4-July-99 Fireworks
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We went over to Sue's for a cookout before the fireworks. Maybe it was the Pete's Summer Brew or maybe I was just spaced out from the chest cold I've had, but I was fascinated by the shadows of leaves and sunbeams through the trees falling on the smoke from the grill. Shadows would form and disappear as wisps of smoke drifted through the sun and shade, in a complex three dimensional pattern. As on Memorial Day, I pigged out on kielbasa.
The Newton fireworks were as spectacular as you could reasonably ask. There were some rockets of types we hadn't seen before that must have had three stages of smaller rockets in the payload. The shells, trailing a stream of red and orange sparks, would burst and smaller trails of red and orange sparks would go streaming in six or eight directions, each bursting and leaving another set of six or eight trails (but how can you count?) of sparks. Fireworks are another exercise in spatial perception, and the ultimate “you had to be there” experience. When a big pink chrysanthamum of fire fills half the sky -- well, maybe with an IMAX film, but I don't think so. And no sound system can make the kind of boom that you hear with your chest.
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