VIDEO: Area residents read the Declaration of Independence

EDITOR’S NOTE: This video was first published on our sister site The B-Town Blog on July 4, 2010, but we love it so much we thought it was worth a rerun on this national holiday:

Out of the red, white and blue, it occurred to us that our third President, one Thomas Jefferson, who loved new gadgets and devices and inventions and discoveries, would have gotten a kick out of our little digital camera, the size of a deck of cards, not much smaller than a hand-held booklet-sized copy of what is known as the Declaration of Independence.

It was 248 years ago that our Founders were ‘cutting and pasting’ (definitely *not* Tweeting) their final draft of what became known as that treasured and precious document – the Declaration of Independence – whose primary author was the then 33-year-old future President Jefferson.

So someone said:

“Let’s take our camera around the region and ask our fellow neighbors and friends and passersby to read aloud the Declaration into our little camera, piece the quotes together into correct order in one colorful video, and release it to the nation and world on our various neighborhood news blogs.”

And so we did – well actually Mark Neuman and Bart Bryan did, then Scott Schaefer edited it – see if you can find yourself, or a friend or two:

(…at the end of the video, look for some amusing outtakes as well as terrific “Happy Birthday USA!” salutations)