Frolicking ticks take home the prize! The 2023 MIWP Fourth of July parade float “Some Like it Hot”, an ecological treatise on deer ticks and other unlovable beasties loving a warming climate, earned the coveted Best Float award! While there are some things that I would have done differently, I still think the image of giant ticks in bathing suits is a perfect metaphor for this warming world. Throw in a spongy moth and some soon-to-arrive Lone Star ticks, and you’ve got the picture.

In the same spirit of reflection/reevaluation, and because there will be no 2024 MIWP parade for reasons of absent personnel, let’s take a quick trip through parades of the past. There have been a lot of them, so I am only going to touch on some of my favorites:

• Best Bird Heads, 2018, the Year of the Bird, with the Crow Bar as a float (which some people thought was an ad for a real bar).

• Most colorful: 2017, Preserve-ing for Thirty Years. Giant raspberries and grapes.

• Best costumes, 2016, The Decline of the Monarch Butterfly, which had incredibly intricate butterfly and larvae outfits.

• Best Audience participation, 2015, The Darth inVaders, or The Buckthorn Strikes Back. Most of the children on the island joined us, in full Star Wars regalia, and we had TWO floats.

• Best Collapsing Hive, 2013, Bees and Colony Collapse, speaks for itself.

• Best Flung Objects, 2010, Invasion of Asian Carp. Six foot carp tossed high into the sky, not always with precision.

And my absolute favorite for its sublime acting, its allegorical perfection, and the amazing construction of a full pioneer cabin complete with smoke from the chimney, 2008, The Buckthorn Buckaroos. The image of Star Flower weeping behind her cabin as Buck Thorn takes over will stay with me forever.

Good times.

To see an enlarged slideshow, click on an image…