[2024-07-04 note: This post was originally from last year, 2023, but now bumped up as a republish. One or two strips added to the post proper as of the 2024 republish. Previous comments are retained, and current readers are encouraged to continue the comments thread!]
July 4th is zbicyclist’s wife’s birthday. She had to age a few years before she realized the fireworks weren’t for her.
But that’s not all of the story: On July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams also died. His last words included an acknowledgement of his longtime friend and rival: “Thomas Jefferson survives.” Adams was unaware that Jefferson had died several hours before. At 90, Adams was the longest-lived U.S. president until Ronald Reagan surpassed him in 2001. (and now Jimmy Carter, born October 1, 1924) Source: Wikipedia.
[This Mutts strip added for 2024. It was just too sweet to resist.]
[This Peanuts is from 1964]
Comics I Don't Understand 
I’m sorry, but that jingoistic “Baldo” makes my skin crawl every time I see it; I much prefer the open-ended assessment in the second (“Prickly City”) strip. The Pledge used to be “…for all“, until a misguided amendment in 1954 restricted it to monotheistic believers.
P.S. I guess I prefer a healthy dose of self-criticism:
I feel Mrs. zbicyclist can claim the fireworks if she wants.
To all my American family and friends, Happy “Reminder Of That Little Unpleasantness In The Colonies” Day! 🇺🇸
Kilby, is the jingoism the nature of a “pledge” of any kind or is it the addition of “under God” that you object to or both? I am not personally too bothered by either, but at the same time I can appreciate a critique of any of it (a pledge, outside of government or military service, not all believe in God [autocorrected to “I’m God” which was even more amusing]). Still, I am not sure “jingoistic” is the term I would use. That may just be my semantic choice, however.
In seventy-six the sky was red / thunder rumbling overhead / and Bad King George couldn’t sleep in his bed / for on that stormy morn / Ol’ Uncle Sam was born!
Here is a YouTube link to one of the three or four versions they have up of Ballad For Americans in the original magnificent Paul Robeson rendition, with different visuals provided. This one has a montage of stills of Robeson at different stages of his career.
(This one also has the good value of some YT comments from me!)
There are other performances available, including the 1960s recording with Odetta singing the lead; and a recent college musician’s amateur staging with fellow students, which I will post a link to shortly.
There definitely exists a movie short, with Robeson and the chorus walking around on sets and real landscapes. I have seen it. But I cannot find it these days. In this video, the still at 8:15 thru almost the end seems to me like a shot from that movie. Can anybody find it?
And here’s that college-project version I mentioned, with Steve Solkela as the lead singer and, so far as I can make out, the organizer, chorus master, and editor.
This YouTube entry also benefits from comments by me — both at the top, with my picture as avatar, and at the bottom, as replies in a thread to the comment with letter B on green field by “@bazzers”, where I take up argument with the “updated lyrics version” by the NYC Labor Chorus. http://www.cpsr.cs.uchicago.edu/robeson/links/NYlabor.ballad.lyrics.html
I enjoyed the original immensely; Robeson was an incomparable American bass-baritone. I also enjoyed the college-project one, but got distracted by developing a crush on the young lady at the table to our left who resembles Lizzy Caplan, with brunette curls, glasses, banded tee-shirt, jeans, and ankle cowboy boots.
You’ll never believe how all this turns out…
Create the most prosperous nation the world has ever seen with this one weird trick.
I’m with Kilby on “jingoistic”.
Coming to this nation as a four year old and immediately being force indoctrinated to reciting a “pledge” (to a piece of cloth no less!) certainly made me in later years wonder how exactly we were any different from the communist countries and their jingoistic propaganda education.
It was especially galling it later years when I decided to exercise my Constitutional right NOT to recite the pledge, and was met with punishment and ostracism.
I led the pigeons to the flag indeed….
I’m with Mrs. zbicyclist. When I was five, we spent a year in Germany. My birthday is a national holiday there, and I thought it was for me, too! (It’s also a [non-statutory] holiday in Masschusetts–I’ll let the detectives winkle out the date if they’re so inclined.)
And don’t get me started on the Pledge. I quite Boy Scouts after two weeks bacause they wanted me to salute a wolf; fortunately by then we’d moved to Canada, so the Pledge wasn’t an issue for me. Though we did have religious education in the public schools back then, which I found interesting, if not compelling. I wound up with better knowledge of the Bible than my nominally Catholic wife, who played organ every Sunday for years as a teenager.
Random thoughts:
Every man who signed the Declaration of Independence is dead.
