July 4th, 2013 – Cantigny Park
July 4, 2013 Leave a comment
Photos taken today (comments later), Cantigny Park:
The Fourth of July
July 3, 2011 Leave a comment
The star-spangled sky is having a birthday party, after hours. Batteries of anxious fireworks try hard to contain themselves while hiding in the bushes. Aluminum chairs, stiff legs unfolded, carefully situate themselves to view the cyclorama of America’s unfolding Birthday, any moment now…
Into the height of twilight, a single whistling flare finds its way up to center stage – KA-BOOM! The crowd whoops, rattled babies cry and children run to huddle on blankets at parent’s feet.
Swoosh-swoosh-swoosh, a hunting, hinting sizzling goes upward and then another and another. Silence is paused mid-air. A cork popping whisper and then KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM! KA-BA-BOOM! Elemental colors burst above the crowd: Reverberation Red, Winter White, Brilliant Blue, Gushing Green, Poised Purple, Sparkling Silver, Yackety Yellow, Gracious Gold, Outspoken Orange.
Garden Roman candles shoot stars, spinners and colored peonies, Summer Heat fountains erupt into splashing fiber optic light. Whistlers – Sky Highs, Whistler Chasers, Scream Dreamers, screech through the sky. Cannonade artillery shells and mortars, bombastic breath takers, shock the air waves. Atomic Thunder Lords pummel the ears of men and women, boys and girls, the young and old, black or white, echoing its thunderous proclamation: “Attention: Liberty and Justice for all.”
Ashes rain down. Apparitions, Spirits of the American Revolution, waft through clouds of sulfur smoke and then disappear until next year.
Heaven’s gazers are photographed. The popping flash bulb sky captures moments of wide-eyed wonderment.
The birthday party continues on the ground. Sparklers arcing on sticks, splash light onto the faces of slack-jawed kids. Smoke bombs fume, the fog making conversation sputter. Snakes coil out of their black dot cages. Bottle rockets shoot straight up defying gravity, fizzling seconds later. Cherry bombs and M-150s snap like bull whips everywhere.
Earlier today, there has been preparation for the birthday party. Parades canopied streets. Marching bands with bugle and drum marched in 1-2-3-4 cadence. Drums called “Rat-A Tat-Tat, Rat-A Tat-Tat” and fifes whistled Yankee Doodle and slow scotch. The Stars and Stripes marched to Sousa while Uncle Sam walking on stilts made children’s fingers and toes point.
Vets sworn to protect now present the Colors: Red, White & Blue. With alacrity caps are removed. Grandparents, Liberty’s Old Guard, stretch out tired legs from lawn chairs. They stand as the High Flyin’ Grand Old Flag passes by, liberty recognized in the woven tri-color fabric.
Pies, apple and blueberry, were swallowed ala mode. Picnics popped up in city parks. Lemonade soured some looks, smacked some lips, returned youth to some in a swallow. Potato sack races tripped up with laughter. Horseshoes were flung at neighbors. Old Glory was displayed on porches and draped on banisters, her stripes and stars unfurled for anyone who will look her way. Families gave way to each other for an afternoon.
We say, “America, you are beautiful, from sea to shining sea beautiful.” Every year we see your birthday smile, your youthful ear-to-ear grin revealing your dazzling braces. We also see the wear and tear on vets standing with tattered flags, wanting to pass the torch to a deserving generation.
America, each year we return to celebrate the beauty of your unbridled hope and your pragmatic ways. Tonight, especially, the dreams of many Americans will reignite and shoot skyward adding more dazzling light to the already blazing torch of Liberty: “America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.” Ronald Reagan
© Sally Paradise, 2011, All Rights Reserved
Our Banner painted by Frederich Edwin Church
The Fourth Of July
July 3, 2010 Leave a comment
“O Beautiful for Spacious skies:”
Our star-spangled sky awaits the launch of the surprise party.
Batteries of anxious fireworks keep cover in the bushes,
“Happy Birthday!” forever moments away.
***
The guests of honor arrive blanketed with family.
Squares of earth are filled with tonight’s squatters.
“Look!” The party now begins:
A single whistling flare finds its way up to center stage –
KA-BOOM!
Now, other party favors come out of hiding:
Reverberation Red
Whistling White
Brandishing Blue
Go-for-it Green
Poised Purple
Startling Silver
Yackety Yellow
Gracious Gold
Outspoken Orange
***
A jetting candle begins with a swoosh,
Then,
a hunting, hinting sizzle scorches a path upward
Then,
A silence pauses mid air
Then,
a whispered cork pop releases
KA-BABOOM!
A sudden burst of Spectacular etches America’s book cover.
The book:
The Land of the Free, The Home of the Brave.
***
The birthday party continues on the ground:
– Sparklers arcing on sticks, light splashing onto large-eyed looks
– Smoke bombs cloaking crowds in fogs
– Snakes coiling out of their black dot cages
– Rockets shooting straight up to find freedom
– Fountains erupting impulsively
– M80s breaking the drums of ears.
***
Heaven gazing figures are photographed,
Secretly captured by a popping flash bulb sky.
Gun powder sulphers the air,
Ashes rain down speckling faces.
