Day of Kiev

It is close to 10 p.m. here in Kiev but we were just treated to a fireworks display that we could see out all of our windows. It was happening in a park about a block away and the booms and crumps from the exploding shells, which is what they are, set off car alarms at each explosion. It is the Day of Kiev and this is a part of the celebrations.

I was reminded watching it that on another day near the end of the Orange Revolution there had been other fireworks. They boomed and echoed around the buildings here just as they did today. But on that day, I was thinking that I was glad and even grateful that they were fireworks and not artillery shells and mortar rounds. That they could have been both, was a constant threat. And one needs only look at what happened in Uzbekistan to see what could have happened-- and what came very close to actually happening here.

But they were fireworks on that day and they were fireworks this evening. The booms echoed along these old Soviet era apartment buildings—concrete blocks—much like echoing sounds down a canyon. I counted four echoes tonight. And we live in the suburbs. The last place we lived, I counted twelve of them.

Have a good Memorial Day weekend all.