Some groups of people (plus bobble heads of US presidents)

A group of women and men dressed in clown costumes...that's the Sepia Saturday prompt for this week! And they are called the Humming Birds Concert Party of Ireland in 1924. 

Thanks Sepia Saturday. I'm going to dig out some other groups of people, not always in costume, but staring at the camera.

These women are cotton mill workers of 1909 in Georgia. Photo credit Lewis Hine.

A more recent photo of my granddaughters who live in Ohio.

Can you guess where they are?

This should give it away...they all went to the Van Gogh immersive exhibit.

Another family member was part of a group who ride in the Gasparilla Parades of Tampa FL. The man in the left front with a reflective yellow vest is my son, one of the safety workers to make sure everything runs smoothly for the float full of the "Krew," costumed "Mustang Sallies and Ryders." Most of these folks are in costumes!

Gasparilla Parade happens around the Carnival time, but has a different flare completely! The pirate Gaspar supposedly sailed into Tampa Bay...so these days there's a "pirate boat" which comes into the bay as part of the celebration.

I also enjoyed getting to know members of another "Krew" (each float has a theme of course). This other Krew were all pirate women, known as Pirate Grace O'Malley of Irish fame. Several of them would come visit the Independent Living center where I was the activity director in Tampa...these pirate women were all dressed in Elizabethean period costumes and gave out plastic beads to everyone!

With COVID, our choir hasn't been up on the stage singing on Sundays. The director of music actually takes zoom shots of each person singing, then blends them together and we have a projected video in the church of the choir singing...just once a month.

And how about this recent article "All the Presidents as bobble-men" from PBS Newshour Here's The Deal newsletter of Feb. 22, 2022.

An entire set of all of America’s commanders-in-chief – as bobbleheads. Forty-five men have served in 46 presidencies in our nation’s history. Photo courtesy of the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum

By Dan Cooney, @IAmDanCooney

Social Media Producer/Coordinator

There’s nod a lot of museums dedicated to bobbleheads. (Yes, that’s a pun.)

But in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, stands the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, which claims to be the largest museum of its kind in the world. And, for this year’s Presidents Day, it added the first complete, uniform series of bobbleheads of all the U.S. presidents to its collection.

The series features each of the 45 men who have served as president. Each one appears in front of a tiny White House. Grover Cleveland, the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms, has one bobblehead. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who lived with paralysis through his four terms, has two — one of him using a cane and the other of him in a wheelchair. William Henry Harrison – who served the shortest presidency in U.S. history at 32 days – also gets a bobblehead.

The idea for the complete presidential series came after the 2020 Democratic National Convention, which was set to take place in Milwaukee, but was largely made virtual due to concerns over COVID. At the time, the museum developed a group of bobbleheads for sale made up of "neglected presidents," said Phil Sklar, museum co-founder and CEO. The popularity of the series of forgotten commanders in chief took museum staff by surprise.

"We were pretty surprised that so many people wanted bobbleheads of Martin Van Buren and some of the other lesser-known presidents," Sklar said.

The museum’s collection also includes Lisa’s No. 1, all-time favorite: Chester Alan Arthur, who was the 21st president. Among the many tidbits Lisa provided in a dizzying array of bullet points: Arthur helped saved Yellowstone National Park in the late 1800s, and arguably contributed to the rise of the Red Cross, which was mentioned in a recent episode of HBO’s “The Gilded Age.”

Today's short Quote:

“Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.” 

​​Nora Ephron (1941–2012)