Earth-on-Water Day 2

If you hop on a plane today, you might still catch the last two days of this flower parade in the land and specific region of my father;  my mother grew up farther east on the Rhine. Here’s an English version of what’s going on;  Westland is a region connected by waterways, not a town.  Here’s a map, and here’s info on the boats. I’m going to send this blogpost to my friends at the NYS Canals, because I think the integrated boat/bike/camping event is a worthy model for Canals to study.  

With my limited WiFi, I post these for you to enjoy.   Let’s start, of course, with a prime mover, a small tugboat mentioned in an earlier post comments as an opduwer.

I’m guessing this float was sponsored by an automobile dealer who sells US vehicles. 

The range of themes surprises me. Note another small tugboat.

 

I love this one.  

Actually, I love them all. 

And given my current long stay in the bayou, I had to include this.

I have a few dozen more photos, if you indicate interest in seeing more. 

Many thanks to Jan van der Doe for sending these along, more photos of a summer festival in another place, maybe not entirely different than the mermaid parade, which I missed last weekend.  Imagine if NYS coordinated a people’s event of this magnitude in 2025 to fete the 200th anniversary of the year DeWitt Clinton made the 10-day journey from Buffalo to NYC to unite the fresh and salt waters. 

Earth-on-Water Day

Fred Trooster sent me these fotos a few weeks back from the province of Holland, in the land of windmills.  Not to push the “maricentric” idea too selectively, but this is truly a unique celebration of green on blue, produce on a canal system, small scale short sea shipping . . . if you will.  These fotos are from the “varend corso westland,” where varend . . . is related to the English word faring as in seafaring. Enjoy.

I’d love to see some of these parades.

Where might this happen in the US?  I don’t mean that as a rhetorical question.

Happy Earth Day.  By the way, what % of the total US energy diet comes from solar and wind at this moment?  Answer below.

All fotos thanks to Fred Trooster.  For previous fotos from Fred, click here, here, and here.

Unrelated:  mini-offering vessels float on Ganges-in-Queens.

Answer:  a miniscule 1.7%.  Read the story here.

Related:  37 “ridiculous” types of things removed from NJ beaches . . . .