Belated Fourth of July thoughts
Jul. 5th, 2003 02:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanExterior:
It used to be easier to see fireworks displays from our back yard. But we have been here for going on eight years, and the trees have grown taller. I went out for my walk at dusk, and heard many more fireworks than I saw. I did see several instances of small groups having their own small front or back yard displays, with fountains and sparklers; very fine to look at. I'd taken my cellphone and left my answering machine on the message that suggests people call the cellphone, and I got a call from Eric just as I was crossing Blaisdell at 37th to head home. I went around to the back yard and sat in the nice new cheap lawn furniture (well, a piece of it) and discovered that I could see much of what was probably the Powderhorn Park show from right there. I checked out the view from the alley, and that was better, but not so comfortable.
Interior:
I am set in my ways, and on the Fourth of July I always puzzle over the following passage from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie:
The scene is a Fourth of July celebration in De Smet, South Dakota;
there has just been a reading of the Declaration of Independence, after which everybody sings "My country, 'tis of thee." The year is somewhere in the 1880's.
"The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and th esong came together in her mind, and she thought: God is America's king.
"She thought: Americans won't obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa; he has to boss himself. Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn't anyone else who has a right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good.
"Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought. This is what it means to be free. It means, you have to be good. 'our father's God, author of liberty -- ' The laws of Nature an dof Nature's God endow you with a right to life and liberty. Then you have to keep the laws of God, for God's law is the only thing that gives you a right to be free."
This is the same character who a few year later will both say she does not want to vote and that she will not say "obey" in her marriage vows.
This is the same character whose family settled in Kansas illegally and was made to move by the government when it for a short time upheld the treaty made with the Indians.
This is a nice knot, part of the permanent furnishing of my untidy brain.
Pamela
It used to be easier to see fireworks displays from our back yard. But we have been here for going on eight years, and the trees have grown taller. I went out for my walk at dusk, and heard many more fireworks than I saw. I did see several instances of small groups having their own small front or back yard displays, with fountains and sparklers; very fine to look at. I'd taken my cellphone and left my answering machine on the message that suggests people call the cellphone, and I got a call from Eric just as I was crossing Blaisdell at 37th to head home. I went around to the back yard and sat in the nice new cheap lawn furniture (well, a piece of it) and discovered that I could see much of what was probably the Powderhorn Park show from right there. I checked out the view from the alley, and that was better, but not so comfortable.
Interior:
I am set in my ways, and on the Fourth of July I always puzzle over the following passage from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie:
The scene is a Fourth of July celebration in De Smet, South Dakota;
there has just been a reading of the Declaration of Independence, after which everybody sings "My country, 'tis of thee." The year is somewhere in the 1880's.
"The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and th esong came together in her mind, and she thought: God is America's king.
"She thought: Americans won't obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa; he has to boss himself. Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn't anyone else who has a right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good.
"Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought. This is what it means to be free. It means, you have to be good. 'our father's God, author of liberty -- ' The laws of Nature an dof Nature's God endow you with a right to life and liberty. Then you have to keep the laws of God, for God's law is the only thing that gives you a right to be free."
This is the same character who a few year later will both say she does not want to vote and that she will not say "obey" in her marriage vows.
This is the same character whose family settled in Kansas illegally and was made to move by the government when it for a short time upheld the treaty made with the Indians.
This is a nice knot, part of the permanent furnishing of my untidy brain.
Pamela
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Date: 2003-07-05 02:49 pm (UTC)When I lived in Chicago, I watched the fireworks from a friend's boat on Lake Michigan. We were closer than everyone else, we were away from all the crowds, and there were no mosquitos. We had to wait an hour afterwards to bring the boat in and avoid traffic, but it was still the absolute best.
B
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Date: 2003-07-05 04:06 pm (UTC)Pamela
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Date: 2003-07-05 06:33 pm (UTC)B