Born on the Fourth of July

For anyone who knows me personally or was a regular reader of my last foray into the Internet, or has stumbled upon the crypt where my archives forever reside like a zombie--neither dead nor alive--this topic may seem better suited for that old experiment.

The Fourth of July is just days away, and we celebrate it full force in our house.

I am always in awe of the machinations that went on in Philadelphia in summer of 1776. There is nothing harder then trying the untried. Still, the colonies had sent forth their best and brightest, and these men chose to set sail on uncharted seas.
Nothing was easy about this time; not the economics, the cultural differences in the colonies, or communication from city to city. But in Philadelphia that summer, these men convened to try and resolve a problem and instead became resolved to invent something that was totally new.

Though the documents that are the cornerstone of our "faith" in the United States evoke a supreme being, they are not religious tracts. They are secular pages which lay out the errors that were occurring at the time. Their writers suggested, established and began the groundwork for a unique idea of government.

I am not naive enough to accept the history of our creation from 1492 - 1789 with only glowing images of "upstanding people" rising above the crowd for the good of all. A simple review of this time will reveal the inconsistencies in our past. My favorites among these are that some of the earliest setlements in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut were founded by people who had been banished from the Massachusetts colony for their religious practices. I know I don't need to underline the irony, but I will. The Massachusetts colony was founded when the pilgrims arrived looking for religious freedom.

The United States has always been an experiment from the earliest explorers searching, to the first settlers hoping, to the southern states seceding. All experimenting with the unknown and the untried. Sometimes we fail; quite often we succeed.

This November, we get a chance once again to do what millions wish they could. And that no one could before 1776. Voice their desires openly by casting a vote toward how they are governed.

This is as close as I will come to a political message. I don't care who you vote for, just make sure you vote. If you don't, you are forgetting the titanic accomplishments of that hot Philadelphia summer.

Having twice celebrated Independence Day in sweltering Philadelphia (during the age of air conditioning), our forefathers were not only bright. They were brave.

In late 1990, I sat with my wife in a doctor's office when he used his charts to tell us our second child would be born on June 30. I turned to my wife and said, "You'll wait four days, right honey?"

The doctor said, "Excuse me?!"

My wife turned to him. "He wants the baby to be born on the Fourth of July."

"You would want your wife to have to go around pregnant in the heat of the summer and for longer than she would have needed?" the doctor asked, shocked and disgusted.

"Uh, yeah!"

July 4th is my daughter's 17th birthday. Happy birthday, sweetheart!!

She was 10 before we could get her to understand the fireworks were not for her alone.

They are not for the United States alone either, they are for the world, as a reminder of possibilities.

Because that has always been the best part of the experiment, the possibilities.