OTTUMWA —
At time of writing, it’s Sunday, and it has seemed a kinder day after sweating buckets last week.
No one has called to suggest I do the fried-egg story. You know that one. The question is, “Is it hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk?”
And if you try to find out, you’ll need a hot sidewalk, and there’s plenty of concrete available in the city.
In the heat, it’s not a healthy thing to try strange cooking methods. OK, eating off the sidewalk might provide some fiber, but it won’t be tasty.
There’s a new question this year. I saw a news clip of some folks who wanted to test a different food and a smaller “grill.” That group wanted to know if it was possible to bake chocolate chip cookies in a car parked in the sun at a ball game with all its windows closed.
I missed the answer on that one but that’s OK. When the outdoor temperature is three digits instead of two, I would rather not use strange cooking methods. In fact, I would rather have cold meals.
Asking for more rain to cool things off seems risky because southeast Iowa doesn’t need another vicious thunderstorm. Not all of the debris has been completely cleaned up from the last one.
Well, what will be will be. It’s July, and that month is known to be hotter than a firecracker. Fireworks are fun to watch but mostly I just hear them in my neighborhood.
According to my “Llewellyn’s 2012 Daily Planetary Guide,” a full moon will greet us Tuesday night before the Fourth of July. Pam Ciampi wrote the guide’s forecasts and noted the next couple of weeks would be “the best time to complete unfinished projects, and end unresolved relationships, or anything else left hanging in the balance.”
Because this full moon occurs in the sign of Cancer the Crab on the night before the Fourth of July, Ciampi said “the moon also emphasizes the Cancer Sun’s love of women, home, family, and country.”
Numerous workers across the country will be off for the Fourth of July. All of us should take a few minutes to think about what it means.
While I perused the Internet on Sunday, I found an interesting item on the New Republic’s Web site (see below). At least one of the Founding Fathers thought Independence Day would become important.
When the Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, John Adams, who more than any other single founder was responsible for that vote, was ecstatic. America’s declaring of independence from Great Britain, he told his wife Abigail, marked “the most memorable Epocha in the History of America.”
Adams hoped the day would be “celebrated by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival.”
“It ought to be commemorated,” he said, “as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”
Go online to
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/91247/july-fourth-declaration-independence-day
Columns
July 2, 2012
Heat ushers in Fourth of July
Browsing Around
- Columns
-
- Headline: Hey, human being here!
- Time is the best gift to give on Mother's Day Editor’s Note: Mother’s Day is less than two weeks away. Due to the request of our readers, we are pleased to reprint this column from 2008. OTTUMWA — I’m struggling to find the perfect gift for Mother’s Day. It’s been an ongoing battle for the past
- What's in a name?
- Names are labels man
- No crab at The Crab House
- A Big Ten Benedict Arnold Imagine if all of the nuclear warheads blew up at exactly the same time the sun exploded. Big deal. I came back from the most disastrous beginning from an NCAA Basketball Tournament pool in history to win. Cheers' Sam Malone once said the "nuclear wa
-
'Leafing' through the memories
As I walked to my car on my dinner break the other night, the smell of burning leaves filled the air. And I loved it. That scent took me on a trip down memory lane. Even though spring is finally on its way, the first memories to fill my mind came fro
- Biblical names were once prominent Biblical names given to our ancestors' children were extremely important with most now out of favor except the New Testament names of Mark, Peter, John, Paul and Andrew with Timothy coming in close behind. Going through an old church yard looking at
- Netflix Mary and I watch a lot of movies, both at the theater and at home. With satellite television, the movie channels are abundant, and they have high-quality movies. Anytime, day or night, I can sit down and find a pretty decent movie. In fact, some of t
- Arts in a bowl
- More Columns Headlines
