...'Just to ride the Ponies'...

1. Some traditions never change. You just don't mess with collective conditioning. As certain as bluebirds fly above the rainbow...every December somewhere in this country, 'A Wonderful Life' glows off thousands of telly's; just as on every 4th of July, 'Yankee Doodle Dandy'
beams the story of Georgie Cohen into hundreds of living rooms across wheat filled plains and congested city scapes. I'm 12, in my pj's, watching the old black and white Admiral when scampering across the 14' tube comes a guy singing and dancing Yankee Doodle in verses I'd never
heard before. And then he does the impossible. He dances up the vertical sides of the stage. I looked for wires. I looked for magic. I looked at me. How did he do that? CGI was 70 years off. The mystery was in the man, James Cagney. And he hoofed it, in black and white my friends, because he could.

2. Fireworks are in the DNA. Asians wave punks before they can sharpen
pencils. I dissected my first firecrackers, leaving a trail of gunpowder to a tin can, long before I dissected a frog in biology. It's all about luck, baby. You fire up those strings of crackers to boot the 'bad' away from residences; no one wants misfortune to hover over their abode. But we never had those lofty thoughts as we blew things off hinges, or sky high into the night. It was the pyrotechnics: the dazzling spangled light, the constant din of ka-booms, near and far, and the night air filling with a glowing claustrophobic haze that you never forgot and will always remember.

3. Amelia Earhart. They're looking for you again. I like the original image
that you left us with. Flying off into the deep blue...the stuff of legends.