Beirut, New York
There are fireworks being set off in Central Park. It must be more marathon celebrating, but I wish it would stop. It sounds like we are under attack.
I was once at a pre-World Cup soccer match at the Redskins stadium in DC, where fireworks were set off before the game. Walking into the stadium, I noticed there were extra chain link fences set up to control traffic flow. Given the number of soccer stampedes in what were then recent years, the fences made me nervous. But then in a stadium full of people from other countries, many of them Latin American and Middle Eastern countries that have known long wars, the fireworks made me even more nervous, on their behalves. Wouldn't anyone who has ever been bombed have immediate flashbacks? Why subject them to the kind of bombast that would remind them of being at war?
Maybe I'm getting too sensitive as I get older, but fireworks in a city that is likely to be bombed someday don't seem like much fun to me.
I was once at a pre-World Cup soccer match at the Redskins stadium in DC, where fireworks were set off before the game. Walking into the stadium, I noticed there were extra chain link fences set up to control traffic flow. Given the number of soccer stampedes in what were then recent years, the fences made me nervous. But then in a stadium full of people from other countries, many of them Latin American and Middle Eastern countries that have known long wars, the fireworks made me even more nervous, on their behalves. Wouldn't anyone who has ever been bombed have immediate flashbacks? Why subject them to the kind of bombast that would remind them of being at war?
Maybe I'm getting too sensitive as I get older, but fireworks in a city that is likely to be bombed someday don't seem like much fun to me.
posted by Excellent Walker at 10:47 PM
2 Comments:
It's interesting how your thoughts and imagery bring fireworks back to what they actually are -- commemmorations of bombings. They are just "safe" bombs and you're right -- there's nothing safe about the noise or flashing lights in a world where citizen and soldier are both equally under threat of being blown up.
And the rocket's red glare
The bombs bursting in air...
We're really a very militaristic society.
hm, we don't like fireworks either - the cats hate them, and I'm afraid I can only think of the money literally going up in smoke, which could have usefuly been used eleswhere. Not sure if that makes me very pi or simply a killjoy!
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