I hope you all had a nice Fourth of July. Here the weather was so hot that the parade in Philly and many of the other celebratory events on the east coast had to be cancelled. My plan was to photograph some of it, but the train I was going to take into Center City broke down. And with the temperature over 100 degrees, my concern was even if I were to make downtown, I might be paying for a very expensive Uber ride back home. After waiting on the platform for almost an hour and a half in the blistering heat, my cooler headed prevailed and I bagged my plans. Then on Friday night a huge gust of wind knocked down our next door neighbor’s sycamore tree. Thankfully no damage was done. And then on Saturday, I drove to the Doylestown’s beautiful County Theater only to find out that tickets to see Jaws were sold out! And finally we lost power during the storm later that evening. Ok, now what? I got home and started to check out a Leitz Focomat V35 I had recently picked up, only to find there was an electrical problem … dead as a door nail! #@$%^&*(!? Surely there couldn’t be anything else that could go wrong, could there? In a word … YES! On Saturday night while we were watching a movie the power went out, same day the electric company workers went on strike. As I write this more than 24 hours later, still no power, but I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of ice cream soup in the freezer!
Is all of this some sort of cosmic sign?
Maybe things can only get better.
I’m counting on it!
A few days before the Fourth my wife and I agreed to put our American flag back up for the holiday after it had been languishing in our basement since you know who was re-elected. But now we felt like it was time.
Why did we do it? Because on this 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I still have great hope for the American experiment and our democracy.
Benjamin Franklin was right when about the kind of government the framers had established … “A republic, if you can keep it.” That is the challenge we as Americans must address ourselves during the coming months leading up to November when we practice our right to vote.
In my younger years I traveled the world in service to our country, to places like the Soviet Union and China, where democracy did not exist and still does not. And I’ve been to countries that are democracies, in no small part due to our help and generosity. No matter where my travels led me I always wanted to come back home, where everyone had a chance to live the American Dream. A dream worth fighting for according to Abraham Lincoln, In his 1863 Gettysburg Address he stated “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
This year our dream and the democracy that enables it are in great jeopardy. As in the years leading up to the Civil War, we are facing grave challenges to the principles the founders set down to establish our nation as a minority tries to do what the those that formed the confederacy could not. To make things worse, most Americans are struggling to make ends meet while Trump, his family and his cronies profit at our expense due to unheard of greed and corruption. And because of his ill-advised adventures, support for autocrats and an unwillingness to stand with our friends and allies, the world is a much more dangerous place and our nation is much less safe,.
Despite all of this I have great hope for our American project and its renewal. I truly believe that a majority of Americans want the same thing and will stand up and be counted, making our 251st Fourth of July much happier than the one we just had, and a reaffirmation of what so many before us fought for.
Stay well, work to preserve our republic, and keep making pictures during these trying times.
Michael
