grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Happy Independence Day to you!

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O beautiful, for spacious skies

Happy Independence Day, America!

Did you know…?

Thirty-three-year-old Katherine Bates wrote America the Beautiful after hiking to Pike’s Peak. “It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind.” (biography.com via Library of Congress)

Bates received $5 for the initial publication of her poem and released all future royalties.

After a visit to Coney Island, church organist, Samuel Ward, wrote a musical composition that would eventually accompany Bates’s poem. He died one year before his music was joined with Bates’s lyrics. His family received no remuneration for the song.

Bates and Ward never met.

I love how such a simple story borne entirely from beauty and inspiration without expectation or greed evokes such raw emotion after all this time. It does for me, anyway.

Happy 4th of July!

Wishing you great food, happy memories, and fun times with friends and family.

Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

[tweetthis]…from sea to shining sea — Happy Birthday America #GodBlessAmerica[/tweetthis]

one of my favorite 4th of July clips plus music!
The Sandlot 4th of July

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Comments

  4. This is such a wonderful blog to begin our 4th of July! I had never seen this clip, which brought tears to my eyes…thank you, Talya!

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!