I haven’t been crazy about the 4th of July since girlhood – when the girls and women in the huge family spent all day preparing food, setting out food, and cleaning up food, while the guys just got to play.
With the result that my kids and I might never have gone on a picnic, except up to Springfield or Urbana to family reunions.
And then, these days, the way the patriot card is played – thoughtful nuanced responses to questions just give the hard-right convinced reasons to yell and accuse.
I’d rather think about how physically beautiful this country is, in all its variations, elevations, and degrees of dryness and wetness. We have three kinds of mountains, for one thing – the old super green Appalachians, the sharp pointed Rockies, with green and desert mixed in, and those in the desert Southwest, where you can see the bones of the mountains / the colors of the minerals in the rock. I fell in love with those mountains the first time I flew into Albuquerque – and they are still my favorites. But all of them are incredibly lovely.
So you can guess that my favorite 4th of July song is America the Beautiful!