HAPPY 4th Of July RAY BRADBURY, Family and Friends!

May your 4th be blessed with fire balloons of your own time and place.

Here is a vampire family I drew inspired by the family in Ray's From The Dust Returned on a family outing... it seems like a fitting 4th of July greeting! Again - Ray and to all- Happy 4th and God bless you!

Beautiful! Reminds me of that episode of The Addams Family in which they went out late one evening on a picnic to get some moon.

Happy 4th to all of you out there.

Thank you Doug! Happy 4th Doug, Nico, Dandelion!

Hey Randomyork, very nice! I really do like your work, and am very impressed at your talent.

Oh, and Happy Fourth, everyone. Very grey and gloomy here; I have the feeling that rain is going to put a crimp in evening plans...

Thank you theoctobercountry! Happy 4th to you!

As I had said elsewhere, I just finished re-reading From The Dust Returned and your art would do justice if packaged with the story. Keep it coming you do great work.

Thank you Patrask! That would be a personal dream come true! Ray's words are full of pictures aren't they!

Dreamed about a giant fire balloon. After 11 p.m. here and the fireworks have almost stopped.

Below is a link to today's MUTTS comic strip. Well said. A happy and safe Fourth of July to all.

https://mutts.com/product/strip-070420/#

Waukegan, Illinois. The Fourth of July, 1925.

The following is from Ray Bradbury's introduction to the 1975 re-issue of DANDELION WINE. Have a happy and safe Fourth of July, everyone!

"Fire balloons.

You rarely see them these days, though in some countries, I hear, they are still made and filled with warm breath from a small straw fire hung beneath.

But in 1925 Illinois, we still had them, and one of the last memories I have of my grandfather is the last hour of a Fourth of July night forty-eight years ago when Grandpa and I walked out on the lawn and lit a small fire and filled the pear-shaped red-white-and-blue-striped paper balloon with hot air, and held the flickering bright-angel presence in our hands a final moment in front of a porch lined with uncles and aunts and cousins and mothers and fathers, and then, very softly, let the thing that was life and light and mystery go out of our fingers up on the summer air and away over the beginning-to-sleep houses, among the stars, as fragile, as wondrous, as vulnerable, as lovely as life itself.

I see my grandfather there looking up at that strange drifting light, thinking his own still thoughts. I see me, my eyes filled with tears, because it was all over, the night was done, I knew there would never be another night like this. No one said anything. We all just looked up at the sky and we breathed out and in and we all thought the same things, but nobody said. Someone finally had to say, though, didn’t they?

And that someone was me."

- Ray Bradbury