Tuesday, May 31, 2011

More scenes from yesterday's Norwood Park Memorial Day Parade

Continued from this entry on Page One.


There were plenty of Scout groups represented. There was a large contingent from Immaculate Conception School.








Among the many other scout groups participating were these from St. Thecla, Norwood Park Lutheran Church and Norwood Park School:






The Onahan School group included the cheerleading squad:











The group from Stock School had a message for parade-goers.












Memorial Day is often cool and dreary in Chicago. Yesterday, though, the weather was sunny, hot and humid.

In other words, it was a tough day to be sporting a fur coat. Especially a spray-painted one:






One canine seems to have decided it was just too hot to walk:


The Norwood Park Memorial Day Parade always features dozens of old cars:




But one of the cars, in particular, seems to have caught the attention of a lot of people. Apparently, BMW was not always a luxury status symbol:



The Chicago Police closed the proceedings on horseback:


The message on the side of this last car through was quite appropriate to the occasion: "Thank You for attending to Honor Those Who Gave Their Lives for Freedom."


Photo credit: Brigid Leyhane.

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And if you need to see even more photos from yesterday's Norwood Park Memorial Day Parade, see this page on the Norwood Park Chamber of Commerce & Industry website.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Happy 70th Birthday, Bob Dylan


Ah, but I was so much older then/
I'm younger than that now.

Forever young?

On this august occasion I am reminded of Paul Simon's "A Simple Desultory Philippic(Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission):"

I knew a man, his brain was so small,
He couldn't think of nothing at all.
He's not the same as you and me.
He doesn't dig poetry. He's so unhip that
When you say Dylan, he thinks you're talking about Dylan Thomas,
Whoever he was.
The man ain't got no culture,
But it's alright, ma,
Everybody must get stoned.

But it's the unhip Dylan Thomas reference that seems particularly appropriate:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Prom Season begins... shudder

From Pardon My Planet by Vic Lee

Here's something I just found out: The Chicago Tribune has a "Comics Kingdom" page. I've been looking at the Comics Kingdom page for some months now via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer web site.

It's a small world after all.

And a surprisingly ecumenical one: Though I pulled this timely Pardon My Planet cartoon from the Tribune web site, this comic appears in print in the Chicago Sun-Times. There's probably an uplifting lesson in here about cooperation. Either that, or a depressing lesson about the continuing collapse of the newspaper business.