In 1946 and 1947 my family lived on N.A.D. Hawthorne, Nevada, where my father was the Navy's Fire Control Officer. As the fourth of July approached in 1946, fireworks were in short supply. Even had there been any, it was an ammunition depot! My father set about creating a big Fourth of July at Walker Lake, near Hawthorne. He invited the band from the Marine base nearby, a color guard from the Navy and Marine bases and townspeople. Never willing to celebrate small, he and his men set up canon, rocketry, large caliber guns and shells, some on boats in the middle of the lake. I'm not certain how many of the townspeople were ready for real bombs bursting in air, but it was a bang up success!
In 1943, based on the 1941 State of the Union Address of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Norman Rockwell painted a series of paintings, depicting four freedoms, four essential human rights, Roosevelt believed should be universally protected. The paintings, featured one at a time, together with an essay on each, by the Saturday Evening Post. They later toured the country, sponsored by the United States Department of the Treasury, to help sell War Bonds. The paintings now hang in the Norman Rockwell Museum. They are sentimental, and, of course, not stylish or avant guard, but, if you haven't seen reproductions of the paintings or posters for a while, they are heartwarming to revisit.
We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way-- everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want . . . everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear . . . anywhere in the world.
--President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Message to Congress, January 6, 1941
We've progressed to a Universal Declaration of Human rights, ratified by the United Nations. It is on the U.N. website. The link is here: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ What is the state of our human rights in this country and abroad this Fourth of July? We should be asking, because it is not good enough to give lip service to how grateful we are not to be living in an undeveloped country or totalitarian state.
Here's wishing us all fun! Enjoy the feast, the concerts, the parades the fireworks! As for me, I love band music, and Denver has the oldest municipal band in the country. Of course the State of Colorado has a pretty colorful history of Fourth of July Celebrations. In 1894, in Swan City, Colorado, restless miners, who had asked for fireworks, had never received them. So they went into town, and blew up the United States Post Office. My dad would have loved it, except for the law breaking part. Oh, hell, my dad would have loved it!
In the quiet time after or before the festivities, talk about the universality of human rights, and what it is We The People want America to be.
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