I know that there were lots of people at Parade the Circle today and I saw many folks with cameras, too. I caught these snaps before my batteries gave up.

There was a lot of DayGlo in the Parade this year.

DayGlo pinwheel...

Brightly colored scarf on my favorite drum group...

Brightly colored huge puppets awed the children and adults.

There may have been more to see, but at this point I was saturated with dayglo. I congratulated the kids playing rhythms on plastic 5 gallon buckets and went to view the new Museum galleries. I love how quiet and calm the Museum is on Parade day. I ate strawberries (purchased earlier in the day at the Shaker Square Market) on the steps of the the 1916 wing of the Museum and looked out over the "south lawn". It was less crowded somehow this year, thankfully. The sun was shining and many folk had their dogs with them. Kids were awed, some slept while their parents were awed. The Parade is perhaps Cleveland's most diverse gathering (aside from some of the Jazzfest events). It is good, colorful, human powered. But it is altogether a bit much for my sensibilities. Cleveland's Carnivale. The cool galleries of the Museum were a welcome respite. While everyone else has their eyes on the Parade, one can have the galleries to oneself. Ahhh...

Walking back to the car, I crossed a bit of the Doan Brook. Looks like a brook, bubbles over stones like a brook, smells like a sewer.

It's too bad that folks have to walk by this on the way to the brightly colored, gaily sonorous Parade (if you're coming from the west that is). But before you know it, the sewer smell has faded into the smell of food vendors, kettle corn, barbeque and other sugary sweet delectables. It was as much a sensory overload as the farmer's market I had visited just before arriving at the Parade, but I didn't have the fortitude to find a local food vendor cooking up locally grown food. Luckily I had a pint of local strawberries on hand. In keeping with the colorfulness of the parade, the berries turned my fingertips pink.

Finally I'm at home and listening to the birds outside my window. I guess I am more accustomed to this quiet green nowadays. I have attended the Parade for all of the 20 years it has been in existence. It has always been a wee bit too much of a good thing for me. I found the Garden Center a welcome respite in the early days, later I began to visit the Museum Galleries during part of the Parade. Maybe next year I'll venture farther away from the hullabaloo. I wonder if anyone is at the Rockefeller Greenhouse, for example, on Parade day.

Did you attend? What did you think?