Does anybody see what I see?

[sovay]

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 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.

Comments

[yhlee]

Heh, my catten is completely unfazed by thunderstorms as long as she isn't actually outside, which I take is her expressing her Louisiana catten-ness.

Yay strawberry ice cream and grilled food!

[kore]

Yeah, I didn't feel like seeing fireworks (the drunken "WHOOO!" frat boy types who treat our neighbourhood like a party zone don't help either). I found myself saying to T "It's my country TOO, he doesn't get to just grab it." (By the -- never mind.) We watched the Mueller dramatization twice and that was fun. Lithgow deserves an Emmy or something similar.

On top of everything else, Tiny didn't like the other cats, but now that Max died in December, she's the only cat in the house and I just didn't want to leave her alone with the noise. Even tho she's a pretty chill kitty.

I have never felt less like celebrating the Fourth, including the time when Shrub was committing actual war crimes, which is really saying something.

[julian]

Yes; I had some Memorial Day where I had an internal realization that I *am* a patriot, in my own way, and my way is just as valid as theirs.

(Also, since when is July 4th a day for The Troops? I wasnt just seeing it from Trump, and it baffled me.)

My sympathies to your A/C.

[nineweaving]

The fireworks were splendid. To my delight, there was a crowd of children on my roof (this is such a staid old building). One four-year-old (I'd say) kept asking, "Is this the Grand Finale?"

Blessings on your family, now happily full of grilled things and strawberry ice cream.

Nine

[gwynnega]

Homemade strawberry ice cream sounds great.

I liked that poem a lot.

[shewhomust]

But I was born only 50 years after Harriet Tubman died,
all the centuries we drag into the next century and the next.

I like the whole poem, but this particularly.

[cmcmck]

Home made ice cream?

Yum!

[drwex]

I found this 4th so terribly fraught that I was unable to celebrate it. I felt like my holiday was stolen from me by the fascists. I wonder if this is how the pagans felt when they first saw Odin repackaged as "Father Christmas" or similar?