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To my fellow Americans: Happy 4th of July, I hope you end the day with the same number of fingers you started with!
May we spend the day CELEBRATING TOGETHER THE MANY DIFFERENT PEOPLE WHO MAKE US WHAT WE ARE, and also THE ALLIES WHO PROPPED US EVERY TIME WE NEEDED THEM, and finally in remembrance that 250 YEARS AGO WE DECIDED DEMOCRACY WAS COOLER THAN BEING RULED BY A SINGLE PERSON.
That is all :)
Same to you goose!
Not feeling much like pride but hoping for resilience and community ( ´◡‿ゝ◡`)
If someone wants an uplifting look at things here's 250 to 250, minute bites of the people who constantly work towards the ideals of equality and a democratic voice in their government. They just wrapped their series of vids
For where we are, I feel like hope is a good place to be. I may not have a ton of pride for our current situation either, but hope for a better future is certainly better than resignation.
And thanks for the link!
Working on hope right now, it comes and goes a bit more.
Those videos, specifically the ones relating to the Acadian exile were what led me to reignite my interest in my own Acadian roots (and go on a fun jaunt down genealogy to see if I'm a Canadian citizen now). It's been a delight getting to know the minutiae of my family history, and it's a rare case where bite-size content is (in my own subjective opinion) a net positive. I'm in agreement that I'm not very proud of the US, let alone what it--we've--done recently, but it's not over yet. It may be, but there's still opportunities left to turn the course back and strive towards what we like to believe we could be, one day.
Like others here, I've got conflicting feelings this year. The history of the U.S. is as loaded with joy and tragedy as any other nation, more exceptional in theory than in practice.
I'm comfortably ensconced on unceded Anishinaabe land, I'm here because the U.S. welcomed my ancestors as cheap union-busting labor, I'm missing a chunk of my family tree because the U.S. decided it didn't want those socialist European Jews anymore. Then the U.S. decided Jews were convenient again and Palestinians (and immigrants and refugees in general) weren't worthy of human consideration.
And yet we have, however unevenly, made some progress. The U.S. did outlaw slavery, it's had relatively progressive legislative periods, it's tried to keep various forms of discrimination in check, it did build one of the most powerful science and knowledge infrastructures in human history, and it has attempted to expand individual freedoms (however much those freedoms are in conflict with each other).
It's disheartening to watch the Patriot Front make free of the nation's capitol, when a Ku Klux Klan rally in a tiny Kentucky town was regarded as a national embarrassment during the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations.
At the same time, my little city takes its fireworks displays very seriously, and there will be a glorious show over the bay tonight. So I'll take that win in the spirit it's intended.
I'm thinking I'm not doing anything this year. Partly because it doesn't feel very celebratory. But also...The heat index in DC is currently like 104-113F (40-45C). And it's only 11am. Also some chance for storms early evening, which will send humidity through the roof before the fireworks start! Yeah, think I'll just enjoy my AC and pay the hefty electric bill later...
But yeah if any of you are going out, be safe, be smart, stay hydrated! And, no, drinking only beer doesn't count! Don't blow yourself up, don't blow up your friends, family, and neighbors! No MF'n bootleg fireworks (if you've seen that video)!
I'm at the Nats game (bit of a tradition for my wife and I even though we cheer for a different baseball team), and we sprung for the club level seats this year to get some AC on the concourse haha
Oh lawd reekris, 40-45 is about the temps I had a week ago. I made the conscious choice to accompany every unit of alcohol with a unit of water. No exceptions.
My friends got TF out of DC for the heat and the flyovers and shit with this admin. Best of luck for you!
Yea same here! VA is stupid hot. I was considering going to see a movie, but definitely not staying outside for any considerable length of time.
The 4th is always a good day to read the text of the Declaration of Independence, a radical paper that was a middle finger to the established concept of monarchy. Even if the country that formed after has pretty much failed to live up to it at every point in history, it's still a good idea.
It has some good enumerated examples of the injustices that lead to its drafting.
Everyone should read those examples of injustices with an eye to the current moment in history. It's uncanny.
Happy 4th!
This time of year takes me back to when I was a kid and how exciting little things like fireworks are when you are young. So I'd like to write a few things about that simple thing, and not about the current political mess.
