Happy Fourth

It’s a drizzly, rainy morning here in central Texas which is good news if you’re a gardener, not so much if you’re a Fourth of July party planner. I’ll take the rain. At this stage of my life Fourth of July fireworks are more of a nuisance than anything else, and that was especially the case when I lived in Houston, because there was always the neighbor who liked making noise. Although if the weather improves, I might wander over to the courthouse for tonight's big show just to say I did.

Of all the fourth of July’s I’ve seen, however, the only one that really stands out was 1976. The country’s 200th anniversary, the Bicentennial. It felt like a really special time, for me, my growing family, and the country. We’d survived the oil embargo. Watergate was history. The Vietnam war was over. Gerald Ford was in the White House. Everything seemed to be working. I was working. We were in our first new home, with one kid, and he was three.

I’ve been thinking about those early days a lot recently. Trying to dust off the old feelings in an effort to rediscover some central truths about the things that made me happy. Take organic gardening. It was a thing I could do to help take care of the earth. And it was a place where I could stand to encourage others to do the same in their own fashion. And it must have worked because in the end we got the rivers cleaned and the air fresh enough to breathe. And it’s nice to touch those old feelings and bring them back to life and to remember on this the holiday of our independence what I want my country to stand for – liberty, and justice, for ALL.