The view from above

My friends Tim and Stan invited me to be a judge for the River Days parade in Portsmouth, Ohio last Saturday. This is a big deal in Scioto County all 12 school districts in the county pick a River Days princess and all of the princesses make floats for the parade and they work on them for months.

This year the theme of the parade was Mardi Gras. Just to give you a taste, one of the floats had a model of a stretch of Bourbon St, including a boutique you could walk into. Another featured a shoe large enough for the princess to sit in.

They have to have judges from outside the county because both the princess floats and the community floats competitions are hard fought and deeply contested. It's fun to be a judge, but you can't help but be influenced by how seriously everyone takes the competition.

After the lead golf cart that I was riding in reached the end of the parade, Tim arranged for me to take a flight in a helicopter and see the parade (and greater Portsmouth) from above.

The helicopter only flew at about 500 feet above the ground, but it was amazing how the world changed from that high up. All of the contention and competition melted away and all that you could see was the floats and bands and fire trucks moving down the streets and the tops of the heads of the crowds. All of the things that seemed so important a few minutes before were reduced to a small part of the overall scene of the town and the surrounding countryside. All of those things were completely overwhelmed by the majestic beauty of the Appalachians and the Ohio River.

I think our lives are sometimes like that. We can get so focused on the little things that we miss the big picture that surrounds us. I think we all need to, metaphorically, get into a helicopter every once in a while and take the higher view of our lives and the things that surround us. It helps keep things in perspective.