Happy 5th of July

(I apologize for being a little late with this post... I was not feeling well on the official holiday. But since the Declaration of Independence was not signed by all the delegates until August 2nd, 1776, I figure that I have a little bit of leeway on my Independence Day post and/or observations.)

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I took this photo of the Stars and Stripes on California Street on a blustery day a few months ago. I love how strong and flowing and proud this flag looks.

What I want this flag to be most of all, though, is not a lapel pin. I don't want it reduced to a litmus test of media brainwashing, absurd posturing, pandering and goosestepping: of What Being Patriotic Means. I want this flag to represent the best part of our country's strengths, and that is that we are so strong as a nation that we can afford to question our leaders and hold them accountable to the great public trust they hold.

Accountable to us, the People of this great experiment of a government.

My wish for all of us is that the essence of the freedoms that the 4th of July represents remains in our consciousness in this important election year, and that we who comprise this brave experiment--this United States of America--that we will all rise to the occasion this year and educate ourselves and vote. Let us together restore our country to what it can be.

I think that the words that move me most, even though they were uttered almost 100 years after the revolution that made us a nation, are these:

"...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Of the people, by the people, for the people. That is what we need to return to. We cannot afford to lose our way any longer.

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Truth can be taught in a variety of ways. I really admire Penn & Teller not as much for their brilliant magic performances, but for their dogged insistence that we actually think about what we believe in.



And for those of you who have not yet discovered her, Paris Parfait is where I always go to first to find very well-written and informative posts about the direction of our nation's politics.

For Those Who Still See Us vs. Them

Red vs. Blue, Me Against You.

(Which is still probably about 99.9% of the planet. I don't think the US has this category locked up, although we're doing a damn good job as a frontrunner.)

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." ~ Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

Or watch and listen here:



And one last very cool version here.