A death in our village, Poppie girlls, and Today we celebrate our hard won freedom, don't take them lightly, let some one take them, or throw them away.....

Yesterday the sad news that two children of our community were in a horrible car accident, their were three other victims but I say children of our community because they were children who came to adulthood at the same time as my older children did.  I can remember the very first time I ever saw the young lady that's life ended the night before the news broke in our community.  She was about four she was pulling weeds in a flower bed with her momma.  She was actually pulling more of the flowers but she was proudly pulling "weeds" with momma. She was a lovely little girls and her kind spirit was there all of her short life.    Her older brother was badly hurt in the accident, and is in the hospital, and from all accounts will be there for some time.  He not only has his life to fight for but he will have to overcome the mental despair of knowing his sister died in the accident, he was the driver.  Lord be praise that the young lady's daughter and husband survived as did the friend of the her brother.  My three kids grew up with these kids, and like any other kids they had the trials of life to overcome, and as a village we took them in tried to support them and help them on their way.  Like any people in this life they have grown and flourished, they have become adults and have had children of their own.  We as a community have judged them and faulted them as well over the years.  They were, and are human, and we pause at the passing of the one way to young, but we as a community need to again become the village that raised them and come together to support the living and mourn the lost......

Poppie is grilling his famous brisket and pulled pork today.  We won't be hosting our 4th of July party, as I have said before but we are going to have our celebration at Drama and King's house.  It will be the same party just at a different location.  The fireworks have been bought, the food is being prepared and all the kids, young and old, you do know that the fifty years olds are sometimes more the little kids when it comes to fireworks than the five year olds, but I digress.  Any way today we will come together as a giant family, of who ever comes to celebrate our nations birth.

I really do wish that this generation would see this day for more than just a day of fire crackers and barbeques.  Today is so much more, it is about the melting pot of peoples that for well over 300 years, close 400 years, who have decided to live their lives pursue the right and liberty of human kind.  We as a burgeoning nation have striven to be a self governing country, yes, long before we declared in our Declaration of Independence, peoples came to these shores looking for freedoms.  WE have come for freedom of religion, we have come seeks freedom from oppression, we sought to have inalienable rights that are due ever man, we have sought..... yes that is what we as American have done, we have sought.  Today we still seek,  some day we loose some of the freedoms that our forefather fought for and other days we acquire new freedoms and right but we are as a Nation part of a grand experiment, that was secured by the lives of so many, in so many generation fighting for the rights that we now enjoy.  We have always endured and have kept our precious freedoms going strong but there have been lows when we have nearly lost those precious rights because of complacency and that is a tragedy, in some ways we are at a crossroads right now in our nation.  We are closer now to losing so many of those rights than we have ever been, we need to remember the hero's that gave their all for our rights and we need to be willing to fight for the ones we still have.  We need to remember to never take lightly the rights that are slipping away,  we need to grab hold of the ones we have and fight for them.  We need to remember that this Grand Experiment called the United States of America is a shining light that calls to so many that don't have any right and give thanks for the right, freedoms and liberties we have.  Today stand up, salute our flag, salute our REPUBLIC, No, we are not a democracy, we are a republic and need to fight those who would have us become a democracy.  Today love and honor and remember, We are one Nation under God...... tomorrow.