Happy Fourth of July! Back by popular demand, we invite our sometime guest columnist Pious Petunia to offer sage advice wisdom for coping with the paradoxes and complexities of America’s 250th.
Dear Pious Petunia: I haven’t been deported, I’m not imprisoned in a warehouse, my family is OK, and even though gas and groceries and utility costs and health care are all crushingly expensive, I’m getting by. Why do I still feel so bruised and tired?
Miss P: Miss P feels your pain, dear reader, and admits to battling a certain chronic grumpiness herself. These are exhausting times, and you are not alone. Let us consider some possible causes for your symptoms.
Is the daily stink of corruption and grift, constant lying, and hateful discourse from government officials causing your moral migraines? Or perhaps the dismantling of America’s science infrastructure is giving you epistemic lower back pain? Maybe blatant racism and xenophobia are descending upon your consciousness like a stinking miasma and gagging you in your spirit?
Miss P is not immune to these ills and tends to succumb these days to unmannerly ranting in her more unguarded moments. Suffice to say, the moral poison in our cultural environment sufficiently explains your dis-ease. (Editors note: Please see Jim Bratt’s RJ post from yesterday, a mannerly rant which Miss P unintentionally echoes.)
However, let us not forget the oft-overlooked possibility of aesthetic trauma. This malady may feel especially acute on our nation’s birthday. One third of the People’s House reduced to pointless rubble hardly swells one’s breast with patriotic pride. Not to mention the tacky gilded ballroom design proposed for its rebuilding—one may well prefer the rubble. How about the delightful beauties of pavement instead of the rose garden? Or consider the National Mall Reflecting Pool, now clogged with duck-killing algae and strips of peeling, rubbery, American-flag-blue coating, all those blobby strips representing millions of misspent taxpayer dollars. Meanwhile, we are still recovering from the display of bouncy-house architecture and gladiatorial blood sport on the White House lawn, as well as the desecration of the Kennedy Center with a certain name, a situation so aesthetically offensive that all the nation’s finest artists fled from the scene and hid in their studios and rehearsal rooms.
Miss P could go on, mentioning perhaps the fair on the National Mall featuring non-existent crowds, power outages, tragically melted ice cream, and the brief appearance of a Confederate flag—now cancelled thanks to extreme heat. Perhaps we should add incompetence trauma to our differential diagnosis.
You asked for a diagnosis, not a prescription. However, Miss P, much like the nation’s committed but set-upon health care providers, does not wish to leave you without some relief. Perhaps you might try a nice, therapeutic IV-drip of beauty and goodness. Go enjoy your nearby spacious skies or purple mountain majesties or fruited plains. Crown the nation’s remaining good with the brother- and sister- and sibling-hood by frolicking in summery fashion with good-hearted family and friends. Join the people who are doing their best to fan away that stinking miasma, sucking it through the moral air filters of kindness, fairness, rule-of-law, and public spirit. Do what you can to help clear the air, literally and figuratively, so we can all breathe.
Dear Pious Petunia: I have very mixed feelings about my country this year. I love America and I want to celebrate the Fourth, but despite the hoopla over the 250th, the usual activities don’t feel right somehow. What do you suggest?
Miss P: Indeed the standard celebratory activities bring extra complications this year. The classic summer family road trip, where you stuff the kids and the camping gear in the minivan and head out West? Stymied by exorbitant gas prices, record-breaking heat, and wildfire risk out West, not to mention budget cuts and history-washing in our National Parks. Stay home and indulge in grilled meats? Alas, apparently every hot dog you eat will shave 36 minutes off your life.
What about that fireworks display you enjoy every year? Well, no one can deny that fireworks provide spectacular explosions of color, impressive booms, and the opportunity to ooh and aah patriotically with your neighbors. However, they also disturb the nation’s birds and torment beloved dogs. Did you know that July 5 is the worst day of the year in animal shelters because dogs run away on the 4th? They wonder what they’ve done to deserve this torture and they try to flee. Moreover, fireworks spew particulate matter into the air, a situation made more severe by hot weather. In fact, if you plan to attend the supposedly greatest-ever fireworks display in the sweltering 100-degree heat of DC, be sure to wear an N95 mask. Seriously.
Strategic variations on these wholesome activities might help you cope this year. Never mind the road trip. Parade the family like ducklings to your local park and read aloud to the children from a well-researched, scholarly tome on American history that duly acknowledges the ugly parts of our legacy (here’s one essay that will tamp down your patriotic pride). The children’s high spirits will droop immediately, and then you can enjoy a silent, meditative walk home.
