Normally for the Fourth of July I post something fun and patriotic, but my patriotism is really lagging right now. After a week of stunning Supreme Court decisions taking away women’s rights to their own body, hampering the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to control power plant emissions, reducing the separation of state and church by allowing prayer back in schools, and overturning a law in New York State that stood for over 100 years by allowing open carry of guns.
As if that wasn’t enough to dampen my spirits, I read about the Ohio man who was shot by police. Not once. Not a dozen times. Sixty times. Details of exactly what happened are still sketchy and there are conflicting statements as to what kind of threat 25-year-old Jayland Walker posed to police who fired 90 rounds at the young man. Some details reported on the Akron Daily Journal. Whatever the circumstances that lead to deadly force, the amount of deadly force was fueled purely by adrenalin, not experience and professionalism.
A single bullet in a leg would have brought him down and everyone would have gone on to live another day. Mr. Walker would be facing the consequences of whatever prompted him to flee from police in court, and the police would still be on the job serving and protecting.
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Even though I’m not feeling the excitement for my birthday or the holiday, I can’t just let it pass without something on my blog. Looking back on some posts from years past, I found this one that reminded me of all the great celebrations we had when I lived out in the country. Take this trip down memory lane with me this year…
Just making a brief appearance today to wish all my American friends a Happy Fourth of July. Hope you are having a wonderful holiday weekend with lots of friends, family, and good times.
My long-time followers may recall that I also celebrate my birthday on the Fourth, although I am not nearly as old as the U.S.A. So, I am partying all weekend with my husband and our son and our new daughter-in-law. Tomorrow, some of the other kids will be out and we will have a Texas BBQ. (That’s barbecue for all you non-Texans.) So I will not have my regular posts today or tomorrow.
The kids like to come out to Grandma’s Ranch for the Fourth because we can usually do our own fireworks show in my front pasture, but not this year. We are under a burn ban and fireworks are limited to a few places where the volunteer fire departments are set up to handle any flare ups that may occur.
Some of our kids joked that if we couldn’t do fireworks there was really no reason to come for my birthday, but they were just giving me a hard time. They really like to do that.
Anyway, we’re going to have to be satisfied with looking at pictures of fireworks from last year.
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The photographs in this post are ones I took with a new camera that I’d gotten as a birthday present the year before this post appeared in 2011. It was such fun taking shots of the fireworks, and I managed to get a few that are quite good.
Whatever your plans are for the holiday, I hope it involves special times with family and friends. Be safe. Be happy.