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Category: patriotism

Half Mast

Half Mast

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Today will be harder on many of us than the last few September 11ths, I think. Harder because of the controversies, harder because of the anger, and harder because today, at least where I live, is uncannily like that day: impossibly blue skies, a hint of fall, a day at first like many others.

In the last couple of years, three of our neighbors have erected flagpoles. There’s one next door, another across the street and still another at the corner.

I just walked past that one this morning. Will and Erica, our friends who live there, have each served more than one tour of duty in Iraq. Will received the Purple Heart. Their flag is the biggest of them all. It’s flying at half mast today.

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Yankee Doodle Dandy

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It’s July 9. The firecrackers aren’t snapping and the flags aren’t flapping. What remains for me is the memory of James Cagney as George M. Cohan in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” I can’t stop humming “It’s a Grand Old Flag,” “Over There” or “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy.” And I can’t forget the sight of that powerful little man going into one of his tap-dancing riffs. He is the essence of jaunty, of sticking out one’s chin and plunging into life. Was our country ever that innocent and optimistic? I replay the final scene of that movie, Cagney dancing down the steps of the White House after telling his life story to President Roosevelt, and I think yes, maybe it was.

The Sacred and the Secular

The Sacred and the Secular

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Independence Day in the Heartland. Small flags flying. People unabashedly wear red, white and blue. A Methodist church and a sermon on national humility. All this has me thinking: How does a nation, founded in an age of belief, survive in an age of secularism? The Europeans have figured it out, but here in our earnest land, it isn’t as easy. We find it harder to say one thing and do another. Our nation is still young. At least we hope it is.