Coincidence ??? Ominous music cue
If our forefathers were here today…they’d be rather old.
And, for fun here’s a Stan Freberg excerpt.
I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the republic which it defines, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all who can afford it.
(I have that unsettling feeling I’ve posted this before, if so, well, oops!)
I don’t know about the jingoism part, but I’m with Kilby regarding the well-intentioned but misguided change made in 1954. Unfortunate that I and others who don’t quite believe should be marginalized. Especially in this day and age, I’d prefer to pledge myself to One Nation Indivisible. And if that pledge is symbolically made to a piece of cloth that represents my nation, so be it: no big deal. “…to the flag … and to the Republic for which it stands…”
Under God and indivisible are exclusive. “Under God” excludes atheists and non-monotheists.
The abhorrence to pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth had more to do to with the hypocrisy of the “under God” crowd: “Do not bow down to any idol or worship it;” basically the same beef Wilhelm Tell had which led to the founding of the Helvetican Confederation (ie, Switzerland)
(cue the Lone Ranger Theme…)
Teaching children to swear oaths by rote seems distasteful in its own right, regardless of the merit of those oaths or lack thereof.
(Meanwhile, the term “one nation” has itself grown problematic associations, most notably in Australia but also elsewhere.)
@ Targuman – It’s actually both. Like most American schoolchildren, I recited the Pledge (at least) 2000 times, almost never really thinking about what I was saying. My primary objection (now) is the “indoctrination” issue†, but having lived as an ex-pat for nearly three decades, I am also extremely uncomfortable with the (equally unthinking) knee-jerk patriotism displayed by many Americans, who seem to think that their own country is indisputably the “best” nation on the face of the planet, without even considering what non-Americans might think. For example, the “rah-rah” chants of “U!-S!-A!…U!-S!-A!…” at international sporting events seem (at least to me) to be extremely unsportsmanlike.
P.S. † Back then I was a nominal (albeit non-practicing) Catholic; the interpolated “…under God…” did not bother me until much later, when I discovered how much it undermines the intended sentiment of “…one nation, indivisible…”‡ (not to mention subverting the concept of the separation of Church and State).
P.P.S. ‡ The primary reason that the German national anthem is only the third verse was (and is) to avoid the nationalistic impression commonly associated with “Deutschland Über Alles” (in the first verse), but at the time when those lyrics were composed, the idea was not “Germany over the world”, but rather “a Unified Germany instead of a splintered collection of little bickering principalities” (the latter being exactly what America is gradually becoming).
P.P.P.S. @ Phil – That was an exceedingly difficult riddle: finding a list for Massachusetts that included “Bunker Hill Day” was not easy. Unfortunately, the date is no longer a holiday in Germany, having been supplanted by “Unification Day” (which was set to October 3rd in 1990).
When I was in school in Miami, the public school system (which covered all of what was then named Dade County, and we were told was 5th largest in the country) was organized generally as a 6-3-3 grade level system: Elementary Schools for 1-6 (no public K), Jr High Schools for 7-8-9, and Sr High Schools for 10-11-12.
But state specifications for High School regulations and curriculum etc were based on the model of four years of high school. Thus for instance requirements of four years of English and four years of Math. So 9th grade was technically the Freshman year of high school, even though for many schools that was the top year at a Jr High. And in Spring of 8th grade, Jr High Schoolers were visited by counselors from the (Senior) High Schools to fill out four-year course plans.
When I got to Sr High School (Actually much closer to my family’s home than the Jr HS had been), on the first day I was having a hard time reading the outline map sketch in our welcome packet and could not find my homeroom. Aaargh! An administrator who found me wandering around asked me, “Are you a Sophomore?” and I didn’t know! But I knew I was in 10th grade and looking for Section 10-21 homeroom. The admin took pity of course on this stammering Sophomore and led me to my homeroom — which was the Chorus Practice Room and indeed not well marked on the map, as it was not on any of the regular wings.
Hey, I’m getting there!
My homeroom teacher, Mr Johnson, was the Chorus teacher, and was the first African-American teacher at that suburban school in 1963. This was already time for widespread disaffection with the country on the part of left-liberal parents, over the growing involvement in Vietnam and the slow pace of Civil Rights, etc. When I didn’t join in the Pledge (Which was done during Homeroom), after a week or so Mr Johnson took me aside and very kindly suggested I would draw less heat from classmates if I didn’t mind just standing along with them, though of course I needn’t join in the recitation nor do the hand-on-heart posture.
