Another year older, but still not grown up

One of the many reasons I love having Livingston, Montana as my home town is that it is full of creative people "of a certain age" like me who share my politics and my love of costumes, not to mention my love of making a fool of myself in public. Yesterday was my 56th birthday, and I got to celebrate it with 25 or so of these people, dressed in costumes, singing Christmas carols re-written as anti-war protest songs. We were a flash mob, showing up at various locations in Bozeman unannounced to sing, recorded by video camera, planning to edit the video and post it on You Tube. This protest was intended to coordinate with a much more serious protest in Washington DC where veterans were planning to chain themselves to the White House fence in protest of the continuing violent occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. 131 people were arrested in that protest yesterday. (see http://www.stopthesewars.org/ for more information)

Our more playful protest was planned by my friend Margarita, shown here handing out song sheets dressed in a quasi-biblical costume consisting of a bathrobe and a towel to go over her head. That's her husband Don to her right with the headband wearing a sign that says "Unemployed Shepard." Some people wore no costumes, claiming to be dressed as unemployed workers. But most people came up with some way to look at least vaguely bibilical. We had more than three men dressed as kings or wise men, a Virgin Mary with a crocheted afghan over her head and a baby doll that stayed in its box so we could donate it to a children's gift drive afterward, and a number of anomalous Christmas elves, who apparently didn't get the memo about the nativity theme. My friend Margie and I rode over to Bozeman together and dressed as angels. I made my own costume, and an extra halo for Margie. She is wearing a set of sheer curtains that I have had for ages and never used and a pair of children's dress-up wings with pink feathers. I opted for building sparkly wings out of tinsel garlands and coat hanger wire. I made an angel robe from an old sheet with matching pillowcases for sleeves. We were accompanied in our singing by a tuba, of all things. The tuba player was quite good and since we could all hear the tuba as we marched around, it kept us all together with our singing, which was good. Too bad it couldn't keep us on key, as well. Oh, well.We started out at the mall, but were kicked out of there rather quickly by the mall cop. Here he is escorting us out, while we continued singing. He had called for the Bozeman police, who all came screaming to the scene just as we drove away. Whew! The mall was saved from the gray-haired singing terrorists and the world was kept safe for retail sales and compulsive consumption.

Then we went downtown and sang on various street corners (here I am on the corner by the courthouse, across the street from a large church) and in stores, coffee shops and banks and even one redneck tavern, where they drowned us out by turning on the jukebox, which set us all to dancing ecstatically with whoops and hollers. Here we are singing in a bookstore. Downtown merchants mostly greeted us enthusiastically and even applauded our songs occasionally. Bank tellers laughed and smiled and nodded. It was lovely. While we haven't yet achieved Peace on Earth, there was plenty of Goodwill to Men.

After the protest, Margie, Margarita, Don and I went out to dinner at the 2nd Street Bistro in Livingston to celebrate my birthday. What a great day I had. In spite of the extra aches and pains, I don't really mind growing older as long as I don't have to grow up.