It's freedom and firework time again. So what did we do on July 4 this year, the 229th birthday of our nation? Once again we went into the neighborhood to find fireworks, rather than drive into a traffic jam at one of the public displays. The displays were not as good as previous years. There were much fewer rockets that burst in the air. Most of what I saw were firecrackers and a "firework tree", which is a canister that spits off sparklers about 5 feet into the air continuously for a few minutes. One rocket went off behind us while a car passed us in the opposite direction. It startled us, and the driver of the car. We thought the car had crashed. But no, it was a firework. Sometimes these people put fireworks in unreasonable places. For example, some teenagers tried to shoot them off in the middle of an intersection. Fortunately, nothing much happened. Just be careful. If you are going to shoot off fireworks (and this saves oil by deterring people from driving to a faraway site to see them) in your neighborhood, do so in a dead end or cul-de-sac, and make sure the ground is not tinder dry. I noticed that a fireworks display in downtown Richmond was delayed by having to wet down all the mulch in the area. The rest of the evening was listening to distant booms and watching stars (the crashed-in comet, for instance) and fireflies.
And that is Independence Day for this year. We will see what happens next year.
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