Cockeyed Florence, etc.

Before this evening's special meeting of the Mack Town Board, I attended the Cockeyed Florence Parade in Trinidad. It's a small but spirited event in honor of a woman of "ill repute" who some say was buried just outside the Trinidad Cemetery in the late 1800s.



I met a lady named Matilda. Damn! I forgot to get her number. Oh well. You snooze, you lose.




Ned Simmons was the master of ceremonies and the life of the party. He read a ballad he wrote and got the crowd fired up.




Everyone got into the spirit, although I can't help but think that the woman and child on the right were peering disapprovingly into my soul.



After the parade was over I met up with Janine Volkmar and Katrin Burleson (above) at their church. Janine is a retired librarian and always fun to talk to. Burleson paints these really cool icons. I admire her work. They're Episcopalians, which is some sort of renegade offshoot of the Catholic Church. I'm basically an infidel, but I have just enough Catholicism drilled into me that I find this stuff interesting and I've been known to recite my Hail Marys when I'm on a narrow road on my bicycle and I hear a logging truck roaring up behind me.