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Domino project: It’s fun with a message

By Noel Harris
News-Sentinel News Editor

At this year’s Lodi Grape Festival and Harvest Festival you will see people playing with dominoes, but don’t expect them to yell out multiples of five while slamming bones on a table.

This domino show has only one theme in mind: Educating the public about diseases.

The project’s creator, Nancy Kobert, of Kobert Animal Productions, came up with the idea as a way to inform the public about Exotic Newcastle disease, a malady that infects birds.

The ailment killed her bird act, thus forcing her to come up with a new show idea for fairs, Kobert said. She struggled to figure out what she was going to do, but one night while she was in bed, she sat up and thought, “I got it!”

Relating the illness to a domino effect, she figured she’d use the tiles to show how similar diseases can wipe out whole flocks with just one sick bird.

The show was first introduced six months ago at the California Midwinter Fair in Imperial County, Kobert said. The approximately 90-second display showcases up to 4,500 bones and 130 mouse traps. Without giving away too much, the last domino meets with the traps. It takes two people about five hours to set up the display, which is all done in front of the public eye.

All around the exhibit are signs explaining how various maladies affect agriculture and why dominoes are used to send this message.

Kobert enjoys the project because it brings a diverse audience, she said. She once saw some teens with mohawks next to a family with children in strollers, but all had grins on their faces, she said.

Mark Armstrong, general manager of the Lodi Grape Festival and Harvest Fair, said he got the idea to bring the show to Lodi at the Western Fair Association meeting in San Diego.

He was able to see a sample of the show on a video and “thought it would be cool to bring it to Lodi,” Armstrong said.

Kobert calls the show “deceptively soothing” and a “must-see,” but admits that the show may have helped her become more organized — or a bit obsessed.

“At restaurant tables, I catch myself lining up sugar packets,” she said.