WHERE THE HELL DID SUMMER GO?

Tell me this isn't the fastest spring/summer in your life. I admit I'm a downer and I start my end of summer countdown in May, when the Kentucky Derby is over. But for crying out loud, Memorial Day shot by like a flash. Next week is the Fourth of July. In a few minutes, the stores will begin their back-to-school ads.

And don't tell me that September is the best month of the year in The Hamptons. September is to winter what May is to summer. September is f*ing September. It's when you must go back to school. For me it’s failing geometry every night in my dreams.

Anyway, here are some of my old guy ramblings. And then a musical idea of how we all can enjoy the 250th celebration of the birth of our wonderful country.

THE MUSIC OF THE FOURTH OF JULY

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed his grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

I have been lied to and manipulated by every president in my lifetime, starting with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Trump is by far the worst president I will ever see.

Before Trump, I used to be a Republican. I was and still am, an ardent fan of Harry Truman, a Democrat, who was one of the three great presidents of my lifetime (Eisenhower and Reagan being the other two), I was a renegade Republican who believed you cannot have too conservative a president, nor too liberal a Supreme Court.

This stance made me no friends on either side of the political spectrum. Frankly, I didn’t care.

I don't trust anyone whose job depends on votes and who can fold under fire from a lobbyist or a pressure group. That's why I'm constantly asking: How did the NRA checkbook become more powerful than the United States government?

When it comes to my freedom, I don't trust any politician. I rely on the nine members of the Supreme Court to guard my freedom and protect me from any weak, scheming president and any dumber-than-dirt Congress. I pray for the good health of Chief Justice John Roberts. A middle-of-the-road man who can protect us from the lock-step crazy Justices on both sides of the Court.

No one can come up with more conspiracy theories than I can. I'm a child of the '60s, waiting for the first bad flashback they promised me, and all I'm getting are warm memories.

I've had it up to here with people who want to tell other people how to live, who to love, who to pray to, what to wear, what to believe in.

And that includes people who believe theirs is the only skin color, theirs is the only language, theirs is the only God.

I have no time or patience for people who believe that God only talks to them, and that their way is the only way.

I'm a pessimist, a skeptic, a cynic.

This is a long way of telling you how much I'm affected by the Independence Day holiday and the words of the song printed above. The music, the words, and the sentiment never fail to bring me to tears.

It started when I was almost too young to understand it. I'm the child of immigrants who bought the dream of those words for me and for my children and for my children's children. They picked the only country in the world where dreams truly do come true.

For many of the early years when I lived in East Hampton, I threw a party at my house for my friends on the Fourth of July so we could watch the gorgeous fireworks display from Main Beach. Every year I would play music that worked with the fireworks.

I would spend days working on my fireworks playlist.

Every year my music and the sparkling light show would sync perfectly, and I would watch the faces of my friends looking up to the sky with the colors of fireworks reflected on their faces.

Every year I would see tears streaming down some of the faces. The year after 9/11, there were more memories and more tears.

If you live in a town on the East End where the town fathers choose to celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks, this is the music I suggest you play as the fireworks go off:

"Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin

"Amazing Grace" by Tramaine Hawkins

"God Bless America" by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

"America the Beautiful" by Charlie Rich

"America the Beautiful" by Elvis Presley.

And finally, at the finale, when the sky is booming and the earth is trembling – with the sound at its loudest and the sky filled with stars – play:

"God Bless America" by Kate Smith

And finally:

"America the Beautiful" by Ray Charles.

Just wait until you hear that fat, old, anti-Semitic fascist Kate Smith singing "God Bless America." She was a pig, but could she sing. She sang the words of this wonderful song with great verve and great feeling, and you can celebrate the fact that Kate Smith never got the ugly, intolerant all-white America she wanted.

And, saving the best for last, listen as the great Ray Charles sends chills down your spine as you hear him singing the greatest version of "America the Beautiful" ever recorded.

Then do as I do and whisper to yourself, "America is the best place in the world. It will outlive any lying, tweeting commie, politician who doesn't think so."