009.) Put On Your Flag Panties - It's Time to Celebrate

It's the fourth of July, the annual celebration of this nation's independence. This day some 223 years ago the Declaration of Independence was adopted, a paper which among other things stated that America was finally free of Britain's rule.

So what am I doing?

Am I gorging myself on hot dogs and hamburgers and beer? Am I maiming myself with sparklers and/or bottle rockets? Am I hanging around Summerfest doing any combination of the aforementioned things and then some - like Kramp and Adler's Summerfest Bingo?

Hardly.

This day I'm staying indoors, listening to the melodic music of an earlier generation and eating these strange french fry-shaped chips flavored like salt and vinegar. I am trying to write my novel (it should be so easy, I have the entire thing planned out - I only need to fill in the spaces in between) but, instead I am wondering about what on earth I'm going to say on Friday 17 July. That day is approaching fast, so fast I feel as though I might choke on the apprehension and excitement - that or these queer potato chips.



UPDATE TO ENTRY 07.04.09 "PUT ON YOUR BIG GIRL PANTIES - IT'S TIME TO CELEBRATE":

I put down the potatoes chips, turned off the Grateful Dead and did something more productive with my day.

First, I knocked out another chapter of my book, putting me thismuchcloser to finishing. Well, really I'm still quite a ways off but it's nice to think that I'm closing in on the glorious finish line.

I then watched the people downstairs begin the arduous task of building their side porch (again, for the original beast had rotted through). This new porch completely obliterates the sidewalk and overtakes my front stoop.

After this, toward the evening, I put in my video (and no, this is not a slang term for DVD as album has become for CD - I really do still watch VHS) of Gettysburg. Now, I know that the 4th of July is Independence Day and came a good long while before the Civil War - but, honestly, the Civil War was the only thing I ever willingly sat through in history class (after history class, after history class because it seemed to be that until 10th grade we never reached even the first world war).

Gettysburg is a superb film (thank you Maxwell, my old Civil War buff schoolmate who in the 8th grade brought this movie to class and also somehow managed to get the Choir teacher to play Monty Python and the Holy Grail on that bus to Six Flags - but I digress). Yes, Gettysburg is heartbreaking and soaring and vile and superb. I highly recommend it. It is rated PG (or was, anyway, when it was released, though now with the tighter garrote around smoking and violence it might have gone up to PG-13 or even R).

I say this because I find that the Civil War might be the only war I would ever fight in/for - given a much earlier birth or a time machine or greater knowledge at the time about what the Japanese and the Nazis were really doing during the 1940s. We (or they? My family wouldn't arrive in the country for another half century) - we weren't fighting for a lie or for words. We were fighting for life, for the dignity of human life.

And now a Wal-Mart wants to go up near the Wilderness battlefield in Virginia? Great way of pissing on our nation's bloody and painful history, guys. What's next? A Chuck E. Cheese's on Ellis Island? A strip mall along the Trail of Tears?