Dang!

"Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained." President James A. Garfield, whose life ended on this day, 19 September, 1881, thanks to Charles Guiteau, his assassin

So, dang – had I had the will to write anything yesterday OR the day before, I'd have noted here that yesterday was the 301st birthday of English writer Samuel Johnson. And if Greta Garbo was still alive, she might well have been feeling too old and puny yesterday, bless her, to have celebrated her 105th birthday.

I meant to then did not note here that the 17th of September was Constitution Day, the anniversary of the cool clear Monday in 1787, in Philadelphia, PA, when 39 men [out of a delegation of 55] put their names to the newly-crafted Constitution of the United States. Our handmade government. Thousands had fought, campaigned, argued, lost their lives for the ideal of self-governance and have since that day. Plenty of folks were still alive 75 years later, when tens of thousands of Americans fought one another on September 17, 1862, at Sharpsburg, MD, for one another, for their home folks' way of life, and for that ideal. More than 26,000 American fighters were wounded, killed, or went missing that day in the Battle of Antietam. Just imagine.

Dang.