Born in the USA, and everywhere else..

Portland Blues Festival
Ever feel like the only normal person in a crowd? I guess there are always other parts of the crowd where you can fit in, that is the point of it being a "crowd".

Up front by the stage where endlessly dancing people, alone, together, whoever shows up, I guess this is not our crowd. But it did make us feel normal.

I have not ever been asked "where is the beer garden" during a singing of the national anthem before, but there is a first time for everything (like last night). Maybe they just didn't know the words. And anyhow after 10 the beer garden is closed; they were disappointed. I don't even think there was a beer garden, in any case.

The metal man from Pioneer Place was there. I never noticed before his menagerie of little metal animals (in front), cute!

This time I had a decent cell camera to take pics of the fireworks (decent for me, I am a blogger, not a photographer). Right smack over the Hawthorne Bridge!

Still close enough to the stage where KINK was blasting out a soundtrack to the fireworks - cool! I would have to say that Bruce Springsteen in his "Born in the USA" was *the* *most* popular song, everyone knew the words. Rah!

On the way home our MAX strategy worked (shhh..), go to a stop or two earlier than where you would usually get on, when there are less people and get on there. Yes! After that it was near bedlam as each stop was met with hundreds of zombie-looking people (definition: people not on the train and we weren't letting them on) who were denied entrance. Somehow we survived and by the time we got to our end of the line it was all families with small children, maybe they were all born in the USA, but we were all Americans in any case.