THE FOURTH IS WITH US

Poor old baby nation, a big birthday and no one feels like celebrating. It’s hard during a tragedy to care about landmarks in the life of the family, but we have to. I am going to celebrate, in both a cranky way, making plans that will hurt Stephen Miller’s reptilian brain, and joyfully: because things are going terribly for that rogue’s gallery. Yes, we have suffered losses, but amazingly we kept birthright citizenship and mail-in ballots, and tick tock, those terrible polls. (How disappointing for them; be still my heart.) It’s our flag and our day, too, and we are needed.

    Remember Oobleck, the sticky green slime that Dr. Seuss’s mad king coats over his kingdom, trapping everyone in slime and ruining all of life? That’s what Trump and his malefactors have done, and we are the ones who will clean it up, starting with the midterms—dry it out, and sweep it up.

    Oobleck gummed up all the instruments, but we are going to scour and restore them. The Fourth honors the wooden fife that soldiers heard over the din of battle, the bugle, the drums. We celebrate through Clarence Clemons’ solos, Bonnie Raitt on slide guitar, Hubert Laws’ flute on Crying Song, and, it goes without saying, Ringo. Lean in and listen.

    We remember great loud noises of rising up— Molly Ivins’ last column in which she wrote, "We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action... Raise Hell. . . . We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'" Rise up.

    We remember loud, life-giving, divine laughter. If you feel depressed on the Fourth about the ongoing destructions of everything beautiful and American, think of the Honorable Judge Box-Of-Wine Pirro, standing at the Reflecting Pool, sternly planning the charges she will bring against the vandals who made 350 foot long slashes in the bottom. Think of the caulking that is oozing from the columns of Trump’s Arch of Triumph at the Great American State Fair. Think of the crowds at that glorious fair, boisterous patriotic mobs of ten and eleven people. Or think back to the Boaty McBoatface military parade he held for himself in 2025, and roar with laughter at them.

    We remember the Titans, the ACLU, the Sabbath, and we keep it holy.

    We remember fabulous firework displays from our early years but some of us nervous cases have been avoiding a repetition for decades. We remember pretending to like firecrackers and poppers so the boys would think we were cool, but now we hate all the explosions in our neighborhoods that freak out our animals, and we can be a tiny bit judgy of those who set them off. Little kids and I love sparklers, though, love creating light in the darkness. Rumi said, “If everything around seems dark, look again, you may be the light.”  Be the light.

    I remember a riddle from decades years ago—as my dad would say, from before Milton Berle: Why aren’t there any knock-knock jokes about America? Because freedom rings. This is a true story: twenty-five ago, during Bush-Cheney, Molly Ivins and I were the speakers at a retreat for Code Pink, the anti-war people. We gave a number of talks, one of which was about how it is our flag, too. And I got a hundred progressive, peacenik women to sing America the Beautiful along with Molly and me:  O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. For purple mountains majesty, above the fruited plain. It was wild and unpredictable. Practice what Wendell Berry wrote,  “Every day do something that won’t compute.”

    Happy birthday, gal, sweet land of liberty. 250 years! Now you can wear your big-girl pants. We celebrate your unfathomable beauty, your Constitution, your Jeffersonian ideals, and your people. It’s your big day. Make a wish, blow out the candles, and show us what you’ve got.