Eve of Independence.
Friday, July 3rd, 2020
It’s a steamy July Friday night in Atlanta, and more often than not, we would be “up north” in extreme upper Michigan enjoying a big party with a couple of dozen people, many who we know and care about.
But not this Friday. It’s really not worth the risks, and besides, the party as a large affair isn’t going to happen (although I bet they’ll attempt a scaled-back socially distanced version with just 8, maybe 10 people.)
So what’s everybody else doing? Apparently a lot of people are watching streaming content, in the house or projected on a drive-in-like screen in their driveway. There’s the film release of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, and it sounds (if I believe the Twitterland) that many, many, many people are trying to consume it at once. Sounds like a good test of Disney+’s servers. We’ll catch up with it after the rush.
And there seem to be some fireworky sounds in the near and far distance. Not on my weekend to-do list. Also not on that list: heading out to South Dakota to watch Trump orate in front of a crammed-together crowd under Mount Rushmore, after which they will attempt to do fireworks without setting the tinder-dry Black Hills ablaze.
This seems like a very different birthday of the United States, one where we may be beginning to recalibrate how this place came to be.
