My wife is a member of the Groton Federation of Democratic Women. Every year that illustrious group (average age 75, my wife is a youngster) sponsors a “float” (read: decorated truck) at the annual Groton Fourth of July Parade. Being unqualified for membership in that august organization, I am unable to man (woman?) the float, but I do come along to help get things ready.
This year, my main job was giving Barack Obama a spine. I explained to my wife, who defends him with the tenacity of a bull dog, that he really did need one. Even she admitted she wondered whether he would “bend with the wind”. As you can see below, I did in fact implant the spine, consisting of the Groton sign from the recent convention, which, along with a liberal use of duct tape did the trick and kept him standing tall throughout the parade, as you can see in the second picture.
I am informed he was generally well received by the crowd. Here are some of the ladies broiling in the sun, doing yeowoman’s work for the Democrats:
This year’s Grand Marshal was Barbara Tarbox, seen below, our newly retired Town Clerk, and faithful Drinking Liberally liberal drinker.
Part of my job is to take pictures, meaning I have to actually watch the parade, a much more onerous duty than participating in it. This year I had yet another new camera (believe me, I have a perfectly good rationale for getting it) to fool around with, so that helped relieve the boredom. Now, I think I can claim to be at least a competent photographer, but I freely admit that my skills as a cinematographer are sadly lacking. Nonetheless, I decided to try my hand at film, and boil the parade down to its essence by removing all the boring parts. Herewith what remains, almost eight minutes out of roughly two hours of tedium. I have removed, as it says in the unreadable opening title, all the firetrucks, ambulances, cops, politicians, and old people in cars, along with a lot of other truly boring stuff. Among the lowlights that never even made it into the camera, not to mention the cutting room floor, was the tea party contingent.
A reasonable argument can be made that this video is still too long by about 7 minutes, but in my humble opinion parades, especially Fourth of July parades, should feature marching bands, particularly fife and drum corps, so that’s what you’re getting, along with the Flock Theatre, which always put on a wonderfully bizarre show, and the Society for Creative Antiquity, about which the same can be said.
I’m pretty happy, by the way, with the performance of the camera, an Olympus EP-1. It’s primarily a camera, but takes decent video, though the “continuous focus” mode is sometimes a bit slow on the uptake.
UPDATE: A commenter pointed out that I misidentified the Society for Creative Anachronism. I can only plead fatigue.
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