Strange celebrations

July 4th – a bit of a strange holiday where we celebrate things we don’t really approve and take pride in things we didn’t do. The more I think on it the stranger it seems. I don’t know that I would have actually cared for any of the “Founding Fathers” (which is kind of a pompous title). Many of them actually owned slaves. Could you sit at their table and enjoy a dinner prepared and served by slaves? It never crossed their collective mind that women deserved a political voice and be allowed to vote. And who gave these guys the right to tell women what they should be “allowed” to do in the first place? Even as they declared their independence from the imperial rule of England they sanctioned the ruthless destruction of the civilizations that had long existed on the land they coveted for their new nation.

What can we celebrate? As time has passed between us and them, people of conscience have worked to keep the best of what the Founding Fathers envisioned while fixing (lets be honest) some of their real screw-ups; a work that will go on as long as human society continues to evolve and advance. But I think that’s the way it will always be, the advances we make being like the tide. It sweeps in, sets a new high water mark of a people electing their own leaders rather than being the subjects of kings and popes, but then it ebbs. At the low point slaves are shipped while woman and children toil away in sweat shops. The tide turns and swells once again, slaves are freed, unions form to protect workers and force living wages, women demand and find their voice. Then comes the inevitable ebb. Jim Crow becomes the law of the land, unions turn corrupt, the KKK rules by terror with a wink and a nod from the powers-that-be, women find themselves still with a second class status in the work place. A slack time then the current runs the other way. Civil rights laws are passed, glass ceilings are shattered here and there, people notice the environment could use a little care, union "bosses" go to jail. The opposing forces build and force a retreat. Religious fanaticism rules the headlines, military conquest and wars without cause or meaning or any end in sight swallow up the budget, civil liberties take a step backwards, “illegal aliens” become the new “niggers,” corporate profit is deemed more important than clean water. Ebb and flood at different stages throughout the world at different times. But the flood sets a new high water mark when it comes and we do a little better job of being humans.

Deb and I celebrated the 4th by spending the long weekend sailing little Nomad, putting 52 miles under her keel, spending 2 nights on the hook with the cove all to ourselves, one night rafted up with good friends (12 boats full!) and enjoying a fireworks display.

 

The weekend gifted us with some good sailing weather, a lake full of whitecaps, and wind enough to call for a reef in the main. Oddly enough, even with the perfect weather the lake was kind of abandoned. (Except for the Saturday night fireworks, where powerboat follies were as much a part of the show as the air bursts.) Indeed, on the hook Sunday evening not a single other boat could be seen, there was no sound of engines or lawn mowers or airplanes, the houses (usually in sight on the far side) were obscured in the setting sun and haze, no lights marked the horizon. There was nothing to indicate that Deb and I had any company anywhere on the planet. It was a strange thought for an odd weekend to celebrate a puzzle of history, which we call the United States of America.