A Writer's Notebook, Day Six-Hundred-And-Seventy-Seven

It being Independence Day, and this being such an extreme year, I am not certain what to say tonight.  I almost did not mark the occasion on this blog at all, was not even remembering it, but then it came back to mind, just in time.  Perhaps it is the lack of fireworks that caused the slippage of my memory, though I did hear a few stray one's earlier, and though it could have been the thunderstorm. 

In any case, I am not really certain what to say tonight.  So much is happening, it is not clear if we will move in the directions our values should lead us or towards even darker times.  Both seem possible, in many ways, and it is also clear that we cannot wait.  Today's infection numbers are a clear indication of this, as are so many of the things in the news daily.  I am not certain what to say, but I do think it is worth considering the questions of our nation's history, of our present, and to consider that we who are citizens here are also the owners of this nation in a way that requires our responsibility to that past, as the mistakes of our people which remain with us, both in that they are present and that they are our responsibility, until they are resolved.

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