Here is some
totallyvery “American” music for this holiday.(Not quite “totally” as the composer was a European visiting and working in the U.S. for a couple years.)
Bingo for Kilby (“2:39 AM “) and Chak (“12:14 PM”)!
phsiiicidu: salute a wolf?
Grawlix (“11:32 AM”): One of the best records ever. I think of it every time our band plays “God Bless Vespucciland.”
And the same group with the 4th movement — not the same session, or perhaps they are also quick-change artistes.
The whole Pledge of Allegiance thing was all a scheme by the magazine “The Youth’s Companion” to make money by selling American flags. The idea was to put an American flag in every classroom. Local donors would buy the flags from the magazine of course.
So the Pledge of Allegiance is a monument to the most fundamental American value of them all: Capitalism.
Boise Ed: Yeah, they wanted us to salute Akela, a picture of a wolf. Hmm, Googling suggests the troop leader is the Akela; that’s now how I remember it. Maybe I’m attributing the wrong term. I just remember thinking “No thank you, this is bizarre”.
Something to do with Kipling’s Jungle Book – Akela is the Father Wolf of Mowgli. I recall vaguely that the Scouts borrowed some imagery from Kipling, but don’t know details (I’m a Kipling fan but was never a Boy Scout (and barely a Girl Scout)).
Well, as long as we are contributing musical tributes, this is my favorite, from the 5th Dimension some 50 years ago (although I’m not sure if this embed will work.). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IhevfANM09Q&pp=ygUpNXRoIGRpbWVuc2lvbiBkZWNsYXJhdGlvbiBvZiBpbmRlcGVuZGVuY2U%3D
“Do you like Kipling?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never kippled.”
I always wondered who Richard was and why he stands (instead of sitting?). Was he SO BAD that he had to stand and could not stand and why was that related to the flag. And then I asked my mother who and why and found out I had been hearing it wrong.
“For Richard stands”
“For Richard stands”
Did you ever hear about Round John?
He’s mentioned in “Silent Night” … “Round John, Virgin mother and child “
After the Declaration was signed copies had to be engrossed/printed and then were sent to the individual colonies/states. When the copies arrived in the capitals of same the copies were sent by rider to the various communities by a rider to be read out to the public in each community. This all took some time.
I have mentioned (I am sure ad nauseam) our reenactment unit. We spend most of our year in the 18th century in 1775. In July we move forward to 1776 for 2 months. The local township has extensive records (let’s face it – any township willing to pay money to support their own reenactment unit is REALLY interested in it’s history) of what went on. We are a civilian unit – so the men are all members of the town’s militia which was all men of the community from 16 to 60 who were needed to protect the community from Natives, French, Dutch, Spanish attack as there was no standing British army in the colonies.
On whichever Sunday in mid July is the closest to when the copy arrived in the township we have our Independence Day event. While most years we have the (modern) copy we are using brought out by someone who says that the rider was there and has left the copy – in some years a member of a horse mounted reenactment unit comes and rides up with it. It is read out to the public on the same green as it was originally. (For a couple of decades until the Covid hit – Robert has been the one to read it to the assembled “townspeople” – more recently we had not been going to as many events and the unit commander has done so.
We will argue and discuss the information with each other and with the public. (What will happen – how will we get supplies. what does this mean, etc. ) Then following what happened originally King Geo is hung and burned – well, an effigy of him is. (I no longer have to sew and make the effigy any longer – another member took over this job.) Some years we more of a riot than others. One of the unit’s women who is more slight than others has been carried off some years as she screams and yells.
The guys then do musket and cannon and drills as would have been done. (And yes, I have fired a musket and the cannon – when one is the wife of the (now former) commander, she does everything needed.)
@ Richard & Round John – The problem with “mondegreens” is that they are (extremely) personal. While many examples may seem perfectly understandable (or even likely), there is no way for anyone to prove that those lines were actually misheard in that way. My own personal (equally unproveable) example was a misreading, rather than a mishearing: for many years I thought the jailer in “The Wizard of Id” was named “Turkney“. I must have misread it very early on (I highly doubt that there was ever a corresponding lettering error), but the weird thing is that my eyes must have glossed over any number of later appearances of the (correct) name “Turnkey“, before I discovered my mistake in my late teens or early 20s.
