We love the written word. Sometimes re-reading a favorite book is like talking with an old friend. One can imagine the characters, what they look like, how they think, and we admit to sometimes thinking who would play them in a movie (or even what role we would like for ourselves).

But the written word, with all its ability to create joy, provoke anger or bring one to tears is sometimes supplanted by that which is spoken aloud.

That was what we hoped for when we set out to create a video for the Fourth of July. And we were not disappointed.

The gracious individuals who agreed to perform for our camera, who agreed to be on our Web page, some wearing work clothes, others caught while taking a break from the bridge table, even one man who was in the middle of moving, did exactly as we asked: They made us feel it.

The words they were reading are familiar, yet at the same time words we forget in the everyday business of living. And they were words written in a different time, using phrasing we do not use in the 21st century. Yet they remain important today, we can be as moved as those who wrote them were, more than 230 years ago.

There are many documents that define this nation. But the first was our declaration that we wished to be free of the rule of another country, of another nation’s king. We wanted to operate freely under our own rules and law, to make our own way, to create our own history.

Some of the names of those who signed the Declaration of Independence are familiar, even to those who care little for history. But how can we not care for history? How can we not try to comprehend, as we enjoy our freedoms, how hard they fought, with their weapons and with their minds, to create a nation that would recognize “all men are created equal” and we are each “endowed with certain unalienable rights, ... life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”?

Read those words again, speak them aloud, and think of those who, in essence, created a nation where we accept our freedom as a right, not a privilege, as we properly should.

Local residents who brought the words of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and the other framers to life were, in the order in which they appear in the video: Mary Beth Evans, Jim Russell, Rosalyn Silverstein, Shanza Toor, Dan Calhoun, Jasmine Smith, John Cullen, Michael Greer, Gil Mahla and Andrew Mattison.

We thank them for their willingness to interrupt their days, to help us bring the Declaration of Independence (a portion of it, at least), to our Web viewers. And for the conviction they put behind their words.

They did it in a place where freedom is truly exhibited: a public library. Our thanks as well to the Anderson County Library for being our “studio.”

We felt their words. We hope you do as well.