(Jake eats a pickle at Jack's Bash )

How I spent my Fourth of July.

I got up with the sun to blog, sent an e-mail to everyone in my family and went down to the office to write my column for today’s paper.

I read the Declaration of Independence and marveled at the brilliance of our founding fathers.

I did not have a red, white and blue shirt. So I wore a blue-and-white shirt until about the middle of the afternoon, then changed into a red shirt.

I went to Jack's Bash -- friend Jack Caldwell’s 27th annual Fourth of July celebration at the river -- with Delinda and Jake. There was a big crowd there and lots of food. We said the pledge of allegiance and sang patriotic songs.

We got home just in time to watch the space shuttle take off. It was beautiful. It was majestic. It was inspiring.

I took my first nap since about 1998.

For supper, we boiled shrimp we brought back with us from a day trip to the Gulf of Mexico on Monday. We also had fresh corn from Macon County and, I’m proud to say, the first four homegrown tomatoes of the summer from my garden.

Grant and I tried watching the Braves game, but they fell behind the Cardinals and then the rains came, so we gave up. I did catch Macon’s own Allison Johnson singing the national anthem on Nancy Grace’s show on CNN Headline News.

I went back and found a chilling quote from Abraham Lincoln: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." Let’s not do that, folks.