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I headed out to do laundry this evening, around 6pm-ish, then walked down to Cascadilla Creek to take a photo from the Tioga St. bridge. (I have been doing a sort of time lapse photo chronicle since last summer -- taking the same shot every time I cross that bridge, which is every day I go to work and some other days as well, if I'm going to church, running errands, or just out taking a walk.) And then I thought I might as well walk back to the laundromat via Cayuga St. (which is technically out of the way, but whatever) and see if the Ithaca Festival parade had started yet, or if they were still on the "volunteers run a mile" portion of the evening. In the event, I got there just as the mayor and a couple other people were walking down the street to open the parade.
I ended up watching the whole thing.
It's a weird sort of parade, even for community parades. It is very, very Ithaca -- the float I saw that got the biggest cheers, for instance, was the anti-fracking display drawn on a truck powered by vegetable oil. Also Planned Parenthood had a float advertising their new location, with a song set to the tune of "We Are Family." It went like this: We have IUDs, and other great bargains like these. Come and plan your family, at our new facility. We have condoms too, one for him, for her, and for you, and then I can't remember the closing couplet, but you get the idea. [ETA: final couplet as follows: We take insurance, yes we do, and a sliding scale if you need to!] And they were directly followed by a group from the local Baptist church waving rainbow flags and proclaiming that God loves everyone.
Ithaca, you know?
There was also the Volvo ballet, the various preschools and Montessori schools, the Celtic festival pipe-and-drum band, the firefighters, various groups with dogs, various martial arts and yoga and dance and cheerleading schools, the Columbian culture group, the adult ESL students, the Commuters on Scooters, a riding barn with kids on horses, Primitive Pursuits (which teaches kids wilderness skills, I think?), the mobile sauna (no, seriously, a mobile sauna; the people came out in towels and hit each other with wet leafy branches), a marching fiddle band, contra dancers, a bunch of other things I'm forgetting, and then the motorcycle contingent to close it all out.
I kept tearing up at odd moments, which baffles me. I mean, I do get sniffly at adorable heartwarming animal videos and stuff sometimes -- particularly if the editing and music are designed for maximum tearjerking effect -- but not so much over random real life things. Today I was tearing up over stuff that intellectually left me cold, and while simultaneously being annoyed at an obnoxiously loud woman standing next to me who kept exhorting the kids in the front row to stand up and clap for random groups.
Maybe it's the sense-of-community thing? People working together and showing appreciation for each other's efforts? Even if I don't care for the end product, the process is admirable. Or something like that, I guess.
Anyway!
The really weird thing -- even weirder than my inexplicable sniffles -- is that it didn't rain. It always rains on the Ithaca Festival parade. We even had cloudy and threatening skies all day. But no rain.
The forecast claims there is a slight chance of rain overnight or Friday evening, but Saturday and Sunday should be dry (and even sunny!). I don't know what is going on, but clearly something is fundamentally unbalanced in the cosmos. *wry*
I ended up watching the whole thing.
It's a weird sort of parade, even for community parades. It is very, very Ithaca -- the float I saw that got the biggest cheers, for instance, was the anti-fracking display drawn on a truck powered by vegetable oil. Also Planned Parenthood had a float advertising their new location, with a song set to the tune of "We Are Family." It went like this: We have IUDs, and other great bargains like these. Come and plan your family, at our new facility. We have condoms too, one for him, for her, and for you, and then I can't remember the closing couplet, but you get the idea. [ETA: final couplet as follows: We take insurance, yes we do, and a sliding scale if you need to!] And they were directly followed by a group from the local Baptist church waving rainbow flags and proclaiming that God loves everyone.
Ithaca, you know?
There was also the Volvo ballet, the various preschools and Montessori schools, the Celtic festival pipe-and-drum band, the firefighters, various groups with dogs, various martial arts and yoga and dance and cheerleading schools, the Columbian culture group, the adult ESL students, the Commuters on Scooters, a riding barn with kids on horses, Primitive Pursuits (which teaches kids wilderness skills, I think?), the mobile sauna (no, seriously, a mobile sauna; the people came out in towels and hit each other with wet leafy branches), a marching fiddle band, contra dancers, a bunch of other things I'm forgetting, and then the motorcycle contingent to close it all out.
I kept tearing up at odd moments, which baffles me. I mean, I do get sniffly at adorable heartwarming animal videos and stuff sometimes -- particularly if the editing and music are designed for maximum tearjerking effect -- but not so much over random real life things. Today I was tearing up over stuff that intellectually left me cold, and while simultaneously being annoyed at an obnoxiously loud woman standing next to me who kept exhorting the kids in the front row to stand up and clap for random groups.
Maybe it's the sense-of-community thing? People working together and showing appreciation for each other's efforts? Even if I don't care for the end product, the process is admirable. Or something like that, I guess.
Anyway!
The really weird thing -- even weirder than my inexplicable sniffles -- is that it didn't rain. It always rains on the Ithaca Festival parade. We even had cloudy and threatening skies all day. But no rain.
The forecast claims there is a slight chance of rain overnight or Friday evening, but Saturday and Sunday should be dry (and even sunny!). I don't know what is going on, but clearly something is fundamentally unbalanced in the cosmos. *wry*
