Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date...
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
Park Forest, IL-(ENEWSPF)- The beat went strong Wednesday night. Village residents and visitors basked in summer’s lease for Main Street Nights III. Terrance Simien & The Zydeco Experience laid down some powerful tracks on the Village Green. A few hundred people of all ages brought chairs and blankets, undaunted by the smoke of Canadian wildfires.
This is the summer of raging Canadian wildfires sending clouds of acrid smoke. Smoke from Canada? My father told me the skies were grey in Baldwin, PA, where I grew up, outside Pittsburgh. In Park Forest, 30 miles south of Chicago, our town and neighboring towns had ground-level smoke. This was yesterday and today. Unreal. It looked like a fire locally, except there was no local source, and the smoke was everywhere.
The Beat Went Strong
Wednesday was overcast, but not with clouds. Just grey smoke and “unhealthy air,” according to news reports. High school kids whom I teach at Marian Catholic wore masks today. Students taking a summer class to work ahead or catch up wore masks voluntarily today—junior and senior young men, no less. It was as if the pandemic was still raging.
This is the world we’re leaving them…
However, the smoke was visible only at a distance, slightly before St. Irenaeus Church, as the sun continued to set.
This is Main Street Nights of the 2023 season. Our first video is finished processing. Stop back through the day on Thursday as we post more, along with a soul-stirring performance of Amazing Grace offered as an encore.
I made the video below after the band warmed up and energized the crowd for about a half hour.
Enjoy.
Next week #MSN will not happen on Wednesday as Tuesday is the Fourth of July. While not part of the Main Street Nights line-up, the village will offer a BBI performance at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 4. The group has twenty years of experience and covers various musical genres, including old classics and new songs.
