Last night after work, I drove down to Fuquay-Varina to see the fireworks show at South Park (which they do every year, a day early, and yes, that's the real name of the park). They had a country band there to entertain the crowd until it got dark enough, and though I'm not crazy about country music, it was okay. At 9:30, the lights went down, and the fireworks started. For a small town, they had a bang-up show; there were the typical ones that explode and fizzle and shower trails of red or blue or magenta down on you. But there were also these cool ones that would pop and whirl like dervishes, spraying sparks everywhere, spinning themselves out of existence. Tonight, I go back over to my parents' house to cook out on the grill, and watch the Boston Pops on PBS; we talked about trying to go to another live fireworks show, but I just don't think I could stand another huge crowd of people like that.

Today, as we celebrate our independence, Patrick Nielsen Hayden (via his blog, Electrolite) reminds us what our forefathers said about liberty and tyranny. We live in a time where more and more arts programs are cut (see my previous entry) because they are deemed "inessential". We live in a time where the FBI can search the records of libraries and bookstores to see what people have been reading; this practice is authorized under the so-called USA Patriot Act, and librarians have taken up the fight to oppose this action with the Freedom to Read Protection Act. We live in a time where our national debt has never been higher, yet we intend to police the entire world.

The USA is the land of the free, but it increasingly looks like Mr. Orwell's vision in Nineteen Eighty-Four. (Orwell, by the way, was born exactly a hundred years ago.) We need to make sure we never take our freedoms for granted. The simple act of writing this blog is an exercise in my guaranteed free speech. We broke away from an oppressive imperialist government 227 years ago, and we must resist the temptation to become that same government. We need to make sure that we never see real propaganda posters like this:

Let your freedom ring, everybody. Happy Independence Day.

---

Now Reading:
Trampoline edited by Kelly Link

Stories Out to Publishers:
16

Books Read This Year:
25

Novel Word Count:
9200