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Kites dominate the sky in Fitchburg during worldwide peace celebration (with photos)

Shawn Doherty  —  10/13/2008 8:47 am

FITCHBURG -- Mary Poppins would be happy: Dozens of families went to McKee Park on Sunday to fly kites.

There were celled kites, Delta kites, box kites, pyramid kites, Rokaku kites from Japan, Chinese dragon kites, bird kites, diamond kites, rainbow kites, pink octopus kites, inflatable kites, whale kites, dog kites, and even a creepy scuba diver kite.

And running back and forth shrieking and laughing under them — and sometimes tangled inside them — were children of all ages.

Gazing upwards with that peculiar combination of anxiety and elation that is familiar to anyone who has ever flown a kite were Ramond and Lynn Tian, along with Grace Deng.

Hovering high in the winds over them was the huge face of a beautiful woman from China. Whenever the yellow kite swooped downwards the children screamed with excitement.

"Look! It's going down! It's going down!" yelled Ramond, 8.

And then when it soared back up into the blue they screamed again.

"It's going to blow us away!" said Grace, 7.

"Help, help!" Lynn, 5, called out.

And their mothers ran to the rescue over and over.

Around the world, in Germany and Hungary and Thailand and Africa and Russia and 30 other countries, similar scenes took place today. It was the 23rd annual World Kite Day, a celebration of peace also known as One Sky One World.

"Underneath all this fun our purpose is to fly kites for peace," said Ray Blum, one of the event's organizers and an avid kiter ever since his family gave him one when he retired from teaching seven years ago.

The winds ignore country borders, said Paul Fieber of Fitchburg, another organizer. "Maybe if the world leaders had flown kites together as kids, things would be different," Fieber said wistfully.

He added that he realizes world politics are complex, and kites are not. "It's just a simple toy," he said.

Simple and ancient. Most accounts trace the first kites back to China 3,000 years ago, where flying kites is still a national pastime. Lynn and Ramond's mother Yongmei Bai pointed to the kites dancing overhead and said that in China, the sky would be full.

"Where we come from in China, there are kites everywhere. All kinds of kites in the sky, very, very high," said Bai, who grew up in Anhui Province.

But for many of these children, it was the first time they had ever flown a kite.

"This is much funner than football or video games," declared Colton Klug, 12, as he tried to tame a borrowed kite. "It's outside and it's active and there's all kinds of tricks you can do."  

Haddy Senghore, 8, was one of the children who teamed up to make 100 paper kites in the morning. After running madly back and forth for five minutes, she finally got her homemade kite aloft and tied it to a pole.

"It's trained!" she said proudly.

Most of the nearly 40 kites in the air at any one time were quite trained, in fact. That's because there were many veteran kiters in the crowd.

Tony and Ann Killip drove 219 miles from their home in Illinois for the festival, their trunk packed with some of the two dozen or so kites they own, including a 52-square foot orange-and-white striped beauty that Tony designed and made himself.

The couple has traveled from North Dakota to Texas to the Niagara Falls to Hawaii to "everything in between" for kiting fairs and festivals, but Wisconsin, they said, is one of their favorite places to go.

"There's a lot of kiters up here, there's good wind, and nice parks and facilities," Tony said, as he and his wife sat in their foldable camping chairs and watched their nylon birds swoop and dive, flapping and rustling and fluttering all the way.

Kiting is more than a hobby. It can be a passion and even an obsession.

"Once you get started, it's kinda like a sickness," said Pam Bowden, who drove to Fitchburg from Wisconsin Rapids with her husband Dale.

Pam recalls getting kites in her Easter baskets and making tails out of paper and old sheets for them. Growing up in farm country, she said, "we didn't have a lot of other activities to do. So we were creative."

Dale remembers kites being a tradition his dad taught him on the farm where he grew up, too.

"When my son was born," Dale said, "first thing he got for Christmas was a kite with dinosaurs on it."

The couple estimates that they own close to 75 kites now. They just ordered a custom-made $400 inflatable gray cat with green eyes to match their land-locked pet.

Times are tough right now in Wisconsin Rapids, where Dale works in a paper mill. "I don't want to say the town is dying," he said. "But it is struggling. It is not good. When kids get out of school, there's nothing for them there."

But Dale knows that at least some things are heavenly — one way to leave your troubles on the ground, for a little while at least.

Get some string and some rip-stop nylon and cast your hopes into the winds.

Go fly a kite.

sdoherty@madison.com

Shawn Doherty  —  10/13/2008 8:47 am