Folks are gathered in numbers at parks and on city streets. Families are picnicking in a variety of places. Tonight, the air will be inundated with booms and the sky will be composed of flares and other spectacular fireworks.

After all, it is Independence Day.

I have written of my previous Independence Days back home; here in the Southwest corner; at sea; in Newport, Rhode Island; on Coronado Island; in East Sound on Orcas Island; and at the Sonoma Plaza.

This Independence Day, after brunch with Maureen’s sister Patsy, we will be at home, just the two of us. My siblings are with their families in Queechee, Vermont, and Signal Mountain, Tennessee. My first daughter, grandson, and son-in-law are in Chicago on their summer vacation. My second daughter is with her husband and his family in Las Vegas.

i am happy for all of them and happy for us.

i will not go into my wailing about commercialism or missing the meaning. i will not judge.

But i will quote from the document that got all of this started, not berating the founders for their faults, i am thankful to them for creating such a profound document. i will not attack those who want “justice just as long as they get theirs first” (thanks, Mose Allison for those words).

There is not a government nor a document stating the purpose of such a government that is perfect. They were created by humans. But “The Declaration of Independence” comes about as close as any could get to being perfect. It’s beginning:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes…

And i consider those words with the words of Major Kenneth Morgan, my Latin professor at Castle Heights Military Academy: “Freedom is the ability to do anything you want to do as long as it doesn’t interfere with someone else’s freedom.”

Blessed be our independence.