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Monday, July 4, 2011

Am I The Only One Who Has Watched Star Trek?




With the American Revolution in my brain, I drew the American flag. I didn't like how the drawing came out--not at all close to Childe Hassam's 4th of July painting, my holiday favorite. I tore it up and reassembled the pieces with an eye towards putting together a balanced color composition. The colors balanced, I still didn't like the assemblage but photographed it anyway, jumped to Photoshop and worked it over with the I-forget-what tool. And that did the trick. The flag's a bit ragged and torn, but then it has been through a lot.

Playing around with the image of my country's flag is okay with everybody. Our constitution guarantees my right to play with Old Glory. I don't approve of the fact that some Americans have sewed the image to the seat of their pants or have burned the flag in protest over some political issue, but I heartily support their right to make their statement. We owe our rights to fuss around with images of the flag and to mistreat it to the folks of the original thirteen colonies who dumped the tea into Boston Harbor,(1773), ignited the American Revolution by firing the shot heard around the world in Lexington, Virginia, (1775), and who declared this country's independence from British rule on the fourth of July, 1776 with these words we hold most dear:

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.

Today, we fly our flags high and salute those thirteen colonies of rebels--Delaware, Pennsylvania,New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island. We also tip our hats with gratitude to the French, the Spanish and the Dutch who gave us a hand with our struggle and eventually went to battle with our enemy themselves wearing their armies thin enough to allow us to defeat them and sign the Treaty of Paris 1783 on September third.

Since then, the Earth has become a tiny place where any shots fired anywhere are heard around the planet in nano seconds and published in full color on You Tube. It's a small world after all and we know it, but then we don't. Am I the only one who watched Star Trek? Am I the only one who got that a Federation of Planets couldn't happen before there was a Federation of Nations--which should have been kicked off in 1996 by a movie called Independence Day? HAPPY TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIFTH BIRTHDAY US of A. We've come a long way. We've got a long way to go earthlings.



NOTE: To read the entire text of Our Declaration of Independence and discover specifically why we declared it on this day in 1776 go to: Early America.

5 comments:

  1. Love your painting of the flag, and how you went about altering it..very successful. Have an enjoyable 4th July (I don't understand why we don't celebrate too), have a good one....ann

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  2. Thanks Ann, but no American flag paintings I've seen rival Childe Hassam's. I do believe that that
    is the one that hung in the Oval Office when Kennedy was in the hot seat--and when Martin Sheen was President on TV's West Wing; I have no idea if it hangs there still for Obama to enjoy. I hope so; it says Hoorah USA loud and clear.

    Childe Hassam was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1859. He was an American Impressionist. His flag paintings were painted during WWI--not during the American Revolution.

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  3. Interesting about Childe Hassam, admit I thought I hadn't heard of him, but I have now googled him and realise I have seen his work before. Wonderful painter. Thanks.

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  4. Fabulous work - love it lots! Happy Independence day. Hope you had a nice long weekend.

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  5. Thanks Evelyn. I had a good time reviewing my country's early history. It's hard to believe that we might still be British subjects, if their armies weren't so busy fighting with the French and the Dutch. They really should have won; they outnumbered us and had a hell of a Navy.

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