Fireworks

I've forgotten to write about how we celebrated the Glorious Fourth here in Hudson, Ohio. The authorities cancelled the municipal fireworks, alas; this caused quite a ruckus with their constituents. The folks in charge commenced braying about rising costs and falling donations; this appeased nobody and only made the locals' reaction more fierce.

We went to fireworks in Solon, Ohio, a fine, if slightly less affluent, city to the north of us. Its chief distinction in our family was that it finished ahead of Hudson in Money magazine's national list of the "Best places to live" - Solon was the forty-second best place to live in America, while Hudson was the forty-seventh.

The fireworks were, I have to say, fairly unexceptional. But they were fireworks, and honestly, it is hard to "do" them well or "do" them poorly. If they make big booms and bright flashes, you've done your job. And the folks from Solon did their job, in spite of the fact that an angry thunderstorm temporarily threatened to undo all of the preparations. The spectators only got a little moist, and it seems that the fireworks themselves stayed dry :)

I am also pleased to announce that I managed to snap, with my phone camera, several amusing pictures of my father doing the "YMCA" dance during the long lying-around-waiting-for-the-sky-to-get-dark period before the show began. There's something to make me smile when I'm feeling a bit blah! ;)