The Traveling McCourys, "Walk Out in the Rain"

Jason Carter throwing high-octane fiddle fuel ...

I love it when a cover is better than the original.

Released.

Peter Frampton released Wind of Change on this day in 1972.

"All I Want to Be (Is By Your Side)" ...

See.

From James Baldwin's letter to his nephew, 1962 ...

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.  In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of identity.  Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shinning and all the stars aflame.  You would be frightened because it is our of the order of nature.  Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality.  Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.  You, don’t be afraid.  I said that it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go behind the white man’s definitions, by never being allowed to spell your proper name.  You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention; and, by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp of reality.   But these men are your brothers—your lost, younger brothers.  And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.  For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.  It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved and unassailable and monumental dignity.  You come from a long line of poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer.  One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost, My dungeon shook and my chains fell off.

Chopin, Ballade No. 4, Op. 52

It's Olga Scheps ...

Happy Birthday, Camille Pissaro

Pissarro, Garden and Henhouse at Octave Mirbeau, Les Damps, 1892

I began to understand my sensations, to know what I wanted, at around the age of forty - but only vaguely.  At fifty, that is in 1880, I formulated the idea of unity, without being able to render it. At sixty, I am beginning to see the possibility of rendering it.  

Cover the canvas at the first go, then work at it until you see nothing more to add.  Don't be afraid in nature: one must be bold, at the risk of having been deceived and making mistakes. God takes care of imbeciles, little children, and artists.

Camille Pissarro, born on this day in 1830

Mac.

The 117th Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac begins today ...

Track the race HERE.

Watch the fleet finish from The Windemere.

Sarah Vaughan, "Tenderly"

Gravity.

We need more Hercules Mulligan-types around ...

Washington’s own guard were willing to accept hard currency to betray their master.  They preferred to kidnap Washington, but the contingency plan was to poison the meal of buttered peas, lettuce and ham that Washington was fond of.   

Recognizing the gravity of the situation, Mulligan hastily shooed out Mathews and sought to inform Washington. He made about half the three-mile trip to Washington’s headquarters on horseback before running into Hamilton, who relayed the information to Washington which, combined with the prison intelligence mentioned above from the conventional story, stopped the conspiracy. Hickey was hanged, while the remaining conspirators including Mathews, were jailed in Connecticut.

More HERE. 

Gordon Lightfoot, "A Painter Passing Through"

Mackinac.

The 117th Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac starts tomorrow.

Help.

The Wild Mushroom

Well the sunset rays are shining

Me and Kaihave got our tools

A basket and a trowel

And a book with all the rules

Don't ever eat Boletus

If the tube mouths they are red

Stay away from the Amanitas

Or brother you are dead

Sometimes they're already rotten

Or the stalks are broken off

Where the deer have knocked them over

While turing up the duff

We set out in the forest

To seek the wild mushroom

In shapes diverse and colorful

Shining through the woodland gloom

If you look under oak trees

Or around an old pine stump

You'll know a mushroom's coming

By the way the leaves are humped

They send out multiple fibers

Through the roots and sod

Some make you mighty sick they say

Or bring you close to God

So here's to the mushroom family

A far-flung friendly clan

For food, for fun, for poison

They are a help to man.

Gary Snyder

It's time for Hen of the Woods.

Unavoidable.

Truth is not that which is demonstrable but that which is unavoidable.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Aloud.

McRae, Pulling Down the Statue of George III, 1853

On this day in 1776, The Declaration of Independence was read aloud to General George Washington's troops in New York ...

As tensions ran high, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, and word reached New York on July 9th. Washington ordered the declaration to be read aloud to troops that day. Following the public reading, soldiers and civilians marched down Broadway and on to Bowling Green. Erected on the green was an equestrian statue of George III. The rowdy crowd toppled the statue and paraded the King’s lead head on a spike, a symbolic regicide. The body of the statue, about four-thousand pounds of lead, was sent to Connecticut and melted into musket balls to use against the King’s troops. 

Happy Birthday, Ottorino Respighi

Ottorino Respighi was born on this day in 1879.

Oksana Lyniv conducts the Youth Symphony of Ukraine in a performance of The Birds ...

The Police, "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"

Ownership.

The Economist: Are the e-bikes a paragon of liberalism or an abomination?

The dominance of convenience also means the decline of ownership. And so much of the anti-social nature of electric bikes is a result of that. “Why did you park your Lime bike there?” one might ask. “It’s not my bike.”

Weber, Andante e Rondo Ungarese, Op. 35

Catherine Van Handel, bassoon, with Rachael Kerr, piano ...

Bound.

Stuart, Major General Henry Knox, 1806

Every friend to the liberty of his country is bound to reflect, and step forward to prevent the dreadful consequences which shall result from a government of events.

