Stars and St. Patty's

I know I said I was going to write about the St. Patty's weekend, and I promise I will. But first I have to share a very exciting photo. This is a starfish. A real, honest-to-goodness, found it in the water at the beach still ALIVE starfish! This may not seem so exciting, but let me explain.

As a child we used to go to the beach often (one of the joys of growing up on the coast of New England). During these frequent trips, we often walked along the water's edge and explored the tidal pools. While poking around in standing water and scaring the brain-stemless wits out of periwinkles and hermit crabs, we also found masses of starfish. These amazing creatures always enthralled me. First, they are shaped like stars, and any kid will tell you how cool stars are. Second, if a leg was cut off, it would just grow back. Really! And they had all these cool tentacles on the bottom side and a really neat looking mouth. They were just awesome. But sadly, when I moved back to CT after college and finally went back to these tidal pools to relive some portion of this childhood wonder...the starfish were gone. I read up to see if there was some kind of major starfish migration. I fear that the changing environment in Long Island Sound probably had something to do with it (there is a spreading "dead zone" heading east from NY).

But here, on Tybee Island in mid-March, I found my first Georgia starfish! It had buried itself in the sand at the water's edge during low tide. The only sign it was there was a slight star-shaped pattern in the sand. When I gingerly dug my toe under the star-shaped pattern, out came the starfish. I felt like I was five again. I picked it up and felt the little tentacles wiggling on my hand. I set it back in the shallows and watched as it glided along the sand before beginning to re-bury itself. It was so neat. I also found two dead dollars and one that was still alive (but my camera batteries had died and I haven't figured out how to get the pictures off my phone yet...).

Okay, so now on to St. Patty's Day. I will preface this segment by saying "I'm not really a 'parade' kind of person" so forgive any lack of enthusiasm. I went because it seemed the thing to do in my new city.

If you didn't already know, Savannah has the second largest St. Patrick's Day Parade in the country. Now, be sure that you read that carefully: second largest. Not to be mistaken for second coolest, or second best, or second most-amazing-glad-I-stood-around-for-4-hours-to-watch-it. I think it would be better described simply as "second longest."


Joy and I grabbed a piece of curb to watch the procession. It was a bit chilly to start, but by the middle of the parade I was glad I brought my hat and sunscreen!


There were several pipe and drum groups, which was neat except that they all kinda looked the same and I really have a hard time picking out whatever tune they're playing. To me, when there is more than one piper piping at a time, it strikes me as a great impression of what I imagine a herd of horny tom-cats on a hot tin roof would sound like.


The band of lil' dancers ranked pretty high on the "Ahhh, that's so cute" scale.


The rakish rouge on the back of Keller's Flea Market pirate ship was also not so hard to look at!



You know you're in the South when a drive-in restaurant has a float in the parade...and it's one of the nicer ones.

I've never really liked the advertising campaigns that have an animal trying to entice you to eat it. There are no lack of BBQ posters with smiling pigs on them and it seems very self-defeating to me. At least this little piggy went wee-wee-wee all the way to the Piggly Wiggly (did you know the grocery store has its own theme song? I've only heard it in the parade, but if you're bored at work try googling it and let me know what you come up with).

No city parade would be complete without the Mayor, Otis Johnson.

Okay, strike my comment from before. You know you're in the South when Jesus is in your parade. I told Joy that Dad would be excited when she told him that she found Jesus on St. Patrick's Day. When he walked by near the beginning of the parade I wasn't able to get a good picture of him. Lucky for me I had my camera ready for his second coming... (no need to get upset, no Jesus' were harmed in the making of that pun)

So, I saved this one for last because I struggled with how to clearly convey the essence of this event. I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase "Kiss me, I'm Irish." Well, apparently there was a group of women who took it to be their personal mission to kiss any man or man-child who paraded by in uniform (I did notice a few women in uniform sporting kiss-marked cheeks, but I obeyed the "Don't ask, don't tell" rule). I kid you not, these kiss-ninjas were armed with whore-red lipstick and a sense of purpose: as soon as a male appeared around the bend, they lubed up their lips and poised on the sidewalk like sprinters at an Olympic starting line. They dashed between rows of marchers like rodeo stars, branding cheeks of Army Rangers, Police Pipers, high school marching bands, veterans, and Coast Guards with Betty Boop-like smooches. The picture above shows a brave Marine defending the color guard from one such kissing bandit. The Marines, it seems, were the only ones brave enough, or perhaps even strong enough, to stand up to these formidable lip-lockers. They were the few, the proud, the clean-cheeked.