As the old joke goes do they have a 4th of July in Canada? Of course they do. It comes after the 3rd. This 4th we are in Santa Barbara. Mostly because we had to pick up McKala but also because we had no where else to go. The 4th was starting to feel like New Years Eve. A Holiday whose time had come and gone and whose meaning was lost first in accomplishing the strange goal of staying out later than we would want or should want and then second in expectations that somehow the loss signified the denied loss of youth. So too seemed the 4th of July. There was no late night expectation, but there seemed to be a need to make it about the celebration of country and it was getting lost in the expectation of hamburgers and hot dogs. It was nice (and that is the adequate adjective) to be in Santa Barbara. We played Tennis in the early morning and softball in the late morning. Plans were for a trip downtown for festivities and then time in the cold waves. It turns out there was more than a summer solstice parade in town. Escaping the Glenn Beck moment we found that there was truly a 4th of July parade. We sat down in the shade, comfortably, not crowded, but not ignored the parade began with bagpipes. There were moments of sweet silliness and disturbing divisiveness when the crazy lady and the ACLU marched down the street. Then for some reason I found myself choked up when a man sitting in the back of a convertable was announced as having been on Omaha beach on June 6th. I was moved to see the revelotionary costumed soldiers and then again surprisingly when the very young boys dressed in WWII costume marched by. The fourth of July was turning out to be a pretty good holiday. All that was left was a hamburger and a hotdog and some fireworks. We finally made it to the beach for a couple of hours of boogie boarding. And we did have hamburgers and saw some fireworks. We stayed up past midnight and rang in the happy new July 5th.