Today is not only Friday - for most of you, it's the beginning of the Independence Day holiday weekend in the United States. For our Canadian readers, it's Canada Day weekend. And for our non-American readers from Bratislava to Brazil? We hope you'll indulge our celebratory spirit today.
It's also the halfway point of the year, and it's been quite an eventful first six months. Our web guru has moved himself and his family - twice - in the last six months. But we gained a new location in Florida, one of the states guaranteed to be a political hotspot between now and November 2012.
There have been many firsts, too - especially in the home of our editor, Amy, who's young daughter is giving her and her husband a run for their money.
Paul has been in and out, traveling to many places, and working with the Sowers Club of Nebraska on some great HuskerNutz cartoon calendars for 2012. Keep in touch to see information on the calendars and where you can order them... right here.
Like we said, it's been busy.
For all of us, the Independence Day holiday weekend always means a little bit more, and not just because we have great love for our country. It's also a chance for us to kick back, relax, and spend a little time with family and friends. It's not exactly Christmas in July - but it is a chance to ignore the craziness of the world around us for a day or two, and remind ourselves of the blessings we all have.
Whether you are a far-right-wing conservative, or a far-left-wing liberal - or like most people, somewhere in between - if you're an American, we hope you take some time this weekend to remember what that really means.
It means you're lucky. To be born in this country - or simply to be able to live here at this time in history is still amazingly lucky. You could be living in a hut, in a village, in any one of a number of third-world countries.
You're also generally free, and hopefully employed. Yes, the facts are what little economic recovery there's been has been highly skewed in favor of corporate profits and against increased wages for workers, as a recent study from Northwestern University has proven. And yes, unemployment is still much higher than we'd like to see. But it could definitely be worse. We could live in Somalia - or even Greece - right now.
We know that the tendency in the media these days is to overreact to everyone and everything - for example, suspending someone for using vulgar speech that doesn't even come close to what we hear on many talk radio shows these days. But we've never been that way, and we won't start now. Even extremist Glenn Beck is an American - and we wish him well on his future as a non-Fox employee.
The key thing to remember about this weekend is, while we don't always agree with each other, we need to remember we are all Americans, and we're all in this together. We don't wish that other Americans who vehemently disagree with us were dead. We do hope that we can find some common ground with them, sooner rather than later.
Looking forward, we hope the next six months are filled with as many positive events as the last six have been - for us, for you, and for our nation and world.
It'll require hard work, and yes - compromise as well.
But anything worth doing is worth doing well.
For us, that includes celebrating our weekend, and our nation's independence.
We hope you enjoy your weekend too.
