The Return

It makes me smile.  I like it because there's an appearance of family unity and fun and the facade of driving in a parade.  The pipe cracks me up -- what is it!   And the boy in the back looks like such a redneck -- sort of like a DisneyLand Homecoming -- so far from reality that they look slight preposterous.  

A beautiful shot, Jeff!

I'd sit on my granddad's lap on the riding mower.  He even let me drive the full-size John Deere on my own once.  Brave brave man - determined that I learn how to turn it, which involves stopping one of the back wheels while the other one is still moving - the front wheels are too tiny and close together.  I'm sure I looked a lot more bewildered than the boy in your picture, which is pure old-timey goodness, by the way.  

I finally put up the Zeiss Flektogon picture I wanted you to see.  It should be on my front page, and it's called "Andromeda Strain."  Rumen also uses a Flektogon quite a bit, but he has expensive Canon glass now.  Like sharks, we all have to keep moving, but the Flektogon is certainly more interesting.  best, j

Nothing  better than a celebration and everyone here seems to be having a good time.  Excellent 'memory' to keep, Donna described it very well Jefffs. Nicely done in color, although I do love your black and white work as well.

Donna:  Douglas MacArthur in Cape Cod.  I was milling through last year's photos, found this, and started tinkering.  It's got a kind of Normal Rockwell feel to it.  I'm a softy, despite my attempts at sustained cynicism and grumpiness.

Ruud:  Thanks.

Jaime:  This was a small Independence Day parade in Cape Cod.  There were some hilarious concoctions on wheels.  I liked how the generations each expressed their joy differently:  the "too cool" adolescents, the "too old to care about being cool" grown-ups, and the stunned little boy.

Gail:  I include color when I think color has something to say.  I have more of a penchant for B&W, but I love great color photography.  Helen Levitt and Saul Leiter being favorites of mine.

Well, this was a 4th of July celebration and I'm sure they don't go about like this usually. I share your somewhat mixed emotions about this picture. The feeling of family and community is very strong here but expressions of patriotism don't ring as innocently or purely as they did in the past. Like you, my soft side rubs up against a certain cynicism.

Quite the mixed bag here. 

Donna summed it up nicely in one word " preposterous "

 

 

I agree with Jack about patriotism.  I love the Douglas figure in the passenger side but I'm a bit skeptical about those others.  There seems to be a clearer image about community and family in the scene (the choice of color is key because of the starts and stripes), that makes this special plus they all seem to be having a grand time, especially the general.

It casual and interesting shot... you have it as it was happen... colorful too...

Telling a lot of american life-style, values, culture..fine capture.

Jeff, a picture showing America's past, present & future.

I love that we still do things like this in America. This is a fun shot with interesting characters obviously having a good time showing some patriotism. Really good exposure as well considering the dappled sunlight.

I like this one a lot!  Love what you did with the lighting!  And as for you being a softie...it's obvious!  That is a good thing. We who take photo's would have to have a soft side...I think anyway!

It's Americana. 

As for cynicism running up against the warmth of celebration and/or family, I still remember something profound a rabbi once said from the pulpit on a celebratory holiday. Though it was one of the less austere and more fun and fanciful holidays, it's one of the four main days of mourning on the Jewish calendar. He rhetorically asked why we would set aside a service of mourning amid such a celebration. He reminded us that even at Jewish weddings, one of the happiest times in a life, the groom wraps a wine glass in a white napkin and shatters it with his foot in commemoration of the destruction of the temple. All happiness he said, is still tinged with a little sorrow, and that's the way it is and should be. Loss and sadness is a place in the heart and happiness is never pure, always a bit tempered.

So the color, the nature, the sweet young boy(s), the costume, the fun, is undercut ever so by a patriotism that gets us in trouble sometime and by a U.S. Marines sign that is both a badge of honor and triumph and death and destruction. Whatcha gonna do?

The lighting in the background, the green, the lines of the trees, the bit of blue sky all work to add dimension to the main scene. The wave of the hand is the icing on the cake.

Jack:  This American experience always creates such mixed emotions.  It's like attending a perpetual family reunion picnic, where love and commitment is interspersed with a certain amount of eye-rolling and embarrassment.

Gordon:  Americans do preposterous with such panache.

Bob:  This little family scene cracked me up.  I remember the scene from MASH where Corporal O'Reilly dressed as MacArthur and rode through the camp.  Everything I've learned about history I gleaned from Nickelodeon.

Grigoriy:  It was  fun little parade.  Good practice taking pictures in dappled light.

Vladimir:  Pride and silliness all rolled into one.  It makes for a fun afternoon.

Amal:  It's interesting how the little boy seems so excited while the "too cool for school" adolescents are so blase.

Fred F:  We attend a couple 4th parades in Cape Cod, where people ride in on decorated tractors, old Chevy's, fire trucks, and scooters to entertain lookers-on.  My kids come home with a year's worth of candy, which we try to dole out prudently, but always ends in a tearful sugar crash by the end of the day.

Janis:  I ain't no softie.  Take it back. Take it back.

Fred G:  My time for photography has dwindled to a trickle, so I've been spelunkering my hard drive.  The idea of joy tinged with sorrow makes sense and works in the converse as well.  My wife's sister just died, the one with Down's, and going through the experience of the funeral, sitting shiva, and the aftermath of watching the grief ripple through the family, has been an interesting one where every once in a while we suddenly burst into laughter remembering all the fun times with Liz.  As you know having a relative with special needs, life for those closest becomes defined by a certain amount of caretaking and perpetual worry.  Anyhow, this picture mines the same emotional file in my head, bittersweet.

So sorry to hear about your sister-in-law and please convey my condolences to your wife. You've talked about your wife's sister with a lot of love and I'm sure she added a fullness to the family that will be greatly missed. 

the strength of this photo is indeed the discomforting undercurrent it conveys and which Donna so described very accurate.

Born and raised in a Germany where patriotism was pretty much out of fashion it appears to me - like to Vladimir - also very american. Though, I think, you can find a scene like this with slightly different 'ingredients' anywhere in the world...

@Fred G.: your comment made me contemplate it (seems, I've learned something from it...) - I guess if in times of happiness we are reminded of sorrow, we probably take our happiness less for granted and appreciate it more.

- Wolfgang