DIY Fourth of July

My favorite Independence Day memories happened up in Bellevue, Nebraska. My dad and I would go to professional shows, sure, but several years we’d also go walking around the neighborhoods as hundreds of households launched their own pyrotechnics. I remember walking along a street on a hill and seeing the rest of a subdivision laid out below on one side, bursts of sparks continually popping up here and there like whack-a-moles. (A TV station yesterday caught an spectacular version of this in Los Angeles).

Fireworks have plenty of drawbacks, with all of the pollution and anxiety and injuries they can cause for people and other creatures. I still find a lot to love in the pops sounding in every direction as crickets and cicadas buzz and lightning bugs flicker, the haze in the streetlights below the stars, the simple fact that all sorts of people are making their own little contributions to the night’s biggest show. You could hardly ask for more summer than that.

My Fourth of July this year was filled with this sort of amateur celebration, which often makes up for lack of scale with charm and camaraderie. Earlier in the day, I followed a neighborhood parade just a few blocks away from home near downtown Rogers. It’d been a few years since I’d caught one for the holiday.

Thanks for looking, and I hope your holiday was safe and happy.

Dan

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Liminal lights

Fayetteville on Friday put on its holiday season getup, switching on hundreds of thousands of lights around the downtown square. The event’s been plenty cold in past years, but this evening it was warm enough for T-shirts and shorts. Arkansas is part of the South, obviously, but it’s not so Southern that seeing a parade with Santa Claus with temperatures in the 60s is normal.

The temperature mismatch has corrected itself since Friday evening, but in my mind it does help show how we’re in a liminal, transitional time at the moment. It’s not quite winter, but more and more of the trees are bare. Some people have Christmas trees up while others won’t tolerate holiday music until after Thanksgiving, thank you very much. I’m still having a hard time believing it’s already the week of Thanksgiving at all.

We’ll snap out of it soon enough. In the meantime, I’ll take some advice from this lady: If you’re selling kettle corn, make sure you save some for yourself.

Thanks for looking.

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Fire and rain

Fireworks still work when it’s raining, if you ever wondered.

This Fourth of July weekend brought a little heat and more humidity to northwest Arkansas, but mostly it brought rain. I had hoped Monday evening to wander around my neighborhood and catch people putting on their own shows, but an approaching storm mostly put a damper on that idea.

(Don’t hold Roman candles, by the way.)

Gentle, off-and-on rain lasted through Tuesday evening, forcing the crowd at Bentonville’s huge Orchards Park to clump under umbrellas, gazebos and their folding chairs.

After half an hour of this with no slowing in the rainfall, the show began anyway, triumphantly exploding in the darkness without a preliminary word from the organizers. The bombs vaporized the falling water, shrouding their streamers in a dramatic cloak of steam and smoke. I like to evoke space or the deep ocean with firework shots, and this nebula of mist didn’t hurt.

It was a great show as always, and these photos don’t do it complete justice. You might see a metaphor in the fact that it went on undiminished by the weather. In any case, I hope the country’s 241st birthday was a good one for you, too.

Thanks for looking.

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Fools’ parade

Mardi Gras is tomorrow, but Fayetteville’s Parade of Fools was Saturday, including this marvelous lady in red. The Carnival and capoeira troupes that have made past parades colorfully surreal weren’t around, but the Renaissance Faire pirates and dogs of all sizes put on a pretty good show anyway.