Friday, July 4th, 7:30 AM. 55 degrees, wind NW, calm. The channel is slightly wrinkled, the skies are blue, and the barometer predicts partly cloudy weather.
Last night’s concert at church was very nice, the Sonora Reed Trio being composed of faculty from UW Eau Clair. They performed pieces by Paradisi, Hoffmeister and Rimsky-Korsakoff, and then a few WWI songs and some very interesting South American tangos and such. Not the usual concert and pretty well attended. At the end the audience joined in and sang America the Beautiful in honor of the holiday.
The Madeline Island parade is at 11:00 and if any of our crew is going they should be on the 10:00 o’clock ferry. Maybe they will make it, maybe not.
Later: we (Eva, Nick, Katie and I) made it to the parade, which was a charming spectacle of small-town kitsch, mostly humorous spoofs too inane to relate. For instance, a "drill" team made up of two dozen guys singing army marching songs ("I don't know, but I've been told...etc.) while each holds a cordless electric drill aloft; a live enactment of the Boston Tea Party with signs reading "drink beer, not tea," and a guy dressed up like a wood tick and dancing to Elvis' "I'm Stuck On You." No fighter jet flyover, no tanks with missile launchers, no jack-booted storm troops. Just ordinary citizens of a great democracy having a little fun on their national day. We will top it off with a back porch barbecue and fireworks tonight.
I leave you with a little 4th of July message from our song:
“O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain…for heroes, proved in librating strife…for patriot dream, that sees beyond the years…America, America, God shed his grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.”
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