What have the Romans ever done for us?

I know America is not very fashionable right now, but being the day that's in it and all, I just thought I'd say hurray for all the delightfuls it's given me over the years, among them the wonderful words of e.e. cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Walt Whitman, Dorothy Parker, Philip Roth, Jonathan Safran Foer ... (my list trails off into a roll call of looming great literaries and a reverie on the lovely moments spent with well-spun words missing arguably unnecessary vowels); the music of the Beach Boys, Janis Joplin, Sufjan Stevens, Johnny Cash, Will Oldham (I can't keep these lists up or they'll gobble the screen); movies like (almost all the best ones I've ever lived in); that growing-up J1 summer on Cape Cod; chocolate chip cookie dough ice-cream; one big love and several big life friends; last month's Portland sunshine; this computer I'm typing on that brings me to you; heroes, heroines and in the dark ages of Ireland when things were low, hope. Oh, and this picture. Happy Fourth of July.