4th of July

One perk of living in DC is the great parades. While I remember going to parades at various points in my childhood, living a 20 minute walk from the usual parade route down Constitution Avenue in the nation's capital, a place which ends up having lots of parades as a matter of course, means that we end up seeing lots of parades. And again because we live in the capital, the parades tend to be top notch.

The standard parade in DC involves a combination of floats and big balloon characters, celebrities (Hey, isn't that Alex Trebek? Or, hey, that's apparently a guy from American Idol!), high school marching bands, people on miscellaneous modes of transportation such as motorcycles, old cars, unicycles, or old fashioned bikes with big front wheels, community groups such as clowns, boy scout troops, or veterans, and representatives of various ethnic groups doing whatever dances and music are typical for them.

Now, I recall high school marching bands in the parades that I attended as a child, but the number and quality of bands in DC parades beat anything from my childhood. After a few parades in DC, one becomes quite the connoisseur of high school bands. The best are those that toss some fancy footwork into their marching when the drums are playing their boom-boom boom-chicka-boom bits. Although I remember not liking when the drums and not the horns were playing when I was a child, Teddy and I like to groove along to the beat when only the drummers are playing. There's nothing more fun in a parade, I've concluded, than a good high school band. Although the music isn't always that good. And their outfits are invariably terrible. And they always look so damn hot in those terrible outfits, especially because our standard vantage point is at the end of the route when they're almost falling over. Still, you have to give them credit for the effort, and the whole event of a passing marching band makes us (especially Teddy) perk up and pay attention.

I suppose that the old cars and such were present in the parades of my youth along with the community groups, but what really distinguishes a parade in DC are the contingents from various ethnic groups. Today, we saw marchers from Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Vietnam, and China. On one level, I suppose that's not different from the Irish or Polish groups who march in the parades in Chicago, but the groups in DC really put on a show. Not to get too philosophical, but at the end of the day, these groups really makes me think about how heterogeneous the U.S. really is and how we're fundamentally a nation comprised of immigrants from all over the place. For all of the tension that immigration creates, we ultimately end up assimilating immigrant groups while also, to varying degrees, keeping their idiosyncratic traditions (for example, think Italian food, St. Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo).

In any case, below are some pictures and a video of our trip to this year's 4th of July parade. One observation: As readers might notice, this set of pictures involves more pictures of Teddy than pictures of Margaret. To some extent, that reflects the fact that Margaret was being a bit petulant during the parade while Teddy was being a jovial little guy. But on a broader level, the focus on Teddy is indicative of the fact that he's becoming a much more interesting little person. Not only is he talking more, but he has interesting things to say and interesting ways of saying those things. Of course, much of what he says is garbled nonsense, but part of the fun is trying to decipher what he's trying to communicate. And he can be very charming as he tries to communicate with us. Or infuriating depending on the situation. Which makes it even more fun.