I don't have a lot of movies or TV shows in my collection related to the Revolutionary War so I decided this morning to go a different route while eating breakfast and drinking my fresh-ground Maui coffee: James Michener's "Centennial".

Some of the youngsters on the board may not even know of this mini-series. I only remember it airing once but was impressed with it. It's standard Michener fare, a multi-generational saga following families in a specific area as the pace of history rolls past them -- in this case, the juncture of the South Platte and Cache la Poudre rivers. Some of it was shot here in Colorado, albeit not in the current town known as Centennial. It's similar in vein to "How the West Was Won" but centered for the most part (some of it takes place in late 18th- and early 19th-century St. Louis) around a single location rather than moving westward.

While it takes place after the Revolution, "Centennial" is as much a story of our country and how it grew and its seemingly eternal (at least, until recently) quest for freedom as any story about Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson or George Washington. I highly recommend it if you're in the mood for something different this Independence Day as I was.