What I like best about Luminara is how spontaneous it is, how improvised... how everyone who comes has a different experience... that there is no apparent "program" .  I love it that you can't possibly see everything.  Even though there is a plan, stuff just happens and lots of the best stuff is a complete surprise.  I love to see what people bring to the event to add to what is provided.  I love the beauty and the humor.

Every year I'm flabbergasted by a lantern  someone brings  or a costume someone wears. I remember talking once to an elderly couple who told me their lanterns were from pre-world war 2 Germany... that they hadn't had them out of their boxes for decades and here was a place they could shine.  I look for those lanterns every year. I love the feeling in the crowd... the wonderment... the sense of sharing something completely outside everyday experience. I am thrilled that so many people have embraced the festival, that thousands upon thousands of people: couples, families, groups of friends and neighbors, groups of youth and old ladies like my 85 year old mother feel comfortable together in the Park in the dark.

At some level that what this is about for me... bringing light into a dark place ...   I love that it is so insubstantial, so fragile, so fleeting and that it is conjured up by our collective imagination.

Terry Loeppky