Past Posts

May 03, 2009

May Day parade

Yesterday was the infamous Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater May Day Parade!  A celebration of spring, liberal ideas and all things granola/crunchy!  Mom took care of Lewis and Art and I had a "special time", just the two of us.  I rode us over to the parade on the bike and darn, do I wish I had a picture of the dozens of bikes locked up to the same fence we were locked up to.  Anyway, the parade theme was, "This is our econmony.  Dig it!" or something like that.  I didn't have a program so I could really make sense of all the esoteric sections.  I don't really know what these pigs are about.  But they were fun!



Art and I had a great spot, right on the pavement with no one in front of us so we could see everything really well.  We stayed for nearly the whole parade - over an hour and a half!  We left when Art had to pee and the long stretch of politians and their supporters were coming through.  Local liberal celebrities like our mayor R.T. Rybak, State Rep Farheen Shaheen... people like that.   I bet Paul Wellstone was a major player in the May Day parade...

There were a bunch of people who had decorated their bikes with large paper mache constructions.  One was like a 10-foot, bicycle powered dragon fly, and its driver was tossing tootsie rolls and bit-o-honeys at the crowd.  Here you can see Art working on his bit-o-honey, completely oblivious to the giant spider passing by.


This is a fly.  I don't know what it means...


Art and I watched almost the entire parade in silence.  We rarely spoke.  I think I pointed out the dragonfly when it passed and one time he said, "A bee, Mama!" when a person dressed like a green bumble bee walked by, but mostly we just watched everything without talking.   When it was all over I asked him what he liked about the parade and he said, "Remember that candy, Mama?  That was fun!" and later he said there were people with funny feet.  "They didn't have this part", and he showed me his foot.  Oh!  He was talking about the stilt walkers!  And he also told my mom and Ben that one of the stilt walkers was a princess.  I don't know which one he thought was a princess or why, because neither of us talked about it.  It's kind of neat!   Everything he took away from the parade was something he noticed - that there were people giving out mud, that the big bear costumes had tongues and that there was a polar bear...  It was a really lovely afternoon and I'm just so glad we went.


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