Tag Archives: Independence Day

Fireworks

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July kicked off much like June this year, warmth and sometimes heat alternating with rain, which cools down things for a while. The threat of cicadas so noisy you can’t hear yourself think has not, at least in my little corner of the suburbs, come to much so far. We’re now getting about as much cicada noise as we do every year, focused around dusk, though perhaps beginning a little earlier in the summer than usual; early July instead of mid- or late July.

July 4 was warm and dry. And on a Thursday, which makes a de facto four-day weekend. Just the time to set off fireworks here in Illinois, where all but the most innocuous ‘works are banned. I didn’t set any off myself, but after dark took to the deck to listen to the explosions.

Somewhere not too far away, someone was setting off M-80s or some noisy equivalent every few minutes, it seemed – a little too much of a good thing, I thought, so I moved to the garage, and listened to the bangs and pops and whizzes from there, with the door open and the lights off and the cars parked outside. The surrounding structure dampened the loudest of the fiery hubbub but still allowed me to hear it all.

There was also much less chance of being hit by a shell, in case some wanker out there somewhere was shooting actual firearms. I know that happens in some places here in the USA. I’ll admit that the odds of that seem pretty slim in our suburb, even at the noisiest moments on Independence Day, but even so probably greater than they would have been only a few years ago.

Listening to the Fourth of July

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Back to work. Got an email today, a steamy hot July day, that started: “Are you working on any National Ice Cream Day (July 17) stories? If so, please consider…” Not my beat, unfortunately.

We didn’t troop out to any public space to see a professional fireworks on July 4 this year. Rather, we listened to the numerous private explosions — at least I did — from the comfort of the backyard deck. Temps were just right, the wind had died down, and the small amount of rain we’d had a few hours before dark had most dried up.

Such pyrotechnics are banned under Illinois law. Or at least all the fun stuff is outlawed. It’s a law that goes unenforced after dark on Independence Day, or much before dark that day, unless (I suppose), you decided (for example) to shoot off bottle rockets in front of a cop. Or at a cop. Assuming you survived such an act, that would probably earn a fine at least.

I’ve heard private July 4 fireworks every year that I’ve lived in Illinois and been here for the holiday, but my impression is that the unsanctioned explosions ramped up in quantity and quality beginning in 2020. That year, we arrived home from Prairie du Chien on the Fourth, and soon watched from the front yard as the block lit up with more fireworks than ever before. I don’t know about last year — we went to Westmont for the show — but the trend seems to have carried on this year.

Then again, location probably matters. Fifteen years ago (was it that long ago?), we were treated to a lot of fine explosions in one of the rural parts of Grundy County, Illinois. This year, I didn’t bother with Grundy or even my front yard. I parked myself on my deck and decided to listen.

Peak illegal fireworks, between about 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., was a richly layered aural experience: rumbling every few seconds off in the far distance, pops and whizzing in the mid-distance almost as often, and BANGS nearby pretty often, all mixed together in a mildly noisy stew, except for those close-by BANGS, which weren’t mild at all. The distant rumbles sounded almost the same as distant thunder, but not quite, if you listened closely. Sometimes you could see fireworks out in the mid-distance, pops of gold and green and blue and red, but this year sound was the thing.

At roughly the same time as ambient explosions peaked, the legal fireworks display at the ballpark about a mile away was, as usual, just visible over a line of trees. I also think I barely heard, and barely saw, the legal fireworks display in Elgin as well, some miles distant to the west. At about 9:30, I heard a massive number of small explosions, as you usually do for the finale of such a show — but faintly — in roughly the right direction as Elgin. I could also see a pale but expanding glow simultaneously with the noise.

By about 10, most of the noise was gone, though of course there were scattered booms and pops until nearly midnight, when nature decided to make some noise of its own. A large thunderstorm barreled through the area, dropping a few inches of rain and conclusively putting an end to this year’s Independence Day explosions.

Independence Day & Cicadas

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At-home Independence Day weekend this year, unlike last year or the year before. Or rather, a metro-area holiday, since I spend some time on Saturday tooling around the border area between Cook County and Lake County before attending a backyard party in north suburban Wilmette, hosted by an old friend and her husband.

The weather turned conveniently dry (and pretty hot) after July 2, so the air temps were just right for an evening outdoor party, as well as for viewing the fireworks show in west suburban Westmont on Sunday. That morning, I got around to mowing our lawn, front and back, which had been greened up by the considerable late June rains. More rain is expected in a few days, so I’m not done with lawn maintenance for a while.

