It’s some kind of national holiday celebrating our independence, but I don’t feel like celebrating in a country where justice has been deposed and our supreme court is nothing but a corrupt arm of the far right Federalist Society. So instead I’m going to murder spiders.
I’ve got a set of wild-caught Steatoda triangulosa, and another set of wild-caught Parasteatoda, and yet more long-term lab-fed S. triangulosa, and they’re all going to feel the kiss of cold 95% ethanol before being stashed in a freezer. Then this weekend they get delivered to a collaborator up north who will disembowel them and sequence their microbiome.
That’s how we celebrate America’s birthday around here.
Also this weekend, we’re going to visit a few cemeteries around Gary, Minnesota and check out the graves of some long-dead relatives, and do some sight-seeing of great-great-great grandparents’ old haunts, while also chasing down a few spiders. It seems appropriate.
If the Ungoliant arrived to Arda July 4th this should surely be a cause for celebration.
The way so many people celebrate the 4th epitomizes so much of what is wrong with this country. A buncha drunk clowns blowing stuff up without a care for how their freedumb celebration affects others including other peoples dogs. Or if they did care it would only be to take sadistic pleasure in being so obnoxious.
Must be nice to have a day off.
A few of which will be granting independence to some of their fingers.
My traditions tend to be
1) watch all the America Rock segments of Schoolhouse Rock w/ my kid (granted, she’s 12 now, but we’ll see if she’s still up for it), and
2) listen to a lot of “American” classical music from such luminaries as George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Ferde Grofe, Irving Berlin, and even John Phillip Sousa.
All of whom were the children of immigrants, all Americans because of the 14th Amendment.
Seems fitting to celebrate as between Trump and DeSantis, 3/4ths of the Republican Primary Voters polled are supporting someone who wants to end the birthright citizenship of the 14th through any means.
This takes some wind out our Yankee sails. France v Britain in India:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/04/asia/last-battle-american-revolutionary-war-india-intl-hnk-ml
The American colonies may have been more than a sideshow in a larger world war, but it surely wasn’t all about us.
hemidactylus @ # 6: The American colonies may have been more than a sideshow in a larger world war…
I’ve been plowing through Kevin Phillips’s The Cousins’ Wars, a very thick book on the continuity between the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War. He notes along the way that, after the shock of losing the North American mainland colonies, the Brits undertook a thorough military reform – getting politicians out of top officerships, cleaning up logistics and supply chains, re-organizing planning and communications, etc – without which, Phillips plausibly claims, they could never have withstood Bonaparte’s mischief.
So – you’re welcome, Whitehall?
Mass shootings. We celebrate freedom with terrorism.
I saw that in the news, fishy.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/04/pennsylvania-texas-fourth-of-july-shootings
(subheading: “At least 15 people shot dead across the country in mass shootings so far on the holiday weekend celebrating the US’s independence”)
Today is America’s day! Barber’s Adagio for Strings is an appropriate threnody for the victims of its bloody history, right up until today.
Well, I celebrated the day with breakfast, followed by a nice bath, followed by an allergy attack resulting in vomiting with a touch of blood.
Leaving me disinclined to accompany a neighbor on a shopping trip to a proper supermarket. Just as well, apparently, she had problems with her pension card funding and/or acceptance (odd, as a couple of months ago I was with her when it worked fine at that very store).
So, I mixed the day with reading some articles of interest and a few youtube videos. Such as a Wikipedia article on the Rocky Flats Plant and its FBI raid, as it was such a radiological disaster that the FBI actually did raid them.
Then buried the report to avoid prosecuting anyone… EPA superfund site, gave up at 6 inches down, so thar’s plutonium in them dar hills, young fella!
Then, the dread fireworks began. Followed by some celebratory gunfire. Grrrrrrrrrr!
And I threw a CMOS battery, just to aggravate my torn esophagus with heartburn.
And I’m still sore as hell from being stupid and not taking my shopping cart to the stupidmarket 2 miles away, then carrying 20 pounds of groceries one handed home.
Ate an extremely light lunch/dinner of nothing much, lest I invite Ralph, Earl and Buuuuuuddddd over.