7/4/25

On Independence Day I drove home from Cape Cod after a few days of beach time with friends. I got on the road reasonably early in an attempt to avoid the holiday traffic and was mostly successful with my efforts. Beyond a brief backup following an accident, I encountered no issues on the trip back to Albany.

For most of the journey I listened to an audiobook, The Librarian of Saint Malo, a historical fiction novel set in France during WWII. I’ve always had an affinity for stories of war and resistance and heroism and have read more works in this genre than I can count, but this book, on this day, was hitting different.

Maybe it was the young woman who, while ringing up my order at Wellfleet’s fancy French bakery, asked if I was doing anything special to celebrate the holiday. Her question surprised me.

Were people really planning special activities and events to honor this nation?

I reached for the bag of croissants and told her I might do something to acknowledge Bastille Day later in the month, but had no interest in honoring this country, not now.

Nearly 250 years after declaring independence from the crown, the United (ha!) States is returning to its previous position as a colony created to exploit the poor and further enrich the already wealthy.

Nothing to celebrate here, kids.

As the miles ticked away, I listened to chapters of my audiobook. Occasionally, I got a little lost when my mind took other roads when I heard words taken from a book set 85 years ago describing contemporary situations – camps, deportations, round up, detainees, all once again in play in modern language.

I lose track of how many times a day I shake my head in disbelief and disgust. After 300,000 years of evolution, this is what we are: selfish, violent individuals devoid of compassion.

This country has fallen further, faster, than I ever could have imagined.

America is breathtaking in an entirely new way.

I can’t see a path forward to unity. How will Neo-Republican MAGAts and soon to be third party former Democrats ever agree on rights, freedoms and processes? How does one negotiate with billionaires in a world in which net worth is the ultimate currency?

I hate* it here.

My car emptied and laundry sorted, I considered what I might do with the remainder of the holiday. Reach out to friends to see what might be going on? Walk to the ESP to catch the fireworks?

I took a nap. Ate a salad. Walked the dog. Watched a couple of episodes of The Bear with the cat and dog curled up on opposite sides of my body. Heard the pops and booms of fireworks. Went to sleep with the sound of the fan masking the sirens.

I awoke early the next morning and took Jeter for our long walk around the ‘kill in the cool summer air. I returned to my audiobook, listening through earphones. It occurred to me that the story I was listening to, complete with graphically described scenes of physical violence was, oddly enough, functioning as an exit from the reality of the present.

I was reading a fictionalized story of Nazis and civilians and the holocaust as escapism.

Knowing how that story ended prompts a small measure of optimism within me as I listen. This glimmer of light, however, is immediately extinguished by thoughts of the great divide in the contemporary U.S. – which side will you be on in the eventual history books (or podcasts or tic-toks) focused on this era?

*I thought long and hard about this word. It isn’t one that I’m comfortable using lightly.