Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Why are there scarecrows in downtown Fredericksburg?

So you may have noticed a lot of scarecrow themed decor in downtown Fredericksburg with the planters

and windows and with the flags. And this week we're going to tell you what that's all about.

All right, so on this week's edition I'm with John Coker who is with the Rappahannock Rotary Club.

and Rappahannock Rotary Club for the past six years has been very involved in a downtown

promotion called ScarecrowFest and that's going on now throughout the month of October. And so

John thanks for joining us today. And why don't you just tell us about what ScarecrowFest is.

Well ScarecrowFest started six years ago where we had the downtown businesses we wanted kind of a

win-win of downtown businesses make their own scarecrows. And then the people the community

would come downtown to vote on those as a means of attracting people to downtown Fredericksburg.

So it's grown until this year's our sixth year and what's varied this year is we're not able to

have some of the activities downtown so we'll be having them off site at the Fredericksburg

Nationals Baseball Park. So that's what we're doing this year. And that offsite event you

mentioned will be October 24th right? Scarecrows and Bats at Fred Nats is what it'll be called. All

right Scarecrow and Bats this year October 24th from 5 to 7:30 at the Nationals Park. We will

have a scarecrow trail, we'll have candy being giving out by the Rappahannock Rotarian will be

doing that. And they'll be social distancing as well as there'll be games to play on the

big screen tv and then there'll be a movie that night. Well it sounds great and as far as what's

going on downtown this month so it looks like there's 36 businesses that are participating

that have scarecrows in their windows and talk a little bit about how the

voting works for it and the different themes and how you vote for your favorite scarecrow.

Well we're so appreciative. In the last few years we've had up to 70 scarecrows and we're

a little nervous this year but 36 wonderful businesses have made their homemade scarecrows.

And they'll be displayed on each one of their business. There'll be a sign that says vote for

the famous categories. There's four categories of: most business related, most historic, spookiest,

and funniest. And when people go in there they'll have ballots for you to fill out,

also there'll be QR codes by many of the scarecrows where you can digitally do it to vote.

So it's going on now and it ends Halloween day October 31st. And then all those votes

and ballots will be collected and we'll have the winners of those four particular categories

and an overall grand prize winner. And the winners can qualify for downtown main street gift cards,

is that right? Well people, they'll get plaques, the winners get plaques

but everyone that submits a ballot will be entered into a contest. And there will be

like several $50 gift certificates given. Drawn out from the people that have voted throughout the

whole ScarecrowFest. Okay great, well these brochures are great, the ballots are great

they show exactly who's participating and there's a map of downtown that shows

where the businesses the participating businesses are located and what theme they're in. So where

can people get these these official ballots? The ballots are at all the places that have scarecrows

as well as the Visitor Center, and online. You can go to the Fredericksburg Main Street online

website to get to vote digitally, but most important Visitors Center and the

businesses that have the scarecrows will have the ballots box. They've all been distributed.

Okay and again we mentioned Rappahannock Rotary but there's other organizations that have been

involved with putting us all together. So maybe give a shout out to them. We had the

Fredericksburg so kind of the charter member so to speak of the Fredericksburg Main Street

Fredericksburg Parent, Rappahannock Rotary. This year we have the Fredericksburg Parks

and Rec are helping with us. They're kind of helping in a major way at the Nationals Ballpark.

And Fredericksburg Nationals are helping by letting us participate at their ballpark.

So those are the main sponsors this year. Okay great. Well thanks John. Again this is in the

sixth year of this program and it's just a really creative great way to bring people downtown and

it's fun walking the streets and seeing all the creative scarecrows that people have done. So

kudos to you and to the Rappahannock Rotary Club and to the other partners,

Fredericksburg Parent and Fredericksburg Main Street, and Parks and Rec., and the Nationals for

making this possible. Well thank you for having us and also I want to put a shout out to you.

I watch this show I look forward to each week and I'm sure other people do so.

I'm being complimentary how nice it is for people to see what you do each week. So

thank you for that thanks John. I appreciate that and I'll extend the shout out to Jim Gaston who's

holding the camera. He puts together most of the editing and yeah so we appreciate your nice words.

Okay all right. So that'll do it for this week's edition. Thanks for watching

and we'll see you next week. Be sure to subscribe to our Youtube Channel and click on the

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