Fireworks season officially arrived Monday evening, meaning for the next few days, well into the evening, there will be a whole lot of popping going on.

State law permits people to set off fireworks from 5 p.m. until two hours after sunset from June 29 through July 9, and from 10 a.m. until midnight July 4.

Not everyone follows those guidelines. Plenty of people started shooting off sporadic fireworks a few days early this year, and plenty of people won’t wait until 5 p.m. to shoot them off now that the legal period has arrived.

This doesn’t bother me much. I’ve always liked fireworks, the louder the better. They were part of growing up, and hearing someone shoot off a string of firecrackers on a July 4 afternoon goes with the territory if you live in the United States.

But a lot of people don’t like them. Having a neighbor shoot off firecrackers, rockets and mortars for hours on end can begin to grate on your nerves after a while.

You can call the police, but most people who have called me say police don’t respond, an understandable set of circumstances given the state has legalized the tradition.

Fireworks, though, create something besides noise. They produce a lot of debris.

Little firecrackers are no big deal. They leave behind pools of paper shreds, but it’s easy enough to sweep that up or pick it up with a lawnmower.

Rockets, though, are another matter. One caller complained that last year, after an extended fireworks show by neighbors, that his yard was full of the remnants of old rockets, the sticks and cardboard cylinders that fall to earth.

He collected an entire bucket of the leftovers, and that doesn’t count what might be in his gutters. To be honest, this is unavoidable.

Maybe a little courtesy would go a long way. After setting off a battery of rockets and watching them fall, maybe the decent thing to do would be to wander around the area and pick up the spent shells from neighbors’ yards, just to be nice.

Of course, if your neighbor is the type who hates fireworks, you’re liable to get an earful if you step on the property to pick up the trash you’ve deposited there.

It’s worth a try, and if you get chased off, well, at least you tried.

A hot idea

A column last week quoted a local woman reacting to a fatal fire on Abbott Street, saying someone needs to come up with a solution to house fires caused by food left on the stove. We’ve designed irons that shut themselves off, and curling irons. Why can’t we do the same with stoves?

Maybe, she said, if someone proposes the idea, someone will come up with an answer.

That prompted an e-mail from an outfit called Pioneering Technology, of Mississauga, Ontario. It has designed something called the Safe-T-element that prevents the element on electric stoves from getting hotter than 662 degrees. A glowing electric element normally reaches 1,200 degrees, the company says.

The temperature limit is below the combustion point for paper, cotton and cooking oils, meaning anything left on the stove might get overcooked, but it will never catch fire, including a pan of oil. The gadget does slow cooking times, but only by about 5 percent, so cooking a pot of pasta takes only about 30 seconds longer than on a regular range, said Chris Allinson, head of marketing and sales for Pioneering Technology.

Pioneering Technology, though, isn’t very big. It has only 10 employees. Many appliance makers aren’t interested in the company’s safety device because it adds to the cost, it isn’t required and they feel there isn’t a market for it, Allinson said.

Many people also don’t know the company exists. Go to a big box store, for example, and ask whether you can get a new electric range fitted with a Safe-T-element, and they probably won’t have the faintest idea what you are talking about.

But the concept has taken off in some areas. Allinson says that 60 universities have chosen to retrofit ranges in dormitories with the heat limiter, and the U.S. Air Force has installed it on stoves at housing on Air Force bases. The item is also used in affordable housing and housing for seniors, he said.