Since we read from top to bottom, I'll start this at the top, even though it's the newest post.

Thought I'd share some photos. Not good ones, mind you, but photos nonetheless.

I talked a bit about alumni drum and bugle corps here. It's something that I enjoy both as a participant and a spectator. It's a very exciting musical genre--people really respond to it. And as a participant I get a great deal of enjoyment from the way people respond to us. As I spectator I enjoy the music and also the link to a past era in which I was a participant.

The observant will figure out "The Big City" immediately. The rest will figure it out as soon as I finish my background here.

The concert is called the "Dixie Stinger". Sort of a funny name. A dixie stinger is an old-fashioned drink made with bourbon and creme de menthe. It meshes with the sponsoring drum and bugle corps' musical theme. The Yankee Rebels (another funny name) picked their name as homage to Maryland's schizophrenic position in the Civil War. We'll see some other corps here with "themes", but the Yankee Rebels have always played a lot of Dixieland. Hence the "Dixie Stinger".

Back in the day, there were a number of drum and bugle corps circuits: American Legion, VFW, Catholic Youth Organization (CYO), to name the most dominant ones. Not so today, but a number of corps exist with that legacy. My corps, for example, is an old American Legion corps. You'll see a number of corps with religious names. These are corps with roots in the old CYO circuit.

I took quite a few photos there, but relatively few turned out. While some are perfectly good, quite a few were blurred beyond belief. I suspect that the camera focused on a head between me and the stage. Another lesson learned.

Some of the corps are a bit shortchanged as I have no photos of them. Suffice it to say everyone there was awesome.

Now, onto the photos.