Parade

Hadiya Pendleton knew she lived in a big world. And the more of it she saw, the better. After returning from Washington, D.C., where the Chicago teenager performed as a majorette during last week's inauguration festivities, she had her eye on her next destination: Paris. For family and friends of the 15-year-old sophomore, who was fatally shot Tuesday in a park near her school on Chicago's South Side, their Hadiya is gone, but her dreams and their memories are not. The victim's mother shook her head and wiped away heavy tears during an interview Tuesday with  WFLD-TV in Chicago: “I'm not worried about where she's going.

The nation's only Tet parade, staged in the heart of Little Saigon, will go on after all. After being told that the city of Westminster could not help pay for the annual Lunar Day parade in the nation's largest Vietnamese community, organizers hurriedly raised $60,000 in just two weeks. "We knew we could not lose this opportunity to promote the beauty of our culture," said Ha Son Tran, vice president of the Vietnamese American Federation of Southern California. "Everyone put in a lot of energy, and there's a lot of pride.

Beyonce had belted her last note and President Obama, newly sworn in for a second term, had grabbed his last hand and given his last hug. But as he walked off the inauguration platform and through an archway to the Capitol, the president turned again to face the people who came to see him. "I want to take a look one more time," Obama said, stopping his Secret Service detail. He smiled, eyes fixed in the distance. "I'm not going to see this again. " What Obama saw was a throng of Americans filling their capital on Monday.

Gunfire erupted from a vehicle, wounding five people, about 30 minutes after a parade honoring Martin Luther King Jr. passed a New Orleans intersection, police said. The parade was one of numerous events nationwide honoring the slain civil rights leader, perhaps the most famous modern advocate of peaceful civil disobedience, on the federal holiday created for him. “It's the state of affairs in our nation that young men do not heed the words of Martin Luther King Jr.,” New Orleans Police Supt.

Some quick looks around the Web: -- Matt Kemp is scheduled to serve as the grand marshal of the 28th Kingdom Day Parade on Saturday. The Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance has been moved back from Monday to avoid conflict with President Obama's inauguration. The parade is scheduled to start at 10:15 a.m. at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Western Avenue, and then proceed west on King. -- In what's becoming an annual event, the Dodgers and Cubs are scheduled to play a game March 21 in Tucson, Ariz., to benefit the Christina-Taylor Green Memorial Fund , the slain daughter of Dodgers scout John Green.

The city that gave birth to Little Saigon is unable to help pay for the annual Tet parade and is asking residents to quickly ramp up a fundraising effort to save an event marking the Lunar New Year. A colorful pageant that draws tens of thousands, the parade dates back nearly 30 years in Westminster. It has been one of the enduring city celebrations since Vietnamese refugees began to flock here after the fall of Saigon in 1975. The event was discontinued after parade organizers lost money in 2004 but was revived four years later when the city again infused it with cash.

Her message was as simple as it was powerful, a quiet, courageous statement of unconditional love. Walking alongside her son in an early New York City gay pride parade in 1972, elementary school teacher Jeanne Manford carried a sign she had written herself: "Parents of Gays: Unite in Support for Our Children. " When spectators began to cheer, Manford figured the applause must be for Dr. Benjamin Spock, the renowned baby doctor who was marching in the parade just behind her and her son, Morty.

Re "A parade grows up," Opinion, Jan. 1 While I applaud a Rose Parade with more diversity and variety, I was thrown off when Patt Morrison described the military heroes and astronauts who have served as grand marshals as "lagging behind the culture. " Sure, actors like John Wayne and Roy Rogers had had their best years behind them when they were the marshals, but they were each very accomplished. Would you rather have Kim Kardashian? Despite a few uninspired and perhaps lackluster characters over the years, the Rose Parade deserves a little bit more credit for its choice of personnel.

It's just a parade, after all, a once-a-year parade, so in the grand scheme of things, the Tournament of Roses Parade doesn't matter - until it does. And it does. There's a paradox at the core of Pasadena's pretty street party. What began in 1890 as Pasadena's way of flaunting its midwinter pleasures became an internationally televised civic institution. Be careful what you wish for, and all that. PHOTOS: The Rose Parade through the years When the world began watching, this parade - more puritanical than Mardi Gras, more glamorous than Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloons - turned into the face of all of Southern California, and thus it came not to be regarded as Pasadena's private shindig any more.