dual personalities

However you want to spend the 4th of July, I’ll take my cue from those three American flyers in the German prisoner of war camp (surrounded by British officers) in The Great Escape (1962)…waving the flag, playing loud music and sipping some moonshine. (“WOW!”)

Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust”:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

(Francis Scott Key)

A little flag-waving once a year is a good thing! You can bet that we’ll be waving away and bar-b-que-ing and then heading over to our local high school to watch the local fireworks.

We’ll also be thinking of our handsome big brother and thinking of those 4th of July birthdays of yesteryear. We were a rather quiet and restrained family (some might say uptight) but on the 4th of July we liked to let loose and bang pots and pans. We would put the stereo speakers in the open window and blast Souza marches to unsuspecting, left-wing neighbors. We set off fire crackers and bottle rockets!

Well, here’s hoping our bro has a happy, happy birthday and that it isn’t too staid and dignified!

We hope this is a “big year” for him, at least in the birding sense. Come see a Pied-billed grebe or a Marbled godwit sometime! We have them in Missouri, you know. After all, we live on the Mississippi flyway.