INDEPENDENCE DAAAY
OK technically it's still July 4 in like the Pacific Time Zone so...
RIGHT. So so... so I really like justice and freedom and explosives, right? So I am naturally pretty keen on the 4th of July in my country! This year I did some pretty awesome stuff to celebrate and so I have taken some pictures and things to share with you all! UNFORTUNATELY none of them involve alien invasions.
SO. We have this... museum I guess? Thing? In Dearborn, which is about 40 minutes away from where I live, called ~THE HENRY FORD~~~ which used to be called The Henry Ford Museum And Greenfield Village (which is a much more reasonable name but idk). It's... well. The website is here, if you want to take a look, but it's pretty hard to describe.
BASICALLY! So like Henry Ford was a magnificent douchebag right, and he had like a fuckton of dollars! And he was all "OH MY GRACIOUS WHAT WILL I DO WITH ALL THESE DOLLARS apart from publish a billion billion viciously anti-Semetic pamphlets!! WHAT A DILEMMA!!!" because his life was hard like that
And eventually I guess he just sort of started doing that thing that loads of old rich dudes used to do which is like buy up other people's stuff and then display it all like LOOK WHAT I'VE GOT, only Henry Ford did not just do it with like vases and shit he did it with
Actual buildings
No joke of a lie he like bought up all these buildings and had them transported back to his... Magical Anachronism Park in Michigan BRICK!!! BY!!! BRICK!!! in some cases and made this weird as fuck village thing out of all these different buildings from different locations and different time periods. Anyway it is actually pretty rad in a number of ways and they do tours and ~educate people~ and shit a lot (though there's obvs a ton of problematic aspects but I won't get started on that because then we'll be here all night and I still have like 20 pictures to show you!!!) and um ...fuck where was I
Right so! They do this thing every year called ~Salute to America~ or wev with a great big bandstand and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and ALL THE FIREWORKS EVER and real cannons! Which they shoot! And 19th century lawn games for children such as the ever-exciting STICK AND HOOP GAME etc etc. It's pretty cool. They also have like 19th century baseball teams who play each other and one of the teams is called the LA SEE DAHS which is pretty nifty imho. Just sayin'.
So we decided to go this year cos we hadn't been in ages, aaaannd... well here's some pics. (I also took some notes but they don't make very much sense to me now although I am sure they did at the time I wrote them, woops)
So one of the first things you pass when you go in the gates is some HAWSES and god knows how I enjoy animals so I took some pictures of their great big horse faces (they are such big horses you guys for reals):
I kind of talked to the horses for a while and got lost a lil bit because there were a billion people and my parents did not realize I had stopped because I am clever but look at their faces! Er, his face. It's pretty charming.
Nother one of the first things you pass - idk some great big warehouse with a fuckton of old engine parts outside it in the yard. The whole village is mainly sort of like OMFG YOU GUYS THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: GREAT THING OR THE GREATEST THING???? but then it also has random like AND THIS IS WHERE ROBERT FROST LIVED and here's a cottage from 17th century England that we have just because we like the look of it! Lol Henry Ford. But it is a pretty photo of the engine parts and the trees and flowers, I think.
Clock tower in the main square which has alarming rotating clockwork people who come out and... rotate... at you when the clock strikes. As you can see they are all about the patriotic banners up in here.
i heard you like banners so i put some banners on your banners is this enough banners yet (answer: no not ever)
TRAGICALLY blurry photo of some very charming young men in a barbershop quartet (and some flapper-type ladies who did backup dancing and singing). Aren't they dressed delightfully?? I like their hats.
Marching band displaying ~the colors~! These guys did like TEN CIRCUITS of the whole park dressed like that and it was real hot, I was impressed. Plus they had DRUMS AND FIFES and come on that's just cool.
FIFES
AND
DRUMSSSssss
The back of the marchers tee hee their hats /is 6 years old
The covered bridge thing they have there for no reason that I am aware of AND SOME DUCKS with naturally I was more interested in but they were all wiggly and I could not get a decent shot of them :(
Sign beside said bridge. IDK what sulkies or phaetons are.
OK you know that 17th century English cottage I mentioned earlier? Thaaasss it! Well, the one I am walking towards. It's really pretty so I can see why Henry Ford wanted it in his Garden Of Anachronistic Delights, ngl
For one thing it has a reaalllly big garden! This is me trying to balance on the stone wall that surrounds it like a big balance-y idiot c:
Woo! Sadly that's all I have of that since it is hard to take pictures of MUSIC and most of the rest of the night was pretty epic orchestral stuff and fireworks. They had a rad ragtime band called the River Raisin Ragtime Review which I liked a lot, and this one dude did a lot of harmonica solos idk??? I really reaaallly wanted to go look at the cannons and I looked for AGES but then when I finally found them the men would not let me go up there cos they said they closed the viewing area at eight. :( IT WAS ONLY LIKE 8:05 IT WAS SO UNREASONABLE I was pretty upset about it.
