Mr. Jim is publishing an article I wrote in his online zine, IdealLab. This was my tame version, which still had to be edited down. Here’s the draft I sent, and the zine is here. (click on latest edition) Theres some good stuff in it…and Brian McClaren often pops by for an interview or some good advice. Oh, for pics of the parade click here.

Outrageous Outreach: Cross Dressers and a Brewery

And Next Up…Naked People!
A mob of bikers wearing nothing but body paint are the first to come through the starting gate. Next there’s; an inflatable sculpture which is having a bad hair day; men on stilts in elaborate drag, and a float full of Oompa Loompas. You’ll find our religious community, ThPM, at the end of this long line of celebrants. We’re pulling a 40 foot long caterpillar. It’s the Litter bug, and we are the Trash Fairies, cleaning up the glitter and pompoms left behind by this extravaganza.

This is what an Ordinary Attempt looks like when you live in the Fremont District in Seattle. The biggest deal in town is the Annual Solstice Parade which draws 30,000 people, all there to celebrate the return of Sun. So ThPM spent a month doing “church” in a brewery. We brought our soup pot, broke bread, and drank wine with our neighbors. We made costumes out of recycled stuff. We asked for advice. We lent a hand.

The People Jesus Misses Most
At our first build date my husband Paul and I had a great talk with Dulcie. She lived alone, and had spent the week traveling to a really depressing town in outer Nevada, where she might have to move in order to work. We talked about the parade, and things she had built in the past. Her favorite was the time she was a dung beetle, rolling a ball of …well…you know. When we parted she said, “Thanks. I just came down because I was alone in my apartment and I didn’t want to be alone.”

My six year old daughter, Eden, came to the Brewery too. She would just sort of float around randomly hugging people and finding out how progress was going. One day she spent two hours folding peace cranes and conversing with two deaf women. Eden would sign an old campfire song: The more we get together the happier we’ll be…cuz your friends are my friends and my friends are your friends. (In exchange, the women taught her how to sign each of their names. One of the women had a name in which you move crossed fingers (R) from the left shoulder to the right hip. When Eden talks about her and needs to use her name, she just pauses her speech and makes the sign. Eden doesn’t know their spoken names, and she doesn’t need to. She’s willing to speak a language that is not her own for the sake of making a connection.

Little Girls and Drag Queens
The last day in the Brewery, I lost track of the girls. I looked outside to find them astride a giant wheeled seesaw. The board of the seesaw was 12 feet long, and the wheels were four feet high. As the girls flipped up and down five feet into the air, two spotters heaved at the wheels so that the whole contraption whipped around; narrowly missing the parade floats which were stationed in the parking lot. A tall man in drag, with a long silver pony tale flowing down his back had his arms around Eden. A guy in a black leather bondage-y type vest sat on the other end with one arm hanging at his side, a finger hooked in a mostly-empty wine bottle. His other arm was wrapped around our younger daughter, Cate. All four of them were rolling with laughter. Together, little girls and drag queens were celebrating the light. We were worshipping the Sun/Son. It was just another ordinary day…for Fremont. The more we get together, together, together, the more we get together the happier we’ll be.