LOOKING FOR AMERICA

 

We recently celebrated my wife’s __?__ birthday in April.  She used to celebrate a normal birthday.  But thanks to her friend, who put a bug in her ear.  “We celebrate my birth MONTH!” You guessed it: we now celebrate my wife’s Birth Month annually. That makes things more costly.  I’m retired, but now I’m thinking of taking a part-time job to pay for the added celebration. Some things are worth celebrating, especially when they are 250 years old.          

I would especially like to have you, our readers, contribute to this 250^th Birthday of America.  Do you have someone in your family, ancestry, or a friend who contributed to making America great?  Maybe you have an interesting family story. Then please share that in the “Connect” box in the upper right of the home page.  Please try to keep the word count to 700.  Your contact information will be kept confidential.

From now through July 4th, each weekend, I’ll be sharing some tidbits of American history and culture. I believe you will find them entertaining and educational.

 

I know this dates me, but I remember the Bicentennial of America. (Yes, I was born in the  1900’s.) My wife made us colonial period costumes that we wore in a July 4^th  parade and church.  There was a covered wagon that crossed America, and a now-defunct restaurant gave out wooden coins that offered free coffee (see photo).  

Below is a picture of the 200^th birthday issue of Time magazine that I kept:

How does one “find” America? Obviously, we must look at our past, but also the present, and consider the future. It’s interesting and frightening that immigrants today who want to become American citizens know more about our history than our current citizens.  A course that all high school students took at one time was Civics.  It taught us about our country and how to be good citizens.  Today, you would be hard-pressed to find any school, especially a public school, that has such a course.  Our young people are worse off for it.  The famed actor, Richard Dreyfuss, has an initiative to bring back Civics to schools.  He said, “Teach our kids how to run our country, before they are called upon to run our country…if we don’t, someone else will run our country.”  I guess you can say, “A good citizen is an informed citizen.”  Many of our public schools are cranking out uninformed citizens.  Put “students can’t answer simple questions” in your YouTube search.  Be ready to laugh and cry.

Okay, people, let’s get informed. We’ll continue to learn about our country and the people who made America great in the weeks to come.