via friend-of-a-friend's LJ. Must say I do like the "To Anacreon in Heaven" melody, and get chills whenever I feel it's fairly earned (say, at the Olympics or somesuch). But I don't like the fake-bombs thing - it seems nowadays to be fake fanfare to justify military adventures whether worthwhile or not - and I SO wish it was taken as a national day of reckoning, to sit around and read Franklin and Thoreau and Whitman. Because I am SO PROUD to be from the country of Zora Neal Hurston and Allen Ginsberg and John Coltrane and Patti Smith and George Clinton and SO ASHAMED to be from the country of George W. Bush. We need to take some time and meditate on how American identity is neither simply proud nor simply shameful, but complex.
I hear you