July 4 is an important day on the calendar and there are lots of fun activities associated with Independence Day.
The annual American Legion Post 31 annual chicken BBQ leads the list. It will take place (pending a monsoon) beginning at 11 a.m. until sold out at the Legion, 1700 Cavanaugh Lake Road.
Along with great food for $10, folks will enjoy fun times at a local lake or pool or spend time in their backyards grilling, playing games and celebrating with family and friends.
July 4 is a day to celebrate all the liberties, opportunities and freedoms that the United States of America affords us.
Unfortunately, it’s also a holiday that Michigan State law allows the use of fireworks. So, if you must shoot them off, please be considerate when doing so, and please think about your neighbors and their pets.
Until I got Buzz, who is very stressed and afraid of those unexpected loud booms, I enjoyed watching the fireworks. Not so much anymore. Now I spend that time comforting him from something scary he can’t see from inside the house, but he can certainly hear.
Ryan ignores them because he can’t hear them.
But still, I have to close up the house and do all I can to muffle the sounds from the moment I hear the first one coming from the direction of Lingane Road until mercifully, they end.
Now I dread the dates that the state allows fireworks.
Below is a list:
- Between 11 a.m. and 11:45 p.m. on June 29, June 30, July 1, July 2, July 3 and July 4.
- Between 11 a.m. and 11:45 p.m. on July 5, if that date is a Friday or a Saturday.
- Between 11 a.m. and 11:45 p.m. on the Saturday and Sunday immediately preceding Labor Day.
- Between 11 a.m. on Dec. 31 and 1 a.m. on Jan. 1.
- Between 11 a.m. and 11:45 p.m. on the Saturday and Sunday immediately preceding Memorial Day.
State law does allow the city to regulate certain activities including the following:
Fireworks cannot be discharged in any public place, school property, church property or the property owned by another person without the other property owner’s written permission.
Fireworks also cannot be discharged so that remnants from the fireworks land on any public place or the property of another person without the other property owner’s written permission.
I’ve had exploded fireworks wind up on my property on more than one occasion, In fact, I had the Chelsea Area Fire Authority come here to check out what I found on my land a few years ago. I wasn’t sure if it was live or not and I sure didn’t want to be injured by an unexploded one.
So, enjoy the July 4 weekend, but please consider your neighbors, their property and their pets — should you decide to use fireworks during the holiday weekend.
Although this comment came from a bogus email account without a full name attached, I felt in fairness, this viewpoint should be published. So, here it is: “Seriously. Wow. No political agenda here. Anti fireworks!”
I’m with Buzz, Lisa–fireworks have become harder and harder to take, especially when I found that: “Americans spend more than $1 billion on fireworks each year, according to the American Pyrotechnics Association.”
http://fortune.com/2018/06/29/july-4th-fireworks-billion-dollar-burn-injuries/
Fireworks were suggested by the founders of our country as the best way to bring people together to celebrate our nation every July 4. I enjoy them every year, and always imagine those citizen/colonists enjoying them in the same spirit, one of the few unchanging links to our past that remain to us.