Happy 4th

[Scooter]

[Joe Guy]

Jose can't you see, right behind you is ICE
You might try but you'll fail, to cross over our border
When you come to this land, be it day or at night
We will send you back home, so just quit all your scheming

Our man Donald's out there! - telling you to be scared!
Each day and each night, so you better beware

Jose, yes our star spangled banner still waves
But you can't live here for free, so go back to your cave.....

($5 million gold card holders welcome)

[BoSoxGal]

I won’t be celebrating the 4th of July this year.
What are we celebrating?
Slave owners balancing their prison camp books but rejecting taxation by the nation that sold them their enslaved men, women, and children, which nation itself soon outlawed slavery leaving us to trade those humans stateside like cattle except without the humanity accorded cattle?
The slave owners’ proud progeny now making the teaching of this history illegal?
Exceptional America building fenced camps in our most uninhabitable parts for the people tragically seeking the freedom we advertise like detergent and doing the work we won’t, and selling merch bragging about the cruelty?
A new law, passed just today, that will, literally, kill the poor and reward the rich,
And the White?
Your fireworks this year are like gunshots to our souls.
~Marc Murphy

[BoSoxGal]

[BoSoxGal]

[Bicycle Bill]

 

Anyone else wondering why there are few if any plans to recognize America's semiquincentennial?   I know the word doesn't roll off the tongue nearly as easy as 'centennial' or 'bicentennial', nor do I expect a rehash of the over-the-top 'Bicentennial Everything' we had in 1976 (as well as the five years or so leading up to it), but still — 250 years is a significant milestone.

-"BB"-

[BoSoxGal]

 

Anyone else wondering why there are few if any plans to recognize America's semiquincentennial?   I know the word doesn't roll off the tongue nearly as easy as 'centennial' or 'bicentennial', nor do I expect a rehash of the over-the-top 'Bicentennial Everything' we had in 1976 (as well as the five years or so leading up to it), but still — 250 years is a significant milestone.

-"BB"-

There is a shit ton of stuff planned for the 250th in Boston, so much that they’ve planned a year off from the very popular music festival Boston Calling.

I’m watching Boston Pops 4th fireworks spectacular as I type this and it’s like, Boston never heard of the concept too much of a good thing. It’s never ending almost boring like hurry up and get to the end already lol.

I feel sure there must be a ton of stuff planned in DC next year as well?

But of course what kind of country will we be celebrating a year from now? Tonight I spent half the patriotic sing along crying sad tears.

[Sue U]

Charlotte's Web Thoughts

What Mr. Ramirez Taught Me
July Fourth means community.

Charlotte Clymer
Jul 04, 2025

For the first half of my kindergarten year, my family lived in a shitty little apartment complex somewhere in Central Texas. I forget where. I think Waco? Copperas Cove? We moved around a lot. If memory serves correctly, I attended three different schools that year.

The apartment complex was right off I-35. We’d fall asleep at night to the muffled rumble of 18-wheelers passing by. The building itself was dingy and sparsely lit. The walls were thin, which meant we’d hear our neighbors’ business, and they definitely heard ours.

The best thing about the property was a flag pole in the middle of the parking lot. It shot up out of a small, circular, grassy island. The metallic shaft was immaculate—shiny and nary a scratch—and the tiny greensward beneath it was surprisingly lush.

I’m not sure when and where I saw it first—probably during that last pre-kindergarten summer during a Nick-at-Nite marathon, episodes of “Hogan’s Heroes” maybe—but at some point, I saw a flag-raising ceremony on television, and it left a big impression.

I don’t remember anything about my first day of school, but I vividly recall the first time I walked outside to wait for the bus and saw Mr. Ramirez go through the process of unfolding the American flag, fastening its eyelets to the snap hooks of the halyard, and then calmly raising it to the top of the pole.

I didn’t know a lot about Mr. Ramirez, and I never did find out much about him. He was probably the property manager or handyman. I’d see him around the complex with his tools, and he always had a smile and a brief, kind word for me. “Hey, kiddo” or something like that.

One morning, during that first month of kindergarten, I walked out to wait for the bus and saw Mr. Ramirez getting ready to hoist the flag. Having now seen this many times on television and now seeing it a few times in-person, I did what my growing brain thought was appropriate: I rendered a salute, my little hand popping up to just above my brow.

He had begun raising the flag when he noticed me standing there—my paw held steady in respect—and cracked the biggest smile and chuckled. You haven’t seen a happier property manager than in that moment. He finished hoisting the flag, secured the halyard, stood at attention, and joined me in saluting it himself.

For the five months I lived there, that became our ritual every school morning, even on some weekends. I’d come outside, Mr. Ramirez would show up with the flag, and we’d do our thing. I don’t think I grasped it at the time, but in retrospect, he got a huge kick out of this. He loved it. I did, too.

A few weeks into this, my mother and I ran into him one afternoon, and he mentioned it to her.

“Your kiddo loves saluting the flag.”

She had no idea what he was talking about. He explained what we did every morning, and she still seemed confused. My mother didn’t give much care to these things. Hers was not the life of respect and discipline. Quite the opposite. It’d have been a rare moment for her to ask if I’d done my homework or bathed.

But Mr. Ramirez did care. On several mornings when I was running a few minutes late, he wouldn’t start without me. I’d dash outside to find him waiting, flag properly fastened, an easy smile to greet me.

“Ready?”

I’d nod, and up the flag went, my salute coming up and then his and the halyard was properly secured and we’d both go about our day.

We never talked outside of this ritual. Mr. Ramirez didn’t know my mother that well, and he probably thought it inappropriate to chat with me beyond our daily ceremony.

Yet even just the fact that a grown adult showed this kind of care meant a lot to me at the time in a way I wouldn’t fully appreciate until much later in life.

With all the trouble at home, all the chaos and uncertainty, all the abuse—things which would take many years to process and contextualize—I knew that every morning, Mr. Ramirez would be there waiting for me.

I’ve thought about him periodically throughout my life — when I was on flag detail during basic training and during NCO school and most times when I see the flag being carried up away from the earth, all those mornings with Mr. Ramirez will briefly revisit me.

It’s very easy to be cynical these days, and it’s especially easy to be cynical about our country. It’s understandable. Every sunrise in America right now brings fresh anxieties about our future. There’s a lot to keep us afraid and tempted into fatalism.

I’m not about to tell y’all that everything is gonna be fine. That would be a lie. We’re in for a lot of pain for the foreseeable future.

But the only way we’re going to get through this painful era is remembering that the best moments in our country are when we look out for each other. It’s when we build community. It’s when we don’t leave others behind.

In the only way he could, Mr. Ramirez showed up for me every morning, reminding me that there were adults who cared about me.

I’m thinking about him today. I hope he’d be proud of me. I hope my sense of citizenship has lived up to his.

Happy Fourth.