Henry Knox, from his letter to George Washington, October 23, 1786

Willie Nelson, "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground"

Willie Nelson is the most underrated and under appreciated guitarist in the history of man ...

What has happened to "music"?

Babe.

What room is the Babe in?

Humility.

SPIRIT

Rumi advised me to keep my spirit

up in the branches of a tree and not peek

out too far, so I keep mine in the very tall

willows along the irrigation ditch out back,

a safe place to remain unspoiled by the filthy

culture of greed and murder of the spirit.

People forget their spirits easily suffocate

so they must keep them far up in tree

branches where they can be summoned any moment.

It's better if you're outside as it's hard for spirits

to get into houses or buildings or airplanes.

In New York City I used to reach my spirit in front

of the gorilla cage in the children's zoo in Central Park.

It wouldn't come in the Carlyle Hotel, which

was too expensive for its taste.  In Chicago

it won't come in the Drake though I can see it

out the window hovering over the surface

of Lake Michigan. The spirit above anything

else is attracted to humility. If I slept

in the streets it would be under the cardboard with me.

Jim Harrison

ZZ Top, "Just Got Paid"

Read.

A young writer once asked Hemingway, “Are there ten books one should read to become a writer?”

Hemingway replied, “Yes, there are such books.”

The young man took out his notebook to jot down the titles.

Hemingway said, “Well, for you to find out which books are for you, you will have to read ten thousand books.”

Whiskey Myers, "Gasoline"

Spiritual things ...

Simple.

I am myself ensconced almost at the back wall, but even across the distance of this room, I can see clearly out into the sunlit street, and am able to make out on the pavement opposite a signpost pointing out several nearby destinations. One of these destinations is the village of Mursden. Perhaps 'Mursden' will ring a bell for you, as it did for me upon my first spotting it on the road atlas yesterday. In fact, I must say I was even tempted to make a slight detour from my planned route just to see the village. Mursden, Somerset, was where the firm of Giffen and Co. was once situated, and it was to Mursden one was required to dispatch one's order for a supply of Giffen's dark candles of polish, "to be flaked, mixed into wax and applied by hand." For some time, Giffen's was undoubtedly the finest silver polish available, and it was only the appearance of new chemical substances on the market shortly before the war that caused demand for this impressive product to decline.

As I remember, Giffen's appeared at the beginning of the twenties, and I am sure I am not alone in closely associating its emergence with that change of mood within our profession - that change which came to push the polishing of silver to the position of central importance it still by and large maintains today. This shift was, I believe, like so many other major shifts around this period, a generational matter; it was during these years that our generation of butlers 'came of age', and figures like Mr. Marshall, in particular, played a crucial part in making silver-polishing so central. This is not to suggest, of course, that the polishing of silver - particularly those items that would appear at table - was not always regarded a serious duty.

But it would not be unfair to suggest that many butlers of, say, my father's generation did not consider the matter such a key one, and this is evidenced by the fact that in those days, the butler of a household rarely supervised the polishing of silver directly, being content to leave it to, say, the under-butler's whims, carrying out inspections only intermittently."  It was Mr Marshall, it is generally agreed, who was the first to recognize the Nil significance of silver - namely, that no other objects in the house were likely to come under such intimate scrutiny from outsiders as was silver during a meal, and as such, it served as a public index of a house's standards. And Mr Marshall it was who first caused stupefaction amongst ladies and gentlemen visiting Charleville House with displays of silver polished to previously unimagined standards. Very soon, naturally, butlers up and down the country, under pressure from their employers, were focusing their minds on the question of silver-polishing. There quickly sprang up, I recall, various butlers, each claiming to have discovered methods by which they could surpass Mr Marshall - methods they made a great show of keeping secret, as though they were French chefs guarding their recipes. But I am confident - as I was then - that the sorts of elaborate and mysterious processes performed by someone like Mr. Jack Neighbours had little or no discernible effect on the end result. As far as I was concerned, it was a simple enough matter: one used good polish, and one supervised closely. Giffen's was the polish ordered by all discerning butlers of the time, and if this product was used correctly, one had no fear of one's silver being second best to anybody's.

Kazuo Ishiguro, from The Remains of the Day

Monteverdi, Selva morale et spirituale, SV 268

Lionel Meunier conducts Vox Luminis in a performance of the the Beatus Vir Primo ...

Refuge.

