"You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism."
 
 - Erma Bombeck
 

American Names

Stephen Vincent Benet

I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.
 
Seine and Piave are silver spoons,
But the spoonbowl-metal is thin and worn,
There are English counties like hunting-tunes
Played on the keys of a postboy's horn,
But I will remember where I was born.
 
I will remember Carquinez Straits,
Little French Lick and Lundy's Lane,
The Yankee ships and the Yankee dates
And the bullet-towns of Calamity Jane.
I will remember Skunktown Plain.
 
Rue des Martyrs and Bleeding-Heart-Yard,
Senlis, Pisa, and Blindman's Oast,
It is a magic ghost you guard
But I am sick for a newer ghost,
Harrisburg, Spartanburg, Painted Post.
 
Henry and John were never so
And Henry and John were always right?
Granted, but when it was time to go
And the tea and the laurels had stood all night,
Did they never watch for Nantucket Light?
 
I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse.
I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea.
You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmedy.
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.
 
 
E-Verse makes it onto Portal Del Sol!
 
 
 

Top Five People Born on the Fourth of July:

1. Ron Kovic (of Born on the Fourth of July book and film fame)
2. Iva Toguri D'Aquino ("Tokyo Rose")
3. George M. Cohan (writer of "Yankee Doodle Boy," in which he boasts of being born on the 4th of July)
4. Calvin Coolidge (only president born on 7/4, in case there are any trivia buffs out there)
5. Stephen Foster (writer of lots of "traditional" American songs, like "Oh! Susannah," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Camptown Races," "Suwannee River," etc.)
 
extra: Nathaniel Hawthorne
 
 
Bill Coyle reads from his book The God of This World to His Prophet:
 
 

E-Verse Radio Unbelievable But Real Film Titles of the Week:

The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters (1982)
 
Hooligan's Fourth of July (1903)
 
Fifth of July (1982)
 
 
Speaking of films, check out Indies Under Fire, the fight for the independent American bookstore:
 
 
Awwww, you know you want to watch. It's so much fun:
 

E-Verse Radio Invaluable Facts of the Week:

 
Independence Day commemorates the formal adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. However, it was not declared a legal holiday until 1941.
Uncle Sam was first popularized during the War of 1812, when the term appeared on supply containers. Believe it or not, the U. S. Congress didn't adopt him as a national symbol until 1961.

The first two versions of the Liberty Bell were defective and had to be melted down and recast. The third version rang every Fourth of July from 1778 to 1835, when, according to tradition, it cracked as it was being tolled for the death of Chief Justice John Marshall.
 
The American national anthem, the "Star-Spangled Banner," is set to the tune of an English drinking song ("To Anacreon in Heaven").
 
 

While we're on the topic, a reader sends in "top five facts about Founding Father Dr. Benjamin Rush":

 
1. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and had close ties to most of the U.S.'s earliest presidents, from Washington through William Henry Harrison. He may have suggested the title Common Sense to Thomas Paine, and been consulted in its writing.
 
2. At the time of his death, he was the most famous medical doctor in America. He published the first Chemistry textbook in America, was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, worked in the New World's first hospital (Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia), is known as "the Father of American Psychiatry," and founded Dickinson College.
3. He taught Lewis and Clark basic medicine to prepare them for their expedition. He also provided them with laxatives that were comprised of more than 50% mercury. This had the unintended consequence of making it easier for later scientists to track the expedition's route.
 
4. He wanted to include a right to medical freedom in the Constitution, but was overruled.
5. He founded the first abolitionist society in America. Nevertheless, he had some pretty bizarre ideas about race.
 

Check out a Sherlock Holmes podcast:
 
 
 
"The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free." - Baruch Spinoza
 
 

E-Verse News You Can Use from the Un-E-Versity of Life:

 
"Salman Rushdie, whose British knighthood has led to worldwide protests from Muslims angered by his 1989 novel, The Satanic Verses, is not commenting on the uproar, for now":
 
 
 
Getty Still Buying Antiquities, True's Successor Says:
 
 
 
"I have a recurring nightmare," Dana Gioia told the graduates. "I am in Rome visiting the Sistine Chapel. I look up at Michelangelo's incomparable fresco of the 'Creation of Man.' I see God stretching out his arm to touch the reclining Adam's finger. And then I notice in the other hand Adam is holding a Diet Pepsi.":
 
 

Rock's Long Inglorious Broadway History:
 
 
 
Classical Music Makes Comeback Big In DC:
 
 
 
Naming a baby was once a matter of whimsy, or maybe family tradition. These days, it's a question of branding:
 
 
 
Who can pack the most cliches into a block of prose? Here are the winners:
 
 
 
"She lived under one of the most repressive regimes on earth. Yet Christa Wolf still longs for the dreamy illusions of communism":
 
 
 
Perversions: what moralists miss about them is a simple, not very furtive fact: they make people happy:
 
 
 
"Europe once energized all of humanity with its science, art, and moral ideals. Now it is destined to be a kind of genteel theme park - if it's lucky..."
 
 
 
"'Angelina Jolie is the best woman in the world because she is the most famous woman in the world.' Yes, Esquire has at last produced the worst celebrity profile in the world, ever . . . ."
 
