As a journalist in a small community where “everybody knows your name,” covering events often means being a participant.
Last Saturday, that was a pretty affirming experience.
I can’t say I was as prepared as I would have liked to have been to celebrate America’s 250th. I’ve been listening to (for me) a lot of discussion of the history of the Declaration of Independence and last week we published some pieces that, I thought, did a good job of bringing out important things we should be thinking about, which many of us take for granted. Those would be concepts like the human dignity promoted by the Declaration’s assertion of the fact that all human beings are created equal, and that we have been blessed by the wisdom of those who crafted the documents that have given us a nation that has lasted for 250 years – when even some of them wondered if it would survive more than a few.
I don’t have space here to go into all the principles that provided the foundations for the Declaration and, later, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The fact that the 250th birthday of the latter won’t come until 2040 makes it clear that they took their time to get it right.
I will say that in our helter-skelter world of creature comforts and amusements and technology and all the other things we find to distract us, the concepts that built this nature can easily get lost in the shuffle.
Back to participation: I wasn’t sure what we-all were going to experience on Saturday, but I knew that a lot of people had put time and effort into planning some substantive celebrations. That turned out to be the case, and I was only sorry I couldn’t be in more than one place at once.
I was privileged – and I use that word deliberately, not flippantly, to be part of the Sweet Home American Legion’s “Two and a Half Miles for Two and a Half Centuries” walk.
If you’ve been reading our paper recently, you know that the local Post 133 is rebuilding in multiple ways, having acquired the former Fir Lawn Lutheran Church building as its headquarters after it was heavily damaged by an arsonist. They’re also working to build their membership.
The walk was a fund-raiser, but it really was a true exercise in patriotism. More than 100 people showed up for the event, and it was fun – especially with the enthusiastic honking from passing motorists throughout the stroll. I’m a runner and I thought about jogging it, but that wouldn’t have been the way to go. I was glad I walked with that group.
They’re talking about doing it again, maybe making it an annual event, and I hope they do – with double and triple the participation.
In Lebanon, organizers put together a top-notch program at Cheadle Lake Park, giving visitors a chance to try out the newly paved parking lot, for starters. Gone was the wagon drag through the gravel. Gone was the dust. It was a good start to the night.
Hundreds of people had a great time, with music from Tom Mask and Taken by the Sky, a Fleetwood Mac tribute band that played a lot of the great hits.
The event benefited the Alzheimer’s Association, and Emcee Jenni Grove, of The Oaks at Lebanon retirement community, delivered a very compelling appeal, based on her personal experiences in dealing with the disease. I personally came away with increased appreciation of the need to support not only research into cures, but the demands of providing and enhancing care and support for all those affected by Alzheimer’s, not just the patients.
Lebanon’s fireworks show didn’t go as planned, thanks to “technical difficulties” that delayed the start for 50 minutes and then resulted in a rather hit-and-miss display. I know the organizers had really invested in that show, so it was disappointing to, well, see that go up in smoke (OK, sorry for that bad pun).
Down the road in Sweet Home, Ron Carter, who pretty much singlehandedly has revived the town’s fireworks tradition that kind of faltered following COVID, put on a great show over the pond at Icebox Radiator Supply, which has generously provided the venue for the last couple of years.
I’m reminded that we don’t always control the circumstances, which is why the fact that we celebrated our nation’s 250th year is in itself a blessing.
Increasingly, we’re hearing how other ideas of how government – socialism or even communism, which both have proved to be disasters elsewhere, are gaining popularity in our country.
People today don’t know their history, or have truncated views of our past. We certainly have had plenty of issues in America, some very shameful. But we’ve also been greatly blessed with a form of government that has created a society that, even with our flaws, has apparently greatly impressed the visitors who’ve come to the World Cup.
In some recent commentary on the semiquincentennial, I saw this quote from Charles Carroll of Carrollton (Maryland), the final survivor of those who signed the Declaration of Independence:
“I do hereby recommend to the present and future generations the principles of that important document as the best earthly inheritance their ancestors could bequeath to them and pray that the civil and religious liberties they have secured to my country may be perpetuated to the remotest posterity and extended to the whole family of man.”
Well put.