I Swam With America!

On the 4th of July, the usual 6:30 a.m. time for Early Bird Lap Swim was pushed back to 9:00 a.m. for a general holiday celebration for the community. I managed to get my laps in side by side with America before being gently ousted by a girl who apologized for bumping into me. Yep, that seems like America in a nutshell! It was a glorious day, weatherwise, though it got quite hot later, also emblematic of America, and our extreme weather trends. It was a joy to see all those children and families there together, and I'm sure a number of them returned for fireworks at night! I actually fell asleep during the (illegal) annual neighbors-across-the-street fireworks display out my open window.

I am aware of the great gulf between Americans today. We are so divided in our views of what is good for the country. I hope we are not really so divided in our hopes for each other as human beings. I certainly want the same good things for others that I want for myself and my family and my children's families, and so on. But I do sense that many are operating from fear, not love, and from a feeling there is not enough for all, so from a place of self-interest or greed. Self-interest and greed are modeled for us in the current government and in the general oligarchical orientation of the USA today. When my colleagues and I are too saddened or anxious about the state of things today, we have a coded safe phrase to signal we just had too much of it all. "Gulf of America." Sigh... To signal my love for my country, and my willingness to breach the gulf, I put up my American flag to celebrate our country's birthday. And I took it down at sunset, as I am supposed to. Right before the (illegal) annual neighbors-across-the-street fireworks display. And to make it feel like a real mini-vacation, I read a good (beach) book: Typewriter Beach, by Meg Waite Clayton, set it the very recent past and the McCarthy era. Beach reading makes it a Slattern Day in the blog.