DOUGLAS COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 17, 2021
Commissioners Issue Proclamation In Honor of Constitution Week
Friday, September 17 – September 23, 2021
(Douglas County, Ore.) The Douglas County Board of Commissioners have issued a proclamation in honor of Constitution Week, which begins today, Friday, September 17, 2021, and runs through Thursday, September 23, 2021. The proclamation is a reminder for the citizens of Douglas County to take a moment to reflect on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship that were established in the founding documents of our nation over two centuries ago. This year on Friday, September 17, 2021, we commemorate the 234th anniversary of the framing of the Constitution of the United States of America at the final session of the Constitutional Convention of 1784.
Constitution week celebrates our heritage, our founding principles and asks that we the people never cease in the pursuit of a more prefect union. The first and last verses of Katherine Lee Bates’s 1911 version of the poem “America the Beautiful”, * say it best:
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!
O beautiful for patriot dream, that sees beyond the years.Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God shed his grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!
The Douglas County Board of Commissioners encourage our citizens to learn more about the history of the United States Constitution, and how you can share the founding principles and ideologies with others in the pursuit of freedom, life and liberty.
*Fun fact: The poem “American the Beautiful”, originally penned by Bates in 1893, was first called America. A poem for July 4. In an essay that appeared in local newspapers in 1925, Bates described that her inspiration for writing "America the Beautiful," came during a trip to Pike’s Peak in 1893. Bates was a professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and had traveled west to teach a summer course in Colorado Springs. Bates and the other professors decided to celebrate the close of the session with a trip to the top of Pike’s Peak in a prairie wagon. At the top, Bates later wrote, she was inspired by, "the sea-like expanse of fertile country under ample skies," and she said "the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind." The poem would eventually become the lyrics of one of the best-known songs in American history.
###
Contact Tamara Howell, Emergency Communications & Community Engagement Specialist
(541) 670-2804 cell - (541) 957-4896 office - tjhowell@co.douglas.or.us
(Proclamation Attached)