Happy Fourth

I haven't been away from family on July 4th since 1973.  That year I was all alone in San Francisco, and watched fireworks on the horizon from my neighborhood in Pacific Heights.

Now I am alone here in Millbrae, and I'd rather be home.  Home with Bogie the dog, who hates fireworks.  Over the weekend some kids set off some early fireworks, and Bogie almost broke down the sliding glass door to get back in the house.

This will be a rather dull Fourth for me, but I wish all of you a happy Fourth, and may it be Obama's last Fourth as the occupant of the White House.

July 4th, 2010!

Happy July 4th everyone.  I am off to Menlo Park to play for the V.A. facility there.

The Most Depressing July Fourth of My Life

Roger Simon at Pajamas Media expresses my feelings exactly:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen my country so divided and depressed on the Fourth of July in my lifetime and - no matter what Bob Dylan dreamed up - I’m not young, or otherwise. That includes the Vietnam War period when both sides at least had some conviction and excitement for the future, even if wrong. Not so now. The current situation is grim.

Obama is already over. In six short months the now-spattered bumper stickers with “Hope and Change” seem like pathetic remnants from the days of “23 Skidoo,” the echoes of “Yes, we can” more nauseating than ever in their cliché-ridden evasiveness. Although they may pretend otherwise, even Obama’s choir in the mainstream media seems to know he’s finished, their defenses of his wildly over-priced medical and cap-and-trade schemes perfunctory at best. Everyone knows we can’t afford them. His stimulus plan - if you could call it his, maybe it’s Geithner’s, maybe it’s someone else’s, maybe it’s not a plan at all - has produced absolutely nothing. In fact, I have met not one person of any ideology who evinces genuine confidence in it.

Read the whole thing.

I feel the same way; I have not much optimism for the future of this country or our personal liberty and economic security. We have elected a naive ideologue who hasn't a clue as to how the world works or why. Our national security is being weakened at a time when our liberties are being eroded and our economy trashed by statist schemes. The immediate future appears to hold hardship for many, a higher cost of living, more taxes, greater government intervention into our private lives (via the global warming scam), and crushing national debt. For many years into the future, many of us will be living hand-to-mouth. The path of economic self-betterment and opportunity has thus been made much more difficult for those seeking to rise.

I agree with Simon. The outlook is grim.

Via Powerline

Independence Day 2009

"Washington Crossing the Delaware" by Emanuel Leutze, 1851

Click on picture to see it full size.

"America the Beautiful" the Story of the Song

The great American hymn "America the Beautiful" has an interesting history. Here are some facts about it from Wikipedia.

The words are by Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College. In 1893, Bates had taken a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a short summer school session at Colorado College, and several of the sights on her trip found their way into her poem: The World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the "White City" with its promise of the future contained within its alabaster buildings.

The wheat fields of Kansas, through which her train was riding on July 4.

The majestic view of the Great Plains from atop Pikes Peak.

On that mountain, the words of the poem started to come to her, and she wrote them down upon returning to her hotel room at the original Antlers Hotel. The poem was initially published two years later in The Congregationalist, to commemorate the Fourth of July. It quickly caught the public's fancy. Amended versions were published in 1904 and 1913.

Several existing pieces of music were adapted to the poem. The Hymn tune composed in 1882 by Samuel A. Ward, was generally considered the best music as early as 1910 and is still the popular tune today. Ward had been similarly inspired. The tune came to him while he was on a ferryboat trip from Coney Island back to his home in New York City after a leisurely summer day, and he immediately wrote it down. Ward died in 1903, not knowing the national stature his music would attain. Miss Bates was more fortunate, as the song's popularity was well-established by her death in 1929.

Stogie's comment: I once saw the story of this great American hymn on the History Channel. What was so amazing was that Samuel Ward's tune was adapted to the poem to create the song, and fit the words perfectly! Yet Bates wrote her poem and Ward wrote his tune completely separate from one another.

Here is one of the best renditions of that song ever sung, by Ray Charles, followed by the words.



AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for halcyon skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!

O beautiful for pilgrims feet,
Whose stem impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till paths be wrought through
wilds of thought
By pilgrim foot and knee!

O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife
When once and twice,
for man's avail
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!

Independence Day: Images of the 4th of July

Some of the best images of July 4th and some of the greatest praise for the USA come from an unexpected source: French blogs.

Of course, I have been seeking out the pro-America, pro-Israel, pro-liberty French resistance for some time, so such sources are not unexpected to me. Here are some of the images. The lady with the star-spangled hat is from Le Blog Drzz, as is the "God Bless America" image to the right.

The images below are from "America, Home of the Brave." The men who man that blog are already better Americans than many who were born here. God blesses America when He blesses her with friends like these.

A painting of Washington observing the first American flag. On the right, a graphic of that flag, with 13 stars.

And finally, the modern flag, gloriously unfurled to the breeze!