Street festival tranquillity

Portland in the summer: street festivals, block parties, concerts in the park. I didn't even mean to go to this one. I was just peacefully walking to the library to pick up Isabel Fonseca's book on the Roma people, and I came across this little festival. I made eye contact with the proud father, pointed to the camera, and he held the baby up for me to photograph. There was such a din we could only speak in gestures, and he shouted, "He's four months old today." Not sure I could hear him, he held up four fingers. I had to angle the camera because of the crowd. We were surrounded by a group of muscle-proud young men trying to pound a mallet hard enough to ring a huge bell, a double-banjo blue-grass band (amplified), a petting zoo with llamas and goats, a contraption that dumped a boy into a pool of water every time someone hit the target with a baseball, and of course the obligatory vat of boiling oil for frying whatever people fry at festivals. Corn-dogs I think it was. The baby was completely unfazed by it all.

Otherwise it was a quiet day, mostly at home. Watched a very powerful documentary called 5 Broken Cameras. It was filmed over five years on consumer video cameras by a Palestinian, Emad Burnat, then scripted and produced by an Israeli, Guy Davidi, working with Burnat. It left me sobbing, but I was glad I saw it. The point is that cameras have become a tool of political protest, integral to any political action, a way to get the word out without the censorship or propaganda of commercial media.

I'm headed for bed with the book, leaving comments off a little longer.