P.S. There is a delightful collection of (mostly German) “mondegreens” in a little book called “Der Weiße Neger Wumbaba” (literally “The white negro Wumbaba”), an alleged mishearing of “Der weiße Nebel wunderbar” (“the wonderful white fog”, from a well-known poem called “Abendlied“, often referred to by its first line “Der Mond ist aufgegangen…”). I sent the author an e-mail about Iron Butterfly’s “In A Gadda Da Vida“, which he later mentioned in a sequel edition of the book.
There was one I genuinely got wrong for the longest time and never even suspected I did not have right until I saw it on some list of frequently held mondegreens. “You and me and Leslie” seemed quite normal, though it was a slightly spicy joke to interpret it as being about a three-way sexual encounter — it could simply be mentioning a friend’s name in the middle of a love song whose lyrics one wasn’t closely following anyway. But it turns out to be actually “You and me, endlessly”. (The rhythm of the syllable as sung seem to me not really a good fit for that “endlessly”.)
And speaking of “Inna Gadda Davita” (under whatever spelling), I have just wasted some 20 minutes trying to find a cartoon I swear I saw multiple times over the holiday non-weekend because my comics-reading routine was distorted. It was one of those “if X married Y” jokes, of the “her name would be” variety (as against the “their baby would look like” variety). Unfortunately I barely know there is a real person named In A Garden; but if she merged names with Danny De Vito she would become “Ina Garten De Vito”
Happy 4th!
@phsiiicidu: I was in Cubs in Canada, back in the ’70s. “Akela” was the head adult of our pack, and his assistants / deputies were “Baloo” and “Bagheera”.
We never saluted them or any pic of a wolf. Closest we got to that was the “Grand Howl” (everyone in a crouch, calling out, “A – KE – LA WE’LL DO OUR BEST…” etc etc).
The pledge was,
“I promise to do my best,
To do my duty to God and the Queen,
To keep the Law of the Wolf Cub Pack,
And to do a goid turn for somebody every day.”
I don’t know how similar that is to American Cub Scouts.
lazarusjohn: Huh, well, maybe my group were an aberration. Or I hallucinated the whole thing. I was in Waterloo, Ontario, FWIW.
A friend of mine who is a viola player in a symphony orchestra told me that he always heard the line from Carmina Burana, “Manda liet, manda liet, min geselle chumet niet” as “On a leash, on a leash, lead a doggy on a leash.”
Kilby: Thanks for the great mondegreens. I think one of the reasons I never liked rock music was that I could almost never understand what they were saying.
Mitch: Big LOL for “Ina Garten De Vito”
phsiiicidu: I’m not usually dyslexic, but I keep seeing your name as “psilocybin.” I’m afraid the effect is mushrooming.
@ Boise Ed – That’s not dyslexic, that’s synesthesic. :-)
Aha, found it again
Apparently Desmond Dekker’s ears were alight.
Anyway – enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7my5baoCVv8
Mitch 4 –
My life – and my husband’s – lately seems to be a collection of things we remember that are not as we remember. Lines in movies that we have seen dozens if not a hundred or more time, are different. One movie “A Touch of Class” we figured was reedited. We both REMEMBER Glenda Jackson saying “Or egg ano” for oregano. For decades when cooking we would often joke by pronouncing it this way.
We have seen the movie in its original run and have seen on TV probably 30- 50 times over the decades since. We were watching the movie being broadcast on some channel by our cable co and instead she said “ore uh gano” as we would normally say and expect to hear. Same thing when we watched it again on a different channel – we figured the movie was changed to match how it is said in the U.S. So, we took out our VHS copy (yeah, we also still have Beta versions of movies) and ran the tape that we KNOW that we heard “Or egg ano” on when we have seen it before. Nope – also “ore uh gano”.
We also remember many scenes in old movies and TV shows which are otherwise different than we both remember and not just a case of reediting).
We have taken to referring to these various changes from what we BOTH remember from numerous viewings as “rifts in the time line”. Either than or we are both going crazy (even crazier than we normally are).
I will also take to leave to mention something else we both remember and seems to no longer apply. While neither of us is a grammarian we both remember being taught that the other person comes before one as in “Jane and me” not “Me and Jane” . More and more I notice that people both in speaking and writing put themselves first – I keep meaning to email a college friend who is an English Professor and writer about this. It was drummed into us back in school that the other person was to come first.
In my part of the US, “or-egg-ano” is standard. I associate “or-uh-gano” with the UK. Which is of course Glenda Jackson was from.
@ Meryl & Brian – For what it’s worth, the German pronunciation matches the British version. There’s also an old native German name for the stuff (“Dost“), but that is only found in very old cookbooks. I think I may have seen it (as a subtitle) on a supermarket package, but that was a very long time ago.