Naturally the cannons are for the 1812 Overture, which is the last song they play before the fireworks start goin' off. About halfway through the song, my mother (who had been getting antsier and antsier as the night went on because she is, if possible, even keener on cannonfire than I am) leaned over to me and said in the most exasperated tone of voice: "TCHAIKOVSKI STOP TOYING WITH US!!!!" it was pretty hilarious.
So, onto the next event! Me and my friend Stick decided to get some explosives to explode, because we are responsible patriots. He proposed going to Ohio so we could buy some REALLY BIG DANGEROUS STUPID ONES that they do not sell here. Naturally I thought this was a grand idea.
Sooo after driving a while and getting a bit lost (Me: I think we have passed it! Stick: LIFE IS A SERIES OF EXPERIENCES, HANNAH) we located the fireworks place:
Classy as fuuuuuck.
Once inside I became totally and immediately transfixed by the names of the actual fireworks. I do not think I can actually describe it to you, so let me demonstrate via imagery.
Stick's face here = pretty much my face the whole time we were inside there, no lie. :')
But in case EXCITING MOMENT does not do it for ya'll, here's some more!
Big family, unique diamond, and PLANET EXPLOSION!!! Also "cheer up smile", which I hate. Fuck, look at it, it's horrible.
I didn't have enough film to take more pictures but I wrote some of the better ones down in my notebook. The ones I have are: color dreams, legend of dragon warrior, train rage, shall we dance, extraordinary party, garden in spring, stealth ninja, real bad guys, HURRICANE PARTY, total satisfaction, and positive feedback.
Yeah idk either. SO WE BOUGHT SOME AND WENT HOME...
Stick lighting one whose name I forgot because it was not humorous.
Me, attempting to locate the fuse on EXCITING MOMENT.
A firework. I knoooow it's a horribs picture but cut me some slack they're really hard to photograph. Imagine this but like ten billion times cooler and some of them in the air and exploding and colors and stuff.
THE FIREWORK GRAVEYARD :( :( :(
So yeah that was MY holiday :D It was pretty explosiontastic and goddamn I am keen on the Star Spangled Banner, ya'll. So keen.
DID THOSE OF YOU WHO ALSO CELEBRATE THIS HOLIDAY ALSO HAVE FUN?? I HOPE SO!!!
RIGHT. So so... so I really like justice and freedom and explosives, right? So I am naturally pretty keen on the 4th of July in my country! This year I did some pretty awesome stuff to celebrate and so I have taken some pictures and things to share with you all! UNFORTUNATELY none of them involve alien invasions.
SO. We have this... museum I guess? Thing? In Dearborn, which is about 40 minutes away from where I live, called ~THE HENRY FORD~~~ which used to be called The Henry Ford Museum And Greenfield Village (which is a much more reasonable name but idk). It's... well. The website is here, if you want to take a look, but it's pretty hard to describe.
BASICALLY! So like Henry Ford was a magnificent douchebag right, and he had like a fuckton of dollars! And he was all "OH MY GRACIOUS WHAT WILL I DO WITH ALL THESE DOLLARS apart from publish a billion billion viciously anti-Semetic pamphlets!! WHAT A DILEMMA!!!" because his life was hard like that
And eventually I guess he just sort of started doing that thing that loads of old rich dudes used to do which is like buy up other people's stuff and then display it all like LOOK WHAT I'VE GOT, only Henry Ford did not just do it with like vases and shit he did it with
Actual buildings
No joke of a lie he like bought up all these buildings and had them transported back to his... Magical Anachronism Park in Michigan BRICK!!! BY!!! BRICK!!! in some cases and made this weird as fuck village thing out of all these different buildings from different locations and different time periods. Anyway it is actually pretty rad in a number of ways and they do tours and ~educate people~ and shit a lot (though there's obvs a ton of problematic aspects but I won't get started on that because then we'll be here all night and I still have like 20 pictures to show you!!!) and um ...fuck where was I
Right so! They do this thing every year called ~Salute to America~ or wev with a great big bandstand and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and ALL THE FIREWORKS EVER and real cannons! Which they shoot! And 19th century lawn games for children such as the ever-exciting STICK AND HOOP GAME etc etc. It's pretty cool. They also have like 19th century baseball teams who play each other and one of the teams is called the LA SEE DAHS which is pretty nifty imho. Just sayin'.
So we decided to go this year cos we hadn't been in ages, aaaannd... well here's some pics. (I also took some notes but they don't make very much sense to me now although I am sure they did at the time I wrote them, woops)
So one of the first things you pass when you go in the gates is some HAWSES and god knows how I enjoy animals so I took some pictures of their great big horse faces (they are such big horses you guys for reals):
I kind of talked to the horses for a while and got lost a lil bit because there were a billion people and my parents did not realize I had stopped because I am clever but look at their faces! Er, his face. It's pretty charming.
