Crowd

On Saturday I spent the day at the Palisade Bluegrass and Roots Festival, hearing band after band. The crowd got bigger and bigger, listening to the bands. We had a pretty jumbo crowd by the time the last band started up. Lots of fabulous music and a happy crowd of all ages.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: jumbo.

These are the guys who got me up and dancing.

Diversity

This is the Trevi Fountain. We can curate the photographs so that we can’t see the crowd. Here is the crowd.

There are lots of changes from 43 years ago, 1980, when I traveled there. More people. We were traveling in January and February 1980, so that’s not a fair comparison. But the crowd is more diverse. At that time we ran into Australian travelers, the same people in hostels as we traveled. We were mostly Caucasian. Now the crowd is much more diverse and I also do not know what language a person will speak. Race is a messy construct anyhow, very unscientific, but I really like the diversity and not knowing what language a person will be fluent in until I hear them speak.

Here is the Vatican Museum. Also crowded and diverse.

Here is a park near the train station in Rome with some “Olympics” for both kids and adults.

We were staying in hostels and only did one formal tour. I wonder if the expensive hotels have the same diversity.

Let’s end with the fountain again.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt.

Kudos to Kops

The Kinetic Kops do krowd kontrol for the Kinetic Sculpture Race. Mostly to keep spectators, especially spectators with cameras, from being run over. Some of these machines are large and heavy and may not stop on a dime. Some of them went down to the water fast, gathering momentum, with spectators lining the way. People get distracted by the costumes and glitter and forget that these are built to climb hills, go through mud, go on water, human powered.

So Kudos to Kinetic Kops for protecting us all!