing, etc.

You can use this post to make your thoughts known. Just click on the “register” link down there in the right-hand column if you don’t already have a posting account. If you do, just click on the “login” link and comment away.

URL: http://bellefonte.com/

As I write this, the presidential election is only a week away, and the number of attack ads is climbing on my TV. Some country-western star even called me the other night to lobby for my vote. He didn’t seem to want to answer any questions though, as he wasn’t real. If felt good to hang up on him. I’m thankful that Vonage gives us Caller ID for free, as it sure eliminates a lot of wasted time talking to people I don’t want to talk to.

Aside from the political silliness, though, we’re going through a bad economic time. It probably will get worse. I was just wondering what you’re going through in your life. We don’t need you to tell us who you are (unless you want to), but it’d be interesting if you could tell a bit of your personal experience with the economic issues. Home ownership under threat? Financing school for your kids? Worried about your job, or your retirement?

What’s going on with you? You can add a comment to share your news.

This site is a brand-new way for people to share their personal perspectives on a variety of topics. You are welcome  here.

There are a few guidelines to remember.

One is that the moderators of this site reserve the right to remove any content that is deemed, in their judgment, to be offensive, obscene or inappropriate for a public site. That said, we are not in the business of censoring differing points of view on subjects that can generate some heat. Heat’s fine, but if you can’t express yourself without personal attacks or deliberately trollish behavior, you’ll be banned and your comments removed. You are always able to go out and start your own blog, too.

The only other guideline (we may flesh this out as need arises, but wanted to keep it as simple as possible) is that we’re mostly interested in perspectives about life in and around Centre County, particularly in the Bellefonte area. There are national issues that affect us here, of course, but we hope this site will be used to air differing views and, most importantly, add to the facts and information we all need as a self-governing people.

Now that the housekeeping is out of the way, let us say again how glad we are you’re here. We hope you will follow the 3 rules a wise teacher once gave her elementary class on the first day of school: “Take care of yourself, take care of each other, and take care of this place.”

When you think about it, what more is there to know?