Category: Historical Tidbits

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Patriotism Disagreeable

New York’s Fourth of July Centennial 1876 in front of Madison Square. No Taylor Swift but lots of fireworks. From alamy.

We long for that perfect Fourth of July. Perhaps there was some festival, some county fair, some town picnic you went to as a kid, and you can still remember the crispness of the coating on the corn dog or the smell of the kettle corn.

2015 Capital Fourth with a proper crowd, listening to rollicking music.

The enthusiasm of the band, banging out some Sousa with gusto or even some toe-tapping rock ‘n’ roll, the dusk dropping slowly, sky melting into fireworks which, as a kid, were bright and loud and wondrous. If you were born before 1970, you might even wax nostalgic for the tall ships that glided with so much grandeur and grace into New York Harbor. Even just 11 years ago, the Capital Fourth was mobbed with people of these diverse United States, welcomed to eat the overpriced snow cones in humid Washington and spread out on the National Mall to listen to cannons go off in the “1812 Overture” and whisper to each other, “that’s not about the War of 1812, y’know.”

Oh, the nostalgia of the corn dogs and our tall ships.

The Operation Sail parade in New York Harbor, 7/4/76. JOYCE NALTCHAYAN/AFP/Getty Images

It doesn’t feel terribly celebratory right now, as divisive as things are, with our 250th birthday hijacked in D.C. to score political points and to suck up taxpayer money to line someone else’s pocket. The Freedom250 festival in Washington has been a giant bust, but even if people had showed up, the fenced-off, algae-filled Lincoln pool and constant National Guard patrols would probably have turned them away. I keep thinking it’s like a teenager planning a 16th birthday bash (or quincenera or high school graduation, whatever) for years, only to find mom married a skeezy stepdad who gives out creepy looks and crashes the party drunk and ruins everything, man! We only had one shot at this party, and it’s been screwed up.

NYT photo shared last week of the Great American State Fair on the national mall. Sparse crowds led Fox news to stop their planned on site filming even before the weekend.

But the idea of a glorious Fourth has often been more imaginary than actual. What we’ve been also really good at is glorious protest. For 250 years, people have used the day to point out that the promise of liberty has not always been delivered. In that, 2026 fits right in, and you may find yourself feeling a little proud, by the end of this, to carry on a tradition of disagreeing with policy. It’s flippin’ patriotic!

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Decoration Days

The tradition of roses and the military go back 2000 years to the Romans. Annually, the Memorial Day Flowers Foundation hands out over 120,000 roses and carnations in Arlington National Cemetery (U.S. Army photo by Rachel Larue)

This coming weekend is Memorial Day weekend, officially an observance to honor fallen soldiers but unofficially the beginning of the summer. We have Congress in 1968 to thank for creating the Uniform Holiday Act, which turned many of our solemn, meaningful observances into convenient three-day weekends, perfect for getaways full of clogged traffic leaving town and home improvement projects that I don’t have enough time to finish because I didn’t start until Monday. On the other hand, the garage could use a spruce up…

I’ve never been able to warm up to Memorial Day, and trying to put my finger on it, I think it’s because of the hypocrisy. To the extent that there’s a typical saying besides “Hot Dogs Half OFF!” or “Beach is Open” or “Maybe there’s a frontage road around this mess…,” the speeches come from politicians determined to shape the idea of sacrifice into a battering ram to justify more use of force. It doesn’t help that every single American war in my lifetime has been about the elite in the US sending the have-not soldiers into places we should not be, but of course that’s not the fault of those in uniform, thank you for your service. (Don’t get me wrong; I would rather have a military than the alternative.) It just too often makes me think of those Jackson Browne lyrics:

I want to know who the men in the shadows are,
I want to hear someone asking them why,
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they’re never the ones to fight and to die…

Jackson Browne “Lives in the Balance”

Still, perhaps in penance for not sufficiently appreciating the sacrifice because of politicians’ crocodile tears, I can offer up a little historical journey. Not why America created Memorial Day because all those bot-churned quasi-stories will trace it to the Civil War. Instead, my question is was putting flowers on military graves always a thing? How did other, older cultures used to celebrate their dead? We’re one of the few cultures that only observes this for one day and restricts it to people in the military.

Meanwhile lots of other cultures, historically, set aside time to remember those who passed before us, especially family members.

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S is for Singapore

Fast Facts:

  • Named for: Siṃhapura, Sanskrit for “lion city”
  • Capital: It’s a “city-state,” i.e., Singapore is its own capital.
  • Long/Lat: 1.17 N/103.5 E, 17 hours and 8500 miles west of Castro Valley.
  • Population: 6.1 million or 100 Castro Valleys. Third most densely populated region in the world, after Macau and Monaco.
  • Size: 287 sq mi or 16 Castro Valleys
  • Avg temp in April: 90 F/30 C, close to the equator
  • Median income: $150,000, close to Castro Valley
  • Ethnicity: 74% Chinese, 14% Malay, 9% Industries
  • Main industries: Trade. Trade. Trade. Their economy is “free, innovative, dynamic, and business-friend.” Surprisingly, not especially corrupt.

One of the key architects of what Singapore has become was Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles. I know, the name sounds made up. That, too, is a metaphor for Singapore, a place of such contrast that it’s hard to believe.

Singapore is tiny, but huge in population. The 3rd most densely populated in the world, the 176th smallest land base for a country. It’s both island and city, near the sweltering jungles at the equator, but a futuristic high-tech sparkling megalopolis. It’s surrounded by Malaysia, also islands and cities, both rural and urban simultaneously. Singapore means “Lion City” though apparently there’s never been a lion, other than in a zoo. Its symbol is the Merlion, half-fish and half-lion. Perhaps Singapore’s success has been in taking on multiple identities.

Encyclopedias on Singapore begin its history with the 14th century, though surely there were people before that. The Malay people who predated the Kingdom of Singapore called it Pulau Ujong, meaning “island at the end of the peninsula.” But that’s a geographic description and not great for creating the image of a city-state. It was called Temasek, a trading port, a mix of Malay, Indian, South Asian, and Chinese people. Lion City seems a more intriguing name even if there never were lions. A Palembang prince in the 14th century reportedly spotted what he believed was a lion but it was really a tiger. Yet, he gets credit for suggesting its name, Siṃhapura.

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