Salt lake City St. Patrick's Day Parade 2013

The Goodman family once again made the trek up to the Gateway Plaza in Salt Lake City to watch the St. Patrick's Day Parade. We have gone to the parade for at least ten years, since our daughter Emma has been dancing in the parade with the Irish dancing school from which she and her friends take lessons. It was the Crawford School of Irish Dance for many years and is now the Scariff Hardiman School of Irish Dance. We are always at the north end of the Gateway by Old Navy come rain or wind or sunshine. This year we had sun for the first time in many years. The theme this year was "Shamrocks, Shillelaghs, and Shenanigans." the parade is usually made up of Irish dancing schools, Catholic schools, pipe bands, trade unionists, Shriners, family clan organizations, dog clubs, and a few other groups thrown in from year to year. It was an especially long parade this year.

Looking south along the parade route from our spot in front of Old Navy. There are never big crowds where we sit. Most of the people are to the south of us by the fountains and the grassy areas passed the sky bridge.

Gabriel with Aunt Rachel.

The police escort begins the parade followed by the flags and the Hibernian Society banner.

 

Bagpipe bands are always popular.

 How did this joker get in here. He's lucky this isn't New York, or the food police would be chasing him.

 The Utah Scottish Festival and Highland Games at Thanksgiving Point is gobs o' fun. Every laddie and every lassie should go!

 Civil War contingent.

Little Caesar missed his meeting on the Ides of March and came to the parade.

This is the dancing school my daughter dances with. Most dance schools have their dancers all dressed in their school dance dresses or their competition dresses for the parade.  But Scariff Hardiman decided this year to have the dancers dressed as snakes with St Patrick. They won the prize for the best dance presentation.

St Patrick leading/driving the snakes out of Ireland.

The big, green snake is Emma.

And around they go.

The Utah Renaissance Fair.

Bicycles,

balloons,

and barbershop!

 

The parade was much longer than this, but I am ending it here. Some of these pictures are out of order, you you get the idea.

 

Postal Art for St. Partick's Day 2013

They tell me that everyone is Irish on St Patrick's Day, so I sent out twelve greeting cards to help celebrate. My family plans to attend the St Patrick's Day parade at the Gateway Plaza in Salt Lake City on Saturday as we do every year. My daughter Emma dances in the parade, and we go up to cheer her on. Last year it was so windy that our camp chairs almost blew away. At least it wasn't raining along with the wind as in other years.

I was sitting on the side of the street that runs through the Gateway holding everything in place while the family went shopping. During a break in the gusts of bitter wind one of the television news reporters crossed the street and asked if he could interview me. I suppose I looked a little Irish with my tam and shillelagh and quilt around my shoulders. He just asked me why I was there, why I come to the parade, and a few other questions. I never saw the clip, but a neighbor said he saw it, and that it was quite long for a news clip. We will see what happens this year. We will probably have lunch again at the California Pizza Kitchen, a yearly tradition.

Here are some examples of my postal art for St. Patrick's day:

 

This is the envelope I made to send the Swap-bot "Make and Envelope #11." I created five handmade envelopes to send to my partner in Tallahassee, Florida.

 

(I am repeating this pattern style and variation too much-I need to expand my thinking.)

 

These are some of the other eleven cards I sent out.

 

 

 

 

Back in the OA

Last Thursday I attended my first Order of the Arrow chapter meeting in the newly organized Scouting District 14. All the districts in the Great Salt lake Council were realigned at the end of 2012. About 80 Scouting units, Cubs, Scouts, Varsity, and Ventures, were taken away from Golden Eagle District and added to the White Buffalo District. Many other units were moved around and in and out of other districts as well. I went to the Ta Tanka Ska Chapter meeting with a little bit of sadness since I had been in the Wamblee Chapter (Golden Eagle) since 1981. I named it. It was my chapter for over thirty years.

In 1981, the Golden Eagle District needed an OA advisor. The chapter was dead-no active members and no one to get it going again. (It has had to be resurrected a few more times over the last thirty years.) So the district chairman submitted my name to the lodge advisor, Dave Halliday. I was a Blazer Leader (eleven year old Scout leader) at the time, but I was not a member of the Order of the Arrow. When Dave Halliday called and asked me to take over and rebuild the chapter, I told him I wasn't a member. "That's alright," he said. "There is an Ordeal next week. Be on it. Oh, and there is the LECM (Lodge Executive Committee Meeting) this Thursday. Please be there." So I went to the meeting on Thursday and to the Ordeal the next weekend. Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Jager helped me out as assistant advisers, and we went to the Scouting units and held elections until we had a few young men who could take the leadership positions.

