Daily Archives: July 4, 2007

In Celebration of the 4th of July

Since today is Independence Day, I urge you to read Langston Hughes’s Let America Be America Again. It is the greatest poem about America — actually, the greatest poem period.

This is probably in violation of copyright, but I can’t help but give an excerpt of the end:

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain–
All, all the stretch of these great green states–
And make America again!

Welcome to WordPress

I’ve switched over to WordPress. I need to do some work to fix all those dead links, though.

UPDATE: Changed theme. Wow, this is so much easier than MT. I think I’ll use this as a base for edits, which I probably won’t have time for today.

UPDATE: MT redirect successful! At least, for individual entries. Some of my old, old links are date-based. I’ll be fixing those later.

UPDATE: Okay, now the months aren’t working. Arg.