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.

Nutty, do you know When I Was On Horseback, the dead soldier's lament?

No, never heard of it. Do you have an author/link?

She's old enough this time. She'll make it the whole way through. She's a big girl.

The thumping starts from around the corner. Bodies larger than hers shift and twist in her way so she leans into her mother's legs - not out of fear, just to keep safe.

She's lifted by strong and calloused hands and placed on a work-broadened shoulder.

Her fingers make braids into handles, and with a turn she can see them now - fringed headdresses, men on stilts, pounding and dancing and singing towards her.

She holds tighter. For balance. She's big now.

"Mummy! Jonkonnu a come!"

No, never heard of it. Do you have an author/link?

It's a traditional song, sung by a dead soldier.

When I was on horseback wasn't I pretty
When I was on horseback wasn't I gay
Wasn't I pretty when I entered Cork City
And met with my downfall on the fourteenth of May.

Six jolly soldiers to carry my coffin
Six jolly soldiers to march by my side
It's six jolly soldiers take a bunch of red roses
Then for to smell them as we go along.

Beat the drum slowly and play the pipes only
Play up the dead-march as we go along
And bring me to Tipperary and lay me down easy
I am a young soldier that never done wrong

(not a 100 words)

scott

He was young. 23? He was working two jobs and going to school. Dreaming of the future. She was maybe not the woman of his dreams, but they loved each other.

So when they found out, they wed. They honeymooned in Hawaii. The little bit of the dream that would be allowed them.

For my part, I tried to implement his changes in the factory. To make it easier for them. More efficient. It was all I could do.

I didn’t go to see him in the hospital. I didn’t feel I had the right. I hated him, really. We were from warring factions in the corporation, and we worked together with a vengeance.

I rode with the company’s president to the funeral. His secretary had a nicer car than I knew was available. But they weren’t going to the burial, so I needed a lift. I went with the warehouse laborers.

I had never seen that many cars in a funeral processional, running the red lights, weaving our way through the city. I wondered if the people who had to wait for us, watching the parade, knew that he had dreams.

gulps

It's supposed to be the biggest 4th of July parade in the country, and it goes past a block from my house. I sit in the shade in the front yard and watch people schlep coolers and chairs and kids and umbrellas over to University Avenue. They glare at me, sitting there in my rocking chair and sipping my iced tea.

I used to watch the parade, but the shade is preferable to the sun on the sidewalk. I can hear the bands just fine, and my favorite part of the parade comes to me.

The warplanes from Hill Air Force Base and the local airport rip the air right above my house. Sometimes I can hear them coming, sometimes it's only the movement against the mountains that warns me as the planes outrace the scream of their engines.

Hubby wanders outside after the last plane. "What was that third one that came over?"

"Let's see, we had the fighters in the Missing Man formation ..."

"F-16s."

"Then the World War II fighter..."

"Something with an Allison engine."

"The third one was a pair of trainers, I think."

"I knew it was multi-engine something."

"Then two biplanes."

"Stearmans."

"And, of course, the B-17."

"I knew that one."

He nods and toddles back inside. I watch the late arrivals stream along the sidewalk trying to catch enough of the parade to make all the effort worth it. I hear the B-17 circling the valley to head back up to Ogden and the base. In how many other countries can warplanes streak low over a city and be greeted by laughter?