Greatness.

I told you what I'd believed all my life: The greatness of America doesn't begin in Washington; it begins with each of you -- in the mighty spirit of free people under God, in the bedrock values you live by each day in your families, neighborhoods, and workplaces. Each of you is an individual worthy of respect, unique and important to the success of America.

President Ronald Reagan, from his "Address to the Nation on the Eve of the Presidential Election," November 5, 1984

Whither leadership?

Better.

[P]rouder and stronger and better ...

Mirth.

Mencken on being an American ...

Mirth is necessary to wisdom, to comfort, above all to happiness. Well, here is the land of mirth, as Germany is the land of metaphysics and France is the land of fornication. Here the buffoonery never stops. What could be more delightful than the endless struggle of the Puritan to make the joy of the minority unlawful and impossible? The effort is itself a greater joy to one standing on the side-lines than any or all of the carnal joys it combats.

Keep.

Released.

America released their debut album on this day in 1971.

Side One, Track One ... "Riverside"

Buck.

It's the last Saturday of the summer, so the Happy Hour specials tonight are margaritas, buy-one-get-one, and chicken nachos, half price.  Drink up, Jim.

As always, it's five plays for a buck on the jukebox ...

Pablo Cruise, "A Place in the Sun"

America, "Ventura Highway"

Firefall, "Strange Way"

Bread, "Guitar Man"

Ambrosia, "Holdin' on to Yesterday"

Mayflower.

On this day in 1620, the Mayflower set sail for Virginia from Plymouth, England with 102 passengers onboard.

Always.

The soup is French Onion, Long Islands are the happy-hour special, and it's always five plays for a buck ...

Wings, "Junior's Farm"

Toto, "Manuela Run"

Supertramp, "It's Raining Again"

Poco, "Heart of the Night"

America, "Tin Man"

Leadership.

It's the leadership (and the upspeaking), stupid ...

Thanks, Kurt.

Always.

Remember always that you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.  We look for a younger generation that is going to be more American than we are. We are doing the best that we can and yet we can do better than that, we can do more than that, by inculcating in the boys and girls of this country today some of the underlying fundamentals, the reasons that brought our immigrant ancestors to this country, the reasons that impelled our Revolutionary ancestors to throw off a fascist yoke.

Frankin Delano Roosevelt, from his April 21, 1938 address to the Daughters of the American Revolution

Yet.

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Always.

He had seen the end of an era, the sunset of the pioneer. He had come upon it when already its glory was nearly spent. So in the buffalo times a traveler used to come upon the embers of a hunter's fire on the prairie, after the hunter was up and gone; the coals would be trampled out, but the ground was warm, and the flattened grass where he had slept and where his pony had grazed, told the story.

This was the very end of the road-making West; the men who had put plains and mountains under the iron harness were old; some were poor, and even the successful ones were hunting for a rest and a brief reprieve from death. It was already gone, that age; nothing could ever bring it back. The taste and smell and song of it, the visions those men had seen in the air and followed, - these he had caught in a kind of afterglow in their own faces -- and this would always be his.

Willa Cather, from A Lost Lady

Thanks, Mum.

Acceptance.

Yearning.

The NEW COLOSSUS

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus

America, "Moon Song"

Crab Balls, please ...

America, "Moon Song"

America, "Wind Wave"