Oz

Got a slow start this morning due to migraine, so opted for Oz-stravaganza (closer, later in day). Now I remember why I don't go to small-town festivals--I always come home feeling like Sayyid Qutb (that I actually thought of Qutb while waiting for the parade frightens me). I haven't seen so many 350-lb people since the last family reunion I attended, but we have the good sense not to leave the house wearing only camisoles and short-shorts (especially the men). And then the pregnant teenagers/teenage mothers smoking on the sidewalk and covered with tattoos (easily visible when you're half-naked)--how can they afford cigarettes and tattoos!?!? Also spent some time wondering how 300-lb women with mullets and no teeth have babies and I don't...maybe I was just too picky with my dating requirements back in the day ("basic hygiene" and "literacy"--shameful snobbishness).

Cranky old maid ranting aside, the festival was disappointing--the parade was short, the "history tent" mostly empty--but I had a nice lunch, and there were a lot of cute kids in costume.

So I'm really bummed I couldn't get up earlier and gone to see Sarah Palin. Although better than a short speech in a crowd would have been to be at the Women's Rights National Park* yesterday when she was there. I'm impressed at the ignorance of the people insisting she's some sort of hypocrite for being interested in the first-wave feminists--Elizabeth Cady Stanton had seven kids, including a change-of-life baby, and Susan B. Anthony opposed abortion and once voted (illegally) for Republicans. I bet Gov. Palin had all sorts of interesting things to say there!

* I visited in 2005, and may again; it's open year-round so I'm not in a hurry. In addition to abolition and women's rights, the first-wave feminists were also anti-alcohol, and that's where we part ideological ways, but other than that I find them quite inspiring.