Diane B. Lockwood: America is the land of the free and the home of the brave

To The Daily Sun

As I was walking home from church Sunday afternoon, Nov. 2, it was one of those beautiful pristine New England days, a bluebird sky, that we've been dubiously blessed with lately by not enough rain in the forecast. So I'm walking east on Church Street headed toward what some locals call Busy Corner, and I see our flag flying on top of the old Scott & Williams building, the old shoe factory. From all the wind of the season, our flag is getting a little tattered, and it will be properly retired in its dignified transfer when it is taken down for the winter as is the custom of that building's management. It will be replaced by a new, fresh USA flag in the spring time.

In contemplation today as I walked home, I thought of the words of our National Anthem. Something in me wants to quote the whole first verse, but in the interest of space and time I will just focus in on that last refrain/phrase

“O say does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

Diane B. Lockwood

Laconia