Small Town Memorial Day Celebration

We were at our cabin in Knox County, Ohio, the week of Memorial Day, 

so we went to the parade and ceremony in nearby Danville.

Actually, we arrived too late to see most of the parade, but at least I got some pictures of the part of the parade I wanted to see most--the riding club for special needs kids.

PELIA stand for "Positive Equine Learning in Action".

I love it that the horses wore red, white and blue ribbons on their tails.

After parading down Main Street, they passed a bank  and a large pasture before turning right to go into a farm at the edge of town.  All the cows that had been calmly grazing near the bank building turned and dashed like crazy things across the field as if to greet the horses.  

After the parade, a brief ceremony honored the sons and daughters of Danville who had died defending their country. The high school band played "America the Beautiful."

Then a speaker talked about a recently fallen soldier.  Her voice broke. She had the mother come forward and she hugged her.  The words on the T-shirts on the couple in the photo captured the spirit of the day: "Danville: Small Town, Big Heart." 

Woman in a Chador

I think what the woman was wearing is called a chador. She was dressed head to toe in a flowing black robe. Only her eyes were visible. Passing through the hall at the Senior Center, she paused for a few minutes to watch our Zumba class. Eight men and women of various ethnicities faced an instructor who led them through a fast-paced dance combining elements of salsa, cumbia and cha-cha. I wonder what she thought. Was she scandalized or did she long to join us? 

Such women are becoming a more common sight in our town. About twenty years ago, I was in the the old mall when a chador-wearing woman rode down the escalator with her husband and two sons. The man and his boys were dressed like any other American male in July. They wore shorts, tee shirts, sandals and baseball caps. Maybe her black tent-like garment protected the woman from the summer heat, but it looked heavy. Somehow I doubt it. A nearby African-American man who was watching them turned to his little boy and said, "Now you just know they're not from around here." 

Easter-Egg Colors

It only seems like it's rained 40 days and 40 nights. The last two weeks have been a succession of grey skies and dripping rain.  The sun was out briefly yesterday, but we had a thunderstorm last night.

Two weeks ago we were at our cabin in Knox County, OH. Half the days were warm and sunny, but the weather turned chilly and rainy toward the end of our week. Sunday, April 24th, the day we drove home, was warm and sunny. We saw a pretty sight on the highway near Berlin, OH--a group of Amish or Mennonite girls and women, all wearing white caps and all riding bikes, wearing dresses the color of Easter eggs--pink, lavender, yellow, robins-egg blue, aqua.

Laurel's Main Street Festival 21 Years Ago

Laurel has held its Main Street Festival on the second Saturday of May for more than 30 years. At 7 AM, the street is closed to traffic. Vendors start setting up their booths.  At 9 AM, the parade starts.

Our church is at Sixth and Main Street. Every year we have games for kids, a crafts booth and a book sale. This year I worked at the book sale.

Our younger daughter is going through stuff at their house, getting ready to move. She found a letter I wrote to her 21 years ago while she was living in Colorado. In the letter, I mentioned the Main Street Festival:

"Phil and Margaret and Margaret's friend, G., showed up at about 2, when Margaret was supposed to work (running one of the kids' games). They all wore "Stop the Stadium" buttons. They brought one for me. I said I was no longer opposed to the stadium. I had had a change of heart. When I arrived at the festival early in the morning, I'd caught the end of the parade. They had saved the best for last: the Redskinettes!  How brave they were to come out on such a cold and rainy day in those skimpy costumes, which were now plastered to their shapely little bodies. The Redskins band was there too. When they struck up "Hail to the Redskins," my heart and my resistance melted. The stadium might not be so bad. In fact, it would be wonderful. I wondered how long it would take me to learn to play the clarinet." 

I wasn't really in favor of the stadium. Our streets were congested enough as it was.  The Laurel Clergy Association opposed the stadium because people going home after church would get caught up in heavy stadium traffic. The owners of the Redskins endeared themselves to no one when they said, "Well, just change the time you have church." Eventually, the Redskins built a stadium in Landover, slowing traffic on I-495 ("the Beltway")  to a crawl on game days.

How times have changed. Although the question about where to build the stadium was settled long ago, a new controversy has arisen over changing the team's name. I'm also somewhat amused by my reference to the "shapely little bodies." What was I really saying about the Redskinettes, I ask myself. I think I was putting them down. Back then, I saw them as airheaded bimbos. After watching a TV series recently on tryouts for the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, I changed my mind. I now see these women as real athletes who take their dancing seriously. Sure, the cheerleaders are mostly about NFL big business--the costumes, the big hair, the loss of a place on the squad because your short legs don't look right in the tall boots--but the tears of the losers are real, and, for the record, some of the winners are rather plain when you see them up close.

The Festival has also changed. The food, for instance. Now you can get Pad Thai and falafel, which  few of us had ever tasted in 1994. The merchandise in the craft booths has also changed over time. Beany Babies are out; knock-off apparel for pricey American Girl dolls is in. This year, for the first time, a group of Amish rented a booth and were selling handcrafted wooden items. Several women, wearing long, black aprons and little white caps,  came in to use our restroom and stayed for awhile to browse the books.