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by Jean Purcell

If you have never visited Washington, D.C., you are missing out on a fabulous experience. Plan a trip there and allow our country to come alive before your very eyes. You won't be sorry.- Pat Brannon, author, commenting on this blog's July 4 post, 2010.

And this is the time to make and set up plans to visit Washington in the Spring of 2011. Plan a trip for the Cherry Blossom Festival, 2011! March 26-April 10. and take notes for a few articles or your blog or web site. If you write about history or governance, what better place than the US capital city?

I think that visitors like Pat, quoted above, see the city with fresher, more appreciative eyes than those of us who live nearby. However, we do not want to take for granted this beautifully designed city. It is a city of marble, of ancient Gothic and Roman architecture, of engravings from treasured documents and speeches, and of giants of this country whose service, life-stories, faith, and words dominate the history that permeates so much of the capital city. Who has documented the numbers of the many books and movies based on this city of history, dreams, and power, intended for good? This is inspiring territory for writers like Pat Brannon, who writes poetry and stories, for grownups and children, respectively. 

   Pat Brannon is a writer working within schools to help children confront difficult problems,  such as bullying, through drama and humor that talks straight.

Related articles

• Washington D.C. Prepares For Cherry Blossom Gawking Season (luxist.com)
• Ten great Washington D.C. restaurants (gadling.com)

  Ask your librarian about these titles. Support booksellers and public libraries - Opinari [to think, reason, believe]

July 4 Independence Celebration

Image by deltaMike via Flickr

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The Declaration of Independence, being one of the most accurately named documents, declared the intention of an unusual group of well-educated and privileged "few" to step forth--at risk of property, profession, reputation, and charges of and hanging for treason-- on behalf of the "many" regardless of the latter's wealth or lack of it, education, or opportunity at the present time. They did well, most of them, to seek to include those enslaved in the colonies of the land new to them; their document was a sword that later cut the bonds of slavery.


Independence Day celebrations every July 4 mark a history and a reality, both deserving of special notice, both known and envied around the world. Criticism of this country often arises due to jealousy or resentment of what the U. S. has done, historically, to defend the weak and to defend itself and its right to exist as the country it is, imperfect yet better than most, due to its basic principles of individual freedom, of liberty of thought, belief, and opinion. This is the freedom of Judeo-Christian history, where no one is forced to espouse belief.

It is wonderful to be what one man, enslaved by Communism in the USSR, once called, an American a person "who walks free." He noticed, on the streets of Moscow, an American walking. Without hearing English spoken or seeing a passport or flag, the Soviet man he knew the man was not only a visitor, a foreigner, but also an American.


Excerpt:

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security....

Love and Revenge-Personal Narrative genre

Her genre is personal narrative. Her story is about love's freeing power, told in her book that includes photos of her with other internationally-known journalists. She reflected upon this quote after her ordeals of World War II in the Pacific:

Peace is sweeter to those who have known the true meaning of war.

At the Eternal Light War Memorial on Corregidor island, Mamerta de los Reyes Block meditated on these words inscribed:  

No traveler who comes here sees the magnificent monument and stands unawed;...  
Sleep my sons, your duty done 
For Freedom's light has come. 
Sleep in the silent depths of the sea or in your bed of hallowed soil Until you hear at down the low, clear reveille of God.

Her WWII captors thought her dead when they dumped her in a heap of corpses. They neither knew nor cared about her, the new life within her, or her widowhood due to murderous occupiers. A respected Philippine journalist, she amazingly survived that pile of death. She bore a baby daughter, Aida, and then did physical labor as a detainee. 

After peace came to her island home, she continued journalistic work; she also met and married a US Ensign, Isaac Block, stationed at Subic  Bay, Philippines. She did not seek revenge against her tormentors, but rather adjusted proactively to post-war life. She moved to Washington, DC, where she and her husband rented a large house known as The House on 19th Street, which gave temporary refuge to exiles coming from war-torn parts of the world.

She never forgot the details of cruel and courageous people; of military powers abused and love's powers applied; of betrayals and sacrifices; of downtrodden people relying on faith to survive. She wrote her story, a Philippine story that reverberates everywhere.  

She said of her treasured freedom: "And yet, I still have occasional flashbacks of torture and sudden deaths of loved ones. It is only God's love that can heal."

Her personal narrative ends: 

Charity (love)

Beareth all things, Believeth all things,

Hopeth all things, Endureth all things.

Charity never faileth.

(I Corinthians 13)

(c)2003 Block, Mamerta de los Reyes, The Price of Freedom: The Story of a Courageous Manila Journalist, Trinity Rivers Publishing, Manassas, Virginia USA  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/03/25/AR2005032508813.html