I remember the Simpsons using the “or-uh-gano” pronunciation to make fun of Marge, who encounters this most ubiquitous of all spices as foreign and exotic, and mispronounces the name.
Now, this is not the scene or episode I remember; I recall it being part of the episode where Homer gets a job with a Larry Ellison/James Bond villain in a thinly disguised Pacific North West Seattle, and Marge being impressed by the wide variety of sophisticated spices their new house that came with the job had.
Even more interesting, in trying to find this, I came across the following comment on Reddit:
In Simpsons S08E09, does anyone else remember Marge pronouncing “Oregano” differently than the way she currently does in that episode? I just rewatched it for the first time in a long time and it is completely different. Even her tone is angrier than I recall. I remember her saying, “Or-Gain-O?” and then chuckling as she says, “such Exotic Spices…” Now it is different. She says, “OreGON-O” and then agrilly follows that with, “What the Hell?” I know the difference is small and a long time ago, but here’s the thing: I’ve been calling Oregano “Or-Gain-O almost my entire life, after seeing that episode. Does anyone else have this memory?
So Meryl, you are not alone! Oregano will help us see through the Matrix!
Since I did not get the group last week and have been reading 2 weeks of comics tonight, I felt it appropriate to mention due to the date of this post –
This past Sunday our reenactment unit had their annual Independence Day event – yes, in mid July. The township the unit is headquartered in and we represent in period – they give us an annual stipend, meeting space etc in exchange for our doing events for the township – learned of the Declaration of Independence on July 22, 1776.
Various copies of the Declaration had been written and sent out to the colonies – by use of riders. This is how long it took for the Declaration copies to made and to reach Suffolk County, NY. We do the event on the Sunday closest to July 22 each year (except 2020, of course).
We are all doing things around the area of our headquarters (a weaver’s cottage in period) on the same village green where it was originally read. We know that some document is coming from the Congress, but only have hints of the details of it. Most years one of our members will come running up with the copy of it – but some years a member of a mounted reenactment unit which we do some events with will come riding up with it.
The document is read to those assembled – 18th and 21st century people alike. Robert used to do so, but the past several the new “Commander” of our unit (replaced Robert – he is now Vice Commander – I am Paymaster General) has done so as we have not been at the event (21 and 22 due to Covid concerns, this year it was just too HOT for Robert to be out). When Robert reads it (and I presume the Commander does the same it is not read as a rote reading, but rather as if it is being read for the first time anyone hearing it. Robert will stop and make comments – “oh, listen to THIS” and so on.
When it was originally read to the populace there was some rioting, so we do so also. One of the larger fellows has on occasion at the event picked up one of the smaller women of the unit who is ranting and raving about how bad this is and how dangerous it is. I often discuss “What will do without Britain to protect us” with people. There is a firing of “the gun” – reproduction black powder 2 lb (ball) cannon (we only fire blank – no ball) – sometimes I fill in firing it. The fellows drill. Then we have a drill of children with musket shaped guns cut from wood.
The local news channel (which our commander works for) took video this year of the D of I ceremony to broadcast and I think it is available online if anyone is interested I can post same. (Obviously since I said we did not go – we are not in it.)
McDonnell recently came out of hibernation to add a few new strips to the Guard Dog (a.k.a. “Sparky”) story arc, but has since disappeared again. The newly prepended Mutts strip (“to-do list“) was re-run today, but was originally published in 2003. Similarly, the “Sunday Picnic” strip is from 2004.
Today’s Barney & Clyde continues the arc from last year, see @2):
I am a monotheistic believer, and really dislike the addition of “under God” to the pledge. “One nation indivisible” is a single thought, and they split it up and put something divisive in the middle of it. And it’s not some ancient tradition: My older brother remembers when it wasn’t there.
Also, my grandfather used to say “One nation and a vegetable” and they ruined his joke.
For some reason I’m really amused by that “This is one of the years they fall on the same day” line. At first I thought That could work for any non-floating holiday. But no, it’s pretty much good only for this one, as it needs to have the date used as sort of the name.
Nice to see the old comments!
We linked a whole bunch of videos last year! I’m enjoying revisiting some of them today. (Errrm, especially the ones I posted ;-) )
I’d like to know what “under God” is supposed to mean. Does God have to approve every law before the President can sign it? Do we have to keep Kosher? Must we keep holy the Sabbath day?