 
 
"The Golden Gate is a magnet for suicides, but the jumpers' bodies are pulled under and lost in the north Pacific. You may leave your heart in San Francisco, but not your corpse":
 
 
 

Swedish man gets disability for "Heavy Metal Addiction":

 
 
 
Barbeque safety:
 
 
 

Fleming's Follies:

 
How not to light your grill:
 
 
 
 
California Julep
1 1/2oz. brandy
1/4 oz. strawberry liqueur
1 tbs. sugar syrup
Chilled Cordon Negro Brut or Extra Dry, Carta Nevada Brut or Semi-Dry
Mint sprigs
 
In the bottom of a glass, crush the mint sprigs into the syrup. Fill with crushed ice. Add the brandy. Stir in the Freixenet. Garnish with mint sprigs.
 
 
An Octopus that Plays with Legos, or, Now I Feel Guilty About Eating Them:
 
http://www.lep.co.uk/weird-world?articleid=2958903
 
 
"The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation." - Woodrow Wilson
 
 

E-Verse Radio Bad Book Cover of the Week, the Yul Brynner cook book:

 
 

"I shall use America and democracy as convertible terms." - Walt Whitman
 
 

Listen to this episode at:


www.everseradio.com/audio
 

A reader sends in "top five names of the founding fathers if they were members of The Spice Girls":

 
1. Daddy Spice (Washington)
2. Gouty Spice (Franklin)
3. Ginger Spice (Jefferson)
4. Muttonchip Spice (John Adams)
5. Rasta Spice (Hamilton)
 

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself." - Thomas Paine
 
 

E-Verse Radio town you really have to visit:

 
Patriot, Indiana
 
 
"We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it." - William Faulkner
 
 
Bonus poem from the most recent issue of the Threepenny Review:


Lucifer at the Starlite
Kim Addonizio

after George Meredith

 
Here's my bright idea for life on earth:
better management. The CEO
has lost touch with the details. I'm worth
as much, but I care; I come down here, I show
my face, I'm a real regular. A toast:
To our boys and girls in the war, grinding
through sand, to everybody here, our host
who's mostly mist, like methane rising
from retreating ice shelves. Put me in command.
For every town, we'll have a marching band.
For each thoroughbred, a comfortable stable;
for each worker, a place beneath the table.
A shadow over every starlit thing.
 
 

A reader sends in "top five things to do on July 4th":

 
1. Hang out on the beach
2. Barbecue
3. Set off fireworks
4. Swim
5. Wear red, white, and blue
 

E-Verse Radio collective nouns of the week:


 
A bouquet of fireworks
A cornucopia of fireworks
A plethora of patriotism
A flagful of patriotism
A flagsworth of patriotism
An explosion of patriotism
 

Hilbertian Sonnet of the Week:

 
 
She Discovers an Unsent E-Mail to an Ex-Boyfriend
Ernest Hilbert

I'm sorry I left you that day at MoMA.
I could at least have tugged your shoulder
Or claimed I went in search of a bathroom.
Your dense jabber put me in a coma.
Your idle pace left me feeling older,
And wherever I stood I felt you loom.
Your thoughts on design from some class you had
And your cribs straight from the museum guide
Didn't work the trick you've come to expect.
I wasn't impressed. In fact, I was sad
When I realized you really have to hide
Yourself with gimmicks I've learned to detect.
It seems nothing in life is worth the pain
Of love, except love. Still, I will abstain.
 

"I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking." - Woodrow T. Wilson
 
 

Reports from the E-Verse Universe

 
 
A reader sends in some more summer songs:
 
"Once Upon a Summertime," written by Johnny Mercer . . . I prefer the Astrud Gilberto version
"Cruel Summer" by Bananarama
"Summer's Comin'" by Clint Black
"Heat Wave" by Martha and the Vandellas
"In the Summertime" by Mungo Jerry
"Summertime" by The Gershwins, I prefer Sam Cooke's version, though Billie Holiday's is good too
 

A reader with even more summer songs:  
 
1.  "Hot Fun In The Summertime" by Sly & The Family Stone
2. "Summer Song" by Chad & Jeremy
3. "In The Summertime" by Mongo Jerry
4. "It's Magic" by The Cars ("Summer summer summer / It turns me upside down")
5. "Summertime Thing" by Chuck Prophet
6. "Summer" by War
7. "Taste The Summer" by Duran Duran
 
 

A reader with an additional town to visit:

 
"A town I've visited just once, without remembering anything at all about it, and yet one I've thought about many, many times since then is Cuba, MO. As it happens, when passing through many, many years ago, driving a Volkswagen Beetle and always counting our change when we calculated our net worth, we saw a bank called the 'Peoples Bank' and picked up the paperwork to open an account there. At the time, 'Peoples Bank of Cuba' seemed like a weirdly appropriate place from which to pay off college loans and credit cards. On our thin income, indulging in the cost of an out-of-state bank was not practical. Checking the web now, I see the Peoples Bank is still a going concern, and maybe now I have enough money stashed away to humor this anti-capitalistic mood."
 
 

A reader with another flag:

 
"Don't forget about Mozambique, the only flag in the world that features an AK47!"
 
 

Next episode: The Five Senses!

 
 
E-Verse Radio is roasting some dogs and burning some burgers and drinking a beer. It is a regular weekly column of literary, publishing, and arts information and opinion that has gone out since 1999.