Thoughts on Independence Day

Today is my day off for the 4th of July. I've been writing in my head since about 4 AM - so many thoughts on so many themes from my latest readings that I scarcely know where to begin. I've never been one for the fireworks and flags thing - all I can ever see is someone blowing off an arm and inevitably, it happens every year. Jingoism makes me terribly uncomfortable. That said, I really missed not being in Chesapeake Beach with Don this year to watch the bay fireworks from the deck of his house, hand in hand. Vacation time is not endless and family commitments took up a chunk this year.

Instead, I exercised profusely and finished listening to Renegade, The Making of a President by Richard Wolffe. This Newsweek reporter spent two years on the road with the Obama campaign and, though it would have been impossible for him to disguise his admiration for the candidate, he also did an admirable job of attempting to remain neutral in his reportage of the ups and downs of the audacious run for the White House. For anyone who wants to understand how a relatively unknown senator raised the kind of money, made the quality of friends, and inspired the kind of trust that landed him the most powerful job in the country, this is the book. At the risk of sounding pie in the sky or drunk on the cool-aid as the distractors say, it does seem as though he was destined to this from a young age. As I watched the president and his family arriving in Moscow yesterday, I wondered if he felt that he had come full circle from that 20 year old Columbia student who wrote a magazine article on the need for nuclear disarmament at the height of the "cold war." See Sunday's New York Times.

To complete my patriotic weekend I watched the entire HBO movie series, John Adams, based upon David McCullough's biography of our second president. When one has been out of school for, dare I say it? 40 years! - one does forget or perhaps was never properly taught the little tidbits that make our history so fascinating. When I was in school we were taught to memorize significant dates but the stories that proved the humanity of our founding fathers were left to my mother to try to provide. Of course, we ignored her.

I recall vividly a family trip to Ft. Ticonderoga in New York state and my mother near tears at the very thought of the historical battle that once happened there. She was trying to describe for us kids what it must have been like. Brat that I was, I was mortified by her passion for her subject.

And so, John Adams, member of the first Continental Congress, believer in a revolution and a man, George Washington, to lead it, left his family alone for years at a time to forge a new government for a young country. Did the end justify the means? Well, of course, but the little details of his family's suffering remind us that this wasn't the age of Twitter. Months could elapse before Abigail, raising four kids, running their farm Peacefield, would hear from her husband and hard decisions had to made in his absence. While he was in France trying to raise money and naval support for the war against Britain, he was ridiculed as a low class country bumpkin disgusted by the debauchery of the Parisians and of his host, Bejamin Franklin, in particular.

What shouldn't be surprising to students of government is that, even then, the intrigue, back stabbing, and back room deals were as prevalent as they are now. Each representative of a colony had his own ax to grind and some, New York, Delaware, the Carolinas, were brought along into the "united states" kicking and screaming. The discussion of the creation of a national bank and the enmity between Alexander Hamilton and Adams were eye-opening to see, as was the friendship between Thomas Jefferson and Adams. It was Adams who initially recognized Jefferson as a man who said little but seemed to hold deep, complicated beliefs and it was Adams who invited Jefferson to pen the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, proof that the pen was mightier than the sword.

As Adams aged, the burdens of the presidency seemed to change him into a morose, hardened man, even as he fought to keep our fledgling country out of a war with France. He was dogged by bad publicity and private sorrows like the death of his son Charles from extreme alcoholism. The move from Philadelphia to the new capitol in Washington, DC, seemed to further alienate the Adamses from their advisors and friends until there were few they felt they could trust. Doesn't this seem to still be the case, over 200 years later?

I can't recommend this video series enough! I'll turn it in tomorrow so it's available for someone else. Now I've got to move from the keyboard and finish reading the next book I want to write about, Marilynne Robinson's Home.