I got back from a fantastic Caribbean cruise celebrating my parent’s 50th anniversary and find myself sick all week! I went to the doctor for antibiotics and left work early after I met a deadline. (That’s the only reason I drug myself there in the first place.) Now I know why I’ve been sick. Here’s author John Derbyshire’s explanation of what happened to him after a cruise:
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“Cruising for health A cruise ship is the healthiest place you can be. Imagine an outbreak of, say, stomach flu on a cruise ship. With a high proportion of oldsters on board, there would likely be a death or two, and consequent lawsuits. Even without that, the cruise line would lose millions from the publicity.

Those in charge are not going to let this happen. The crews on these ships are trained rigorously in hygiene. All surfaces are scrubbed and inspected constantly. Food with the least mark of unfreshness will feed the fishes. The air quality is likewise closely monitored: Legionnaires’ Disease is another nightmare for the owners.

So strong are these obsessions that seasoned cruisers whisper dark tales of people taken ill on board ship who mysteriously vanish — hustled away to an airtight room somewhere in the bowels of the vessel. I haven’t yet heard a version in which the invalid’s cabin itself disappears, as in one telling of the classic Paris Exposition urban legend, but if there is not currently such a story going round, I am sure there soon will be.

The downside of all that hygienic purity is that one’s immune system, seeing that there is nothing for it to do, does an automatic power-down. It’s still slumbering when you reach dry land at the end of the cruise and get on a plane to go home. Now, the cabin of a plane is one of the least healthy places on earth. Passing from cruise ship to plane cabin is like going from an iPod assembly room to the Congo basin. Result: I spent much of the post-cruise week moaning and coughing in bed with a savage bad cold.”

This makes me feel better. Cruise pix to follow.

K. (I’m guarding everybody’s privacy right now!) and I met up with some other friends for the Freedom Festival at the Village at Sandhill. The fireworks show was spectacular – it lasted almost 30 minutes. We kept applauding during the last 10 minutes because we thought, oh, that has to be the finale. Yet it just kept on going.

Calvin Coolidge, on the Declaration of Independence:

It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.

Another excerpt, applicable in today’s theory of “living documents:”

It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Read the whole thing.

More on the Glorious Fourth.