From this Day 4th - When the lights go out...

BY CYNTHIA ADLER

It is one thing to see them when you’re freezing your butt off, but quite another on a warm breezy night, surrounded by entwined lovers and overtired kids dropping slurpies on the grass.

We wait for the 4th to shoot off rockets, walk barefoot on lawns, and heavily barbeque our favorite meat or fowl, and declare once again the birth of the United States as an Independent Nation…

Or do we? 

Do we even remember what this holiday is for? And do we care? Some students are preparing for the 4th by drawing cartoons of the President as a big wiener waiting to be cooked on the grill.  Or Bill Barr spread eagle, riding a firecracker that’s about to go off…or Mitch McConnell rolled up around a half-eaten worn out cob of corn.  But many of us would really like to take our mind off anything political this July, and that’s why the fireworks are so important. They blast away the past year and take us into a new fresh start.

Or do they?

In some hidden parts of the country, with each new burst of color and light, everyone makes a wish.  Believing that going forth after the 4th can produce change and magic. Because after the plentiful and yummy food… and the wine and the beer and the ice cream…we will face another day, with hot, sweaty and dripping skin and endless bugs and unrelenting sun.  And will we think about our Independence? Perhaps we should. Maybe use this 4th of July as a stepping stone into a new paradigm, where things can change with different sounds and a burst of intense color that we had not even imagined before.

Take a good burp after your chicken wings and skewers…and think about it.  After all, it is our holiday, and right after those fireworks you can be sure we do have a few sweaty and heated up months in front of us.  

In more ways than one!

Happy 4th, Hip Silvers…