Fireworks on the lake

Japan is a land of fireworks connoisseurs; check out Robert Brady's blog for what it's like to enjoy the show from the 8th International Symposium on Fireworks when you've the advantage of living nearby.

Here in Orlando, land of Disney and Universal, all the family fun is supposedly pre-planned and canned. The fireworks run every night from multiple locations, perfect and precise, like wind-up toys. It's all quite routine, no mystery at all.

How I miss the magic of waiting on a sandy beach in the dark, listening for the sound of a shell launching. Then looking up to the night sky with anticipation, wondering and watching: What would it be? A chrysanthemum? Whistler? The little twirling sparklers that squirmed like polliwogs in mud?

Comments

Unknown said…
although we weren't at oneida lake, we were able to catch the works last summer at cazenovia, from way up on the hill. It was pretty, but short! I'm the type of person that likes to dodge the flaming embers (and you can do this in Allentown PA at J. Birney Crum Stadium--scars to prove it).
2:13 PM
teletypeturtle said…
Dodging the embers... that happened once at Oneida Lake too :-). One summer, working at the amusement park there, I remember the wind was blowing the wrong direction on the fourth of July. We had a few half-burnt (and half-burning) firework shell casings falling on us among the kiddie rides. At least the customers were all out on the beach...
2:45 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A "Pope of the Living Dead" Moment

Image
Yesterday morning I picked up the newspaper outside my door and saw this: Woah, hold onto your brains! Zombie Crisis in the Vatican! Anyway, after I took it out of the wrapper, the full picture emerged. Don't things like this make you wonder if the people doing front-page layout are awake, asleep, or trying to make us spit our coffee all over the paper?
Read more

What future? I don't even wear a watch.

I just finished reading The Unfinished Revolution: How to Make Technology Work for Us--Instead of the Other Way Around . This one is for a class, so it's outside the range of my usual reading list. Basically it's a manifesto on how computers could be made easier to use by making them more "human-centric" -- fitting the computer system to the way people need to use them, instead of forcing people to learn how to work to fit the computer. The author, Michael Dertouzos, was head of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science, so his examples are filled with his own actual experiences using (guinea pigging?) experimental computer applications developed by colleagues. There's a flight-reservation system that operates on speech recognition technology instead of keyboard input, and a "meaning processor" that attempts to spider information as you use it and tag meaning on your behalf to create an ever-expanding index. The ideas are interesting, but they
Read more