Grand day for a parade

I was going to headline this post about today's Memorial Day parade "The other Albany," meaning the patriotic parade-goers as opposed to self-interested workers of the political system, but I figured that's a bit unfair and anyway, the route wound up in the heart of grand official Albany. The reviewing stand (where the assembled pols included Jerry Jennings chatting amiably with his old rival Jack McEneny, with Mike Breslin nearby, after they'd all marched) was on the steps of the magnificent Greek-temple-pillared Education Building on Washington Avenue. That's across the pocket park from the Capitol and the Al Smith building, west of Academy Park and City Hall, amid as fine a collection of civic architecture, I'd wager, as any city in America (although it helps if you avoid seeing the modern junk like One Commerce Plaza or the brutalist Legislative Office Building). The city looked good on this gorgeous spring day, with the cops out to block off the streets from traffic. I covered an antiwar rally in the same park a year or two ago. Today, my pretty liberal wife was marching with the Blue Star Mothers, her eyes (she told me) welling up with tears as the Capital District Marching Band behind them played patriotic tunes. As the band played each service's theme, -- Anchors Aweigh, Into the Wild Blue Yonder, From the Halls of Montezuma, and Our Caissons Go Rolling Along -- the marching mothers with a child in that branch would clap. They got a good reception along the way. So did Jennings, from what I saw, which may bode well for his re-election. There were plenty of other bands, too, including the Albany Police Pipes & Drums (playing "Scotland the Brave" when I heard them), the American Legion's Yankee Doodle Band, Christian Brothers Academy, and the Jubilee Fife & Drum Corps of Coxsackie, whose motto is "To God be the Glory," and whose young members were in period (colonial?) costume and played The Battle Hymn of the Republic.