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I'm taking a hiatus from my Gov Gab hiatus today to bring you my GSA coworkers' reports about their Fourth of July experiences. My colleague Karen Trebon tells us about the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and my colleague Jonathan Rubin reports out on the National Mall fireworks display. Tell us about your Independence Day celebrations in the comments section and don't forget to post your photos to the USA.gov Fourth of July Flickr photostream. You have until midnight eastern time tonight and we'll be highlighting our favorite photos here tomorrow!

From the festival grounds...
The Smithsonian is much more than a bunch of museums!  Every year around Independence Day, the Smithsonian goes alfresco on the National Mall for the Folklife Festival. This year’s event featured the power of words in the African American community, music in Latino culture, and the country of Wales.

Giving Voice held demonstrations of storytelling and other oral traditions important to the African American community like poetry, radio, and humor. Las Americas: Un Mundo Musical (Musical World) featured Central and South American food and three salons for live performances of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Venezuelan, Dominican, Salvadoran and Paraguayan music. Wales (or Cymru in Welsh) showcased their food, music and crafts such as textiles, stone carving, iron and woodworking, and ceramics.

One of my favorite sources of information about other countries is the CIA World Factbook. Don’t be intimidated by the author!  From the drop down list, simply select the country you want to read about and this online encyclopedia tells you about its people, geography, and economy, just to name a few.

Rumor has it that Mexico will be featured in 2010, but watch the festival’s official website www.festival.si.edu to see what other countries and parts of the world will be exhibiting next year.

..and on to the fireworks!
To most of us (myself included), the holiday is a great thing - a day off from work. It's a pretext to get together and celebrate some immediate, tasty pleasures: grilling, some adult beverages, and fireworks, all beneath a canopy of American flags. It's a patriotic picnic with a very large invite list.

Here in D.C., however, it feels a little different, especially now that I am a Federal employee. When you work inside the halls of government every day, it can be very insular. "We" on the inside are working for "the citizens" on the outside, and sadly, it can be rare when the twain meet.

On the 4th of July, however, it's like they turn government inside out; the halls empty and America hangs out on the lawn, together. It's refreshing for me to be with the people I work for and relish the fact that every American contributes to making this country what it is. All our actions, large and small, create the American experience.

D.C. is the epicenter of the 4th of July. It's the heart. Walking down marbled streets, past the Washington Monument framed gorgeously by fireworks (which, despite a recent article by Slate, are really thrilling), you feel like you've been given access to a great thing, like a backstage pass to a fantastic event. It's both exclusive and free at the same time. You are milling about in the most powerful city in the most powerful nation in the world, and yet you feel unmolested. An incredible amount of work, not only by the Founding Fathers but by each of us every day, has gone into creating a country where we can peacefully assemble and praise or protest anything we wish, no matter how controversial or ludicrous.

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