By Donald Wittkowski
What’s the perfect antidote for a noisy, raucous, headache-inducing presidential election?
A giant mute button, perhaps? Well, maybe. But, believe it or not, there is someplace that celebrates the sweet sounds of silence.
So, shut up and listen. We’ll tell you what it is.
It’s called the Quiet Festival. The wacky annual event in Ocean City has grown in importance this year, coming just four days after the conclusion of the eardrum-shattering yell fest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Novena Weigly, 8, and Reagan DeVlieger, 10, both of Ocean City, pet a hamster.
Giving children and adults an escape from all the Election Day racket, the family-friendly Quiet Festival was a decidedly tranquil affair Saturday.
Kids dressed up their dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, turtles, hamsters and even hermit crabs in colorful costumes in a quest to win the coveted Quiet Pet Contest.
The Quiet Festival is held at the Ocean City Community Center, a complex that includes the public library. Fortunately, there was no need for any librarians to rush in and shush anyone.
Everyone who attended the event received a “I Survived the 2016 Presidential Campaign” certificate to make it official.
Mark Soifer, the city’s public relations director who dreamed up the event, said the Quiet Festival allows people to appreciate the simple things in life.
“We would like to offer some quiet things to do to get over this,” he said, referring to the election. “Read some poetry, pet your dog, take a walk, fly a kite.”
Mary Eileen Durante, left, and her mother, Eileen Durante, both of Northfield, show off their costumed pet guinea pigs and rabbit.
Soifer complained (softly) that the volume of the presidential campaign was far too loud, including the political ads and the nasty insults exchanged by the candidates.
“There have been other lively elections, but not like this one,” he said. “It was brutal, especially the way they insulted each other.”
But at the Quiet Festival, things were sedate. Children sat on reclining chairs and pretended to fall asleep. Then they began to snore, quietly, of course.
“The quietest snorer is the winner,” declared Soifer. “This is the Snore at the Shore Contest. It’s famous around the world.”
Even the animals were quiet. Moose, a 9-year-old dachshund dressed up in a hotdog costume, didn’t dare bark.
“He does not bark period. Isn’t that so funny?” said Moose’s owner, Ann Godfrey, of Ocean City.
“We heard him bark once,” chimed in Godfrey’s 8-year-old daughter, Carly, a second-grader at the Ocean City Primary School.
Quinn Schlembach, 7, of Ocean City, plays inside an expandable toy sphere.
Carly’s father, Andy Godfrey, insisted that Moose even snores quietly. “It’s a soft snore, he said. “He’s not tearing the wallpaper off.”
Novena Weigly, 8, a third-grader in Ocean City, let her well-behaved pet hamster, Penny, out of the cage for everybody to pet.
“No, Penny doesn’t make a sound,” Novena said.
Novena’s father, Bryan Weigly, confirmed it. “There’s no noise, just the sound of the hamster wheel,” he said.
Perhaps the quietest of them all were three turtles owned by Karen and Charlie Buckley of Turtlesinger Inc., a nonprofit charity that educates the public about turtles.
During the Quiet Festival, the turtles crawled along the top of a table, not making a sound.
Charlie Buckley explained that some turtles can have extremely long lives, even 100 years or more.
That’s a long time to be quiet.
