northside parade
Tuesday, July 4th
got up and painted, first thing this morning. went downstairs around noon to watch the parade. bruce, Jason and the rest were down on the street. the crowd was gathering. I’d brought my camera and so I wandered around a bit looking for things to shoot, but pretty quickly wound back up in front of the bakery and settled in at a good spot where I could unobstructedly see the action.
the parade was great. it’s a long way from the semana santa processions in Antigua, this was definitely a usa style parade. I remember people in Guatemala asking me if we had parades in the US, I tried to describe july 4th parades and I remember not having a lot of luck explaining them – I even tried to describe the macy’s thanksgiving parade, but that was even harder… but I tried.
The thing about a good ol' american 4th of july parade is that it gives everybody in a community a chance to publicly voice their minds and proclaim a cause or belief that is important to them. the northside parade today seemed to have representatives from all aspects of this neighborhood, and watching it gave me a feeling of closeness to this place and helped me feel like I understand the people who live here a little more now than I did yesterday.
sometimes I feel like Cincinnati is even more foreign to me than Guatemala was, but it’s an oddly familiar kind of foreignness… a sort of deja vuish you-can-never-go-home-again kind of alienation. monica’s been my tourguide to the suburbs, and bruce has been taking care of me as the good friend he is… but I do feel like a fish out of water, or a foreign correspondent that, try as he might, just doesn’t quite get the local culture. at least I’m more adept at the language here than I was in guatemala.
The parade was fun and I met a few more of bruce’s friends, and everybody here is awfully nice and welcoming to me. I’ve spent the afternoon painting my pictures, and prepping these photos – I’ll put some of them below. I’m pretty happy with my new camera, and glad I had a chance to practice with it today... and the paintings are coming along, although it's always a little rough going at first, you know... I'll figure it all out though - never fear!
fireworks are exploding outside as I write this, maybe I’ll go watch!
got up and painted, first thing this morning. went downstairs around noon to watch the parade. bruce, Jason and the rest were down on the street. the crowd was gathering. I’d brought my camera and so I wandered around a bit looking for things to shoot, but pretty quickly wound back up in front of the bakery and settled in at a good spot where I could unobstructedly see the action.the parade was great. it’s a long way from the semana santa processions in Antigua, this was definitely a usa style parade. I remember people in Guatemala asking me if we had parades in the US, I tried to describe july 4th parades and I remember not having a lot of luck explaining them – I even tried to describe the macy’s thanksgiving parade, but that was even harder… but I tried.
The thing about a good ol' american 4th of july parade is that it gives everybody in a community a chance to publicly voice their minds and proclaim a cause or belief that is important to them. the northside parade today seemed to have representatives from all aspects of this neighborhood, and watching it gave me a feeling of closeness to this place and helped me feel like I understand the people who live here a little more now than I did yesterday.
sometimes I feel like Cincinnati is even more foreign to me than Guatemala was, but it’s an oddly familiar kind of foreignness… a sort of deja vuish you-can-never-go-home-again kind of alienation. monica’s been my tourguide to the suburbs, and bruce has been taking care of me as the good friend he is… but I do feel like a fish out of water, or a foreign correspondent that, try as he might, just doesn’t quite get the local culture. at least I’m more adept at the language here than I was in guatemala.
The parade was fun and I met a few more of bruce’s friends, and everybody here is awfully nice and welcoming to me. I’ve spent the afternoon painting my pictures, and prepping these photos – I’ll put some of them below. I’m pretty happy with my new camera, and glad I had a chance to practice with it today... and the paintings are coming along, although it's always a little rough going at first, you know... I'll figure it all out though - never fear!
fireworks are exploding outside as I write this, maybe I’ll go watch!
posted by joe at 7:16 PM
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