Fireworks in February

Here we are, about a month before the start of spring, and I am going crazy with the snowy, cloudy weather in the northeast. Even though this Winter has been mild, it still feels so damn long, like two Winters rolled into one. Enough already.

Hamilton College realizes that winter gets old around here, and to keep one's sanity for the duration requires constant vigilance and diversion. Every year the college has "Feb-Fest" - a month long celebration with various activities to break the Winter monotony, and celebrate the last full month of it. There have been beer and wine tastings, and yes, fireworks on campus.

Friday night we sat in our living room enjoying electricity again after a nasty wind storm knocked out power twice in one day. Suddenly, we heard loud booms and at first thought that it was trees crashing down in what was a day of record tree fallings in the area. But no. These booms were the booms of fireworks. We quickly shut out the lights and sat on our couch watching a tremendous fireworks display that seemed to go on for an hour. The black, boring February sky was dramatically filled with greens, yellows, blues and reds. It was spectacular. What is it about the combination of gunpowder and sky that make people ooh, and aah? It's the boom, and the motion of the colors. It gets me everytime. For about an hour on Friday night the Winter monotony was kept at bay, and I smiled and felt light-hearted forgetting the fact that we still have another month to go before the start of Spring.

jb