Nother one of the first things you pass - idk some great big warehouse with a fuckton of old engine parts outside it in the yard. The whole village is mainly sort of like OMFG YOU GUYS THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: GREAT THING OR THE GREATEST THING???? but then it also has random like AND THIS IS WHERE ROBERT FROST LIVED and here's a cottage from 17th century England that we have just because we like the look of it! Lol Henry Ford. But it is a pretty photo of the engine parts and the trees and flowers, I think.
Clock tower in the main square which has alarming rotating clockwork people who come out and... rotate... at you when the clock strikes. As you can see they are all about the patriotic banners up in here.
i heard you like banners so i put some banners on your banners is this enough banners yet (answer: no not ever)
TRAGICALLY blurry photo of some very charming young men in a barbershop quartet (and some flapper-type ladies who did backup dancing and singing). Aren't they dressed delightfully?? I like their hats.
Marching band displaying ~the colors~! These guys did like TEN CIRCUITS of the whole park dressed like that and it was real hot, I was impressed. Plus they had DRUMS AND FIFES and come on that's just cool.
FIFES
AND
DRUMSSSssss
The back of the marchers tee hee their hats /is 6 years old
The covered bridge thing they have there for no reason that I am aware of AND SOME DUCKS with naturally I was more interested in but they were all wiggly and I could not get a decent shot of them :(
Sign beside said bridge. IDK what sulkies or phaetons are.
OK you know that 17th century English cottage I mentioned earlier? Thaaasss it! Well, the one I am walking towards. It's really pretty so I can see why Henry Ford wanted it in his Garden Of Anachronistic Delights, ngl
For one thing it has a reaalllly big garden! This is me trying to balance on the stone wall that surrounds it like a big balance-y idiot c:
Woo! Sadly that's all I have of that since it is hard to take pictures of MUSIC and most of the rest of the night was pretty epic orchestral stuff and fireworks. They had a rad ragtime band called the River Raisin Ragtime Review which I liked a lot, and this one dude did a lot of harmonica solos idk??? I really reaaallly wanted to go look at the cannons and I looked for AGES but then when I finally found them the men would not let me go up there cos they said they closed the viewing area at eight. :( IT WAS ONLY LIKE 8:05 IT WAS SO UNREASONABLE I was pretty upset about it.
Naturally the cannons are for the 1812 Overture, which is the last song they play before the fireworks start goin' off. About halfway through the song, my mother (who had been getting antsier and antsier as the night went on because she is, if possible, even keener on cannonfire than I am) leaned over to me and said in the most exasperated tone of voice: "TCHAIKOVSKI STOP TOYING WITH US!!!!" it was pretty hilarious.
So, onto the next event! Me and my friend Stick decided to get some explosives to explode, because we are responsible patriots. He proposed going to Ohio so we could buy some REALLY BIG DANGEROUS STUPID ONES that they do not sell here. Naturally I thought this was a grand idea.
Sooo after driving a while and getting a bit lost (Me: I think we have passed it! Stick: LIFE IS A SERIES OF EXPERIENCES, HANNAH) we located the fireworks place:
Classy as fuuuuuck.
Once inside I became totally and immediately transfixed by the names of the actual fireworks. I do not think I can actually describe it to you, so let me demonstrate via imagery.
Stick's face here = pretty much my face the whole time we were inside there, no lie. :')
But in case EXCITING MOMENT does not do it for ya'll, here's some more!
Big family, unique diamond, and PLANET EXPLOSION!!! Also "cheer up smile", which I hate. Fuck, look at it, it's horrible.
I didn't have enough film to take more pictures but I wrote some of the better ones down in my notebook. The ones I have are: color dreams, legend of dragon warrior, train rage, shall we dance, extraordinary party, garden in spring, stealth ninja, real bad guys, HURRICANE PARTY, total satisfaction, and positive feedback.
Yeah idk either. SO WE BOUGHT SOME AND WENT HOME...
Stick lighting one whose name I forgot because it was not humorous.
Me, attempting to locate the fuse on EXCITING MOMENT.
A firework. I knoooow it's a horribs picture but cut me some slack they're really hard to photograph. Imagine this but like ten billion times cooler and some of them in the air and exploding and colors and stuff.
THE FIREWORK GRAVEYARD :( :( :(
So yeah that was MY holiday :D It was pretty explosiontastic and goddamn I am keen on the Star Spangled Banner, ya'll. So keen.
DID THOSE OF YOU WHO ALSO CELEBRATE THIS HOLIDAY ALSO HAVE FUN?? I HOPE SO!!!