The weekend also involved a lot of time on the deck reading, or, during one particular few minutes at dusk on Monday, listening to cicadas. I hadn’t noticed them this year until that moment. There seemed to be only one (or maybe a small knot) of the insects in the tree over our deck, singing 20 or 30 cycles before being quiet for a moment.

More distant lone cicadas seemed to be doing the same in other trees. Are these the vanguard of the cicada army that will loudly fill the late afternoons of late summer?
Also, how can something so small be so loud? That’s a question new parents tend to ask themselves as well.

Canada Day 2020 &c

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Back on July 6. Canada Day is here, after all, and Independence Day isn’t long from now (and also the 40th anniversary of the wide release of Airplane!). In honor of both holidays, I created a temporary display on my deck.

That calls for a U.S.-Canada holiday week: North America Independence Week. Better yet, we kick off the celebration with Juneteenth and end it with Nunavut Day (July 9) — a mid-summer mashup of independence and freedom celebrations.

Not much work gets done from ca. December 21 to January 3. No reason we can’t do the same at the polar opposite point in the calendar.

Early in the evening on the last day of June, we took a walk around Spring Creek Reservoir Forest Preserve in Bloomingdale, a small part (90 acres) of the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County. Access is from E. Lake St., which is a stretch of U.S. 20, which goes all the way from Massachusetts to Oregon or vice versa.

It’s a simple circle around the reservoir. The FP District says: “In presettlement times, the forest preserve was almost entirely woodland with a small slough. It was a gravel pit from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, when it became a reservoir. The Forest Preserve District acquired the reservoir in 1987 and additional parcels in 1999 and 2000.”

Not just a reservoir, but a place for runoff from Spring Creek — flood control for Bloomingdale, as evidenced by a small dam with a spillway at the north end of the reservoir. Further downstream, Spring Creek is called Spring Brook (according to Google Maps, anyway), which eventually merges with Salt Creek, a tributary of the Des Plaines River.Spring Creek Reservoir Forest Preserve

Spring Creek Reservoir Forest Preserve
Lush summer vegetation all along the way.
Spring Creek Reservoir Forest Preserve
Spotted a monarch in the weeds.
Spring Creek Reservoir Forest Preserve
According to the info board, the path measures a shade more than a mile around. My gizmo, which measures steps, agrees.

July Idles

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This year was a stay-close-to-home Fourth of July. That is, metro Chicago. Some are, some aren’t. We returned to our old haunts in the western suburbs on Saturday night to see the Westmont fireworks, from the vantage of Ty Warner Park. It’s always a good show.

That was a high point of the weekend. So was taking my daughters to Half Price Books, at their request, on the evening of the 3rd.

The low point of the weekend was walking the dog on the 4th, not long before we left for the fireworks show. Late afternoon, that is. Part of our usual route takes us along a path between a dense row of bushes and a small patch of land sporting enough trees to block the sky, when they have leaves. Pretty soon I re-discovered its mid-summer nature as Mosquito Alley. The mossies were especially forceful when I was cleaning up after the dog.

Complaining about mosquitoes, though, is just carping. I’d rather look out of my back door and see this (an early July shot).

Schaumburg, July 2015Than this (an early January shot).

Schaumburg, Jan 2015Bugs aside, I spent a fair amount of time over the weekend on the deck reading The H.L. Hunley by Tom Chaffin (2008), a fine book about the submarine of that name, along with its predecessor vessels (the Pioneer and the American Diver). Or, as I learned reading the book, the “submarine boat,” which is a 19th-century usage. The Confederates gave underwater warfare a shot, but it turned out Age of Steam technology — as inventive as it clearly was — wasn’t quite up to the task. Not without killing more submarine boat crew than Union sailors.

Also, it’s another reason to visit Charleston, to see the vessel, now an artifact on display at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center. Not that I’d need any more reasons for a visit.

Independence Eve ’13

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What’s up with the weather this summer? High summer isn’t very high this year. Rain this morning and about 60 F., and not a lot warmer during the day. A complete contrast with the hot-for-Illinois, thirsty-dry summer of 2012.

It was a bit warmer at 10 pm tonight when I went out and the smell of gunpowder, ever so faint, wafted by my nose. Occasional pops of minor fireworks were part of the night’s background noise. It’ll be a lot smellier and louder tomorrow night.

No posting till July 8 or so. Maybe I’ll be back with an image or two to publish, and a handful of brief descriptions.