Unknown, Kant, 1790

Fifth Thesis

The greatest problem for the human species, whose solution nature compels it to seek, is to achieve a universal civil society administered in accord with the right. Since it is only in society—and, indeed, only in one that combines the greatest freedom, and thus a thoroughgoing antagonism among its members, with a precise determination and protection of the boundaries of this freedom, so that it can coexist with the freedom of others—since it is only in such a society that nature’s highest objective, namely, the highest attainable development of mankind’s capacities, can be achieved, nature also wills that mankind should itself accomplish this, as well as all the other goals that constitute mankind’s vocation. Thus must there be a society in which one will find the highest possible degree of freedom under external laws combined with irresistible power, i.e., a perfectly rightful civil consitution, whose attainment is the supreme task nature has set for the human species; for only by solving and completing it can nature fulfill her other objectives with our species. Necessity compels men, who are otherwise so deeply enamoured with unrestricted freedom, to enter into this state of coercion; and indeed, they are forced to do so by the greatest need of all, namely, the one that men themselves bring about, for their propensities do not allow them to coexist for very long in wild freedom. But once in a refuge such as civil society furnishes, these same propensities have the most salutary effect. It is just as with trees in a forest, which need each other, for in seeking to take the air and sunlight from the others, each obtains a beautiful, straight shape, while those that grow in freedom and separate from one another branch out randomly, and are stunted, bent, and twisted. All the culture and art that adorn mankind, as well as the most beautiful social order, are fruits of unsociableness that is forced to discipline itself and thus through an imposed art to develop nature’s seed completely.

Immanuel Kant, from Critique of Pure Reason

Best.

Brian Lamb dicsusses the book 1776 with its author, David McCullough ...

[Henry Knox] is such an extraordinary story of an American who seemed to be miscast, seemed to be a fellow not prepared for the role that history had for him to play and who not only lived up to the role but went over the top, as it were.  An example of a man who came from very humble origins with very little advantage in the way of education or connections.  He rose to be one of the most important Americans of his day, the man that George Washington discovered and the man that George Washington counted on through nearly eight and a half years of the Revolutionary War and who then counted on him as his secretary of war during the time that Washington was president.

He started out as a Boston bookseller. Big, stout, gregarious, robust, friendly, popular fellow who had about the equivalent of a fifth grade education and who loved books and never stopped reading. And he became one of the best officers in the whole war. 

Washington singled out two young men almost within a week or two weeks after he took command at Cambridge, Massachusetts as people he could count on. One was Nathaniel Green, who was a 33-year-old Quaker who'd been made a major general at the age of 33, having had no military experience at all. And the second was Henry Knox, who was all of 25, and he had had no military experience at all.  But both of them had been reading books. What they knew about the military was entirely from books. That was an age, an era that believed that one of the best ways to learn things was to read books, the age of The Enlightenment. They are in their way, I think, wonderful examples, personifications of the Enlightenment faith that if you want to learn something, pick up a book and get reading.

Henry Knox, a long-standing member of The Hammock Papers' Great Hall.

The "Knox Moving Co." scene from John Adams ...

An excellent book ...

Happy Birthday, Gustav Mahler

It is peculiar, but as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me; and this helps me again and again.

Gustav Mahler, born on this day in 1860

Bernard Haitink conducts the Berlin Philarmoniker in the 3rd Symphony's horn introduction, f,the first time in my dog-walking mix, featuring the heroic horns of Norbert Hauptmann, Fergus McWilliam, Klaus Wallendorf, Stefan Dohr, Stefan de Leval Jezierski, and Manfred Klier ...

Thin Lizzy, "Cowboy Song"

I am just a cowboy, lonesome on the trail

A starry night, a campfire light

The coyote call and the howlin' winds wail

So I'll ride out to the old sundown ...

The lamp is lit.

Aaron Lewis, "Northern Redneck"

Recorded at The Bluestone, in Columbus, Round-On-The-Ends-and-High-in-the-Middle ...

Until.

Raphael, The School of Athens (detail), 1509

Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy cities will never have rest from their evils.

Plato, from The Republic, Book V

Unobstructed.

Otis, Thomas Jefferson, 1817

I abandon politics, and accomodate myself chearfully to things as they go; confident in the wisdom of those who direct them, and that they will be better and better directed in the progressive course of knolege and experience. our successors start on our shoulders. they know all that we know, and will add to that stock the discoveries of the next 50. years; and what will be their amount we may estimate from what the last 50. years have added to the science of human concerns. the thoughts of others, as I find them on paper, are my amusement and delight; but the labors of the mind in abstruse investigations are irksome, and writing itself is become a slow and painful operation, occasioned by a stiffened wrist, the consequence of a former dislocation. I will however essay the two definitions which you say are more particularly interesting at present: I mean those of the terms Liberty & Republic, aware however that they have been so multifariously applied as to convey no precise idea to the mind. of Liberty then I would say that, in the whole plenitude of it’s extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will: but rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law"; because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

Thomas Jefferson, from his letter to Isaac H. Tiffany, April 4, 1819

Learn.

If you learn one thing today, take a load off ...

Thanks, Kurt.

