It's time to pull out the red, white and blue and join with other Islanders for Independence Day festivities. Edgartown plays host tomorrow to a Fourth of July parade and
fireworks display. If you want to join the holiday fun, read along for details about the day.

This Fourth of July parade was clearly the biggest. Last
night's fireworks were vivid and colorful. And those words can
also be used to describe a parade that was so large that it took nearly
two hours to run its course.

Edgartown fire chief Tony Bettencourt said: "It was absolutely
the largest. It was incredible."

On the day that America celebrated its independence, and that
Edgartown held the big parade, another kind of parade streamed through
the tiny avenues of the Camp Ground in Oak Bluffs; a tetherball
tournament entertained employees of the Vineyard Yacht Club; and, by
night, post-fireworks revelers flocked to Circuit avenue, sidestepping
the blobs of melted ice cream left behind by toddlers before their
bedtime.

It was a warm and sunny weekend, until rains came Monday afternoon;
and the Vineyard took full advantage.

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Signs of the times are everywhere.

On the Fourth of July a couple of centuries back, the United States was founded on compromise, taking the good with the not so good.

It’s appropriate that today on the Vineyard, the fireworks, parades, flags and cookouts are served up along with traffic, crowds and chance of rain.

And for those involved with safety, service or transportation, it’s a day of continuous motion.

Islanders take the ferry to that other place, America. We even voted in Nineteen-Seventy-Seven to leave the state, and maybe the nation, too — when Beacon Hill moved to remove the Island’s seat in the statehouse, thereby leaving us with less representation for the taxation states always impose. So what if our ragtag secessionist revolution failed politically; the spirit of separation remains strong. Few remember the proposed Vineyard anthem, but a few more still have the flags of our one nation, and more than a few have good stories from those heady days when freedom was on every Islander’s mind again. In our hearts we remain a place apart.

Independence Day 2010

On Sunday morning, a huge nine-by-17-foot United States flag will be hung at an Eastville home as part of one family’s Fourth of July tradition. The flag, which has 46 stars and is thought to be 100 years old, is known inside the Rowan family as the 1910 Battleship Flag.

A descendant of Abigail Luce Smith, Christine Smith Rowan lives year-round at 178 New York avenue with her husband Chris Rowan. They are originally from Connecticut.

As police lights flashed and sirens wailed through the heavy fog that settled in over Moshup Trail, 100 children, clad head to toe in their red-white-and-blue finery, paraded down Old South Road in Aquinnah.

What started nine years ago as a group of eight children strolling on Philbin Beach has transformed into a neighborhood event every year on the Fourth of July.

At 5 p.m. sharp on Wednesday, crowds in Norwich, England, gathered to see the Olympic torch arrive at the Queen’s summer estate. Crowds in front of New England televisions watched the Red Sox play in Oakland. And in Edgartown, a downtown crowd waited anxiously for the first notes of the annual Fourth of July parade.