Rain, rain, go away...

In the town where I live is a celebration every June called Friendship Day. It's a nice tradition, including a parade in the morning, a used-book sale by the local library, booths set up in the elementary school gymnasium and schoolyard by artisans from the area and beyond, food, entertainment, games for the kids, and just a grand sense of cameraderie which is one of the reasons I like living in a small town. Even after we were forcibly merged with the city next door (and whose name we now bear), we continued on with Friendship Day. In French it is called Jour de l'Amiti�, and that is what it is designed for: to show the friendship between our two linguistic solitudes.

Today is also convocation at the university. Students who have spent the past three or four years (or longer) working on a degree will have their piece of paper handed to them today. The campus has been preparing for weeks now, planting flowerbeds, cleaning up winter's detritus, getting new paint jobs (mind you, there is that area between M0ls0n and McKinn0n which is completely dug up, something about a new gas main going in there) and we're expecting a larger crowd than usual. Normally convocation is held in the gymnasium. If you don't get there early, you are likely to be left standing, craning over someone else on the indoor track trying to see your particular graduate walk across the stage in his or her cap and gown and get his handshake from the chancellor. The university decided this time, seeing as how we seem to have a larger graduating class than ever before, to hold convocation in the football stadium. There is a covered platform set up for the profs and VIPs, but the visitors must sit in the stands and the graduands will probably have chairs set up on the level field. There is no contingency plan in case of rain.

I bring up these two outdoor events, Friendship Day and convocation, because it has dawned gray and wet this morning. According to my internet weather source, it will rain all day and continue in this pattern until Tuesday, when the sun will come out. I had planned to go to the parade, then to the faculty luncheon before sitting on the hard bleachers (maybe I should bring a cushion) to watch the second parade of graduates across the platform. The bagpipers who traditionally open convocation with Road to the Isles have said they will not play in the rain because moisture ruins their instruments. A recording of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance is ready in the event there are no pipers.

I am beginning to have second thoughts about all this. Friendship Day is always a gamble, and the booths at least are set up inside or under a tent outside. The entertainment is also under a covering. But convocation? Without a contingency plan? Someone was seriously not thinking. It must have been a man.

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