July 04, 2004 - 11:46 p.m.
Ever been so tired you can't sleep? This is what I'm facing right now.
Mike and I are enjoying the first weekend since sometime in May that we're both home and have no pressing need to go anywhere outside a 5 or 10 mile radius of home... ok, 15 if you count the drive to the little country church we've been visiting. So we're at liberty to do relaxing, holiday weekend things like tearing up our yard, uprooting trees, and going swimming. Tomorrow morning I hope to give the house a thorough scouring... if I can drag myself out of bed after being up all night too tired to sleep. Craziness.
Even the boys are exhausted - but they are at least sleeping. Mike is also holding his eyes open with toothpicks in order to level up in City of Heroes. Madness.
I ought to crack open the book I started on Friday - a little history of the Revolutionary War. It isn't exactly what I had hoped. It's in 3 parts: a very long explanation on the causes of the war; a very brief synopsis of the war; and a very very long essay on the repercussions of the war. Founding Brothers was much better. I also have a new book to read - all the more thrilling that I won it!! Every Friday the Fairfax Public Library sends out an email newsletter and there's always a little literary trivia at the end. Answer correctly and get your email into their inbox at the right moment (the number changes each week) and you win a book out of their donations. Every week I try and every week my timing is poor. The closest I came was being 74th when the target was to be 72nd. But they have a consolation prize for the persistent and I was offered a book for my countless attempts. They sent me a list of books from which to choose and I got a copy of A Wilderness so Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America. I'm quite excited about it and happy I got my first choice. But first I ought to finish my Rev War book.
I have intended for a couple of years now to write up something about July 4. I suppose I ought to work on something and save it to post next year... My focus is still off right now.
Earlier today, after a tangential conversation about Gettysburg, I found myself thinking about these words:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
It wasn't a perfect start. Women's sufferage and the abolution of slavery were generations away. Fullfillment of that proposition of equality was even longer. But they came.
There's a bit in one of Mike's favorite plays, 1776, where Adams complains to Franklin about their failure to comdemn slavey.
Adams: Mark me Franklin, if we give in on the slavery clause, posterity will never forgive us.
Franklin: Perhaps, but we won't be around to see it, we'll be long gone. Besides, what will posterity think we were? Demigods? We're men, no more no less, trying to get a nation started against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed. First things first John. Independence. America. If we can't secure that, what difference will the rest make?
It was a good foundation and we continue to build on it and reach toward what our ancestors hoped. As one great man said, I think our best days are still ahead of us. God bless America.
