1) My tradition the last few years is to read the Declaration of Independence aloud, and you should, too. Here’s this year’s reading.
2) Forty years ago tonight — Monday, July 4, 1983 — Gramma and I were watching Morley Safer interview Vladimir Horowitz on 60 Minutes when he began to play “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” He hadn’t played it in at least 20 years, and when he stopped we were both so sad. He sounded wonderful to us! (Skip to 10:51 to hear it.)
2a) By the end of the month Gramma had died. I am so grateful to this day that I got to spend as much time with her as I did that summer.
3) John Adams suggested that our National Day “ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.” I couldn’t care less about the games, sports, and guns part, but “The Stars and Stripes Forever” as arranged by Morton Gould for eight pianos and 16 hands covers everything else. Maybe, as Salieri suggested in Amadeus, I just need “a good bang at the end of songs to . . . know when to clap,” but there is nothing more glorious than the sparkling cataract of this finale.