I kept seeing goarmy.com commercials on television while watching the Discovery Channel… and they kept talking about being strong and army strong and all that business… well.

I came up with the following:

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This is just something I wrote down while waiting for the fireworks to begin this evening.

7/3/2007

Writing is something I do so infrequently… and it shows! In any case, say hello to the Ashland Fireworks!!! Aside from the excessive patriotism, the one thing I’ve noticed in particular is the proponderance of people wearing scowls. People-watching isn’t something I do on a regular basis, but it appears to be a way by which you can catch people mostly off-guard. Not entirely, of course, but enough so that you can see that people are fundamentally unhappy. I mean, I’m not perfectly happy, either, but I think I am coming much closer to finding out the core of it. The rest are details. This scene reminds me of a series of photos that were featured in this place I used to frequent for breakfast sandwiches. The owner was a fairly brusque character–I eventually stopped going there because of this–and there were photos of (I assume) his children, and these photos were so telling. In one photo, the tension inherent in the photos ran in increasing proportion from youngest to oldest. There were separate photos of the three, and a group photo of the three as well. The group photo appeared earlier than the individuals, and the difference was most marked in the youngest daughter. Sure, it could have been a bad day, she was in a bad mood, whatever. But the pattern was obvious. Right now, it is twenty of eight o’clock, and they’re piping march music through the loudspeakers. It sounds like a WWII newsreel here. Such sad, angry people. The more that come, the more sadness and anger I see. Only the smallest children–but not the infants–exhibit anything remotely like happiness. Let’s not even say anything about the trio of cops that trudge through the field… At an event that is otherwise patriotic, to see so many sad and angry people just is not surprising. The older the are, the more calcified their expressions. Fear, too. Worry. Lost. Regret. That will be it for my observations of the crowd. It is beginning to get too dark.

Other observations as the evening wore on:

They had a guy announcing the 50/50 raffle for about 90 minutes straight… it got kind of annoying pretty quickly, but the proceeds from that pay for part of the fireworks for next year. It looks like they raised over $1200 for next year from the raffle alone. But that was okay, really.

Right before the fireworks began, the guy with the microphone led the crowd in singing “God Bless America.” I think that it was at about this time that I decided that I should probably forego any future patriotic attendances. There was a guy next to me that was singing, saw that I wasn’t singing, and said, “C’mon, sing!” I kept silent… I don’t know if that was the right thing to do, but I just knew that I did not believe any of the parts of that song… I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in “America” (certainly not in the way they mean it)… there’s just so much packed into that song that I just don’t believe, I can’t honestly sing it.

[Edited to add] – I had this really sickening feeling during the singing of that song… I recalled to my mind a scene from a movie (I think it was “Cabaret”) in which Germans were singing some Fatherland song… the setting was in the days right before Nazism hit into full swing and took the country by storm. Can you determine why I felt a sense of unease?

Then, of course, they had the singing of the national anthem. I happen to recall, a number of years ago, that the MC would generally say, “Please rise for the national anthem.” Now, however, they don’t even say that. They introduce the national anthem, and everybody in the crowd just automatically rises to their feet. I stayed seated… again, I’m not sure if that was the right thing to do, but I can say that I didn’t feel any problem with staying seated… I didn’t feel like I had to stand, I didn’t feel like I had to conform to the group… it was actually a rather benign feeling, one of–dare I say it–tranquility.

Finally, the fireworks. I should have gotten some earplugs or brought some earmuffs (even my nice computer headphones would have helped) because we were considerably closer to the fireworks than I’ve been in the past… and this year, after maybe 10 or 15 blasts, I decided that it would be prudent to preserve my hearing (my ears were beginning to hurt a little bit, too). As I watched the fireworks explode in the sky (most of them, anyway–at least two of them misfired, perhaps three… but the third one might have been designed that way), it occurred to me that this was a pretty silly ritual. I mean, here we all are, gathered in a field, to watch colors literally explode across the night sky. I’ve seen enough fireworks that I’m rarely impressed anymore, and they have become more boring, with a heavy emphasis on red, white, and blue.

I rather highly doubt I will attend any more patriotic fireworks displays. I certainly won’t stop anybody else from going, though if somebody makes a strong case as to why I ought to tag along, I might reconsider my stance… but it would have to be quite the strong case.