A successful Italian American Festival downtown

AS A CONFIRMED Italophile, I would be remiss if I didn't pass out a huge compliment to the sponsors of the past week end's Italian American Festival at Lock 3 in downtown Akron. The synergy between the Council of Italian-American Societies of Summit County and the Plusquellic Administration successfully connected hundreds of volunteers and patrons ( along with a welcome blessing from the weatherman).

Deputy Mayor Dave Lieberth said the crowd of 52,000 for the three-day event exceeded expectations . "We demonstrated we can handle major events - and there was not a single problem for the police," Lieberth said.

When the Society decided to move from Cuyahoga Falls to downtown Akron this year, among the first concerns of the critics of the move was that security would be a problem in an urban center. Didn't happen. Meantime, on the plus side were the additional space available to the vendors and the various attractions (slides, cliff climbing, high flying swings) for the kids.

Nancy and I arrived Sunday afternoon and wandered through a big crowd. We ended up at the pavilion in time to enjoy the all-in-the family four-member music group, Cavalieri Reale, on stage. It's a great outfit from Cleveland, proving once again that not everything in that city is a bust. I even bought one of the Cavalieri Reale CDs. I do what I can to help Cleveland, and in this instance it was an excellent investment.

Not being grumpy when I came home Sunday evening, I waited until Monday morning to write this - and I still was not ready to complain about Republicans.