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Events honor vets, celebrate pets
The Gwinnett Daily Post and the City of Suwanee will host a Memorial Weekend concert on May 23 while Star 94’s Petapalooza on May 17 will celebrate our furry, four-legged “best friends.”
Petapalooza
Star 94s annual “pet party in the park” is a tail-wagging event. This year’s party for the pooches takes place from noon-10 p.m. Saturday, May 17, at Town Center Park. Frisbee and agility demonstrations, discussions with pet experts, pet adoptions with the Gwinnett Humane Society, dog events, and live music will fill the day.
Contests will include pet/owner look alike, biggest dog, smallest dog, ugliest dog, best dressed pet, and best dog trick.
 
The first dog show/demonstration will begin at 1 p.m. Live musical entertainment begins at 4:30 p.m. Check Star 94’s website for a complete schedule of events and updated information about the stage lineup.
Off-site parking will be available at the Shawnee North Business Center, 305 Lawrenceville-Suwanee Road. Free shuttle transportation between off-site parking and Town Center Park will be provided for people and dogs from noon-10:30 p.m. (Canines wishing to ride the bus must be under 25 pounds and on a leash.)
Pet products, food, and beverages, including beer and wine, will be available for purchase. No alcohol may be brought into Town Center Park.
Memorial Day Weekend Concert
 
The 43-piece concert band of the United States Air Force Reserve returns to the Town Center stage for a Memorial Day Weekend concert Friday, May 23. Also dropping in will be members of the Silver Wings parachute demonstration team.
The Sugar Hill Stakes Choir will open with a 7 p.m. performance. About 7:30 p.m. members of the Silver Wings parachute team will land at Town Center Park. The U.S. Air Force Reserve concert band performs at 8 p.m.
The largest and most versatile unit of the Band of the United States Air Force Reserve, the concert band’s varied repertoire ranges from classical overtures through Sousa marches to Broadway show tunes, popular music, movie themes, and patriotic favorites.
Food and beverages will be available for purchase or bring your own picnic. No glass bottles or alcohol please. Bring low-back lawn chairs, blankets, and a canned good to be donated to the Gwinnett County Food Bank.
World’s Greatest Backyard Athlete
Do you have what it takes?
When the Life is good Festival comes to Town Center Park Saturday, June 14, most folks are in for a unique, laid-back yet interactive, kind of a day. It’ll be like a really great, most-fun-ever day in your own backyard – only it will all take place in Suwanee’s “front yard.”
But a few select individuals are in for an intense, all-out battle as they vie to be crowned the Atlanta area’s World’s Greatest Backyard Athlete. The approximately 25 competitors will demonstrate their serious skills at events like sack races, whiffle ball homerun derby, watermelon seed spitting, and obstacle-course burger-building.
Allyson McMillan, area director for Suwanee’s Primrose Schools, is ready for the challenge. “I’m going to start running every night,” she says. “I’m thrilled. I’m totally excited. I just want to go out and beat all the men.”
Suwanee Day planning committee member and businessman Scott Snead hasn’t encountered such critical competition since his elementary school field days. He’s going to practice his seed-spitting skills, though he promises not to do so in public.
And Senior Pastor Bobby Linkous at Shadowbrook Baptist Church figures that if David could slay Goliath then he’s got just as good a chance as anyone at being crowned the World’s Greatest Backyard Athlete.
 Do you have what it takes? If you’d like to be part of the World’s Greatest Backyard Athlete Competition at Suwanee’s Life is good Festival June 14, please contact Amy Doherty at adoherty@suwanee.com. All competitors agree to raise $500 for Project Joy, a nonprofit organization that uses play to strengthen and heal children whose lives have been impacted by trauma.
Flock to Greenway
for Art on a Limb
 This year’s Art on a Limb is sure to have folks flocking to the Suwanee Creek Greenway for their chance to find and keep a one-of-a-kind piece of artwork. The 2008 “finders keepers” celebration of nature and art features gourds painted to represent some of the birds that inhabit the popular four-mile trail. The birds have been created exclusively for Suwanee’s Art on a Limb by local artist Ingrid Bolton.
 Each day throughout the month of May, the City of Suwanee will hide two pieces from Bolton’s flock of gourds somewhere along the greenway. The birds may be placed anywhere along the trail, from the bridge that connects the greenway to George Pierce Park to the trailhead at Suwanee Creek Park and may include the new pedestrian connection to Town Center as well as Suwanee’s new soft surface trail. Whoever finds a piece of artwork may keep it.
For Art on a Limb, Bolton originally tried painting magnolias and other flowers on gourds, but determined that they were too tame. “I like nature and I like birds,” she says. “I thought that doing birds would allow me to use the interesting shapes of various gourds and to create something fitting to be hung from trees along the greenway. Some of them have real character.”
Those not lucky enough to sight one of Bolton’s birds along the greenway may purchase one beginning June 2 for $25 at Suwanee City Hall or the Life is good festival at Town Center Park on June 14.
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