I AM THE NATION I was born July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence is my birth certificate. The bloodliness of the world runs in my veins, because I offered freedom to the oppressed. I am the nation! I am 250 million living souls & the ghosts of millions more who have lived, fought & died for me. I am Nathan Hale & Paul Revere. I stood at Lexington & fired the shot heard around the world. I am Washington, Jefferson & Patrick Henry. I am John Paul Jones, the Green Mountain Boys & Davy Crockett. I am Lee, Grant & Lincoln. I remember the Alamo, the Maine, Pearl Harbor. When freedom called, I answered & stayed until it was over, over there. I left my heroic dead in Flanders Fields, the rock of Corregidor, on the bleak slopes of Korea, in the steaming jungle of Vietnam & the desert sands of Kuwait. I am the Brooklyn Bridge, the wheat lands of Kansas, the granite hills of Vermont. I am the coal mines of the Virginias & Pennsylvania, the fertile lands of the West, the Golden Gate & Grand Canyon. I am Independence Hall, the Monitor, the Merrimack & the Challenger. I am big. I sprawl from the Atlantic to the Pacific... more than 3 million square miles of land throbbing with industry, more than 2 million farms. I am forest, field, mountain & desert. I am quiet villages; cities that never sleep. Look at me; see Ben Franklin walking down the streets of Philadelphia with his bread loaf under his arm; see Betsy Ross with her needle; see the lights of Christmas & hear the strains of "Auld Lang Syne" as the calendar turns. I am Babe Ruth & the World Series. I am 200,000 schools, colleges & 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 & a letter to Congress. I am John Glenn, Neil Armstrong & their fellow astronauts who whirl through space. I am Eli Whitney, Stephen Foster, Tom Edison, Albert Einstein & Billy Graham. I am Horace Greeley, Will Rodgers, the Wright brothers. I am George Washington Carver, Jonas Salk & Martin Luther King, Jr. I am Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman & Thomas Paine. May I always possess the integrity, courage & strength to keep myself unshackled; to remain a citadel of freedom & a beacon of hope to the world. Yes, I am the nation. 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.. ------------------------------------------ Have a safe and Happy 4th of July :-) Nancy E Parr---Hostess