Today, October 5, was the culminating event of Weston's 300th anniversary celebration, a huge parade and festival on the town green. I was there staffing a booth as librarian of the Christian Science Reading Room in the heart of the village. Here are some of the highlights, as captured on my cell phone.
The parade included firetrucks, extending in an out-of-sight line of blinking lights and cacophony of blaring horns. Two ladder trucks not traveling in the parade held the giant flag for the parade to process under toward the grandstand.
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| Anticipation. |
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| My church floated a car promoting our Oct. 6 youth talk. |
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| A curious clown takes a look at Christian Science. |
We also had an informational table, featuring not only the lecture, but a new biography of Mary Baker Eddy written by a former member of our church, Isabel Ferguson.
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Hoppy the Clown learns something about our textbook,
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. |
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| A small pirate challenges a small Napoleon. |
This was the ultimate family festival. Babies in strollers, toddlers, school children of all ages, parents, grandparents. Everyone was there. Many who had been in the long, elaborate parade wore period costumes. There were pilgrims (but no Indians), fife and drum bands, reenactment militias, modern veterans, Weston High School alumni from many eras marching together, and imaginative floats from almost every business or organization in town. I don't have more parade pictures, because I took videos.
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| An informal moment at the grandstand. |
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Next to our booth, children constructed cardboard
projects, completely oblivious to anything else. |
That is, until a magician-clown set up shop on the other side of our booth.
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| The clown's act went on for an hour, at least, |
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| When his first crowd left, the clown became a wandering minstrel. |
Across the green, children were constructing straw-stuffed figures. Townies had donated all sorts of clothing and costume items. One onlooker fussed to me that someone -- a wastrel, evidently -- had donated a silk shirt.
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| Superman lies supine, awaiting a face to bring him to life. |
I don't have pictures, but the rest of the town was also studded with scarecrows of every imaginable stripe.
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This hotshot socialite of straw lured
passersby to the pie-selling booth. |
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| This wistful trio caught my eye. |
The culminating event of the festival was the commemorative photograph. How do you portray townies by the hundreds?
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Everyone from Weston squeezed onto the other end of the green,
while a photographer perched at the top of the extended firetruck
ladder took the 300th Anniversary town portrait. |
