Hello, dear readers,
Yours portly is taking this weekend off from extensive blogging. Enjoy leftover Independence Day foods with your family and friends. I’ll be flying back from a week in Indianapolis with my older brother.
More details to come next week!
Happy Saturday!
—TPP
Fifteen years ago today, on 4 July 2010, my old brass band, Brass to the Future, played an outdoor concert in a park in my hometown of Aiken, South Carolina. It was a bit of a “guerrilla” concert, in that we did not ask permission, but just showed up in the park and started playing for our fans.
In the spirit of Independence Day, I’m featuring rare footage from that concert today.
On Monday, America celebrated its 246th birthday. I don’t know what the word is for “250th” (bisesquicentennial?), but that will be fun when it arrives in 2026. I’m still hoping to make it to the tricentennial in 2076, but I’m not holding my breath—I’ll be ninety-one-and-a-half (maybe I’ll blog about it—ha!)! I also imagine the United States of that time will be as unrecognizable to us as the United States of today is unrecognizable to someone at the bicentennial, much less the centennial observance.
America is not in the best of times, but victories abound nonetheless. Sure, prices are through the rough and shortages seem to be increasingly commonplace. But babies have a chance at life now, and our most basic constitutional rights continue—for the time being—to be upheld, albeit imperfectly (we have what are essentially political prisoners wasting away in jail without a trial because they were invited to walk around the US Capitol Building).
Regardless, I’m proud to be an American, and I’m thankful to live in this country. It’s not perfect, but it’s home.
With that, here is “TBT^16: Happy Birthday, America!“:
Since 2018, I’ve been reblogging my original “Happy Birthday, America!” post, which dates back to 2016 and the old Blogger site. Each year I add another layer of commentary to to the original post, which essentially analyzed and discussed very briefly Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
My view on Lincoln’s role in American history has shifted somewhat in five years, but it’s undeniable that the Gettysburg Address is a powerful, succinct speech. The Address, unlike my windy blog posts, is the quintessential illustration of the principle that “less is more.”
Like last year, this year’s post is a bit delayed due to the way the Fourth fell this year (on a Sunday). It was a very quiet Independence Day: my younger brother had my girlfriend, myself, and another friend over to have hot dogs and burgers, as his wife and kids were away visiting family. I manned the grill, turning the dogs like a human-operated convenience store hot dog roller. The thin, diner-style smash burgers my brother made were delicious, especially with American cheese.
This year was the first in awhile that didn’t really feel like the Fourth of July, even though last year’s celebration was during the supremely unfree Age of The Virus. I suppose the holiday snuck up on me, and with the nation in the state it is, perhaps I just wasn’t feeling all that patriotic.
Nevertheless, I reminded myself that America has been on the ropes before, and we’re not going to let some bug-eating, gender-confused CommieNazis destroy our hope.
With that, here are several posts commemorating July Fourths past:
The Portly Politico 