Willy Street Fair Parade Video

 

Today Travalon got home a little early, so we went for a walk in the woods across from the bluff in the last of the daylight. We could see glistening orange through the trees where the sun was setting - it was very beautiful but probably wouldn't have looked like much in a photo.

Here, at last, is the promised video of the Willy Street Fair parade, with footage shot by Travalon on his iPhone. Watch for the Bubblemobile, Brazilian percussion, drag queens on stilts, unicycles, dancing butterflies, the Forward marching band, and a dancing river.

I have never felt more like I belonged in a place. I wore the outfit featured on here previously of my brightest tie-dyed shirt, Buddhist prayer beads, a chakra necklace, and of course the sequel to Famous Hat. You can see in the video where one of our grads students, who plays in the Forward marching band, greets me. Willy Street is a special place, unless you are from out of town and call it Williamson Street. (Honestly, I have no idea who Williamson is. Most of the streets in Madison are named after presidents or former chancellors of the university.) I felt the same sense of belonging during a Very Important Meeting with a bunch of deans and faculty members, even though I was the least important person in the room. Maybe it's part of being something larger than yourself, like the university and the crazy culture that is Madtown. I can't imagine living anywhere else... when the weather is nice. (Ask me again in January...) 

Dear readers, I have to tell you that I am such a dork that I cried during the parade, right when the Brazilian drums passed by. They were tears of ecstasy. I was already primed for an ecstatic experience because just before we got there, on the community radio station's early music station they had played a piece by Scheidt that always sends me into ecstasy. We sang it in my OTHER choir with Easter words, "Surrexit Christus Hodie," but this version had Christmas words, "Puer Natus in Bethlehem." I say any time of year is a good time for Scheidt (other than Lent, since the piece prominently features the word "Alleluia"). Why not during the Willy Street Fair? If I only knew how to say that in Latin... Rich? Help?

Famous Hat