The 4th in Nashua

Our holiday was spent at home in Nashua, NH, but we didn't stay home in the sense of being indoors for the entire long weekend. We attended several events all within walking distance of the mill apartments, no need to be on the roadways in traffic or spending $. Read on to learn how we did that.

As in many other parts of the country, while it wasn't nearly as 🥵, it was a very warm weekend. Temps were in the low 90s with some rainstorms followed by higher humidity. We're in for more of the same this week along with rain forecast on at least 4 days.

July 4 celebration at City Hall, nashua, NH

Our July 4 Independence Day holiday observance was celebrated downtown on Main St in front of City Hall. The inaugural event  included a high school junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) color guard, members of Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. (VFW) the Mayor of Nashua and members of the public. The event included a reading of the Declaration of Independence, a mayoral speech and the singing of several well-known songs. The half hour observance concluded with the raising of the Betsy Ross Flag, an early design of the U.S. flag in which 13 stripes and 13 stars signify the original colonies. 

July 4 fireworks viewed from our apartment

Friday night we watched several fireworks displays from our living room windows, which offered a great view. We were watching the PBS broadcast from Washington, DC, but found these local displays were more of a draw. We missed that televised display, but watched some of the earlier performances. (Taking fireworks displays is not my forte. A shout-out to fellow blogger John (AC) who always has great fireworks images. You can check out his early July posts of July 1 Canada Day fireworks on his blog, The AC is On.)

Saturday evening we attended a performance by the Soldiers’ Chorus at the downtown Nashua Arts Center. This 26-member mixed choral ensemble is the vocal complement of the United States Army Field Band of Washington, D.C. performing as a separate component and in joint concerts with the Concert Band of the “Musical Ambassadors of the Army.” 

The concert theme was America the Beautiful and vocalists performed songs related to that theme and patriotic tunes, God Bless America and The Star-Spangled Banner plus popular songs including Moonlight in Vermont, Chattanooga Choo Choo, This Land is Your Land. The nearly 90-minute performance included a multimedia presentation. This Free event was a sell-out in terms of attendance in the 750-seat arts center, unlike at many concerts, the audience was encouraged to take photos.

The Soldiers' Chorus at the Nashua Center for the Arts

The Soldiers' Chorus had its origins in the early days of the Concert Band, when members would gather in front of the band during shows and sing. In 1957, the unit began to audition vocalists specifically for the Chorus. The unit's first full-time female soldier-musicians joined the ranks of the Soldiers' Chorus in 1974.

Sunday, we ended our stay-at-home holiday weekend with a film showing at the Nashua Public Library, which presents Cinema Classics weekly. Perfect for a holiday weekend, this week it was 1955 American musical Oklahoma! based on the 1943 musical of the same name by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Actors included Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones (in her film debut), Rod Steiger, James Whitmore and Eddie Albert. The film wasn't shot in the title state as producers thought that oil wells would be a distraction for exterior scenes, so location shooting actually was done in AZ and on sound stages (dream ballet sequences). 

Movie poster for 1955 film, Oklahoma! (Internet source)

The film's setting is the Oklahoma Territory shortly after the turn of the 20th century. It's a love story of farm girl Laurey Williams and her courtship by rival suitors, cowboy Curly McLain and sinister farmhand Jud Fry. A secondary romance involves Laurey's friend, Ado Annie and cowboy Will Parker. A background theme is the territory's aspiration for statehood and the local conflict between cattlemen and farmers. Oklahoma!  won Academy Awards in musical scoring and sound recording. It's truly a classic, the likes of which are not made these days. In 2007, the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions. 

This wasn't our first viewing, afterwards we found ourselves humming to many of its tunes (there's 15) including, Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin, The Surrey with the Fringe on Top, Kansas City, People Will Say We're in Love, All er Nothin' and, of course, the title song Oklahoma. (You will thank me for not including a link to any of these, ear worms can be very annoyingly persistent.)

Your Turn — Did you celebrate July 4 in any special way(s) this year?