I’d like to know what “government OF the people and BY the people and FOR the people” is supposed to mean. Mainly the problem is the OF, which is no surprise since OF is one of the more slippery of English prepositions. Is it here amounting to OVER? Or is it more or less redundant with the BY?
I would go with “over the people,” as the closest equivalent.
I’d say it address the origin, the administration, and the benefit: the people instituted it, the people run it, and it’s for the benefit of the people.
Some explanations I’ve seen include concepts like the ones who govern come from the people, and not an aristocracy or nobility that would restrict participation in government. Then the “by the people” refers to who selects the governing individuals from “the people”.
Thanks for the suggestions re Lincoln’s choice of prepositions. (In the Gettysburg Address, which was referring to but not quoting the Declaration from 87 years earlier.)
This year – 2024 – starts the 250th anniversary celebrations/remembrances for the American Revolution with the events of that year including the Intolerable Acts, the closing of the port of Boston by the British and the First Continental Congress later in the year having various reenactment events in different places during the year.
This will continue with the 1775 (2025) events including Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, etc. Then into 1776 (2026) and continuing until until 1783 (2033) when the War ended.
The township our unit is based in (and supported by the township) has already started having commemorative events including reading out the townships” “Declaration of Rights” written and read to the public back in 1774 and again this year in commemoration.
Our unit is doing events other than those of 1774. We have already a 1777 event. This one was held at the local restored village which is restored to mid 1800s, but does have one house which dates back to the 1700s (which we interpret – some of us in first person – for their Christmas event) and we usually do an event there during the year as well.
This event was was “Long Island under the Red Coat”. There is a local reenactment unit of British 18th century soldiers we are friends with who join us for some events if appropriate. We were in an encampment and they would hassle us and also do military drills.
Unknown to most (and not even mentioned in school) Long Island was the area occupied by the British during the American Revolution from when the “Battle of Long Island” aka “Battle of Brooklyn” was fought in August 1776 until the (literally) last ship of British soldiers left the colonies in November 1783.
So those of you on the east coast of the US keep an eye out for what should be good events this and the next few years. This is a great way to get children to understand what went on, much better to see it happening, then hear about in school while bored in general.
On the other hand – modern July 4th –
We used to go to Lancaster, PA for July 4th weekend (in general for the holiday and to avoid the illegal fireworks here). ALL fireworks are illegal in NYS even sparklers. Based on not traveling since 2020 started we have now been through 5 July 4th’s at home.
It has been far worse than we ever imagined here. This year the fireworks people were (illegally) setting off started a couple of days before July 4th. On July 4th there was a huge aerial display from a former school property – but nothing scheduled there so it was an illegal display. We live on a 4 lane main road. The small side road which just about lines up with our house on the other side of the street had also had a huge aerial display going off in the street – illegally. The next street on that side of the road seemed to have 2 of the same type of displays going on. On the street behind our house we could hear fireworks also, but could not see them.
These smaller – hear, not see fireworks behind us started 3 days before the 4th and continued to – well, yesterday the 10th (presuming they have actually ended.)
I don’t think I will ever be comfortable when we go away again for the holiday as I will be worried about all this going on around the house and the possibility of it catching fire.
At least this year no one was setting off fireworks – including aerial ones – in the middle of our street between the cars driving through as they did in 2020 and 2021.
I remember lots of preparation and publicity leading up to the Bicentennial in 1976. It seems like we should be hearing about the bisesqui … sesquibi … whatever the heck two and a half centuries is. Or are we just going to pretend it’s not happening?
@ MiB (60) – I had the misfortune to attend the Bicentennial fireworks show on the Mall in Washington, D.C., on July 4th, 1976. The problem was that some idiot had decided that they should stage a historically accurate display, with only such fireworks as would have been available and used in 1776. Perhaps the fountains, sparklers, and ground displays were beautiful, but I wouldn’t know, nor would about 80% of the audience: most of the effects never got above tree level. It was about as much fun as listening to a thunderstorm in a windowless basement.
P.S. For the 250th anniversary, Wikipedia suggests “sestercentennial” as the “traditional” (i.e. Latin) term, along with two other improbable neologisms. Another listed possibility would be “quarter millennial”, but that seem a little overly optimistic at this point.
There are events planned and being planned for the 250th anniversary events, at least, along the east coast by the various museums related to the period.
A quick look online I found this site – https://america250.org/ I don’t know who they are or how complete/accurate their info is, but it is a place to start.
Boston, Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey, Colonial Williamsburg, plus lots of other locations are all planning events.
If I have enough energy I might even make us some new 18th century clothing as our stuff is getting rather worn.