I can't believe this was us last year ... celebrating the 4th in Philadelphia ... watching the parade down Benjamin Franklin Parkway ... how time flies! This year - no Mummers (the crazy people in the picture are Mummers and apparently they show up for any parade, not just the New Years parade)- no parade, just a quiet 4th with a church picnic, friends, fireworks and a deeper understanding of what July 4, 1776 really meant.

Oh, and about that : after studying early American history this year it seems to me that the Declaration of Independence was written after numerous attempts by the general public to get the attention of politicians that thought they could pile on taxes and laws without listening to the will of the people ... hmmm. What would our grievances be today were we to list them?

I think it is worth reviewing at least the first part of the D of I. It emphasized a few things that made me really think about this whole idea of convening a constitutional convention in California to re-write the state's Constitution.

When 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. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. ...

you can read the rest of it here and learn more about a Californian Consitutional Convention here and here. *update* and the cost to the signers of the Declaration was significant. You can read about it here.