Los Angeles residents defy fireworks ban, light up sky citywide on 4th of July https://t.co/7zXSFlOnL2 pic.twitter.com/eU9rL9UroQ
— Disrn (@DisrnNews) July 5, 2020
![Minneapolis by AD reader Gordon Scott [Updated by GS in comments]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/https___cdn.cnn_.com_cnnnext_dam_assets_200527104052-21-minneapolis-protests-0526-1-1024x682.jpg "Minneapolis by AD reader Gordon Scott [Updated by GS in comments]")
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— BY THEODORE ROETHKE
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Same here. The cities didn’t have fireworks displays because of WuFlu and fire danger. The citizens took matters in their own hands and lit up the night with illegal fireworks purchased legally from neighboring states. It was a sight to hear and see.
The two bleach blonde bubble headed Karens on the broadcast were hilarious
In the Twin Cities, it looked a lot like that, especially in the vibrant neighborhoods. I thought this year might be a bit more subdued, or that folks had blown the fireworks budget already, but I was wrong. Window-rattlingly wrong.
The only things legal in Minnesota are sparklers and rather tame fountains. No bottle rockets, Roman candles, star shells, and especially no firecrackers. But Wisconsin is just 20 miles east, and they had a new thing this year. They have these really powerful mortars that pump a big explosive into the air.
According to the Wisconsin sellers, they have to get a signed affidavit from the buyer that they know how to use these properly. I can assure everyone that the people in north Minneapolis know how to ignite these. The launch thud is pretty loud. The explosion about 1.5 seconds later will rattle every window on the block, and if you’re within 100 yards outside, you’re going to feel it also.
It seemed like there were fewer of the star shells like the ones in the video this year. But oh, man, those mortars. Thousands of those mortars. There’s also some new thing about the size of a breadbox. Light it, and get the hell away because there is one hellacious BANG! and then 12 little star shells fly off in three dimensions, to explode about 15 feet from the source. All of this takes place at ground level or within 15 feet. It definitely gets your attention.
In Socal, Tijuana is 150 miles, but then you have to smuggle them back into the US. Vegas is 5-6 hours across the desert. Arizona is at least 4 hours to Quartzite. There were just too many for families casually picking up a few on their yearly Vegas trip. In San Pedro, it’s been like this every night for a week. It goes on till midnight every night.
From a hillside, the whole LA basin was a solid sea of glittering starbursts for hours on the 4th of July.
There has to be a local black market that brings in massive quantities of this stuff. I have no idea of how to go about finding that market, but apparently everybody else know how to, and everybody thinks the risks are minuscule. Law enforcement is selective and a Potemkin village, respect for the law is rapidly diminishing. Only the middle-class fear the reach of the law.
“Only the middle class fear the…law,” John A. Fleming.
I hope the politicians and the bureaucrats and the law take note of this incredible scene of LA fireworks. See that? Every one of those explosions also represents a gun owner, and in between that are several more gun owners. Americans are gund up to their ears, and also we are madder than hell.
Casey sed: “Americans are gund up to their ears, and also we are madder than hell.”
======
Right.
Maybe this Nov, rather than an election, there should be a turkey shoot.
Clean house, top to bottom.
Since they don’t want to do what they were hired to do….
Horses….man, leave them out of the curse. I’ve only met a couple that were assholes and they were made that way by some idiot who used violence to make them so.