History instructor. 🇺🇸 Personal account. Author of Michigan History: A Course Companion, https://teapawt.org/t.co/QYv5Kv341I.
Sweet Land of Liberty
Joined October 2025
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Americans, we live in the greatest country in the world, made possible by the grace of God and the US military. We have so much to be thankful for and to be proud of and to look forward to. Dream on. 🇺🇸 🛩🦅🗽🚀
USAF F-35 in Battle Creek, MI
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"But alas! By experience I find it is false,
For of the two, Yankies are better than us.
They will fight with great valor in the open field--
Take them in the forest, then Britons must yield."
---"Burgoyn's Defeat"
Photo: Saratoga Battlefield, Stillwater, New York
View from Mount McGregor, Palmertown Range of the Adirondacks, New York, just in front of Ulys (as his wife called him) and Julia Grant's house. The Hudson River is nestled in all that pretty fall foliage. grantcottage.org/ (link).
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"'I have heard it said that one should love his neighbour as well as himself; but for my part I love my ship better than my neighbour's, or my neighbour himself.'"
---Captain Truck in James Fenimore Cooper's, Homeward Bound, 1838
The sloop Friends Good Will returning to dock in South Haven, Michigan
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Sinclair station on Stone Lake in Cassopolis, Michigan. Dino the dinosaur is on the roof. It's not in operation, just a cool example of American roadside. sinclairoil.com/dino-history (link).
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"Until a second broadside with all the signers' names listed was issued six months later, Hancock was the only delegate whose name was publicly attached to the treasonous document... His signing alone, affixing his name to the document that would become his death warrant if he were captured by the British, can be described only as HEROIC."
--- John Hancock monograph by W. S. Randall, p. 116.
The printing of the Declaration with all signers' names mentioned is the Goddard Broadside of January 1777, printed by Mary Katherine Goddard in Baltimore, Maryland. nps.gov/articles/independenc… (link).
Signature and waistcoat of John Hancock, museum inside Lexington Depot, Lexington, Massachusetts. lexingtonhistory.org/ (link).
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Bass drum made in England, circa 1770-1790 at Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond. The fife is a reproduction. virginiahistory.org/ (link).
Really enjoyed the movie Drummer Boy, a story of the American Revolution. It's mostly set in Kingston, New York, the state's first capital, which is in a beautiful area on the Hudson River (just north of Hyde Park and Poughkeepsie, it has a massive maritime museum today). In real life, the British burned the city in 1777. Hopefully viewers will be motivated to learn more about the American Revolution and visit places like Colonial Williamsburg as a result of this movie.
Trailer: youtu.be/wlm_vxf4PaM?si=NXVy… (link).
Also see: kingstonhappenings.org/kings… (link), battlefields.org/learn/revol… (link), and thelibertytrail.org/ny/trail… (link).
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tautologous: an adjective describing a redundant idea
merriam-webster.com/dictiona… (link)
Example from a story by Ben Franklin: "He composed [a signboard] in these words, 'John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money"... [A friend] thought the word 'hatter' tautologous, because followed by the words 'makes hats'..."
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youtu.be/jhEz1_Ad5L4?si=DpoA… (link). Loved this movie! Drummer Boy.
In the movie, the Revolutionary drummer's name is that of "The Drummer Boy of Chickamauga," little Johnny Clem, who pestered the 22nd Michigan Infantry, mustered in Pontiac, Michigan, until they allowed him to follow them. At Chickamauga, he shot a Confederate colonel and returned to Union lines. He was promoted to sergeant and made the Army his career, retiring as a Major General in 1915. He passed away in 1937 and is buried at Arlington. battlefields.org/learn/biogr… (link) and nps.gov/civilwar/search-batt… (link).
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"It is a base untruth to say that happy is the nation who has no history.
Thrice happy is the nation that has A GLORIOUS HISTORY."
---Theodore Roosevelt, "The Strenuous Life."
Washington equestrian statue and his 1779-80 headquarters, Morristown, New Jersey.
Good documentary on the Greatest American, George Washington: youtu.be/vJ1J0HY-93k?si=pQdP… (link).
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Emilee Johnson, M.A. retweeted
UPDATE from @USCGHeartland: Working closely with our partners, the USCG has confirmed all passengers are accounted for, with no reported casualties following the collision on the MS River. Our focus now shifts to safely reopening the river and coordinating salvage operations.
By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the one, the Blue,
Under the other, the Gray.
"The Blue and the Gray," stanza one, Francis Miles Finch, 1866
Gettysburg National Cemetery, Pennsylvania
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Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done,
In the storm of the years that are fading,
No braver battle was won:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the blossoms, the Blue,
Under the garlands, the Gray.
The Blue and the Gray," stanza six, Francis Miles Finch, 1866
Gettysburg National Cemetery, Pennsylvania
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No more shall the war cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Love and tears for the Blue,
Tears and love for the Gray.
The Blue and the Gray," final stanza, Francis Miles Finch, 1866
Gettysburg National Cemetery, Pennsylvania
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