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fireworks, 2008
Sunday, June 29 2008
Kingston had its annual Fourth of July fireworks celebration this evening, nearly a week ahead of the date being celebrated. I'd heard that one could see the fireworks from our house, but tonight was the first time Gretchen or I had ever actually done this. I turned off the lights and we sat on the bed in the upstairs bedroom, the only place high enough and south enough for a mostly-unblocked view of the airspace above the Rondout, some six miles away. The bigger fireworks created glowing circular displays two or three times the diameter of the moon. These didn't clear the boughs of the one tree blocking our view, but there were enough voids between its branches for us to see most of what was happening. We could also hear the muffled thumps of the fireworks exploding, but since it took thirty seconds for sound to travel to us, the actual firework making any particular sound had been forgotten by the time we heard its report. After the grand finale, the roar of explosions continued well after the sky had gone dark.
Interestingly, these fireworks were too far away for their sounds to frighten Sally, who does cower when nearby teenagers set off contraband fireworks. Later, though, a powerful thunderstorm swept through with several loud thunderclaps, throwing Sally into a fit of yawning and trembling. We had to keep an eye on her to make sure she didn't run off to Andrea's house. As she's gotten older, Sally's thunderstorm freakouts have grown worse, and now she'll do almost anything for hope of relief, including abandoning us to run up the road through the rain to either Andrea or the Greenhouses. This behavior almost made sense back when we'd leave her by herself and a thunderstorm would come through, but she'd evidently become so accustomed to doing this that she continued doing it even when we were around.
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