Where I grew up, fireworks were always illegal and not sold, but they were in neighboring cities, so everyone would drive over there and get some. The type they sold were marketed as "safe and sane" because they didn't explode or shoot projectiles. So mostly they were cones that made a fountain of sparks a few feet in the air, and also some sparklers and caps and "snakes" that would stain the concrete with black soot.
Although I said that the fireworks didn't explode, some could be easily altered so that they would. There was a type called "Piccolo Pete" which were small and burned quickly, making a loud whistling noise. And everyone knew that you could take pliers and pinch the cardboard tube about halfway down, which would cause them to explode once the burn got to that point.
I was a very little kid when I would use these fireworks and light them. I think the most dangerous were the sparklers, which were bits of metal wire coated with gunpowder and whatever else, and they would glow white-hot after they burned. We would have an old coffee can filled with water to douse them afterward so we did have some safety prep I guess.
When I was a little older, maybe in my early teens, I was able to get some more dangerous fireworks. I knew some cousins or neighbors who could get them from Mexico and bring them back. So I would go around for hours with a brick or two of these, and blow up all kinds of model airplanes and spider webs or blow soda cans into the air. We would also sometimes get bottle rockets and that was really fun.
Somehow I never injured myself but I did get a lot of little burns on my hands.
On the 5th of July, the streets would be littered with used fireworks. My cousin and I would go around and check if there were unburnt ones, or any "duds" that we could fix or something. I remember that when I took them apart, the inner paper was usually newspaper. Frequently the paper would have Chinese writing which was pretty interesting and kind of funny to me.
When I was in my later teens, I had a neighbor who would get his hands on very dangerous fireworks, including "m80s" and "buzz bombs". m80s were very illegal and dangerous, and could definitely remove fingers or even worse. I'm not sure if all of them were like this, but the ones he had had waterproof fuses which made them even more dangerous. The buzz bombs were probably more dangerous still. They had a plastic propeller on them, and when lit they would spin and fly into the air, then explode. Somehow we all survived the year we had those, but in the next morning we saw that a window had been broken by one of the explosions. One of the m80s probably caused a rock to fly into the window. Luckily rocks or glass wasn't thrown into one of our faces.
The police in our city definitely knew that people were setting off fireworks in the streets, but it was mostly tolerated. I think they would try to stop people who were doing skyrockets, but only if they did them for more than a few minutes. It definitely was so widespread that they could not have really done anything about it anyway.
Now that I'm grown, I live in a city where the fireworks are illegal for miles around, and most people go to an officially sanctioned event where professionals set off skyrockets and the fire department and paramedics are standing by. It's nice, but nowhere near as exciting as being a little kid playing with fire and doing something slightly wrong.
This graffiti art sums up my feelings on it pretty well.
I suppose I can still appreciate the history if not where it currently ended up at least.
I grew up in the country, and moved to the city for college and stayed there my adult life. I much prefer the city for so many reasons... But I do miss lighting my own fireworks ha. The big pretty city shows are cool and all, but can't beat just exploding nonsense on my own driveway. Alas
I grew up in the country but in a state where the "good" fireworks were illegal. Things like bottle rockets and firecrackers and all the other fun ones. Plenty of people would drive to the next state over to buy fireworks for the 4th, but my parents thought they were a waste of money and, as an adult, I agree with them. But as a kid I hated it. All my friends got to play with bottle rockets and I was super jealous.
Well I ended up moving to that next state over for college and lived there for 11 years. I drove past the multiple enormous fireworks stores every year and I never once bought any fireworks the whole time I lived there.
I've since moved back near where I grew up and now that I have dogs I honestly kind of hate regular people having fireworks. You get those morons that shoot off one loud firework every 15 minutes all day long for a week leading up to the 4th and another two weeks after and they don't do anything but make noise and even if they did it's broad daylight and you couldn't see them anyway. They're still illegal but I have never once heard of the cops enforcing it and you can be absolutely sure the cops themselves are going to the next state over and buying fireworks for themselves too.
I don’t live in Tulsa anymore, but on my Google News thread this morning I saw that a 12 year old lost a hand yesterday with fireworks. Please definitely make great choices, especially if you have kids and teens!
I'm working a 12 hour shift today but that's okay because it's double time and it's miserably hot and humid outside (already, at 10am) and I don't drink much anymore and that's all most people do today anyway.