Wow, people are excited about Kaboom Town 2010, the celebration held in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that features fireworks… and lots of them. Frankly, as I write this, it sounds like Kaboom Town 2010 set up a local franchise in the baseball field behind the woods where we live. That, or small militias are celebrating the fourth by staging an epic battle for a suburb of Providence. Talk about fighting over nothing…

Anyway, should you be in the afore-mentioned Texas local, or within traveling distance, and you like your Fourth of July to the sound of patriotic display of loud ordinance, how could you not make your way to this festival of the firecracker, this revival of the rocket? Besides, this is the 25th Anniversary of the festival, so expect big things to be highlighted, before they get blown up, I mean.

The local militias seemed to have switched to mortar fire and old fashioned, Russian Katyusha rockets. The fighting seems centered on a local, dirt access road. Yopu can hear scattered pockets of citizens clapping and making “Oooh!” sounds.

Back to Kaboom Town 2010. To give you a clearer indication of the size and scope of this event, it has been deemed one of the best places to view firework in the entire country, by no less a set of critics as the American Pyrotechnics Association, plus a number of top newspapers and magazines. Me, I’d go with the guys that have the word “pyrotechnics” in their title. They guys not only know the how of “BOOM!” intimately, they are experts on the why. If you have to ask me, then you will never know, you know? even the Wall Street Journal loves this extravaganza, and the only thing they like that blows up, usually, it stock prices. Anything that distracts them from Finance must be good.

Along with the half-hour of “light up the sky” (which is syncronized to music from JACK FM (100.3), you get an air-show by the Cavanaugh Flight Museum, a movie, and even a cookie, if you’re good. (Offer may not apply in reality, check my head for details…)

So, if it isn’t enough to set off fireworks yourself, and if your local city or town puts up a sparse anti-aircraft show, then you could do no better than Kaboom Town 2010. Ah, the militias outside are at it again…

The Kutzdown Folk Festival is the great-grandpa of folk festivals, having been held continuously since 1950. Of course, back then, they didn’t call it “folk music,” they called it “Get outta town and don’t let us see you nor that gee-tar again!” So, really… times haven’t changed. It’s still the dulcimer capital of the world.

And the fun doesn’t stop with the traditional music, you can also see exhibits and learn more about the culture of the Pennsylvania Dutch than at any other folk festival you could possibly think of. So, you know, if you were you given to think about folk festivals on a regular basis, you’d already know more about The Kutzdown Folk Festival than I would. Which isn’t saying much.

In all seriousness, the festival celebrates the Pennsylvania Dutch Culture and Traditions, and employs actual Penn. Dutch, as opposed to hiring actors to portray them. So it is certainly authentic. From the first year, when some 25,000 attendees enjoyed 4 days of the Kutzdown Folk Festival, the event now is nine days worth of simple fun, bringing in well over 130,000 inhabitants. So, while many of the demonstrators have been doing this for generations, so have quite a few of the people who come each year to enjoy the quilt exhibits, the traditional crafts, and of course the jigs and reels, the klezmer bands, the square-dancing, and of course, the dulcimers

The Kutztown Folk Festival has a website you can visit to find out everything you could possibly want to know about the offerings available, and you might even win a free trip there, although I’d be surprised if involved transportation there in some modern vehicle. No airplane rides for thee. A tractor, maybe, if thou art good with God.

These guys are clearly “good with God.” The rest of you can