Here in Portland, Oregon we have an annual Rose Festival. It’s a big to-do to celebrate Portland’s roses, or so I’ve been told. Portland is almost as famous for its roses as for the local professional basketball team, the JailblazersTrailblazers.

The Rose Festival lasts for almost two weeks…and…every year when the Rose Festival starts, the rain rains more than usual.

I have, however, done very little research on this and this very little research proves, sort of, that two weeks prior to the start of the Rose Festival there is a dry spell sometimes.

Imagine that, if the Rose Festival were moved up two weeks Portand could have, maybe, a dry Rose Festival. I realize this bucks a tradition that goes back years when the founders of the Rose Festival were doing wine testing every day for hours and hours.

But I ask, “Should mankind be stuck with silly traditions just because we now consume more beer than wine (ok, ok, that’s only true for some Portlanders)? No. I said, “No!”

The reason I’m adamant about having a dry Rose Festival is because a part of the festival is going to the “Fun Center”. The Fun Center is in a park down near Portland’s famous, extremely polluted Willamette River, somewhat near Portland’s famous superfund site.

Every year it rains and rains and the rain turns the Fun Center into one big mud pool with small but expensive carnival rides. This may be fun for the kids and the people who like to watch people in business suits get all muddy, but it’s not fun for those of us who like to sit on the grass to listen to the various bands that play in covered tents and sometimes outside.

So I say, let’s move the Rose Festival up two weeks.