It took us a year to organize a group of dedicated young men, like Brent Shaw, Scott Hogge and many others to serve as Chiefs and Vice-Chiefs in the chapter. We organized a dance team and a ceremony team and assisted the lodge with Ordeals and other programs. We created an Eagle Court of Honor program and an Arrow of Light program for the Cub Scouts. We were doing dance programs and ceremonies in our district and all over the south end of the Salt Lake Valley. The second year, Wamblee Chapter was fourth in the lodge for service hours. The third and fourth years, our chapter was Chapter of the Year.

During the second year of my tenure as advisor, I was called as Scoutmaster to Troop 420. Between the OA chapter and the troop, there were months when I was gone from home three and sometimes four nights a week and two weekends a month. I was so busy with the OA and being Scoutmaster that my wife said one or the other had to go or she would. Since Scoutmaster was my church assignment, and I kind of liked her, I let go of my responsibilities in the OA, and Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Jager took over. I served for a few years as a part time assistant advisor, but slowly gave it up. Later the Golden Eagle District was divided, and Wayne and Dave were in the new White Buffalo District.

During my advisor years, I became a Brotherhood member and a Vigil Honor member of the OA. My last big hurrah with the OA was in the summer of 1990 when I was on staff for the OA Junior Leader Training, called Coup Trail.

Because I have been active in many church and Scouting assignments and work over the last twenty-five years, I haven't been able to do much with the Order of the Arrow. I have paid my dues and slipped into a meeting or two when attending District Round Tables as an Assistant District Commissioner, but that is not much. However, serving in the local Scouting units does fulfil the Obligation of the Brotherhood of Cheerful Service. My wife is happy to have me do some OA stuff again, so I will give it a whirl. Wayne Jacobsen is the advisor of Ta Tanka Ska Chapter, and I will serve as one of the associate advisers, along with several old friends from the past-from the Wamblee Chapter past.

A Dubious Achievement

As of last Friday, March 1st, I have seen all episodes, all 168 half-hour episodes, of The Rifleman Television series. Some of them I saw more than once, but I have seen them all at least once. The series ran from September 1958 to April 1963. Eighty-four hours of rootin' tootin' shoot 'em up! Eighty-four hours of my life that I will never get back, but I enjoyed it, so what is the loss. Maybe reading some books or doing something constructive. Hummmm.

One thing I wonder about is just where the town of Northfork, New Mexico Territory, is supposed to be located. They mention more than once the towns of Lordsburg, Roswell, and Hobbs, all of which towns I lived in for three, two, and three years respectively between 1951 and 1960. So Northfork has to be somewhere in the southern third of New Mexico and not a long distance from the Mexican border. The town of Yuma is also mentioned often as if it were not more than a couple of days' distance to travel. Yuma is actually all the way across Arizona on the California border, about 300 miles from the New Mexico border. Does anyone know in what geographic location Northfork was supposed to be? Maybe it floated around the area as needed for the storyline.

This may now be filed with another of my dubious television achievements: I have also seen all 234 episodes of Leave It To Beaver.

A Green ATC Swap for March with a Roswell Twist

 

I joined a Swap-Bot ATC swap for March wherein the ATC was to be or have a lot of green on it. When I read my swap partner's profile, I thought see said she loved aliens, as in UFOs and "little green men." So I started an ATC with a green alien on a green and gold background that I painted using acrylic and bubble wrap. I used the same painting process on the envelope. I went back and looked at her profile again and saw that she loved the movie Aliens and not little green men in general. Oh well, I had already started it, and it did follow the swap requirements. Lived in Roswell, NM, from 1954 to 56 when I was in the third and forth grades. My dad taught at the New Mexico Military Institute during those two years. I don't remember ever hearing, when I lived there, about the suppossed flying saucer crash that happened near Roswell in July 1947. My wife and I drove through Roswell six years ago on a trip around New Mexico to visit places I lived as a child. UFOs and little green men are a big deal in Roswell now with alien signs, plasic blowup aliens, murals, and a UFO museum.

 

Any way, I used the alien theme for my official swap card and added a couple more for fun.

 

 

If anyone wants to start swapping ATCs or postal art, contact me. I would like to expand my postal art and ATC contacts. You might also think about joining Swap-Bot. Let's keep good old snail-mail going.