Happy Birthday America

I am the flag of the United States of America. My name is Old Glory.
I stand for peace, honor, truth and justice. I stand for freedom.

I am confident. I am proud.

Listen to Elvis sing “America the Beautiful” while you read this post.
http://home.comcast.net/~nw-fla/tribute_flag_B_thompson.htm

On the way to the Palos Verdes Estates “Old fashioned Fourth of July” party, I stopped at Starbucks for my daily latte (grande, no foam, single-shot). Good friend Rori Roje said “Oh, you’re going to see Mayberry RFD meets The Rich and the Famous.” Rori was half right.

The PVE event was celebrating its forty-sixth year and it looked and felt like small town, mid-America transplanted to the gorgeous Pacific coast. Guests were treated to music by the Unabridged Big Band, to a stunning rendition of the Star Spangled Banner by Shauna Steiner Torok, recognition of all the military services, an apple pie contest (the top two finishers were men!), a patriotic bike parade, a puppet show and face painting and awards for children essayists, Americanism (De De Hicks), volunteerism (Josh Liu) and the Norris Heritage of Freedom Award to noted historian and keynote speaker Kevin Starr.

De De Hicks spoke with heartfelt passion about what it means to be an American. She told us about the neighbor’s house she saw burn to the ground when she was only eight and how, by the end of the next day, the family was re-supplied with everything they needed to live from the generosity of the community. Experiences like that helped to mold De De’s volunteer spirit, a spirit she sees in abundance in America, “the greatest country in the whole wide universe!!”

Kevin Starr (CA Librarian Emeritus) is the author of a multi-volume series on the history of California, collectively called “America and the California Dream.” The most recent edition is The Coast of Dreams (2004), a concise cultural history of California since 1990. In 2006 Starr was awarded a National Humanities Medal. Starr opened with a reminiscence of his time at the White House when he received the Humanities Medal from President Bush. He contrasted the classical Greek architecture of the White House with the Mediteranian architecture of Malaga Cove in PVE. Yet, for all the thousands of miles between us, we are all one country, “from sea to shining sea.” He talked at length and with wonderful detail about the Westward movement and the incorporation of California into the Union. He asked the founding fathers and mothers to join us in this day of celebration.

It reminded me of what is sadly slipping away in much of America: a deep and abiding sense of the cultural history of our great nation. Dennis Prager calls for a July Fourth seder. “Perhaps the major reason Jews have been able to keep their national identity alive for 3,000 years, the last 2,000 of which were nearly all spent dispersed among other nations, is ritual. National memory dies without national ritual. And without a national memory, a nation dies. That is the secret at the heart of the Jewish people's survival that the American people must learn if they are to survive.

“When Jews gather at the Passover Seder they recount the exodus from Egypt, an event that occurred 3,200 years ago, as if it happened to them. That has to be the motto of the July Fourth Seder. We all have to retell the story in as much detail as possible and to regard ourselves as if we were present at the nation's founding in 1776.”

As parents and grandparents we need to see to it that the history and values of our great country are taught and are cherished by our kids and grandkids. I saw an example of that in Malaga Cove today. As the great social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville commented long ago in Democracy in America, “the village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural that, wherever a number of men are collected, it seems to constitute itself.” That perfectly natural township is alive and well on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.