Sonia
and Marty's Ancient Greek Wedding
April
14-17, 2006
"By
the powers invested in me by the immortal heavens above and by the
state of New Hampshire, I pronounce you husband and wife." --
Hera
And a very special thanks to
all those who shot video footage or took and shared photographs:
Ben, Mika, Dan, Audubon, David, Nikki, Rain, Rhonda, Brigit,
Tony, Sonia B., Marty's dad, Maria,
and especially
Brian, who, while wearing full-on gladiator wear, juggled three cameras, his baby,
and an overflowing mug
of beer with the effortlessness of Orlando
Cabrera.
Mika's
labor of love with the video editing and postproduction work gave us
not only a polished
movie to
watch, but gave further proof to what everyone knows, that she can
throw herself into
any new task, no matter how
difficult, and simply do amazing work.
Three
gifts that have gone to our heads
The
biggest surprise of the weekend -- a touching, frame-by-frame, original
animated film
made by
Dan, Mika, Sonia B. and Mike. As everyone finished
eating the first three members of
this foursome's
superb dinner on Saturday night, I was fooled into
helping set up the
projector, believing Dan's
white lie about
wanting to show a movie about aqueducts in Athens(?)
Click the image
for the Quicktime link. And crank up the sound. I
still can't tell who or what
is making
the
cat sounds. While we love this short film
very much,
giving it four thumbs up, ten stars, and the symbol
that's
not a turkey or a pair of dice in The New Yorker's reviews (I
forget what the good symbol
is), we should
acknowledge our bias that we, along with
Marble, are the stars! Yeah!
Funky music, too.
As hard as we worked to seal off the weekend from
politics and non-ancient worldly concerns, look at what
arrived shortly after our mini-honeymoon (all the
doings of Campy, who has connections I don't want to know about).
We love it. The irony is rich, too,
considering early in our relationship we evaded the
question of whether we would
marry by citing Pres. Bush's goal
to increase the marriage rate as a reason not to do so.
We couldn't wait out his second term.
And here's a
terrifically fun and optimistic piece that Kristin, Julie and Shakur
made. We've learned
that the
president also clipped some phrases and
added them to the pile, but that Kristin, in exercising
tight editorial
control, rejected many of them.
Give me all the
year round the dear delightful spring,
when cold doth
not chill nor sun burn.
In the spring the
world's a-breeding,
in the spring the
world's all sweet buds,
and our days are
as long as our nights
and
our nights as our days.
--Bion, early 1st c. B.C.
Postscript (2.5
years later): We got a kick out of the DNC's setup for Barack Obama's acceptance speech (you can't go wrong
with columns!) We got a bigger kick out of the McCain campaign's not-too-witty mockery of the Greek theme:
