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Showing posts with label 4th of July. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 4th of July. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Quote of the Day -- Independence Day Edition



"Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance." 

--President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt 

With thanks to the Sierra Club for the reminder.

Happy Fourth, everyone.


Happy 4th of July! Independence Day!



On this day, July 4...

--1804, Author Nathaniel Hawthorne, born;
---1826, in one of history's notable coincidences, former U.S. Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died, 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was adopted;

---1863, Union troops defeated Confederate forces in a battle at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Independence Day was not celebrated in that city for many, many years after;

--1872, - Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States, born;
---1895, the poem America the Beautiful, by Wellesley College Professor Katherine Lee Bates, was published. The poem with music by Samuel A. Ward was published as a song in 1910;

---1939, Lou Gehrig gave his "...luckiest man on the face of the Earth..." speech in announcing his retirement from the New York Yankees;

---1986, more than 250 sailing ships and the United States' biggest fireworks display honored the Statue of Liberty in its 100th birthday year;

---1997, NASA's Pathfinder reached Mars to become the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the planet in more than two decades;

--1998, Malia Obama, daughter of former President Barack Obama, born.

Happy Fourth, everyone! Stay safe! Enjoy!

Source/link:

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

To That America, We Wish Happy Birthday


 

To the country that values citizenry over consumerism, 
that values liberty over enslavement,
that values equal opportunities for all, 
that values the health of one equal to the health of another, 
that learned that separate is not equal,
that put a man on the moon, 
that separated church from state in order that church could be that much more available, 
that helped free the world from Nazi tyranny and 
proudly had women build the machines that did it, 
that invented the blues, 
that overcame pitting brother against brother in order to break the evil of slavery, 
that exported rock and roll, 
that put storytelling on the big screen, 
that gave us Fred Astaire, 
that gave Einstein a home, 
that has a statue in the harbor welcoming the downtrodden, 
that figured out burgers and shakes go so well together, 
that wrote the social contract that has yet to be beaten that begins "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal..." 

....to THAT America, we wish a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!



Saturday, July 2, 2016

Happy Independence Day Weekend


This farming family, the Butlers, it seems, have found that singing in their empty silo gives them fantastic acoustics and effects. I and a lot of people agree.



Happy Independence Day. Enjoy your holiday weekend.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

St. Lou on "America's Most Amazing 4th of July Fireworks Displays"

Yahoo! News today shows St. Louis as having one of the best Independence Day celebrations in the nation, for what it's worth. What they say:

"On July 4, St. Louis kicks off a three-day-long "America's Biggest Birthday Party" with an evening of fireworks over the city's iconic arch."

It wouldn't be too late to get over there, then, and enjoy it. (Be aware of the huge crowds, it should be noted).

Another thought--while not one of the "most amazing" in the nation, Jefferson City also does a big display over the Capitol building, high on that bluff, overlooking the Missouri River. I've heard it's beautiful, too.

Regardless, happy Fourth. Be safe. Enjoy.

Link: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/XPAdult/My%20Documents/st%20lou.html#crsl=%252Fphotos%252Famericas-most-amazing-4th-july-slideshow%252F-photo-2419856-183600055.html

Friday, July 1, 2011

Does anything in America work any more?

The NFL is fighting between the owners and the players over who can keep a bigger piece of the football pie. The NBA is about to shut down, it appears, and quite possibly for the entire season. Now Minnesota's government has shut down, for the Independence Day holiday, at least. The Republican leadership in Congress is coming close to shutting down the country--and putting the world's economy in a tailspin--by not raising the debt ceiling for the country just so they can continue to hand out tax cuts for the wealthiest of us and tax subsidies for "Big Oil", etc., etc. It just leads you to ask: does anything work in this country any more? Are we all just greedheads? Can we not all work together? Can we not compromise? Are we not all, in the end, just Americans? Can we not work together for a greater good for the country? It surely doesn't look that way. Links: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-wojnarowski_nba_lockout_players_063011; http://news.yahoo.com/noticeable-casualties-minn-shutdown-074321209.html; http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/F490YD/UU8SCS/X0GXOU/WYW5VQ/Y9LD3/50/h; http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/the-minnesota-shutdown-the-nba-and-the-death-of-compromise/2011/07/01/AGeV6ntH_blog.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics

Happy Independence Day weekend, y'all

 
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The annual, ugly, very unpatriotic Independence Day screwing

Well, good morning and welcome to the annual, very unpatriotic Independence Day screwing we always get from Corporate Amerika and the gas stations, coast to coast. As I went to work today, I noticed gasoline jumped at least approximately 15 cents--from $3.27 per gallon yesterday (when I filled up, thank goodness) to today's cost (on the East side of town, anyway) of $3.42 a gallon. Thank you, Quik Trip, et. al and happy 4th of July to you, too. Doesn't it seem as though some representative in government should propose a law making this annual holiday gouging illegal? And not just on our national patriotic holiday but Thanksgiving, Christmas, all of them? Does it seem right they can get away with this? It sure doesn't to me. And it particularly doesn't on the day we celebrate the country's birth, the opportunistic, exploitative bastards. (To borrow a phrase from another local blogger, "You kids get off my lawn!").