In the early 1770s, American colonists became convinced that the English Parliament intended to take away their freedoms. In fact, the Americans saw a pattern of increasing oppression and corruption all around the world. Indeed, the British were determined to bring their unruly American subjects to heel and b...

I can still sing the battle songs of every branch of America’s armed forces. I am also usually the only person in our crowd who, when we gather around the Christmas tree, knows the words to the second verse of just about every Christmas carol. I went to public school, had no religious education, but I’m prett...

I learned two surprising things in putting together this special July 4th issue of Senior News on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The first concerned Betsy Ross, who — as everybody knows — sewed the first American flag. Or did she?

My father was only high school-educated, but he was an ardent student of the history of our nation who felt privileged to live in an historic city, central to the forming of our country — Philadelphia. When I was a young girl, in the 1940s and early ’50s, Dad would take me on Sundays by bus (we never owned a ...

We asked Senior News readers and others for their quick thoughts on this 4th of July. Here are some of the responses.

What America means to me, in the words of some of our Founding Fathers, all signatories to the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

As we celebrate the 4th of July and the United States’ 250th birthday, I’m trying to remember if I was raised to be patriotic as a child. My recollection is like Arthur Krystal’s in a recent New Yorker magazine: “I did not grow up loving America — not because I thought it didn’t deserve love but because I did...

One of my great-great-greats was Benedict Arnold, which always made me feel a little sheepish about the quality of my inherited family patriotism. But my father’s family was longtime Yankee stock that had infested Western Massachusetts back to the early 1700s — slate headstones carved with the names of variou...

Like most kids growing up in the ’50s, I recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in class and sang “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful” in school assemblies. I was conditioned to believe that the United States was the best country — superior to any other because of our democracy, equality an...

When we were little, Mom read stories to us kids at bedtime and told stories of various events from her childhood. She was a keen observer of the human condition and told us about local happenings in our neighborhood and the little village of McFarland, Wisconsin, where we grew up.

Independence Day is always a hot time in the throes of summer, especially here in Arkansas. But I remember an especially “hot” celebration at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock on July 6, 1991, as a huge shower of glowing orange embers brought a spectacular ending to a patriotic celebration.

The 56th annual Wildwood Days takes over Rio Dell July 30-Aug. 2, with parades, cookoffs, softball, bocce, firefighter competitions, a soapbox derby and much more. Started in 1970, the festival is a celebration of small-town summer in Humboldt County. Thursday, July 30, features the BBQ competition on the Rio...

Every Sunday afternoon through August, come enjoy live music in the great outdoors at the Humboldt Botanical Garden 2026 Summer Music Series.

Edith Sachs and Alfred “Henk” Pennekamp were German refugees when they met in exile in Belgium in 1935 or 1936. They were married in 1940 in Lewisburg, New Jersey, just weeks after Henk’s — my father — surprise release from a French concentration camp for German and Austrian anti-fascists, intellectuals and J...

I was born at 7 p.m. on July 4, 1949 — 77 years ago. In the U.S., about 900,000 others have July 4th birthdays, so I’m not unusual. After all, there also are about 900,000 people in the U.S. who were born in Colombia. About 900,000 people live in Austin, Jacksonville or San Jose. About 900,000 Toyota Corollas...

As a self-described writer, the First Amendment — Free Speech, etc. — guarantees my favorite freedoms. For one thing, it allows me to be a highly respected commentator for the prestigious Senior News. What? Senior News? Yes. It’s a newspaper with thoughtful, insightful and at times humorous articles of specia...

My poor parents. Devout Southern Baptists, they permitted minimal TV in our house. Music? Cue the hymnal. Two church services on Sunday and one on Wednesday evenings were the week’s outings. The only movies we were allowed were religious (e.g., “The Ten Commandments” and “Ben Hur”) or Disney (“Cinderella” and...

They don’t wake to breakfast in bed or hand-drawn cards slipped under the door. There is no chorus of “Happy Mother’s Day” or “Happy Father’s Day” rising from the hallway. Instead, a cry comes at 2:14 a.m., thin as a wire, insistent as weather. The quiet arithmetic of survival — diapers, deadlines, rent, slee...

This month, Senior News is all about those revered paragons, mothers and fathers. Because, as John Steinbeck said, “It takes courage to raise children.” For context, I reread tributes I wrote for both parents’ memorials, which made me a little weepy. Mom was 84 in 2014 when she went on to “The Next Big Thing....

Throughout my childhood, there were long trips down from Santa Monica to Corona Del Mar with Mom, Dad and my two sisters, Janet and Debbie. All us kids sat in the back of my dad’s white flatbed truck, clinging to the wooden guardrails while we whipped down the highway at 70 mph. Can’t do anything fun like tha...