Home to this bright clear cold fall here after 80 Fahrenheit in Fort Tryon the day before yesterday. Not one Protestant firework last night, though a hundred years ago...

In Scotland (late 60's/early 70's) I remember huge bonfires, Bengal matches (which were regular matches with huge heads which burned in different colours--sold to children for thruppence literally!-- wrapped in a swatch of a provincial newspaper from the midlands, a red elephant on the yellow box) and being given cocoa and a baked potato. Helicopters would fly up and down the UK photographing the bonfires for TV. The implied assertion of the crown's legitimacy very much in the picture.