***
Today, there has been preparation for the birthday party:
Parades lined the streets,
Marching bands bugled and drummed The Stars and Stripes,
Pies, apple and blueberry, were swallowed à la mode,
Picnics popped up in parks,
Punch tie-dyed white tee shirts,
Potato sack races tripped up with laughter,
Horseshoes were flung at neighbors.
***
Flags are bowed forward on porches,
Flags wave fields of stars,
Flags march stately with fields unfurled,
Flags receive honor when are hats are removed, when salutes are rendered,
Rendered by men and women who secured their honor with life and limb.
Grandparents, smiling their tearful approval from lawn chairs,
Stretch out tired legs and stand for Old Glory.
***
America, you are beautiful,
From sea to shining sea beautiful.
Tonight we see your birthday smile,
Your ear-to-ear you grin, revealing to us your dazzling braces:
“Liberty under God and the law”.
Each year we return to your birthday party with fused smiles and arsenals of hope
Seeking sparks of optimism to ignite our dreams and shoot them skyward.
With wide-eyed wonder we stare into your “Spacious Skies”
Wishing you many more.
******
© Sally Paradise, 2010, All Rights Reserved
Cindy Wity 
Independence Day Recast?
July 4, 2012 2 Comments
Have you seen the movie Independence Day? If you have then you would know that aliens have invaded our world. There are aliens in the air and, you might agree, there are aliens on the ground in the form of the cast.
A blurb about the movie from the IMDb website: “The aliens are coming and their goal is to invade and destroy. Fighting superior technology, Man’s best weapon is the will to survive.”
Man’s best weapon here may be to laugh off this farce. I like sci-fi. I think Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey and the original The Day the Earth Stood Still directed by Robert Wise are some of the best in that genre. But this movie is epic as pathetic slap-stick sci-fi. Of course you can’t take it seriously.
Will Smith’s pre~Men~In~Black typecasting of silly No Fear bravado and Randy Quaid’s dad~is~crazy~but~somehow~his~zaniness~endears~us~to~him role adds fuel to this trash can fire. The role of President Thomas Whitemore is played by a stiff whose part would have better played better by a teleprompter. Jeff Goldblum as David Levinson portrays an MIT educated-computer expert~chess playing~environmentalist~satellite tech~you~name~it~he’s~got~the~answer~for~you~kind~of~guy who ‘triangulates’ the four corners of this going-nowhere movie.
The movie’s special effects won an Academy Award and I’ll never know why. The effects are third-rate at best. (I thought Twister should have won that year). The movie does, though, offer something for the political observer ~ a perfect realization of the Obama presidency.
The dark, foreboding and humongous space ship hovering over Washington D.C. is a perfect archetype of the Obama Administration. Out of the bottom of the ominous alien craft come lethal rays: Obamacare taxes and immigration fiats. Cities and people’s lives are instantly destroyed. America is under attack.
There is no reason given for why this is happening other than America is America and the aliens say that America must die. So it is that Eric Holder, an onerous chief alien, sits in the mother ship’s ivory tower directing America’s destruction with reserved glee.
“It’s the end of the world as we know it.” At least for America as we have known it.
…The space ship is hovering….
Constance (the President’s Press Secretary): “Now what do we do?
President Thomas Whitmore: “Address the nation. There’s gonna be a lot of frightened people out there.”
Constance: “Yeah, I’m one of ’em.”
Wow! Someone save us from the dialog! Thankfully the brave and ‘wacky’ heros played by Will Smith and Randy Quaid) come to America’s aid and help bring an end to this distraction of a movie.
Using viral computer ‘implants’ and sexy aircraft maneuvering the alien ‘death’ ship is decimated but only after hundreds of minor skirmishes with the pesky alien ‘gnats’ (the larva born in Obama’s ideological intransigence or perhaps in Jeff Goldblum’s The Fly movie).
The next time you watch this movie listen to the dialog. It deserves a Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot of Mystery Science Theatre over dubbing!
We can turn a movie off when the Hollywood kitsch gets to be too much or when the credits (and debits) finally roll. But we can’t turn off government when it makes no sense. Except if you and I begin voting it out of our lives.
Do you want freedom from annihilation by Obamacare taxation? How about “Fighting for our right to live ~ to exist” without own government’s tyranny, oppression and persecution? How about freedom from government’s intrusion of our privacy and its coercive mandates? Will the middle class now go quietly into the night now that it is being taxed into oblivion?
America’s Independence began when it resisted taxation without representation. Now we have representation that doesn’t represent our best interests and that mimics King George’s taxation edicts. Let’s throw off the shackles of tyranny and vaporize the black cloud of government that overshadows us wherever we go. Vote Obama and the Dems out.
It is confirmed. There is alien life out there. They are living among us: Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Holder, Napolitano, Durbin, Charles Rangel, Barbara Boxer, Elizabeth Warren…
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Filed under commentary, Life As I See It, Political Commentary, Politics, Writing Tagged with affordable health care act, Barney Frank, culture, economy, Elizabeth Warren, Eric Holder, Fourth of July, freedom, Harry Reid, Independence Day Movie, Joe Biden, Liberty, mandate, Move Forward, MSNBC, Nancy Pelosi, Obamacare, Obamacare tax, politics, progrssives