Alan Jackson - Hard Hat And A Hammer

I am posting my Labor Day posts early. This is a beautiful song dedicated to all the hard working men and women in the U.S.A. God Bless Alan Jackson!

America The Beautiful by Elvis Presley

MY STOLEN FLAG

I was visiting my friend Sue  here and she prompted me with all her beautiful red white and blue posts to post a piece about my stolen flag.

When the first gulf war started Hershey's had a promotion. If you sent in, I believe, fifty individual candy bar wrappers, you got a free full size American flag. All the ladies I worked with in the Peds clinic at the University Hospital joined in. Doctors and nurses and secretary's stopped by with their wrappers. I ordered that flag and she was a beauty. In fact, she was so darn beautiful and large that someone stole her off my front porch in broad daylight! I have never recovered from that!

A few years later my hubby's youngest troubled brother gave us his flag. He acquired it when he was in the U S  Navy and we still have that flag. I suppose it reminds us of better days when John was a whole person. Before the drinking and the drugs took a toll on him.

Perhaps that is why the Lord has let that flag fly in our yard for all these years.

I don't have the flag in its place yet because I am been sick with the headaches and the hub has been trying to get yardwork done before those ninety plus temps hit us full force. But I have a pretty image from goggle I want to share with you.

Happy 4th of July!

Merle Haggard -- Okie From Muskogee

FLAG DAY: LET'S THANK OUR MILITARY

Let us all join together today, amid all the turmoil in our country from political corruption, Chicago style politics and major oil spills and thank all of our military who serve us so well here and abroad. May Old Glory wave proudly, we are after all living in one of the free countries in the world! Display her, respect she, talk about her proudly! Pray for our Military, they need our prayers now more then ever.

Happy Flag Day!

Memorial Day by Joyce Kilmer

The bugle echoes shrill and sweet,
But not of war it sings to-day.
The road is rhythmic with the feet
Of men-at-arms who come to pray.

The roses blossom white and red
On tombs where weary soldiers lie;
Flags wave above the honored dead
And martial music cleaves the sky.

Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel,
They kept the faith and fought the fight.
Through flying lead and crimson steel
They plunged for Freedom and the Right.

May we, their grateful children, learn
Their strength, who lie beneath this sod,
Who went through fire and death to earn
At last the accolade of God.

In shining rank on rank arrayed
They march, the legions of the Lord;
He is their Captain unafraid,
The Prince of Peace...Who brought a sword.

THE WALL

This is a tough post for me to write. It is full of emotion and sentiment and I had started it the night my daughters little dog passed away. So I set it aside and decided I needed to write it.

If you look at the tall girl in my header picture that is my mom Cecilia's cousin Hedwige. She lost her only son in Vietnam and today I will honor him and all the men and women who died in that awful conflict they called Vietnam.

James Louis Turner was born on February 7, 1946. in La Junta, Colorado. He died on April 26, 1968 at Quang Nam, South Vietnam. He was a Cpl E4 in the USMC.. His mother passed away on October 24, 1976. I doubt she ever recovered from the grieve of her loss. James began his Vietnam tour on November 22, 1967. He was a ground casualty  and his body was recovered. His name is on the Wall Panel  52E Line 25. Please visit his name on the wall if you are ever in Washington D.C. He took an assignment at the last moment, and the operations clerk who typed his order was the man who was suppose to go. For whatever reason God had he took James instead.  That gentleman  Ronald Campbell deserves my respect and my prayers as he is here and James is gone. But for reasons none of us will ever know we live and we die on God's terms.

I thought perhaps you would share a little personal history with me here. I am sorry I do not have a photo to show you. When the traveling wall came to Thornton two years ago I could not take myself away from it. I went there every day for five days and I walked the rows and looked at names and thought how many families were torn because of their losses. War is an awful thing.

Looking back and reflecting on Vietnam I say our nation was very disrespectful to those men and women who served. I could tell you more personal stories but then I would never stop to post. I just know many were hurting and our nation turned their backs on these fine upstanding men and women. They were sent there by a government who refused to stick by them when they came home crippled and depairing. If you do not believe me, come to my city and take a walk on the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver. You will see dozens of Vietnam Vets lying in doorways, begging with handmade signs.

They did the world a great service and the world disrespected them.  My thoughts and prayers are with each and every family that lost their loved one in that awful war.

As always, when I am praying for God's perfect timing, He ultimately gives it to me.

"Those who walk uprightly enter into peace." Isaiah 57:2

Never forget.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers

John Adams: An American Patriot

Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel;
“As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal”;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet;
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free;
[originally …let us die to make men free]
While God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! While God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honor to the brave;
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.

The words to this beautiful song was written  in 1861 by Julia W. Howe. This hymn was written during the American Civil War. Howe visited an army camp on the banks of the Potomac River near Washington D.C.  She heard the soldiers singing "John Brown's Body" and was taken with the strong marching beat. She wrote the words the next day. The hymn appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862. It was sung at the funeral of British statesman Winston Churchill, American senator Robert F. Kennedy and American presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.

The music John Browns Body was possibly written by John William Steffe. John Brown was an American abolitionist who lead a short lived insurrection to free slaves.