Bored with these guys yet?
The good news then is that we think we have found all but 2 or 3 of the statues. That means this is the penultima frog marching commentary.
Quick Background for those who are new to my quest: Tired of waiting for any of the criminals to be “frog marched” out of the White House, we have been following another type of frog march — the march of frog statues honoring the not-yet-famous frog bridge in Willimantic. We have been in a hunt to find each one.
Okay, okay. So it’s been a tough week.
Good enough reason for the Better Half to initiate another search. And sure enough, the town of Willimantic complied and “hopped” out a September podful of the fiberglass statues.
Reader Frog is stationed outside the library. Notice the literary frogs painted on his spool.
This guy I named Peace Vigil. He sits on the corner of Main Street and Jackson, right across from the Frog Bridge. It’s the corner where the Casey Sheehan vigil was held back in August. Since then, I have discovered that all Peace Vigils are held on this corner, including the one every Thursday night against the war in Iraq.
I have also learned that the real Frog Bridge frogs have official names: Willy, Manny, Windy and Swift.
Willimantic spawned the first two names (Willi and Manny). Windy is for Windham county — in which Willimantic is situated, and Swift is a reference to the translation of the Alonquin Willimantic, which means “land of the swift running water.”
Below is another view of the Peace Vigil frog, this time as he looks across to the real guys on the Frog Bridge.
In the photo beneath this paragraph, this little radio guy with the earphones, Wili Frog, is tucked away beside the Wili Radio station headquarters.(The station created the boombox Fourth of July parade.
Over ten years ago, the town was way too poor and was planning to cancel the parade. No live bands to be found willing to march. But Wili radio to the rescue… they played marching band music, everyone brought their boombox, and Voila! we had the “original” boombox parade. Firsties. )
Finally, we found this guy, Fire Chief Frog by the fire station. Some stations have dalmations, some have frogs.
The fire engines are in the background and a fire hose wrapped around his threadspool base. He’s not too far from the LilyPad [Look, the town doesn’t have one blasted other thing to its credit (besides Eastern Connecticut University and maybe the Willimantic Brewhouse). Cut them a little slack.] Willimantic also has the Frogview market, the Lilypad, it’s a theme thing.
We are going to have to go back though, for yet another search. Rove is still at his job in the White House, despite bush’s best posturing. This frog hunt will have to do because so far, there’s been no frog marching of the deeply soul satisfying kind.
The Part II frogs are here Frog Marching.
And the first ones are in a diary at Booman Frog Marching for Booman.
(Disclaimer #1: I have no connection with the Willimantic Frogfest. Disclaimer #2: I have made up my own names for the frogs, just to identify them.)
I started these for Booman, but also cross posted at ePluribus Media Community Discussion site.