Parades

On September 15th in whatever year it was much of Central America became free from Spain. This is exciting and interesting for many reasons. One is that there is a torch that is run from Guatemala all over Central America announcing the auspicious occasion. As it gets to each new place, they light their own torches and spread the light. I must say that I quite like the concept of spreading the light among the people. In order for the torch to make it up here, several high schoolers and one very dedicated teacher took a bus down the mountain at 11pm on Saturday night. They met the torch down there and then ran and bussed (I'm not exactly sure how this part works) all the way up the mountain where they were met with more folks from each school in the community (on a Sunday no less) who each lit their own school torches and ran them off to their schools. The torch arrived at our school shortly before meeting so we were able to participate without running (always a good thing for my knees on these roads) in some singing and celebrating and silence having. Just knowing that the light from the torch at our school traveled all of the way from Guatemala boggles the mind.
Then on Monday I was in a parade. It has been many many years since I have been in a parade and I found myself recounting to many the wonders of Hoghead, my grandpa Byron - Miss Hoghead many years runnng, my mom's stint as Santa in August and various and other sundry memories of Proctor's celebration and my family's participation through our yearly float. It's not everyone who can say that their very own grandpa started a yearly celebration that involves various presumably straight older men dressing up in fancy dresses and perching on old cars in parades. This was my first parade as an adult and it also had some other firsts. I performed in Costa Rica for the first time for an audience with an electric guitar from the back of a truck (some Costa Rican tunes and some contra/square tunes) while kids were dancing in the parade. I also went to my first speeches in a building where you can't hear anything because the acoustics are so terrible. And then we performed two of the dances again there. When I say we performed, it should be clear, I played guitar and a bunch of kids did the dancing. They were excellent, we were okay, but it was at least an hour after we got to the building from the parade before the end of the parade arrived and we were allowed to perform. And then there were speeches before we could perform. And then there were other dancers and a tenor singing songs that he hadn't memorized the words of. Silly tenors. I hadn't memorized the words of the songs we were performing, but Spanish is not my native language and I did learn the chorus... Plus, there was no mic for me to sing into anyway and our singers did a great job.
Sept. 15th is also my mom's birthday so even though I spent the entire day being swamped and tired - it was hot and sunny in the truck and playing for an hour straight is hard on the body - I wished she could be here. It was a great parade and I'm sure she would have enjoyed it. Additionally, I've started making more musical connections - someone who plays mando/guitar/something who wants to play bluegrass, and there's a coffeehouse on the 27th that we're going to try and work up some tunes for to excite some people about the concept of live bands and contra dancing. We need to have a couple of rehearsals.
Anyway, I didn't get any pictures because jordan's neck was out. Maybe I'll figure out if anyone else got some shots in and I could link to them. It was the first time in years that the quaker school had anything to do with the parade on Independence Day, and the first time there was square dancing in the parade alongside more traditional Tico dancing. We're pretty proud of what we pulled together in just three weeks of school. It was a lot of really hard work on the part of a few people and I had only a very little part in it. But it does mean that I've now played a gig with two of my students (more if you count the singers) and had a chance to connect a bit more with one of the 12th graders who my mom's partner Greg is related to through marriage. Everyone's a cousin around here, even the gringos...