FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Musings on American Independence Day #241

On this Fourth of July, Independence Day #241, so much to be grateful for, including among others things:

High-flying friends who think of me and tweet me from the most-unlikely of places... like an SAS Airbus 330















I also think of lost-dead ancestors who, when it mattered most, stepped-up and did what what was needed in order to make that dream they had for a free and independent nation, a living reality.




On IndependenceDay, I always think about a particular paternal ancestor of mine who was a spy for Gen. Washington during the American RevolutionaryWar, and think about all the problems and the daily peril he knowingly put himself in, to serve, knowing that he'd be killed if caught by the #British Redcoats.




When they were both younger, this same ancestor had marched with George Washington 21 years before under British Gen. Edward Braddock from Alexandria, Virgina to Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) to fight in The #FrenchandIndianWar, 1755.


Having survived that living hell, and many years of being a Revolutionary War spy, he lived to see the Thirteen Colonies full of vary different cultures and traditions become one free nation.

He was the first of many ancestors of mine who were to live in Ohio over the next 200-plus years, living there on bounty-land he was given by Congress as partial payment for his services during the war effort. 

He was in Ohio even before it became a state in 1805, and was then part of the Northwest Territory, the Ohio Territory, settling in an area north of Steubenville, where the U.S. land grant office was established.

And there he lived right near the Ohio river, an hour southwest from Pittsburgh and the general area where he had witnessed firsthand wholesale bloodshed of a sort that he never saw before and never wanted to see afterwards.



@HamiltonQuotes: There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism. #Hamilton

In case you are new to the blog or unaware of the good news, starting in October, SAS, @SAS, will start flying non-stop flights between Stockholm Arlanda Airport, @Arlanda and Miami International Airport, @iflymia, after SAS initiated flights last fall between Copehangen @CPHAirports and Oslo @Oslolufthavn and Miami..





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