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From: "Alice Palladini;" <>
Subject: [MA-MENDON] Happy 4th of July:
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 18:38:52 -0400



Hi Listers
This was sent to me last year and I think well worth repeating
here.
Happy & Safe Holiday to ALL
Alice
................
I AM THE UNITED STATES

I was born on July 4, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence
is my birth certificate. The bloodlines of the world run in my veins
because I offered freedom to the oppressed: I am the United States of
America.
I am 250 million living souls and have the ghosts of millions
who have lived and fought and died for me.

I am Nathan Hale and Paul Revere. I stood at Lexington and fired
the shot heard around the world. I am Washington, Jefferson, and
Patrick Henry. I am John Paul Jones, the Green Mountain Boys, and
Davy Crockett. I am Lee, Grant, and Abe Lincoln.

I remember the Alamo, the Maine, and Pearl Harbor. When freedom
called, I answered and stayed until it was over, over there. I left
my heroic dead on the bleak slopes of Korea and Vietnam--in Flanders
field, the rocks of Corregidor, and the desert sands of Kuwait.

I am the Brooklyn Bridge, the wheat fields of Kansas, the granite
hills of Vermont. I am the coal mines of the Virginias and
Pennsylvania, the fertile lands of the West, the Golden Gate and the
Grand Canyon. I am Independence Hall, the Monitor, the Merrimac, and
the Challenger.

Oh, yes - I am big. I sprawl from the Atlantic to the Pacific -
3 million square miles of land throbbing with industry. I am more

than 2 million farms. I am forest, field, mountain, and desert. I am
quiet villages and cities that never sleep. You can look at me and
see Ben Franklin walking down the streets of Philadelphia with his
bread loaf under his arm. You can see Betsy Ross with her needle.
You can see the lights of Christmas and hear the strains of "Auld
Lang Syne" as the calendar turns.

I am Babe Ruth and the World Series, 170,000 schools and colleges,
and more than 300,000 churches where my people worship God as they
choose. I am a ballot dropped into a box, the roar of a crowd in a
stadium, the voice of a choir in a cathedral. I am an editorial in a
newspaper and a letter to Congress. I am John Glenn and Neil
Armstrong and their fellow astronauts who whirl through the spaces
above my head. I am Eli Whitney and Stephen Foster, Tom Edison,
Albert Einstein and Billy Graham.

Yes, I am the nation and these are the things that I am. I was
conceived in freedom and, God willing, in freedom I shall spend the
rest of my days.

May I always possess the integrity, the courage and the strength
to keep myself unshackled, to remain a citadel of freedom and a
beacon of hope for all the world. AUTHOR UNKNOWN.




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