But those are just records our parents owned

[sovay]

My day has been unexpectedly rocky. Have a string of links.

1. Three poems that got my attention: Amit Majmudar's "Newsquiz," Jack Mapanje's "Skipping Without Ropes," and Sandra McPherson's "Spill."

2. An article I found useful in discussing police abolition without assuming that at step two a miracle will occur: "Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop." "The question is this: did I need a gun and sweeping police powers to help the average person on the average night? The answer is no."

3. I was not sure I had heard of Lotte Laserstein, except then I recognized her self-portrait with cat. I like her style.

4. I had definitely not heard of Louise Page, but I am fascinated that she wrote a stage adaptation of Margery Allingham's The Fashion in Shrouds (1938), since that's the one Campion novel I actively dislike, intellectually mitigated only by my knowledge of the circumstances of its writing. I hope Page's version is produced; I would love to know what she saw in it.

5. According to the Globe, our fireworks problem last night [edit: tonight] is a popular one, right down to the boom-spooked cats: "With so many illegal fireworks going off in Boston, who you gonna call?" I hadn't realized fireworks were wholly illegal in Massachusetts. I still miss sparklers.

Comments

[kathmandu]

Mass doesn't allow sparklers? Connecticut allowed sparklers, just nothing more likely to spread. And we had really great public fireworks several times a year.

[sovay]

Mass doesn't allow sparklers?

Massachusetts does not allow sparklers! I never noticed as a child because we always spent the Fourth of July with my grandparents in Maine, where my brother and I ran up and down the street merrily covering our wrists and hands with tiny burn scars of showering magnesium. Nothing worse ever happened to us. The adults in our lives were always very clear about safety. I still feel we could be trusted with the little fizzy light-up sticks, but the Commonwealth does not agree.

(Professional firework displays are not illegal: Boston traditionally puts on a nationally broadcast show for the Fourth and various satellite towns have their own, smaller-scale versions in the surrounding days. Not this year.)

[genarti]

Oh interesting! I grew up running about with sparklers, but always in Ohio and upstate New York; the idea of sparklers being illegal in Massachusetts had never occurred to me. They're fizzy light-up sticks! They give children a pleasant buzz of danger without actually risking anything but a teeny spark-scalding! I'm sure you could accidentally start a fire with one, but that's true of plenty of legal implements too.

[sovay]

the idea of sparklers being illegal in Massachusetts had never occurred to me.

It may have happened in our lifetimes—I want to say I found out as an adult, after I had moved back from Connecticut and suddenly noticed their absence again, but I think it had been true for some time by then. I still think it's silly. Most obviously, the legal unavailability of sparklers has done nothing to deter our neighbors from setting off military simulators in the parking lot behind our building.

They give children a pleasant buzz of danger without actually risking anything but a teeny spark-scalding! I'm sure you could accidentally start a fire with one, but that's true of plenty of legal implements too.

And you can put your eye out with plain old sticks such as drop off trees all the time!

[desireearmfeldt]

Fireworks and sparklers were illegal in MA for most or all of my childhood. From all the fireworks I've heard in my neighborhood in recent years, I'd assumed they'd been legalized -- I don't remember that going on when I was a kid, and I currently live a 10 min walk from the house where I grew up.

[sovay]

Fireworks and sparklers were illegal in MA for most or all of my childhood.

Thank you. Then I just didn't notice because of Maine.

I don't remember that going on when I was a kid, and I currently live a 10 min walk from the house where I grew up.

I suspect the non-stop nightly amateur fireworks of the last couple weeks are some kind of political reaction combined with stir-craziness, but that doesn't make it hurt my ears and scare my cats less.

[desireearmfeldt]

I remember it because of the Maine contrast too.

[nodrog]

"To create crime, create laws."
- U K LeGuin, The Dispossessed

[ethelmay]

My sister set her hair on fire with a sparkler once. She wasn't seriously injured, but considerably spooked.

[sovay]

My sister set her hair on fire with a sparkler once. She wasn't seriously injured, but considerably spooked.

I can see that. I once briefly caught on fire while cooking.