thedrifter
07-03-05, 09:14 PM
Happy Independence Day!
The United States of America will mark its independence Monday. It’s a holiday. And like other holidays, it has become, for many, just another day off. For those wishing to celebrate in a manner more appropriate to the occasion than overeating and overdrinking..we offer the following suggestions, many of which are especially fitting for families...
We want to say Thank You to all our young men and women serving today all over the world.
Thank You to who served in the past and continue to keep our traditions and values going today.
Have a Happy and Safe Independence Day!
Mark and Ellie
http://www.thefontman.com/i_am_the_flag.gif
thedrifter
07-04-05, 11:10 AM
SALUTE TO OLD GLORY
NEW YORK POST
There was a time, not all that long ago, when a few foolish folk thought they would best demonstrate the freedom the American flag symbolizes simply by burning the flag itself. But the flag endures.
Post-9/11 — and particularly this holiday weekend — the flag is to be found flying everywhere, and for good reason.
On July 4, the nation’s thoughts traditionally turn to the hopes and virtues that the Stars and Stripes represent — thoughts that have inspired America’s poets since the Republic’s early days.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s grandfather, William Emerson, was a minister in Concord at the start of the Revolution. On April 19, 1775, he urged the Minutemen to stand their ground near his parsonage, the “Old Manse.” In 1776, he left home to join the troops near Ticonderoga. His family never saw him again: He died of a fever, caught on the punishing journey. To the memory of his grandfather and the fallen Minutemen, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the following verses, sung at the dedication of the Concord Battle Monument on July 4, 1837.
Concord Hymn
By Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
By the rude bridge that arched the flood
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
Walt Whitman saw firsthand the dreadful sacrifice young Americans made for the flag in the Civil War: He tended the wounded on the battlefield and elsewhere until the last military hospital in Washington closed, long after Lee’s surrender.
Bathed in War’s Perfume
By Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Bathed in war’s perfume—delicate flag!
(Should the days needing armies, needing fleets, come again)
O to hear you call the sailors and the soldiers! flag like a beautiful woman!
O to hear the tramp, tramp, tramp of amillion answering men!
O the ships they arm with joy!
O to see you leap and beckon from the tall masts of ships!
O to see you peering down on the sailors of the decks!
Flag like the eyes of women!
It is only in recent years that the Stars and Stripes has been considered appropriate patching material for blue jeans. Indeed, as the Ohio poet Henry Holcomb Bennett points out, people who failed to accord the flag the respect it deserved would usually be put sharply in their place by their fellow citizens.
The Flag Goes By
By Henry Holcomb Bennett (1863 - 1924)
Hats off!
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,
A flash of color beneath the sky;
Hats off!
The flag is passing by!
Blue and crimson and white it shines
Over the steel- tipped, ordered lines
Hats off!
The colors before us fly;
But more than the flag is passing by:
Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great
Fought to make and to save the State:
Weary marches and sinking ships;
Cheers of victory on dying lips;
Days of plenty and years of peace;
March of a strong land’s swift increase;
Equal justice, right and law,
Stately honor and reverend awe;
Sign of a nation, great and strong
Toward her people from foreign wrong:
Pride and glory and honor all
Live in the colors to stand or fall.
Ellie