are people not loving the parade? I could change the topic -- should I?

No, mistress. Making it harder just makes us respect you more.

Or something. Nothing wrong with a difficult topic. Theme. Challenge thing.

What Bev said. Having to work a little makes you a better writer.

Having to work a little makes you a better writer.

What? Crap. I thought drinking a lot made you a better writer.

I thought drinking a lot made you a better writer

Ah, you subscribe to the Irish/Hemingway School of Writing.

Okay. As a valentine to Susan W.'s writing endeavor:

Antigone in Wellington's Army

M'Morran went to parade fully arrayed, with his weapon loaded. The village in Portugal was a league away from anything else: disease had been running wild through the assembled regiment, so it was broken up by company into the countryside. Lieutenant Dickinson had spent the winter talking only to himself and to the Sergeant, and the Sergeant was not much of a conversationalist.

M'Morran went to parade in his Highland red, fresh from an excursion with his village girl. Word was that she would be following, when they set forth back into Spain come warm weather. It was March, and the hares were sure to be mad somewhere, and Lieutenant Dickinson had been watching that girl for a long, long time.

M'Morran went to his execution smartly, with beatific calm. The Sergeant kept the company in order, because no replacement had been assigned for Lieutenant Dickinson.They used the same tree to hang M'Morran and to lash up his body as a warning to the soldiers. The villagers watched from a distance.

The girl tried to cut down the body, later, but someone had posted guards. The Highlanders did not march away till late Spring, and M'Morran was hard to recognize.

Wow, Nutty, that gave me a chill!

And for my entry, here's an epilogue to my novel that may or may not ever be, because while I know that Jack and Anna attempt to emigrate to Canada in 1813, I haven't yet decided if the ship they're on is captured by the Americans, forcing them to winter in Boston, with various circumstances uniting to make them decide to stay. It all depends on the little boy in this vignette--with a name like Arthur Horatio Arrington Wilcox, he must have a story of his own, but he hasn't told me what it is yet, so I don't know if he needs to be Canadian or American.

---------------------------------------

Boston, July 4, 1814

“So-jers! So-jers!” The little boy wanted to join the parade, and did his best to fling himself out of his father’s one whole arm. The surrounding crowd smiled indulgently upon him, and indeed upon his whole family—a handsome, thriving child, and surely the father must’ve been a soldier himself before he lost the arm, so tall and lean and proud he was. And the mother, too, a rare beauty and so heavily pregnant that not a few worried the firing of the guns and cannon in praise of Liberty might startle her into delivering right there in the street.

“What do you think?” Anna asked.

“That it’s strange to even think of settling here, under the circumstances. And yet. I doubt we’d find a finer farm in Canada, and it wouldn’t be such a journey for you and the new one.” Jack settled the squirming Arthur more firmly on his hip.

“Well. It wouldn’t be the first strange path fate ever set out for us.”

We are a parade of America’s worst nightmares, a public service announcement made flesh. There are disabilities here I’ve never seen, which is saying something as between my life and mom’s professional history, I’d considered myself kind of an authority on how the human form can be spindled, folded or mutilated.

Quietly, I say “Damn,” and pray “Space Cowboy” leaves my head, really fast. I picked it up yesterday in the Capitol, trying to be quiet; it’s always like that. I wonder for the millionth time what a pompatus is...shake my head.

Or are we? Because as we roll single-file down the muggy DC summer streets, being careful not to scraggle and thereby become arrestable traffic hazards, we are an army.

“Free our brothers! Free our sisters! Free our people, now!”

We need one of those cadence things...

Ain’t no sense in looking back,

Jody’s got a broken back...(in cadence Jody gets everything, nobody knows why)

One two three four

One two three four..

But I am a newbie, and very few people care what I think. But when I get my turn I flip the chant, just once, to say “Free our sisters! Free our brothers! Free our people, now.”

I wonder if anyone but me noticed. But maybe that’s enough.

Damn, the darkness in this theme choice is intense. Executions -Nutty, do you know When I Was On Horseback, the dead soldier's lament? It reminded me.

Liberation Day

The twenty-fifth of August, and Paris is en fete. All along the Champs Elysees, people watch from the broad sidewalks. The boulevard is alive, horses with their mounted chevaliers, enormous tasselled hats bobbing in unity, foot soldiers with ceremonial arms marching ahead. People laugh, applaud, take pictures.

Some, the older among the crowd, are silent, lifting a hand or a wineglass in a quiet salute. These are the people who remember what this day celebrates, the allies marching into Paris, the end of the Nazi reign.

I slip away from the throng and go to Notre Dame, to light a candle for those who are gone.

July 4th, Wisconsin

We forgot what day it was and don’t realize at first what the tractors decorated with streamers and homemade signs and the pick-ups loaded with kids dressed as soldiers or spacemen mean. It’s a parade, making its ragtag way down the three block main street of this small Midwestern town. We, the visitors from New York, are amused by enthusiasm of the folks lining the street for the fire trucks and the cheerleaders moving slowly by.

But as we drive around the corner to get a better look, we see the secret of this parade. At the end of the block the paraders park and stand by the side of the street and cheer the next group coming by. The whole town not only watches the parade, they ARE the parade. We climb out of the car and start cheering too.

take my hand

She calls, "Our people are coming!" You can hear them already.

Jason is first, dreads flying, hands a blur on the djembe. Then Psalters, musicians and dancers. David is next with his custom horn. You wouldn’t expect him in this parade.

"Let’s go, let’s go!" and I am gone, whirling into the celebration. Behind, he stands with his camera, "But she’s got my hat," and comes along.

Tribal and punk, gothic and rocker. An old man with an umbrella joins the throng. By the time we come back we have quadrupled. "Only at Cornerstone," she says, and laughs. Community. Worship.