Happy Birthday (North) America

While our nation celebrated its 224th birthday on Tuesday, July 4th, there is also cause to celebrate how far we've advanced in our celebration technically. For instance, the more than 60,000 shells of fireworks used for Macy's 30-minute show were launched with one stroke on a keyboard. All around the city and on local news shows there were banners for OpSail2000 and encouragement to go to the website OpSail2000.org, which was down every time I tried to access it on the 3rd and 4th. The city of Boston went all out, and even included its own URL for the occasion: http://www.july4th.org/. Both cities offered fantastically patriotic concerts by their respective Pops orchestras. The New York Pops (http://www.nypops.org), led by the prolific Skitch Henderson, and the Boston Pops (http://www.bso.org), led by Keith Lockhart, drew the singers out of attendees with their renditions of classic American songs.