July 4: John F. Kennedy, Independence Day, Freedom

A great motor yacht named the Scheherezade now slid past the marriage bed.  The song its engines sang was a very low organ note.  All her lights were on.

Two beautiful people, a young man and a young woman in evening clothes, were at the rail in the stern, loving each other and their dreams and the lake.  They were honeymooning, too.  They were Lance Rumfoord, of Newport, Rhode Island, and his bride, the former Cynthia Landry, who had been a childhood sweetheart of John F. Kennedy in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

There was a slight coincidence here.  Billy Pilgrim would later share a hospital room with Rumfoord's uncle, Professor Bertram Copeland Rumfoord of Harvard, official Historian of the United States Air Force.

John F. Kennedy.  The United States Air Force.  I guess that's as close as I'm going to get to Independence Day anything from Slaughterhouse.  Not that I think Vonnegut hated the United States.  On the contrary.  I think Vonnegut cared a great deal for freedom and truth and goodness.  That's why he wrote.  He wanted the world to be a better place.

I am not going to belabor this post talking about the celebration of Independence Day here in the United States.  I am grateful for the freedoms I have as a citizen of the United States.  Because I live here, I can write blog posts and poems and essays about anything I want.  I can criticize and complain without fear of being thrown into prison.  For now.

I am supremely lucky for everything that I have in my life.  That's it.

I have been to two parades today.  Tonight, after dinner, I'm heading to a community picnic/gathering.  At dusk, there will be fireworks.  My kids will eat snow cones and cotton candy and popcorn.  I have sparklers, too.

Saint Marty is thankful today for freedom.