Happy Birthday, Frida Kahlo

I wish I could do whatever I liked behind the curtain of “madness."  Then: I’d arrange flowers, all day long, I’d paint; pain, love and tenderness, I would laugh as much as I feel like at the stupidity of others, and they would all say: “Poor thing, she’s crazy!” Above all I would laugh at my own stupidity.  I would build my world which while I lived, would be in agreement with all the worlds. The day, or the hour, or the minute that I lived would be mine and everyone else’s - my madness would not be an escape from “reality."

Frida Kahlo, born on this day in 1907

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

... to prioritize victory over, rather than coexistence with, the communist threat.

Arts.

Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they've lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat - and drink! - with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.

M.F.K. Fisher, from Serve It Forth

Proof.

Kurt's focus on The Philosopher of Phoenix' framing of freedom ...

America still has what we've lost: the reflex to build rather than administer. The founder is a hero there, not a suspect. Success is proof there, not a sin to atone for. That's your treasure. And a treasure is lost without anyone noticing—a form, an agency, a "good cause" at a time.

So don't look for hidden enemies. It's useless and unworthy of you. Look at the figure instead.

Kurt said it decades ago: "Aside from mayonnaise, the French are good for very little."

Maybe they get a pass on sculpture, as well.

Elimination.

Steve has on gentle elimination's role in improvement ...

If you'd like something better, then a routine you are comfortable with may have to die.

Wait.

Remember that you must behave in life as you would at a banquet. A dish is handed round and comes to you; put out your hand and take it politely. It passes you; do not stop it. It has not reached you; do not be impatient to get it, but wait till your turn comes.

Bear yourself thus towards children, wife, office, wealth, and one day you will be worthy to banquet with the gods.

But if when they are set before you, you do not take them but despise them, then you shall not only share the gods’ banquet, but shall share their rule. For by so doing Diogenes and Heraclitus and men like them were called divine and deserved the name.

Epictetus, from The Enchiridion

Living.

Evans, Thomas Jefferson, 1947

The question whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water.  Between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another.

On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation…

Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.

Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to James Madison, September 6, 1789

Contribute.

Since you are an integral part of a social system, let every act of yours contribute to the harmonization of social life. Any action that is not related directly or remotely to this social aim disturbs your life, and destroys your unity.

Marcus Aurelius, from Meditations

HUZZAH!

Having bowed to the inevitability of the dictum that we must eat to live, we should ignore it and live to eat.

M.F.K. Fisher

HUZZAH!

Rather.

Wyeth, Jamie, Patriot's Barn, 2001

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family, and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give.

Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to Alexander Donald, Paris, February 7, 1788

Vision.

Victor Davis Hanson and Michael Auslin discuss the survival story of the Declaration and its evolving legacy ...

That is the greatness of the Declaration over history, multiple moments where we have seen the deeply-divided people keep returning to it for a couple of reasons. One is, it gave this vision of the type of future, the type of country that they wanted to live in. Second, they would look back at times of division to what seemed to be a time of more unity, meaning 1776, when patriots across these very, very different and often divided colonies came together and they tried to recapture that.

Unalienable.

In Congress, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
John Hancock
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcot
Matthew Thornton

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

... to prioritize victory over, rather than coexistence with, the communist threat.

Resolve

Charles Laughton recites President Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" from Ruggles of Red Gap ...

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- 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.

Preserve.

On this date, at this hour, in 1863, approximately 11,500 Confederates under James Longstreet's command stepped off from Seminary Ridge to begin Pickett's Charge against the center of George Meade's Union army on Cemetery Ridge.

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago; or to anyone who ever sailed a skiff under a quilt sail, the moment in 1492 when somebody thought This is it: the absolute edge of no return, to turn back now and make home or sail irrevocably on and either find land or plunge over the world's roaring rim. 

William Faulkner, from Intruder in the Dust

The description of Pickett's Charge from Ken Burns', The Civil War ...

A little over ten years after the start of the Civil War, in July 1871, Gen. George Meade spoke to a reunion of Union Army veterans in Boston ...

“Comrades of the Army of the Potomac,” he began, “The first thing I shall do, which we ought to do…is to return our thanks to the Great Being who, in His infinite mercy, has allowed us to be here, to enjoy the pleasures of this meeting, who has blessed us and spared us through all the dangers of the war.”

Reconciliation; unification; a re-examination of the whys and wherefores of the greatest conflict in American history: All of these would be themes of later Civil War reunions and observances, leading up to the current 150th commemoration. What those veterans celebrated in the first major anniversary of the war was the simple fact that they had made it through alive.

“There was a desire among soldiers on both sides to bring moral clarity and purpose to what they had just experienced,” says Peter Carmichael, director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. “We cannot forget that especially for Northern soldiers their celebration of Union meant something deep to them. They went to war to preserve the Union.”

Learn.

There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man's life to know them.  The little that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.  It takes two years to learn to speak and sixty to learn to keep quiet.

Ernest Hemingway, from Men at War