Since I had such a good time two years ago, I expected to be disappointed this year, and in fact, it started off like that. Two years ago I admired all the umbrellas at the festival. They attached to folding chairs, and provided the sitters with some much needed protection from the sun. There were plenty of umbrellas this year, too, but they were needed for rain, of all things!
Perhaps it's a common vice with old men to look at the past with nostalgia, but surely it was actually true, back there in the good old days, that when you went to a public festival in the summer, you could expect a modicum of success at girl-watching. Not anymore. Everybody was so old and fat. Worse yet, so am I.
I noticed a middle-aged man enjoying a CEE-gar at the edge of the park. Granted, he looked a little sheepish and unsure of himself, but he still held his ground.
Even more impressively, a couple matrons risked getting police records, probably federal ones, by defying the anti-dog signs. Their dogs didn't look like too much of a threat to public safety.
Everybody looked pretty subdued. Was it because there was a cop every fifty feet, or was it the recession or the threat of rain? But things perked up when the live music got going.
Every time there is an art show I force myself to go through it, thinking that on some great day in the not-so-distant future, I will start to enjoy them. But I end up looking at all that stuff and thinking, "There is next year's yard sale." But women go through it all so slowly and meticulously. What are they thinking about? What are they looking for?
But I've made this mistake before, and have learned to escape it. It is a mistake to try to impose lofty notions, such as free moral agency, on other human beings. This causes one to expect too much. Instead, let's just think of them as bipedal anthropoids at a hunter-gatherer stage of evolution. Back then it must have been a matter of life or death to be observant with every thing that might have been useful to her.
One of the things that I amuse myself with, at festivals, is to look for the best hat. Trying to photograph them is not so easy without getting my face slapped or challenged to a duel. Two years ago the winner was:
I'm happy to report a new winner this year:
At one point I was getting discouraged and ready to leave the festival. How remarkably specific are the things that will turn anybody on! I am a sucker for a woman with a parasol.
Just think of all the banal news articles there have been since 1970 or so about some woman going where no woman has gone before: "First woman appointed Asst. Principal at MLK Junior High," or some such thing.
But this lady was truly liberated. Instead of trying to drag out some poor man who really didn't want to dance, she just went out and danced with the music. Good for her! Besides, men look completely ridiculous "dancing" in the usual sense of just wiggling their bootie back and forth.
You have to admire how uninhibited people are to just get out there and dance, in front of everybody. But no good deed goes unpunished: they had to dance a few steps in front of car-sized speakers, which could have been injurious.
At times I wondered what a real Mexican would think about gringos trying to have fun. We really aren't very good at it. But the citizens of the Little Pueblo acquitted themselves quite well.
