not one of their better ideas. . . .

The day after the Annapolis Middle East Peace Conference, explosions were heard and felt in downtown Annapolis. Heard and felt by me, anyway, starting about 8 p.m. I didn't actually see them. No one else seems to be talking about it.

Sirens did not immediately join the apparent conflagration which was shaking our house and went on for about 15 minutes, so I eventually assumed that the explosions were being caused by fireworks. This, even though November is not exactly associated with any known firework-exploding occasion.

My first thought: What idiot thought that EXPLOSIONS were an appropriate way to mark the conclusion of the PEACE Conference?

My second thought: What if it had been a terrorist attack? No one in Annapolis appears to be responding with any alarm. [I seemed to be the only person standing out in the street wondering what in the world was going on]. We're just sitting here like fat, dumb, ducks.

My third thought: Well, anyone at the Naval Academy who has experienced the dangerous kinds of explosions will certainly respond appropriately. . . . Here's hoping they gave them advance notice of a just-for-fun explosion display!

Because they sure didn't tell us about it - you know, the citizens of this town who live here and pay taxes that presumably paid for the display (although I guess that could be federal money, so that's all of you out there) - not that I saw, anyway. And I looked in the paper (after the fact) and we'd watched both local and national news - in between ridding the fridge of the final left-overs from Thanksgiving. And I don't see anything searching the online archives of the local paper, either. Unless I'm just missing it? The hidden-in-plain-sight syndrome. . . .

Maybe it was a flash-forward. . . . a Freudian fear revealed of what I dread might happen when you combine Middle East combatants in our little town. One soldier I know said that he was willing to go in harm's way over there so that we wouldn't have to, here.

Right then. So that we can have a little make-believe explosion session for grins and giggles, and oooh and ahhhh over all the the pretty colours. . . .