WENDELL — The traditional Old Home Day celebration returns Saturday, Aug. 9.
The musical lineup on the town common will look different than last year, consisting of The Can Collectors, The Bear Mountain Boys, 2 Car Garage and The Shadow Twisters.
“This year we have a super fun music lineup,” said Christine Texiera, of the event’s all-volunteer organizing committee. “I’m so excited.”
Wendell Old Home Day is going back to being held in August after the organizing group decided to hold it in September last year because the weather would be a little cooler and fewer people would be out of town on vacation. The event was not held in 2020 or 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic but returned in 2022.
Texiera said Old Home Day will last from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will be a rededication of the maple tree on the town common and the presentation of a Citizen of the Year award to a winner who has not yet been announced. There will also be at least 46 vendors and public information booths, and a parade with the theme of “Love and Peace” at 11 a.m.
Alistair MacMartin, who helps organize Old Home Day, said the event will also have a children’s tent with youth activities and prizes. Diemand Farm and Ginger Love Cafe will sell food, and gourmet popcorn will be for sale.
“The music has always been a cool part of it,” he said of Old Home Day, adding that there will be a handful of massage tables there.
The event will also feature “PHOTO: Sixty-Five Years of Edward Judice Art,” presented by the Wendell Historical Society. This one-day exhibit will be on display at 10 Center St.
Judice’s photography career began in New York in the late 1950s. By the end of the 1960s, he was a well-established commercial photographer for retail outlets, modeling agencies and magazines.
He moved to the Pioneer Valley in 1970, living first in Wendell and then Northampton starting in 1991. The Polaroid Corporation and Disney were among his major clients.
It was in his Orange studio that Judice began exploring the gum bichromate process, a 19th-century developing method that transformed his art photography to a new level of visual experience. In 2012, Judice moved to Framingham, where he continued producing photographic art and where he now resides.