Don't Mourn; Organize (My Thoughts)

This blog has been sporadic for several months, a place to post links to articles in the Princeton Alumni Weekly and essays I was writing for Texas-based website "The Back Word." Over the summer the Back Word went down the drain, and I've spent several months mourning the loss of a forum for essays I loved writing.

Today I posted the text of those essays here, as a way to organize my thoughts. I'm tired of mourning, for the Back Word and other matters that I'll write about one of these days. If I want to write, I'll write here and let the "getting rich and famous" part come later. This being the first day of the month, let the new approach begin today, with an observation on the Village Halloween Parade I attended last night.

How to Have a Truly Transgressive Halloween Parade

I've lived in and around New York for 25 years, but had never ventured downtown to this drag-queen driven festival of fun known as the Village Halloween Parade. In this new mode of experimentation, I walked from my cushy office high over swanky Park Avenue to 6th Avenue and 21st Street, at the conclusion of the parade, to see what the fuss was about.

I did what all good New Yorkers do when a big event takes place; I stood around waiting and waiting. Finally the parade reached its north end. I'm glad I stayed around. Some highlights:

* The poignant New Orleans kick-off, with a band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In."

* Two men dressed as the Pope doing a ring-around-the-rosy dance, then kissing

* Various S&M themes, usually a woman whacking a man (that's the PC way to show things, isn't it?)

*At least three groups dressed as "The Gates," the enormously popular exhibit from February that festooned Central Park with thousands of, well, gates, with orange fabric flapping in the cold Gotham breeze

The parade had surprisingly few people dressed as President Bush, sparing it from becoming a dreary political event. I saw more people dressed as priests and nuns.

Which brings up a thought: For all the daring, outrageous, transgressive New Yorkers in the parade, couldn't anybody work up the nerve to dress as an Islamic imam, perhaps running amok with a guillotine? Or as break-dancing burka-clad women? That's topical. The opportunities to be naughty are huge, and surely sophisticated New Yorkers would get the joke. Well, except for the folks found on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and other places normally under FBI surveillance. Unlike Catholics who must put up with a lot of hilarity aimed at their faith, the Islamists are a little touchy and may not react with the live-and-let-live attitude so prized in tolerant societies. They, you know, kill people who cross them (definitely they don't like anything involving crosses).

Perhaps next year some Halloween Parade denizens will decide to not play it safe and show a truly transgressive spirit. But I'm not holding my breath.