Six on 4th of July: Red, white but rarely blue - the science of fireworks colors, explained; Forget the tanks. Trump’s violat

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Six on 4th of July: Red, white but rarely blue - the science of fireworks colors, explained; Forget the tanks. Trump’s violation of the Lincoln Memorial is the real offense; Frederick Douglass on the Fourth of July; Wishing for a Tank-Free Fourth It could be worse. There’s always James Buchanan.; Charleston's strangest Fourth of July ever probably occurred 159 years ago

Red, white but rarely blue - the science of fireworks colors, explained

Red, white but rarely blue - the science of fireworks colors, explained Paul E. Smith Most of us look forward to the fireworks on the Fourth of July. But did you ever wonder how the chemists create ...

 

Forget the tanks. Trump’s violation of the Lincoln Memorial is the real offense

"The grounds around the Lincoln Memorial have become cluttered with war memorials, but the best of those, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, was also conceived as a place of reconciliation. It doesn’t celebrate the war whose fallen it honors. Rather, it focuses entirely on the pain of loss, and the memory of those who died. It is the opposite of bellicose, a place for national healing rather than a patriotic display, which is why it was so controversial when it was new. ...

The grounds around the Lincoln Memorial have become cluttered with war memorials, but the best of those, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, was also conceived as a place of reconciliation. It doesn’t celebrate the war whose fallen it honors. Rather, it focuses entirely on the pain of loss, and the memory of those who died. It is the opposite of bellicose, a place for national healing rather than a patriotic display, which is why it was so controversial when it was new.

But no president since the Civil War has been more uninterested in the rhetoric of healing and unity than Donald Trump. It is difficult to express how deeply repugnant his effort to politicize this space is to commonly held American ideals. The display of tanks near the Lincoln Memorial is just a bitter and expensive absurdity compared with the co-option of Lincoln’s temple for the personal aggrandizement of a man who celebrates political violence, who proudly calls himself a “counterpuncher,” and who regularly tweets insults calculated for maximum divisiveness. In the long arc of Trump’s public career, there isn’t a shred of evidence that he understands who Lincoln was, what he stood for and how he accomplished it.

And it isn’t just a matter of symbols or rhetoric. The aesthetics of Trump are the opposite of the aesthetics of the Mall, which took form during the progressive era, at a moment when many in public life were deeply concerned about the evolution of the country into a commercial leviathan. In cities such as New York and Chicago, great fortunes were being made building up into the sky, asserting the power and privilege of wealth. Markets were unstoppable, commercial development proceeded like a forest fire and the streetscapes of our great trading enclaves expressed the frenzied ambition of untrammeled capitalism."

Perspective | Forget the tanks. Trump’s violation of the Lincoln Memorial is the real offense.

Perspective | Forget the tanks. Trump’s violation of the Lincoln Memoria... https://www.facebook.com/philip.kennicott The Mall has always been a place for reconciliation. Not our new politics of cruelty.

Frederick Douglass on the Fourth of July – Alan Singer on Daily Kos

Frederick Douglass on the Fourth of July – Alan Singer on Daily Kos

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/4/1869388/-Frederick-Douglass-on-the-Fourth-of-July?_=2019-07-04T03:36:15.492-07:00

Frederick Douglass on the Fourth of July In the early stages of the 2020 Presidential election, and as Congress conducts hearings on a bill to establish ...

Wishing for a Tank-Free Fourth

"Happy Fourth of July, everybody. I want you to have a great day. No moaning about the state of the nation.

Don’t obsess about Donald Trump! It’s true he thought watching a bunch of tanks roll through Washington, D.C., would be a great way of celebrating our national character. Fortunately, it turned out the city streets couldn’t support his vision. The military came up with a compromise, dragging in tanks and other tanklike vehicles on flatbed trucks, in a very expensive show totally unrelated to their actual function.

Pentagon grapples with how to move tanks from a Washington rail yard to ... https://www.facebook.com/dlamothe Flatbed trucks rolled up to the tanks on Tuesday afternoon, seemingly preparing to move the armored vehicles.

Some people might think of this as a metaphor for the whole Trump administration. Feel free. It’s Independence Day. ...

We’ve been careening toward tankification ever since. It’s really a shame he didn’t start his presidency with a visit to Indonesia, where they celebrate Independence Day with pole-climbing contests.

Trump is sort of the anti-George Washington, a president who thinks everything should be about him, including holidays. Last year, when he was asked the traditional Thanksgiving question about what he was most grateful for, the answer almost instantly turned to, um, himself. (“I’ve made a tremendous difference in the country. This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office that you wouldn’t believe it.”)

The Daily 202: Holidays used to bring us together. In the Trump era, the... https://www.facebook.com/jhohmann Tanks enter Washington for Trump’s July 4 ceremony.

Well, he did pardon the turkeys.

Maybe we should feel lucky that the special parade plans weren’t a lot worse. Imagine the possibilities. We could have Ivanka skipping along in front, tossing flowers to the common folk while Jared follows behind on a leash.

The president doesn’t think the whole affair is going to be very expensive — after all, the government already has a bunch of tanks and planes. “All we need is the fuel,” explained the man whose first term is going to run up a $5 trillion deficit."

Opinion | Wishing for a Tank-Free Fourth

Opinion | Wishing for a Tank-Free Fourth It could be worse. There’s always James Buchanan.

Charleston's strangest Fourth of July ever probably occurred 159 years ago | News | postandcourier.com

Charleston's strangest Fourth of July ever probably occurred 159 years ago 

Charleston's strangest Fourth of July ever probably occurred 159 years ago Robert Behre rbe...@postandcourier.com What made Charleston's Fourth of July celebration in 1860 so different was that many in the city already had cel...

What made Charleston's Fourth of July celebration in 1860 so different was that many in the city already had celebrated a few months early, when a failed Democratic National Convention h/t to Joseph Olin

https://www.postandcourier.com/news/charleston-s-strangest-fourth-of-july-ever-probably-occurred-years/article_8383913c-8dee-11e9-917a-dbf3bd6f8711.html

 

America, The Playlist - NPR

"Happy July Fourth from all of us here at World Cafe! In honor of the holiday, we pulled together an all American-made Independence Day playlist. It includes a handful of literal July Fourth classics by Bruce Springsteen, Aimee Mann, X, James Taylor, and Galaxie 500. There are also songs with references to America like the original cast recording of "America" from West Side Story, Jimi Hendrix's version of "The Star Spangled Banner" and Ray Charles' majestic version of "America, The Beautiful."

James Taylor James Taylor artist page: interviews, features and/or performances archived at NPR Music

Aimee Mann Aimee Mann artist page: interviews, features and/or performances archived at NPR Music

Ray Charles Ray Charles artist page: interviews, features and/or performances archived at NPR Music

Jimi Hendrix Jimi Hendrix artist page: interviews, features and/or performances archived at NPR Music

Galaxie 500 Galaxie 500 artist page: interviews, features and/or performances archived at NPR Music

X X artist page: interviews, features and/or performances archived at NPR Music

Bruce Springsteen The following stories about this artist have appeared on NPR.org

America, The Playlist

America, The Playlist Stream a playlist of songs about the red, white and blue, perfectly equipped for a July Fourth barbecue.

America, The Playlist Stream a playlist of songs about the red, white and blue, perfectly equipped for a July Fourth barbecue.