July 4th

[aroraborealis]

Yesterday, I went with wolfkitn and pumpkin_pi_ down to the Charles to see the fireworks. I love fireworks. This has become something of a guilty pleasure ever since I read how horrible they are for the environment, which, paired with the ridiculous financial extravagance makes the people-and-environment-before-unimportant-pleasures part of me cringe. I console myself with the knowledge that no matter how hard I might try to get us to give up fireworks, it wouldn't work. And people would mock me like they mock PETA people, and I think they'd be right to do so. Therefore, I will not start an anti-fireworks campaign, and, in fact, I will continue to enjoy them. I'll just feel guilty about it. But not very guilty.

My favorites tend to be the ones without color, the shimmery sparkly ones or the waterfally ones.

I was both amused and baffled by the number of people taking pictures, in particular, those taking pictures with their cameraphones. We were behind a fellow who had a tripod set up and was clearly pretty serious about getting good shots, which made some sense to me, but I don't get why you would be at the fireworks and instead of just soaking them in, you'd be taking crappy photos with your phone. But I have a bias against mediating experiences with taking pictures, and that obviously shows.

We made a clever move, which I'll have to remember for next year, for the return: rather than get in the long-ass line at Kendall going outbound, we hopped on the first available train INbound, rode to Park Street, changed direction, and, I think, got home a lot faster and with less standing in line than we would have otherwise. It was brilliant!

As an added bonus to our cleverness, I got to chat with a family from Quetzaltenango! I was wearing my school's t-shirt (on the back, it reads "Justicia y Paz," which I thought was pretty perfect for the 4th of July), and they saw it, and asked me if I'd been to the town featured on the shirt. We had a very fun conversation and got to exclaim on the smallness of the world :)

I didn't get enough sleep last night, but I think I'll make up for it tonight.

Comments

[cruiser.livejournal.com]

Two things to consider with regard to making it an even less guilty pleasure:

1. Financial Extravagance: when you consider the number of people who are watching the show, it winds up being not such an extravagant thing - sure a couple million dollars is a lot of money, but if a million people are watching it, that's only a couple bucks per person entertained (and most fireworks shows aren't nearly that expensive).

2. Environmental costs: I haven't actually read anything about the environmental impact of fireworks, but the impact per person entertained is probably pretty small, and it wouldn't surprise me if the information you were reading overstated the environmental impact, just like PETA and other anti-whatever groups do.

[pumpkin-pi.livejournal.com]

It really was a great day/night! Thanks for everything! Next time, though...safety goggles.