4th of July Blog-Warning: Includes loose assosications.

So it's the 4th of July here in America, Independence day.  Day of 3 day weekends, BBQ's, county faires and blowing shit up, which where I live is decidedly illegal and that much more fun. 

Anymore I feel like this is less of a holiday and just another day that disrupts my routine.  The whole weekend is spent avoiding the freeway because that empties into both Costco and Walmart where the masses are loading up on masses of shit.  I'm a little out of it because of it. 

Also I live in possibly one of the hottest places in the U.S.  It's a weird heat.  I just got back from a road trip to the southwest where the temperature was exactly the same as it is here and it was infinitely more bearable.  The heat here is strange, oppressive, not quite humid all the time but always thick.  At House Rhuad we combat this by hunkering down as much as possible in the air conditioned house until Dark, when we come out and cavort in the garden and square.  As a result we usually miss the early morning semi-cool hours, but that's okay, we own the night and really it is nice to be able to move freely through a town with a different sort of people, the night ones. 

As I mentioned I just got off a road trip which took me to the southwest and the beginning of the Heartland.  Well, not really but Utahians like to think they are the heartland, they really do.  What I noticed most about Utah was the churches, water parks and shopping malls as far as eye could see and every other billboard with Glen Beck's pasty face on it.  It was dizzying and strange.  All this from the freeway.  It looked like white heaven.  Especially with the other billboard advertising white stuff from clothing to mayo and the myriad places of worship.  And don't kid yourself, the water parks and shopping malls factor in as big here as the churches. 

Maybe bigger, it's hard to tell. 

Off the freeway it's a different story.  There were more Mexican markets in Utah than I have seen since I was in San Diego last year.  It was a strange contrast from a state that is avidly in accordance with Arizona's crazy immigration policies and busy drafting its own illegal alien bills.

However, Mexican markets aside, we were hard pressed to find any other world cuisines. Other than of course the watered down Americanized Chinese food, etc.  We were there to visit our college student and I really did not believe that there was no falafel in the stores there ,as she had told me.   But there wasn't . Now I have to send a box packed with falafel out there for her.   There also was precious little Indian Food, the best food we found came wafting from the apartment in the motel we stayed in.  Delicious scents only Indian grandmas can create.   I was told they order spices online. 

This is the land where the 4th of July was once more important than any other holiday.  Christmas wasn't celebrated in Utah by the early settlers, only Independence Day and Pioneer Day which are in the same month.  Maybe because it was warmer and easier to get together. Anyway it looked like the whole state  was heading up to a big asses explosion of red white and blue.  It was a little frantic, a little scary.  It reminded me a tad of film I watched of Anthony Bourdain's cookouts in Greece where men sat around shooting guns in the air and eating at the same time.  Big pieces of meat.  It felt like that. 

It's a different America there than what I grew up in and in truth what I am comfortable with.  My childhood 4th of Julys were on Coronado Beach in San Diego, where bananas roasted in coals with caramelized sweet milk.  Mexican polka played next to 70's rock and fireworks lit the sky while we watched surfers so brown it didn't matter what tribe they were from.  Little children digging into welcoming family campfires from all nations.  Fresh fruits sprinkled with chiles from Mexico and the middle east.  I knew we were a melting pot.  We tasted good, like a rich stew. 

Middle-ish America 4th of July is cool whip compared to that.  And I get the feeling that they want to spread their cool whip message everywhere. 

I hate cool whip. 

It isn't real, it's made in a lab of chemicals containing nothing of what real whip cream is, something divine and to be cherished, skimmed off the top.  It's a fake, a pretender.  And it's cheap easy and filling and like this fantasy of Americana it's spreading to everywhere near you. 

It makes me sad.

Anyway.  This 4th of July I intend to eat my way around the world.  Kabobs for BBQ, ceviche, roasted bananas, jicama with chiles, fennel and oranges and if I have need of anything white, it will be real.  Believe it. 

I also intend to honor our forefathers by doing something they did.  Something less than strictly legal.  Mark the Sky.