The Great Halloween Lantern Parade

If you know me at all, then you know that anytime I find myself with some spare time on my hands, I find some new project to fill it up. In the spring and summer, I spend at least one Saturday a month leading canoe trips and cleaning aquariums at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center near Annapolis, MD. Throughout the year, I serve as chairperson for the Smithsonian Institution Women's Council, an employee advocacy group. For the second year in a row, I am spending my fall helping with The Great Halloween Lantern Parade.

Held every year for the past decade in Baltimore's Patterson Park, The Great Halloween Lantern Parade is a truly unique event. The parade itself features stilt walkers, candle-lit bamboo and paper-mâché lanterns, giant floats, drums, costumed performers, and more. The parade is open to anyone who wants to be a part of it, and it's totally bilingual--English and Spanish. This year the parade will take place on October 24.

Nana Projects, a local nonprofit that specializes in community oriented, cultural performances, holds at least a dozen free lantern making workshops for families in the months leading up to the parade, not to mention the new "lantini" party for adults. Martinis, bamboo, paper mâché and flames--what fun! They also offer stilt walking classes and have a parade school to share their expertise with other local artists and community organizers.

Last weekend, I spent five hours at the Lantern Parade Studio on Eastern Ave., creating a shawl-like throw for a stilt walker to wear. Molly Ross, Nana Projects director, gave me a five-gallon bucket of strips of white Tyvec, a big piece of lightweight netting and a few instructions to work with. I cut the netting into an oval shape and cut a hole in the middle. I proceeded to tie the strips of Tyvec around the bottom and middle edges to create a "shawl" with white fringe around the collar and bottom edges. The costume will be worn by one of the stilt walkers and will look amazing, no doubt. The white will glow as light from the lanterns splashes against it and the "fringe" will sway and flow with the stilt walkers every move.

On the day of the parade--October 24--I will be lighting lanterns, providing logistical info to participants and helping students from a local charter school carry their float along the 45-minute parade route. The best part...I get to wear a fun costume! I will be dressed in an all-white jumpsuit with a hand-made, light-up "pagoda hat" on my head. The hat--which is an almost-14-inch-tall bamboo structure wrapped with paper mâché--is designed to look like Patterson Park's well-known pagoda.

I am seriously considering taking the stilt walking classes next year. After taking four lessons in stilt walking, newbie stilt walkers are ready (apparently) to brave the 45-minute parade route, up and down the hills of Patterson Park. According to Annie Howe, Nana Projects artist and professional stilt walker, the newbies bring up the back of the parade line. Apparently they don't move fast.

Patterson Park Pagoda

Making a difference

Frustrated and annoyed with the garbage and dog shit piling up in the alley behind my house, I decided to take action and host a community block clean-up this past Sunday. I was very pleased that two people actually came out to help Jack and I pick up garbage, sweep up broken glass, shovel animal waste and pull up weeds. I honestly didn't expect anyone to show up to help on a sweltering hot August morning.

Even though the army of concerned neighbors I assembled for the clean-up was relatively small, our work made a difference. Not only is our alley in much better shape than it was before, I got to meet a number of my neighbors who may not have helped with the work but did take the time to stop by and introduce themselves to me and thank me for what I was doing.

I started noticing other small changes as soon as one week after I passed out the first flier notifying my neighbors of the clean-up. That very next weekend, I witnessed one neighbor cleaning up her backyard, and the owners of the Highland Clipper Club on the corner of my block finally picked up all the cigarette butts that their patrons had tossed on the sidewalk. Then, last night when I went to bring our trashcan back into our yard, I noticed that three of my neighbors who had previously just tossed bags of garbage into the alley had actually purchased trashcans with lids and even neatly labeled them with their addresses.

If you have been following my blog for a while, you may remember me first talking about hosting a community block clean-up back in May, and you may be thinking, "Gee Mara, I thought you were a go-getter. It took you how many months to pull this together?"

The reason for the delay is that I was trying to get a grant from the City, from a local nonprofit or from an environmental group, to pay for the supplies for the clean-up. No such luck. Most organizations I contacted had no money to give, and those who did have grant programs available said my neighborhood didn't fall into the City's "target areas" (aka my neighborhood isn't ghetto enough to receive assistance).

I was however able to borrow brooms and shovels from the Highlandtown Neighborhood Association. That groups leader, Kevin Berhnard, is awesome! He helped me through the planning process and was even one of the two guys who came out for the clean-up.

The funds for the weedkiller, contractor bags, gloves and drinking water came out of my own pocket. But, you know, it was totally worth it. I am going to do one of these clean-ups every month, with our without the City's help.

Aspirations of world domination

The entire world will beg to bow before me, their charismatic despot. MUUUUUUAAAAHHH!

I am often accused by friends and co-workers of plotting to take over the world, but I assure you, I don't really have aspirations of world domination. I mean come on, what kind of arrogant prick would I have to be to believe I could rule the entire planet? I'm just looking to change my immediate surroundings for the better. Is that so wrong?

My most recent undertaking (what is this a morgue? anyway....) is a grand plan to clean up and beautify my block.

The neighborhood I live in could be described as "transitional" or "up-and-coming." If you walk three blocks east, you come to half-a-million dollar condos, but walk three blocks north and you'll find a "blue-light district" with drug dealers on every corner.

My block is somewhere in the middle. There's no one yelling "ready-rock, ready-rock, I got the rock" on my corner or anything, but there are some lingering sketchy corner bars where gun fights are the norm, and there's a lot of garbage on the streets and no one cleans up after their dogs.

Instead of sitting around and passively bitching, I have decided to take action. I am applying for a "block beautification" grant from the city. If it works out, I will assemble a small army of neighbors to pick up garbage, plant flowers and kill the weeds that plague our sidewalk and back alley. I also hope to use the money to get trash cans, with lids, for all my neighbors.

Also, I am attending a Highlandtown Arts! meeting next week to find out about tax breaks for community art projects and to meet representatives of local art groups. This is step one of my goal to turn the big, blank, brick outer wall of my home (I have an end unit rowhome) into a canvas for a giant, sparkly mosaic. Step two is to take a class on making mosaics, where I will learn to cut glass and mirrors among other techniques. I am thinking that I will do a mosaic garden scene, with the help of some local arts organization. Finding an organization to collaborate with will be step 3.

So, there it is. My (not-so) evil plot to "take over" my block.