Poetry. Like King Charles III's apocryphal diary entry from July 4, 1776 from which this book takes its title, these poems remind us that it is only from the perspective of time and distance that we come to understand what is truly important in life. The life of poet Claudia Serea has taken her from the streets of Bucharest during the bloody overthrow of the Ceausescu regime through the experience of an immigrant in New York City and the tension and tangle of traveling back and forth between her native Romania and her newfound home in New Jersey. And like the simple clothesline on the cover that in one poem relates a tragedy and in another the exquisite beauty of the mundane, Serea's wondrously observant verse celebrates the potential in each moment, the revolutionary act of merely being alive.