But I didn’t love it this year– and by “it,” I mean the annual July 4 parade. I thought it was a little on the short-side, it featured too many cars with no decoration or indication at all why they were in the parade (perhaps they just got stuck in traffic), and it had too many church groups. As I overheard one person saying, “When did the Fourth of July become a religious holiday?”
A few images:
It’s as if Elvis were posing just for me! (Note the EMU construction in the background.)
Apparently, this was an industry of sorts in Ypsilanti back in the day. Now that the auto industry has cleared out, perhaps we can rise in the underwear business again.
And then there’s this, which I think was about the weirdest float of the day:
This was a float for a church group of some sort, and the theme was Jesus/God as carpenter and also something about “building for the future and our children.” But all I saw was that rather disturbing hammer march scene in Pink Floyd’s The Wall (watch all of this on YouTube or skip ahead to about the 4 minute mark to see what I mean). My guess is that this particular group of church goers missed that movie.
Anyway, not to rehash stuff that came up last year about this time, but once again, there was no EMU presence in the parade– well, no direct presence. I am sure there were many people who are tied to EMU who were in the parade for other organizations/purposes. There are a lot of logistic reasons why the Heritage Day Parade is a little more workable for EMU schedules in terms of things like the band or athletic teams or whatever. Still, it’d be nice if EMU did something more than nothing.
So that got me to thinking: anybody interested in an EMUTalk.org float next year? Or maybe something a little broader than that, like Ypsi bloggers? Maynard, what do you think?
When that video ended there’s a link to someone’s recording of the 2007 parade, and it’s the same exact lineup (pretty much in order too) as this years, and people in that video were complaining about there being too much religious organizations.
From my understanding, is that basically, it’s like this: anyone who wants to be in the parade arranges it with a group (my guess is the DDA), and they aren’t entirely discriminatory as long as you are supporting part of the community. The churches are quite an important aspect to our city, just as much as the schools or the city departments (fire, police, etc) or the politicians, etc, since they are an active member of our civic arena, so it makes sense. The problem is that we are just not seeing alot of the other groups, organizations, and businesses get involved in the parade as they should. I am just as surprised as you that there was no direct EMU involvement, not even a little bit, but EMU is not the only community leader that drops the ball on making an appearance at local parades.
I think you are totally right on all counts, ET. All the more reason to organize the EMUTalk.org and/or local bloggers float!
Ha! A parade appearance would be a great idea! Count me in.
Since we like administrators from UofM they can make a float with maize and blue for the new team. Once again the people at the top wonder why the Ypsi community resents them. I am sure the new provost has his house in Stonebridge all picked out.
I like the idea very much. It’s one of those things that I think about every year and never do. In my dream my friends and I take the parade over, with tons of bands playing on flatbed trucks, etc. I think there’s enormous potential… I missed the parade this year, as we had a surprise party to get to. Thanks for the coverage.