283. International Festival

The view from the inside. Well, from the just outside the inside.

Sunday afternoon, after Melinda left with new knowledge about canning, I walked over to Zelda's house. She keeps sitting on her front porch reading a book and I keep interrupting her to chat. And chat we did. One question I need to ponder more: what makes converts tick? I mean, why do people convert, how do they make the switch in their brains? In their hearts? We weren't talking about subtle interdenominational conversions like Methodist to Catholic to Lutheran to non-denominational Christian. We were talking about major moves. Shifting without the clutch engaged.

But that's for later because I don't have it formulated in my head yet even.

We sat on her porch and watched the sightseers. Our park has several festivals throughout the summer. I call it the park of outcasts--the pagans have a festival, the gay pride fest is there, and then the international festival. Religious fringe, gays, immigrants. And I love that I live here and these things happen. I love that people come to our park and celebrate. People from all around come into the city and spend time (and money) enjoying themselves. It is lovely.

But we wish they would learn how to parallel park.

The international festival is, I would guess based on the parking situation, the biggest of the three summer gatherings. Of course Pridefest is skewed for me because my street gets blocked off for the parade and therefore no one can park on it until after the parade (and frankly, everyone is already here by then). But this weekend made parking tricky.

To begin with, a neighbor who lives near the corner is dying. The family has never been a part of the social life of our block. They've lived here a long time and know Henry and Liv, and Len, but unlike those folks, they never really responded to overtures to join us at barbecues and block parties. That's fine. People have lives centered where they need them to be. But anyway, she's dying and relatives have come in to be there. Be here.

Secondly, Henry and Liv, who are probably in their mid-70s, have eleventy-billion descendants. I think half of them spend the night any given weekend, and then there's a son or a grandson who is living there full-time. He has at least two cars. So we already were a bit crowded.

And then you take folks looking for the absolutely closest space to the park festivities and have them troll up and down our block (we have a one-way street, so this involves illegal wrong way driving, or sometimes just reversing all the way up to the top again) and it's really quite entertaining. People double park. Someone tries to figure out where Big Ed lives because obviously they know him from something, hoping they can park in his garage (where he is parked, of course, because there's nowhere to park on the street).

A woman in an SUV trying to park in a spot that maybe Jake's little Saturn could fit in--and having her teenaged daughter get out to try to guide her in. She eventually gave up. My thought? You're going to walk all over the park. What's three more blocks? Henry and his grandson/son agreed with that and spent the day orchestrating the parking situation, spreading cars out so no one could park, somehow parking a motorcycle so inconveniently that it took up 2 spaces.

I parked in back. Zelda later moved her car to the garage and I took her spot so Jake could park in back post-camping.

We never actually made it over to the festival this year. Fiona wasn't dancing (she was camping) and it was nice to simply stay home. Plus there was the show right outside.