Borscht Belt Fest was a resounding success this year, I’m happy to say. My summer job at the Borscht Belt Museum had me all over the place, helping to bring the festival together – you may have seen me weaving through the crowd, walkie-talkie in hand, or in one of the venues, tidying chairs, adjusting mics. I was one of many cogs in the festival machine, so I thought this week I would highlight some of those who brought Borscht Belt Fest to life, and some of the most memorable moments they created.

On Friday, I was in the kitchen with Chef Lillian all day making borscht. If you attended the festival, I’m sure you saw the giant vat of it at the museum booth, selling fast. Nearly every beet in that soup was scrubbed by me, while Lillian dashed around slinging pots and trays, making due with itty-bitty packages of dill from ShopRite. I’d never worked in any sort of commercial kitchen before (my first job was in retail, not food service), but Lillian was the ultimate cheerleader. She flew in all the way from California just to make borscht, and even when she had me peeling hard-boiled eggs, she made it look like fun.

The heart of the Borscht Belt Festival is performance, and we had all kinds – comedy shows, theater, panels, talks. I fixed the projector for Allen Frishman, the Borscht Belt Museum’s archival officer, who spoke about his vast collection of resort memorabilia. Like any good Borscht Belt performer, he had us all laughing as he flipped through photos of hotel-branded forks, speculating as to how guests might have snuck them out of the dining room.

On my way through the museum in the heat of the day, I caught a glimpse of Dan Levin, one of our integral museum board members, deep in conversation in the oral history booth. The museum is in the business of collecting stories from those who remember the Borscht Belt, and it looked like Dan’s interviewee was telling a good one.

I had a break and I went to see the Paradise Lost exhibit at the Hunt Building, a collection of photos by local photographer Isaac Jeffreys. He brought these crumbling hotels to life with lights and a certain graceful touch that made the audience audibly gasp when he gave his talk a few hours later. One photo in particular, depicting the once-grand swimming pool at the Pines Resort, now filled with plants, yet somehow still glowing with past, present and future, was striking.

That was the last show of the day, and festival producer Scott Frost came to my rescue at the end. It was 6 p.m. after 3 long days of festival, and he started stacking chairs. I don’t know how he found the energy. But no one was moving faster than the board president (my boss) Andrew Jacobs. I ran into him only a handful of times, and he was a whirlwind.

There are so many more I could mention, more board members and volunteers than I could name. So many little tornadoes of energy, fretting together to make the festival spin. It’s a good look for Ellenville, motion like this. I’ll never know what the village felt like 50 years ago in the Borscht Belt heyday, but this past weekend, Ellenville was so very alive.