Since grilling meat can prove irresistible thanks to atavistic urges from our neanderthal past, maybe try something other than hot dogs. Miss P is not aware of specific research on the minute-to-minute life-expectancy effects of chicken breasts, ribeye, BBQ ribs, salmon burgers, venison, or bean burgers. So enjoy this window of ignorance before we learn what they do to us. (Actually, bean burgers may extend your life, but only after a brief spell of gaseous anomalies.)
As for the fireworks, there’s always the old sparklers-in-the-driveway approach. (Miss P reminds all her readers to please observe every possible safety precaution. July 4 is a terrible day in the nation’s emergency rooms, too.) Then, scurry everyone, including the pets, down to the TV room in your nice, cool basement and watch the World Cup matches. Paraguay-France should be especially good. You can always watch televised fireworks after the game, of course. Not the same, true, but at least you can turn the sound way down and protect the dog from trauma.
Miss P is not unpatriotic, of course. There are certainly things to celebrate about this country, its promise, its ideals, its diverse people, its spectacular land- and sea-scapes. How about gathering the neighbors, circling them up on lawn chairs, and providing a dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights? Who knows what forgotten wisdom you might discover in there for this “beautiful, contradictory, unfinished” country.
Or perhaps you could listen to Hamilton and revel in that scrappy, can-do American spirit, noting that “immigrants, we get the job done!” In fact, you could queue up a whole playlist of good listening: Lincoln’s Gettysburg address and Second Inaugural, Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country,” MLK’s “I Have a Dream,” the Obama’s speeches at the opening of the Obama Presidential Center. Swell that bosom with pride in our high ideals (and history of soaring rhetoric) and renew your determination to help us achieve them for real.
If you should be moved to sing some hymns—always a fine impulse—Miss P suggests “America the Beautiful,” with special emphasis on the last lines of vss. 2 and 3 and renewed fervor to protect those shining seas and everything in between. Or this hymn, set to the tune of Finlandia, in which love for one’s own country is tempered with a prayer for peace:
If all that does not fill out your schedule or suit your mood, you could spend the evening watching Independence Day and indulge in the fantasy that aliens would bring the world together, snarky American misfits would save the day, and around the world, people dressed inexplicably in traditional ethnic garb would cheer in gratitude.
Dear Pious Petunia: I’ve been watching the World Cup, and I don’t understand why the players are always crossing themselves and kissing their fingers. What is up with that?
Miss P: A good question. As one journalist observes, “the tradition of players blessing themselves before taking a penalty kick or after scoring a goal is as much a part of the global football tradition as insulting the referee.” Miss P notes the amusing juxtaposition of those two traditions.
Is all this crossing-and-kissing a sign of genuine faith? Possibly. Many of the world’s elite players come from Catholic countries, so they could well be expressing their faith or at least their cultural identity. The kissing fingers part—perhaps especially mysterious to Protestants—is actually the kissing of a tiny cross made by crossing the thumb over the index finger. Whether or not the Almighty wishes to intervene in football matches is another question entirely, one which Miss P is not prepared to address. (Fans may recall the infamous “Hand of God” incident, a divine intervention now attributed only to Diego Maradona’s fist.)
Of course, elite athletes depend on all sorts of rituals to ground them. They’re trying to perform superhuman feats of athletic skill while being buzzed by numerous drone cameras and cheered (or booed) by roaring and rabid stadium crowds. Also, they could snap an ankle tendon at any moment. Surely this is an understandable occasion for prayer.
Some athletes have been accused of hypocrisy for this gesture, or even for inciting inter-religious conflict, but Miss P suggests instead that the gesture, practiced sincerely, might prove useful beyond the pitch. Perhaps one might cross oneself to pray for courage before a sweaty workout at the gym. Or before entering the bewildering consumer jungle of a warehouse store. Or before the start of the school day teaching a passel of rambunctious middle schoolers. Or—help us—at the voting booth.
However you spend the day, Miss P wishes American readers a beautiful, safe time with good food, good friends, and good hope for all that is right and true and beautiful. Miss P also offers an appreciative salute to our Canadian neighbors and apologies for all the noise and smoke from down below. Please look after your dogs.
Image credit for main image: abcnews.com.
