THE BIGGER BANG
Each year, as we celebrate this nationally important date of July 4th, there seems to be a continuing growth in a civic competition in which localities try to outdo each other by setting forth bigger, brighter and louder fireworks displays than anyone else.
It is a costly event and many civic budgets are badly bent each year b y the rising costs of such displays to brighten the skies, and bedazzle the ear drums of citizens within within many miles. Dogs, cats, other pets and rats all take to cover and cringe until the human fun is played out. Many badly bent civic budgets for such needs as education public health, highways, social services quake - or whatever equivalent term might be thought to apply, when displays of such a nature take place even while their needs are being denied or cut for economic reasons.
One Virginia town, which will go unmentioned here by name because some people will call the city government tightwads, unpatriotic troublemakers, and worse for refusing to anti up money for a fireworks display this year. The money, they felt was far more useful elsewhere in meeting the towns budgeted needs. They are to be praised, I would say. For having the courage to declare their independence of the mania for more massive and costly 4t of July fireworks displays. Their action took political courage and there has been criticism and “get even” threats at the ballot boxes.
Some citizens are ashamed that their small town cannot compete with the larger cities and commercial units nearby who will be filling their portion of the sky aglow and banging a billion baffled birds into flight nation wide. One city has proudly promised it will fire a thousand units in the last thirty seconds of their display .
It is time we consider the serious meanings of July 4th for our nation and for citizens of the world at large. The trappings of self-celebration are a enjoyable thing as far as they go, but they are feeble compared to the true meanings of independence such as that we have known for a few hundred years in this nation. We should be illustrating and teaching the fundamentals of freedom rather than competing to see who can put the most fire and noise into our little portion of the sky which covers all of us.
Each year people lose their lives or suffer injury because of amateur handling of at- home on a me-too basis. Others, in far greater numbers, are injured in such mishaps, oddly enough mostly in states which prohibit the sale of fireworks entirely.
Other small cities and towns may do well to think about emulating the example set by that small governing body in Virginia. The vast majority of towns setting off such cloud busting displays do “poorly” at it, too. Fireworks displaying is not a professional fields of specialized work; best set up and shot off by experts who do nothing else. They perform that civic function far better than local talent and they are fully equipped and experienced in doing their work well ... far better than any random, sandlot shooters.
And, strangely enough, the people who used to make it a point to go to see the fireworks display now watch on TV at home where they can compare what other cities are doing -or did – at about at the same time to provide their version of a few frantic, ear splitting moments. In our family usually have a family meal that night and from a hill top homestead we watch a score or more public and private displays in the horizon about us.
We enjoy 4th of July fireworks from afar. It is good that we can have them, but they have “priced themselves out of the market” in several ways – money which is more urgently needed elsewhere in most towns and because of loss of life and limb, as well.
A.L.M. July 3, 2004 [c669wds]
