Happy Birthday America

We had so much fun watching A Capital Fourth on PBS last night. I've always loved Washington and regret not spending more time there with my kids while they were growing up. Now I have the farm and it's so hard to get away...When AJ and Mia were little and we were running up and down the east coast travelling to Georgia where my mother's folks live, we always sang patriotic songs in the car. My kids know the words to all those songs I heard on TV last night. Growing up in the 1950's we learned them all in school. Assemblies consisted of the school chorus singing ALL the patriotic biggies and EVERYBODY stood up and covered their hearts when the Star Spangled Banner was sung. I noticed yesterday at the parade that only us old folks did it when the young lady sang the National Anthem. The music teacher at my elementary school would pick boys (ofcourse) to march up the aisle with the American flag and the school flag at just the right time in the concert and tears would roll down parents faces. They were the people who lived through World War II and saved the world for democracy. I'm glad my formative years took place in a time when we were taught to read with phonics and Dick and Jane, pre-Affirmative Action and Multicultural Education. We were all Americans and nobody got a free ride. Christmas concerts at school had all the traditional carols and a secular Christmas song or two. When I went to hear AJ and Mia sing at Alexander Hamilton School in Morristown I didn't recognize most of the cutsie "holiday" tunes. I paid the price for the patriotism I instilled in my kids - my two boys put themselves in harm's way in the military. AJ is still in the Army, Eric got out between the two Desert Wars and is working for another kind of military - the Boy Scouts of America - that focuses its resources on the home front, the way I wish our government would do. Billions and billions of our dollars thrown away, and generations of family heartbreak - for what? Happy Birthday America - I love you even though you have changed so much since my childhood. Come back, 1950's America, come back!