Good Morning Gentle Readers,
Not sure exactly how that worked out, but our Fourth of July celebration isn't happening until July 5th this year. Just twenty some-odd people from the other side of the family, a pale shadow of its former self, but still a plain illustration of why we abandoned the long running annual 4th of July Bash. Some people thought it was because Jim died, but that wasn't it. It was just too much work.
This day we celebrate the Promise of the Promised Land. Or rather, the promise of some mostly reviled dead white guys who put their John Hancock (pun intended) on a piece of paper that essentially was an execution warrant (see: William Wallace).
The promise comes up a little tarnished now and again, but it's something we can point to when we tell the nice officer that he can't look in the trunk. He'll look anyway, and the courts will often allow it, but at least the specific intent of the founders is on record. Therein lies the difference between America and most everyone else.
Both Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville warned that it wouldn't last. And to some extent they were right and to some extent they were wrong. But the real legacy of America's Promise is the proclaimed ideal that it is our essential God-given biological nature that entitles us to live as free individuals.
We all get a chance, everybody gets to dance. What you make of that is up to you.
Random Thoughts:
The Annual Fourth of July Bash had a good run though, and sometimes the turnout was amazing. Had a few minor celebrities along the way as well. Way back in the day, at the Little Blue House by the Lake, we'd dig a pit for the annual bonfire. Got popped once. The Boys in Red rolled up and told us to come get a permit (on the spot) and they'd let it go by. Shoulda seen the girls scramble down to the firehouse. Nothin' but cute little backsides and elbows. Lordy.
The tree of liberty, from time to time, must be replenished with the blood of patriots.—Thomas Jefferson
I'm putting up the Rattlesnake flag. Don't know that I've got the cojones those guys from Culpeper did, but it makes me feel like maybe I do. Looks like this.
Can't see the video? Look right here.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
As Always,
The Wine Commonsewer
