SUSAN SAYS

Images of July and ways to observe the Fourth

— Summer has officially arrived and July Fourth, Independence Day, is coming up the first of next week. Area towns are gearing up to celebrate the big day.

Sulphur Springs will hold its annual gathering on Saturday. Then Monday, on the holiday itself, Gentry’s Freedom Fest is scheduled. (Read all about it in our special supplement this week.) Monday evening you can go out to Pop Allum Park in Gravette and watch Gravette’s annual fireworks extravaganza.

There is much to celebrate in July including, in our family, the 100th birthday of a beloved aunt July 10. Jo Northrop, author of the “Simple Country Pleasures” column, described the month in a Summer Joys column over 20 years ago, “Jubilee! It’s July! Sun-drenched days are as calm and smooth as silk. The garden overflows, flowers bloom abundantly.July is the absolute heart of summer, putting us in close touch with the pulse and color of the season: lush summer crops, the all-encompassing green, the rich smell of warm earth ... In July we enjoy the country pleasures of sprawling lazily in a lawn chair and listening to the grass grow.”

More recently, in 2006, a “Country Living” writer described July as “days to laze” and continued, “July laughs, a joyous lilt that echoes across lakes in the evening. It billows, lifting sheets on country clotheslines. It bursts, ripe and warm and juicy like tomatoes. And it sparkles: Just ask any kid who has chased it, squealing and barefoot, through a sprinkler.”

July is a good month to pack a picnic and the Fourth is an especially good time to prepare a portable lunch and move to the park or just your backyard. Purchase red, white and blue paper or plastic tableware and decorate your table with red, white and blue candles or simple white chunky candles in small red and blue tubs. Feature red, white and blue in your menu too, perhaps with a flag cake or a dessert of strawberries or red raspberries, blueberries and white grapes. After the picnic’s over settle back on the grass, read excerpts from the Declaration aloud and talk over with the children what freedom means.

Myrna Blyth, formereditor of “Ladies’ Home Journal,” believed that on this most American of holidays we should, with our families, take a little time between the swimming and the sunning to think about this glorious country of ours. Most of us who live in America consider ourselves very fortunate. But we are also aware that there are many serious problems that our country must tackle.

President Kennedy, in his inaugural address, said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Perhaps, Blyth suggested, just as we make New Year’s resolutions we should all make a Fourth of July resolution to become involved in a national issuethat concerns us, whether it is the environment, the plight of the homeless or the deterioration of our educational system. She urged readers to decide what they could do for their country and then do it.

“If we all resolved to become involved in an issue we cared about, and followed through on our resolution,” she asked, “wouldn’t that be even more patriotic and impressive than the grandest fireworks display?” It’s something to think about.

Happy birthday, America!

Susan Holland, who works for the Westside Eagle Observer, is a lifelong Benton County resident.

Opinion, Pages 6 on 06/29/2011