To the editor:

Just wanted to thank the Jaycees and the Originals and whoever else donated money and worked to pull off this year’s Fourth of July celebration downtown. That was wonderful!

It would be great to see the concept of the local restaurant food booths expanded into an “A Taste of Lawrence” festival (like Seattle and Chicago do). Of course, keep the music and other events part of it. The downtown-focused event this year seemed much easier to get to, to move around at, a greater range of options available, and more to do.

The viewing was mostly good from where we sat; we could see all of the 6- and 8-inch shells, but missed some of the smaller ones. Given the hard economic times, we were very impressed with the duration and quality of the display this year. Great work by everyone involved and a special thanks to the those on the ground doing the actual launching.