Independence Day

Wednesday is the 4th of July, which is Independence Day, when Americans celebrate being freed from the shackles of rule by the Brits. It's another holiday that sneaked up on me - in the UK, you have a sense of what the holidays are, and what you are supposed to do on them (May Day, hang around in the rain, Easter, injure yourself doing DIY and go to the hospital, Christmas, eat, drink, watch TV with relatives, etc) but here I don't.

So I asked around, in the hope that the answer wouldn't involved spitting on British people, as a revenge for the tyranny that they inflicted on their colonies. (Not that the US has much sympathy with other ex-colonies, but anyway). It seems that's not what one does, which is nice. One (traditionally) goes to the beach or park, where one has a picnic (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) or a barbecue (hot dogs and hamburgers), and then one watches the fireworks. There is usually a free fireworks display in each city, and some paid ones around the place. The nature of firework displays is that it's kind of hard to make people pay to watch them though.

Santa Monica used to have fireworks displays on the beach, but they got too crowded (something like 100,000 people would go to the beach to watch the fireworks, which is pretty impressive in a city that only has a population of 100,000). They tried having them very early in the morning, but then they just gave up.

The fireworks this year are going to be potentially particularly exciting because of the rain. Or rather the lack of rain. Since we arrived (about 9 months ago) I've seen water fall from the sky precisely once. In an area where houses are surrounded by low level brush, the houses are all close together, and made of wood, this makes for much bigger fireworks than the ones that are lit with a blue touch paper.