Notes from my Knapsack 7-17-2025

Notes from my Knapsack 7-17-2025
Jeff Gill

Just to belabor the obvious
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With summer in full swing, and the Fourth of July behind us, it's worth a glance on down the road… to the summer of 2026.

If you've been at almost any public event in the last month or two, you've probably picked up on the fact that we have some big events coming in celebration of 250 years since 1776, and that significant Fourth of July from which our subsequent celebrations spring.

America 250-Ohio and its state executive director Todd Kleismit have been around Licking County and Granville helping us get ready; our friends in the Daughters as well as the Sons of the American Revolution are excited and full of big plans themselves.

Obviously, the focal point of all these "America 250" plans is July 4, 2026. In Granville, Ohio if you ask "will there be anything going on for the Fourth of July?" the answer is "you have got to be kidding me." Of course there is: Granville's Fourth of July Celebration, an annual street fair, fireworks, and parade which Granville Kiwanis have been presenting since 1964.

My point here is not just to toot the horn of Granville Kiwanis: for one thing, I'm a member. It would be unseemly.

However, I've been around the discussions for the America 250-Ohio planning enough to know that the question in many parts of the state, or even elsewhere for Licking County, is "who will help us put on a big deal for 250 years of American independence?" Not everywhere is there a long tradition of a major series of events for the Fourth of July. In Granville, it's become easy to sort of take it for granted.

Trust me, there's gonna be a big event in Granville for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Simply because there's always a big event for the Fourth of July! We won't hold back in 2026. The county effort to participate in America 250-Ohio means there will be even more than usual going on, all through the year, which will help make July 4, 2026 even more special.

This just makes me want even more to point out how fortunate we are in Granville to have the history and traditions around the Fourth of July which make it an event people come from long distances to experience along with us. In the summer of 1806 when Granville was just getting started, the early records indicate "young America" observed the Fourth by using gunpowder to blow up stumps, which shows some things never change. Speeches were made, and festivities have been observed in every year since. It's just had a particular shape and form since 1964.

As a participant in the effort, though, I want to note here how not every town or community can pull this kind of program off. The banner we used to put up, and the tagline we still have, is a laconic "Just Another Granville Kiwanis 4th of July Celebration." As in "yeah, we did it before, and we'll do it again." With Granville Rotary helming the Firecracker Five, and the Granville Arts Boosters committing violence against lemon halves, and the GHS Football team tending the trash and hoisting bleacher sections, and our Marching Blue Aces and 4-H Band, plus the various Scouting units doing their parts… it is a complex web of interlocking mutually supportive efforts which take both leadership and participation to pull off.

Or as is often said: the planning for 2026 is already started. And it's gonna be great!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's proud to be a Kiwanian, especially around the Fourth. Tell him what you want to see happen in 2026 at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 7-11-2025

Faith Works 7-11-2025
Jeff Gill

On having watched fireworks
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You can post your pictures of fireworks on social media, but will anyone really look at them?

We all know fireworks on a screen, TV or computer or phone, are not at all like watching them in person. Yet I know each year walking to the field where we set up our chairs and wait for dark to fall and the fireworks to rise, I say to myself "this year I'm not taking any fireworks photos" and then I do anyhow… and post them later.

Call it a tradition of sorts.

What I do know for sure is that the experience of watching fireworks is something that passes by, that you try to catch with your attention, your focus, even as they flare and fade. Taking pictures is a reminder of this, as you see a certain stage of explosion and expansion but your picture tends to be a beat or two too soon, or a little too late. The photograph is a discrete moment, but the experience is a passage, a flow.

Which ends. The boom followed by the expanding arcs and sudden flashes then sizzle downwards and drizzle back into darkness. They come (ooooh!) and go (ahhhh!). Some of the big city fireworks you see on television I wonder about, where the show is a constant fusillade of multiple shots all overlaid, one to another then another and boom then another and on and on. How do you get the sense of the pinnacle of the explosion from the eruption before to the dissolution that follows? It's just boom boom boom boom and your eye and mind can't quite catch up from one fireworks shell to the next.

This seems to be a classic case of how less really can be more. The grand finale is a fireworks classic, but if the whole show is finale, are you really getting more fireworks experience, or in a peculiar way, less?

There's also an awareness I know others have along with me. While there are more events than formerly with a closing fireworks show, from Disney World evenings to Denison commencement eves, in general you get about one live fireworks a show a year, if that. Not everyone goes to see the fireworks, even if it feels like it trudging back into Granville from Wildwood Park, or waiting in traffic in Heath heading out of the parking lots, let alone the boats piled up near the ramp at Buckeye Lake. For all of us in sum who attend them, there are some who opt out.

What I think as an annual attender, though, is that I've got about twenty more fireworks to see, give or take. Looking at my family longevity and general patterns of mobility as one ages, it's reasonable to ballpark my remaining budget of firework shows at two dozen for the most, possibly less. Twenty sounds like quite a few yet, but it's like what a twenty dollar bill used to feel like, but once broken tends to vanish quickly. So too with more fireworks shows behind me than ahead.

When I was a Scout at summer camp, the director in the closing campfire told us to look at the sparks rising, as the logs shifted in the huge pile at the center of the firebowl. Some rose a short distance and turned, twisted, and faded; others kept climbing up an updraft, ascending far overhead. He would talk about those sparks as representing us, some achieving great heights, others perhaps sputtering and fizzling out early. His point obviously was to exhort us to be those towering sparks, even as we all warily watched the ones with less aspiration, but wandered over towards our seats glowing brightly, until they didn't.

Interestingly, what's endured is that memory. Of those sparks, high or low, of the story by firelight, and other faces not all of whom are still with us. As well with fireworks past, long faded, but bright in recollection, with faces upturned, and even all the oohs and ahhhs still echoing decades later.

The fireworks are over, but the experience of their passing somehow lasts.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's content with one fireworks show a year (your mileage may vary). Tell him what annual events you value at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.