It’s been a lonely winter holed up here in Oregon without any kite festivals to attend… But, we’ve been busy getting in touch with people from all over the world in our efforts to stimulate and connect the kiting community as a whole. As a global body, we’re in a year of rebuilding and are poised to redefine and reinvent ourselves, as well as how we reach the general public with this wonderful pastime we call kiting.
There is a recurring theme coming to the surface again and again this year… Grassroots and “organic” projects focusing on setting up festivals and competition with a minimal budget, making them accessible cost-wise, and encouraging an influx of fresh faces with programs tailored to the new participants! People all over the country are taking personal responsibility for kiting in their area… It might be time to ask, what can you do to help?
This will surely the busiest year of my young life with over a dozen festivals on the Kitelife Tour for 2005, beefing up our bi-monthly issues, joining the AKA Sport Kite Committee, expanding our archival projects and flying with a brand new sport kite team based in Vancouver WA… I’m not complaining mind you, and I look forward to every step in each of these tasks.
We’ll be providing daily updates from more events than ever this year, with day-by-day coverage and photos from KTAI, Wildwood, the World Sport Kite Championships, WISKF and the AKA Grand Nationals… Always an extremely popular feature of our site, you can count on tons of exciting content from each of these.
I’m also pleased to say that the Kite Lines archival project is underway… We’ve secured two full collections (thanks to Harold Ames and Felix Cartagena) which we’ll be scanning and processing into full color PDF format and archiving on the Kitelife site for all to view! These will be available for download free of charge, and will provide an incredible resource for plans, articles, interviews and much more spanning from 1977 to 2000.
With nearly 3,000 pages and 50 issues in 13 volumes, this is the largest undertaking we’ve ever had here at Kitelife… But oh, so worth it! If you would like to assist us in this project, please consider becoming an official subscriber and take an active role in helping us reach new levels of kite media on the world wide web.
Our goal is to make available one volume (four issues) at a time, in-between our regular bi-monthly issues… Look for the first volume to be posted sometime in mid to late February!
Cordially yours,
John Barresi
Publisher/Editor
Kitelife Magazine
Next Prize Drawing to be held soon!
