Freedom Don't Come Free

{listen too...}

"Let the world go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike,

that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans,

born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace,

 unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship,

support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty. This much we pledge and more."

"to those nations who would make themselves our adversary,

we offer not a pledge but a request that both sides begin anew the quest for peace..."

"Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty.

Now the trumpet summons us again, not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need, not as a call to battle, though embattled we are,

but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”,

a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America can do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

John F Kennedy's Inaugural Address
January 20, 1961

Have a Happy 4th of July my Sweet Friends!

And when the words 'Thank You' don't begin to express my feelings of pride & honor & gratitude towards our American Hero's,
when I am at a loss for words & can find nothing else to say,
I am always mindful that...

'Freedom Don't Come Free'!

XOXO

proud to be an American

Sweet Friends, With Memorial Day having just past & the 4th of July right around the corner, I wanted to start getting into the spirit of things here at home, on my blog & at my shop. I am one of those patriotic Americans that gets teary eyed sitting at a baseball field, looking & smelling the beyond green grass, on a lovely summer evening, singing the National Anthem. I mean...it's 'Field of Dreams', who doesn't right?

I get goosebumps walking through Washington DC, standing amid the history that this Nation was founded on. Staring up at the Lincoln & Jefferson Memorials, feeling so small among giants. Thinking back to the bravery of our colonial Father's, imagining that our new, little Nation could ever defeat a world dominating force like England...& yet we did.

A nation that was willing to war brother against brother to right the wrongs that had long gone unacknowledged about what the true meaning of "all men are created equal" infers. Having been fortunate enough to have stood in the battlefields of Gettysburg & in the exact place where Abraham Lincoln gave his amazing Gettysburg Address, I am in awe of this place I call home.

Being an American, I have the luxury to call home my California coastline to my Brother's Baltimore, MD harbor & all destinations in between. My home is big & beautiful & diverse. It has oceans & deserts, islands & redwoods, prairies & majestic mountains. It's so big it has places I've seen, places I wish to see & places I will sadly never get a chance to see.

So, here's some fun vintage images for you to create with and let's get out our red, white & blue & celebrate a nation that's not perfect, but is always trying to remedy that flaw & I will remind myself again of the wonderful words spoken in a Pennsylvania field in 1863. I think I'm going to town & buy a fresh new flag to fly today! Hugs Friends...

"Four score 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.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Abraham Lincoln