{"id":193,"date":"2008-07-05T05:12:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-05T05:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bluetablepainting.com\/blog\/?p=193"},"modified":"2008-07-05T05:12:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-05T05:12:00","slug":"independence-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bluetablepainting.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/independence-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Independence Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

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First things first: I would like to give a shout out to the men and women in military service, who have answered the call of duty; who are willing to sacrifice everything. Thank you. We’ve got numerous clients in the military and they are a delight to work with.<\/div>\n
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I am grateful to live in the U.S. <\/div>\n
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I spent two years in Chile (mission). I lived and served in some of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in the country, both rural and urban. I remember seeing the profoundest miseries imaginable. Things that had not entered my imagination before then, though I am sure that even worse conditions exist in human existence.<\/div>\n
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I remember the day I got back to the US. When I got off the plane in Miami I knelt down and kissed the floor (and you have to be pretty worked up to put your lips on the floor of the Miami airport). I bought two king-sized Snickers and sat there in my worn-out shoes and trench coat eating them gratefully. <\/div>\n
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I remember flying into the Medford, Oregon on a little puddle-jumper and seeing all the mills and lumberyards encrusted with snow. From that day everything was sweeter. I was amazed just to go into a produce section of the grocery store. It seemed over the top. A swimming pool was a luxury beyond belief. My clothes smelled and felt softer. And we had these two great machines that did our laundry for us! Oh, and no fleas.<\/div>\n
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I remember describing a washer and dryer to my first pension mother. She didn’t believe me. She said I was lying and that such machines did not exist. Besides, why would you need them when a clothesline and fresh air were free!<\/div>\n
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Now that I’m in Utah I feel like I’ve moved right into the heartland. I live with a fiercely independent people, who fled persecution in the mid-1800s. There is a tremendous sense of community and self-reliance. We take care of our own (and visitors\/others, too!).<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First things first: I would like to give a shout out to the men and women in military service, who have answered the call of duty; who are willing to sacrifice everything. Thank you. We’ve got numerous clients in the military and they are a delight to work with. . I am grateful to live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bluetablepainting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bluetablepainting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bluetablepainting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bluetablepainting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bluetablepainting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bluetablepainting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bluetablepainting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bluetablepainting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bluetablepainting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}