Mr.FF wanted to know if I wanted to watch Capitol Fourth-- I saw Mike Love and quickly came back to the computer! A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to be in an elevator in Atlantic City with Mike Love and several other people. One young woman got up the nerve to ask him "Are you Mike Love?" and he was totally rude. He's been completely off my list since then.
MUST READS:
TRIUMPH OF THE RABBLE
By Suzanne Fields
July 4, 2005
Fantasy time: If I had lived in the colonies 229 years ago today, would I have stayed here in harm's way or returned to London to sip tea and nibble crumpets with Fortnum and Mason (or one of their forbears)? The temptation would have been great on the eve of the Revolution. Losers would have been traitors, to pay at the end of a British rope.
Would I have had the confidence in a ragtag army of farmers who knew how to use a pitchfork, but not necessarily a gun? Would I have trusted that the sailors and fishermen, artisans and tradesmen of town and country, shoemakers, saddlers, carpenters, blacksmiths and tailors could defeat the mightiest empire in the world? How seductive, given the final choice, would it have been to leave behind dresses of homespun cotton to aspire to the fine fabrics of London ladies?
Strong considerations of family life would have intruded, too. It wouldn't have been easy to encourage a husband or a teen-age son to go off to join a raw, undisciplined, inexperienced "rabble in arms," to follow a general who had never led any army into battle. Disease and hunger followed them. Fathers marched off with their sons; one Connecticut woman "fitted out" five sons and 11 grandsons.
King George III rode to parliament in a gilded chariot decorated with golden sea gods, symbols reminding the American colonies that Britannia ruled the waves, almost without challenge. Would I have imagined the king right, after all, when he announced to parliament that "to be a subject of Great Britain, with all of its consequences, is to be the freest member of any civil society in the known world?"
These are the questions that flood the reader of David McCullough's new book, "1776," where we learn that for all of our romantic notions that the colonies were guaranteed by destiny to win independence from Great Britain, the result was actually far from certain. This is the book to read on this Fourth of July as a complement to the barbecues and speeches and fireworks. Doubt and uncertainty threw a shadow over everything, from the eloquent and contentious debates in the House of Commons and the House of Lords to the dark and bloody ground where the ragged colonists camped.
You can read the rest of this article at
http://washtimes.com/op-ed/20050703-101055-5832r.htm
REMEMBERING
By Diane Horning
July 4, 2005 -- MY husband, my daughter, her friend and I spent this past Memorial Day in Washington, D.C., visiting memorials, not going to Memorial Day sales.
Our son wasn't with us on this pilgrimage because he was murdered on 9/11. The day filled our own personal need to remember and honor the events and the people to whom these memorials were dedicated.
You can read the rest of this article at
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/49330.htm
About Mike Love and the Beach Boys.....how totally rude!!!
I hate hearing about supposedly big stars who don't seem to remember that it's their fans that made them great. When they look down their noses, it's disgusting, isn't it?
He was so offkey - I'm assuming he couldn't hear the music in his ears and couldn't find the right notes - it was pathetic. He finally moved into the correct pitch, but it was almost painful, if you know what I mean.