The rocket's red glare
Click to viewThese 'hotel balcony national anthem' videos always give me the good kind of goosebumps.
Show actually start at about 2 minutes in--just a fun little sampling of fireworks for those who might not have any available where they are, or don't feel like dealing with heat and mosquitoes. ;)
For at least ten, maybe fifteen years, we've been doing grocery store fireworks displays in our backyard (always running the sprinkler first!), and even though they're pretty rinky-dink in comparison, there's still something magical about it. My parents were (briefly) discussing this afternoon how even what we think of as 'basic' fountains, the kind you can get for $5 over by the bread aisle nowadays, were completely illegal when they were growing up. It's kind of mind-boggling to me, and also a reminder that while we are perhaps less free in some ways than in our past, there are also all sorts of other things that once seemed set in stone and now are laughable. We can buy wine in the grocery store too, now, and that was unimaginable when I was a kid.
(It's strange, how easy it is to take for granted that just because something's been a certain way as long as we can remember, it will always be that way. Strange when you find out it wasn't always so; stranger when it suddenly comes to a close. Maybe I'm thinking about this sort of thing a bit more than usual, given that tomorrow is the functional start of a new chapter in life for me--instead of going back to work after a pleasant holiday long-weekend, I'll... email my financial advisor about rolling over my 403b? Scrub the bathroom? Give the dog another haircut? I'll try my best not to wallow on my bed the way I have the last few days, but I feel so strangely unmoored, it seems safer to do that than any of the endless new possibilities.)
Anyhow, to close out today's festivities, an old classic: