Nothing serious or spiritual this Sunday. Just a picture of the two lovely ladies in my life…

Normally, my July 4th post would say “Happy 4th of July.” But, I have to admit this July 4th is somewhat sad and somber for me.

It’s sad as I watch the cancer in our country eat away at what made it great in the beginning.

There is an evil loose in the land and it goes by many different names, progressivism, Marxism, socialism, BLM, Antifa and on and on.

Before anyone wants to throw a stone, yes, I believe black lives matter because all lives matter to God. But some see a few black lives as a political end and they don’t care about other black lives (e.g., Chicago). That’s the evil I’m talking about.

It’s a somber July 4th for me because I don’t know what the future holds.

Betty and I are in the final stage of our lives so we have eternity with Jesus to look forward to and standing with people from ALL tongues, tribes and nations to worship God. I suspect a person’s skin color will not matter at all.

My somberness comes from my concern for our children and grandchildren. I don’t know what kind of country they will live in after we’re gone.

America is not perfect and never has been perfect. There have been major issues including far worse and more extreme racism than what people riot about today. I lived in Birmingham, Alabama during some of the worse racism you can imagine.

During the worst of those times, good people of all colors worked together to try to solve and resolve those issues because of two things.

First, most people, regardless of their color, loved their country and wanted it to be better, to live up to the ideals in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Martin Luther King was a good example of this.

This love of country and love of each other is what sent millions of young men and women to leave their safe places to defeat the greatest evil that faced our country at that time. America was an idea worth dying for.

Second, God was more prominent in our country and our collective belief in him opened us to his grace and power, regardless of our color and regardless of our failings. He had not yet been pushed out of our culture and out of our schools.

As kids, Betty and I said the Pledge of Allegiance and prayed the Lord’s Prayer every morning. Yes, there was an issue of how to deal with the beliefs of others. But, I believe that good people could have worked that out and made appropriate accommodations.

That didn’t happen. We threw the baby out with the bath water. Many children are taught that God is not an important part of their lives. Many children are taught that their rights are given by the government and not from God as the founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence. I even wonder if kids today are taught about what happened in Philadelphia in 1776 and what it meant to those men, what it cost them, and what it means to us today.

What our founders did that July of 1776 wasn’t a political or theoretical exercise. When they signed that Declaration, they knew they were signing a potential death warrant. And many did pay a very high price for their courage. Some were captured by the British and executed. Some fought in the war and died. Many had their homes seized and burned by the British. They truly pledged their lives and fortunes for the idea of an America that was like nothing else before or after their times.

To them, America was an idea worth dying for. For me and Betty that’s still true, at least for the America which God designed and the founders brought into being. The America we learned about when we were kids. The America we hope for our kids and grand kids.

So, if I can’t celebrate what is and what the future may hold, I will celebrate the wisdom and courage of those brave men and their brave wives and families that supported them. They birthed an idea that has never reached perfection, but offers the idea that it is possible and worth any price that needs to be paid.

The editorial cartoonist Michael Rameriz gets it right…

… and being an old Navy man, I love this picture of the Blue Angels…

Have a safe 4th.

If you can’t cry and don’t want to get angry, then let’s continue to laugh…

First, all the idiocy surrounding our statues…

A little good news about attacks on statues…

This is true. Can you imagine the amount of ‘offense’ and need for ‘safe spaces’ if Mel Brooks released Blazing Saddles today…

Next, the current state of living with our government-controlled lives…

A mask created solely to protect against a virus…

More of what’s to come next month…

A few more serious thoughts…

Some words from one of the smartest men I know and respect, Thomas Sowell…

Finally, this conveys my thoughts about anything in this world…

As we approach July 4th when we celebrate our independence from England, does anyone seriously believe the Founding Fathers would not be astonished and disappointed at what we have done to their creation?

If our parents were ‘the greatest generation’ for surviving the Great Depression and for beating the evil of Hitler’s Third Reich and Japan’s quest for power, then I wonder what future generations will name the current generation.

To celebrate our 53rd wedding anniversary, we went to one of our favorite restaurants, Farm and Table. They grow most of their own vegetables, raise chickens, sheep, cows and pigs for their own meats. The food is really delicious. It was a good night.

We started the night with a nice Italian red wine…

Gotta start with bread and butter of course…

Betty’s Beet Tostado with Kale and Goat Cheese and it was delicious…

On our way to our car we came across some friendly Guinea Hens…

A good night to celebrate 53 wonderful years…

What’s special about 53?…

• Fifty-three  is the 16th prime number. It is also an Eisenstein prime, and a Sophie Germain prime.
• The sum of the first 53 primes is 5830, which is divisible by 53, a property shared by few other numbers.
• 53 written in hexadecimal is 35, that is, the same characters used in the decimal representation, but reversed. Four additional multiples of 53 share this property: 371 = 173₁₆, 5141 = 1415₁₆, 99481 = 18499₁₆, and 8520280 = 0820258₁₆. Apart from the trivial case of single-digit decimals, no other number has this property.
• 53 cannot be expressed as the sum of any integer and its base-10 digits, making 53 a self number.
• 53 is the smallest prime number that does not divide the order of any sporadic group.

I have no idea what any of that means… so let’s try something else…

• The racing number of  Herbie, a fictional Volkswagen Beetle  with a mind of his own, first appearing in the 1968 film The Love Bug
• The code for international direct dial phone calls to Cuba
• In How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and its animated TV special the Grinch says he’s put up with the Whos’ Christmas cheer for 53 years.
• Fictional 53rd Precinct in the Bronx was found in the TV comedy “Car 54, Where Are You?”
• 53 More Things To Do In Zero Gravity is a book mentioned in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• The maximum number of players on a National Football League roster.

More my speed. The most important thing is today, July 1, is our 53rd wedding anniversary.

Old Bill Shakespeare said it well: ‘To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed, Such seems your beauty still. ‘

Betty, in my eyes you are now as you were when I first laid eyes upon you in Mr. Gregory’s chemistry class. Your beauty today is deeper and more beautiful than it was when I first saw you.

I am a blessed man.