Does anybody see what I see?
We have been listening to the fireworks from our apartment: a pepper-pot of booms and echoing crackles which the cats are enjoying about as much as your average thunderstorm. I am sure they would look marvelous from Prospect Hill. We were much too tired by the time we got home to find out in person.
We made our strawberry ice cream. We grilled an assortment of things. Last year my niece and her younger cousin chased each other around the kitchen and the year before that they shared a trampoline and this year toy trucks were the preferred medium of chaos (a garbage truck and a flying bus featured prominently). I paid as little attention as possible to the news out of D.C. except to approve when![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch told me the weather was bad. This Fourth of July is no more uncomplicated to celebrate than the last, but I realized that I have started to feel territorial about national holidays: the administration does not get to define them; does not get to use them to define America; does not have either the right or the breadth to define America. Neither does my family, of course, being one family with some friends to celebrate with, but I think we come a lot closer than a narcissist's gun show. The two trees in the side yard are growing despite the rabbits. The milkweed and the wildflowers are flourishing over the grave of Abbie the Cat. The air conditioning at least had the courtesy to wait until all the guests had gone to give up the ghost for good.
It was not particular to the holiday, but I read this evening and have been thinking about this poem: Sarah Browning, "The Fifth Fact."
Maybe I'll finally sleep tonight.
We made our strawberry ice cream. We grilled an assortment of things. Last year my niece and her younger cousin chased each other around the kitchen and the year before that they shared a trampoline and this year toy trucks were the preferred medium of chaos (a garbage truck and a flying bus featured prominently). I paid as little attention as possible to the news out of D.C. except to approve when
spatch told me the weather was bad. This Fourth of July is no more uncomplicated to celebrate than the last, but I realized that I have started to feel territorial about national holidays: the administration does not get to define them; does not get to use them to define America; does not have either the right or the breadth to define America. Neither does my family, of course, being one family with some friends to celebrate with, but I think we come a lot closer than a narcissist's gun show. The two trees in the side yard are growing despite the rabbits. The milkweed and the wildflowers are flourishing over the grave of Abbie the Cat. The air conditioning at least had the courtesy to wait until all the guests had gone to give up the ghost for good.It was not particular to the holiday, but I read this evening and have been thinking about this poem: Sarah Browning, "The Fifth Fact."
Maybe I'll finally sleep tonight.
no subject
I finally did, well into adulthood. My aunt was Christian and we would go places as a family for Xmas dinner. One of the places we went had an old-fashioned fireplace and the log.
increasingly Hanukkah does feel important to me, not because it's the Christmas-adjacent winter analogue, but as the festival of not assimilating
Very good point. I hadn't considered it from that angle. I will read your entry on Lights; thanks for the link.
Do you mean that literally?
No. I don't have "a" rabbi, just a group I increasingly identify with and have gone to a couple events they've been visible at. I didn't even know the blockade was going to happen until I stumbled across the livestream of the arrests on my twitter feed.
The family that was attacked in the Arlington firebombing was the people who taught our kids for their b'nei mitzvot. That was pretty personal.
(I marched on Tuesday. Did I miss you in the crowd?)
I'm glad you did. I did not know it was happening. I might have, had I known. I was just back in the country from four days in Iceland and spent the day buried under a large pile of paid-work things.
no subject
I hope it looked sufficiently exciting for all that trouble (said ironically).
Very good point. I hadn't considered it from that angle. I will read your entry on Lights; thanks for the link.
I tend to link when it seems easier than recapitulating in comments. We used to watch Lights every year for Hanukkah; we'd taped it off the TV when I was very small. Eventually the tape wore out and we replaced it with an official VHS. It must be on DVD these days. I think one year I tracked it down on YouTube.
I don't have "a" rabbi, just a group I increasingly identify with and have gone to a couple events they've been visible at.
Gotcha. May I ask which one? There were a bunch of Jewish groups involved in this protest.
The family that was attacked in the Arlington firebombing was the people who taught our kids for their b'nei mitzvot. That was pretty personal.
I can see that it would be. I didn't know them as people, but I'd walked by their house and I grew up in Arlington; it was personal by proximity.
I was just back in the country from four days in Iceland and spent the day buried under a large pile of paid-work things.
That sounds exhausting and not at all politically satisfying.
I suspect there will be more protests, and you and yours should come. I'll try to give more heads-up than I got with this one—it only hit the listserve where I found it the day before it happened.