Tuesday, July 04, 2006

OH, BEAUTIFUL Most Americans can remember the first stanza or so of America's other national anthem, AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL.  The spacious skies, the amber waves of grain, the fruited plain, and so on from sea to shining sea. Unlike the STAR-SPANGLED BANNER, its tune is easy enough that most people can actually sing it and hit all the notes. AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL was written by a woman named Katherine Lee Bates, inspired by the view from the top of Pike's Peak, a 14,000 odd ft. peak that overshadows Colorado Springs, Colorado. She was the daughter of a Congregationalist Minister; she herself was deeply religious but as an adult could find no home for her faith in any church. She was a prolific poet, and a professor of English at Wellesley, but other than this unofficial national anthem, her work and her name are forgotten. Katharine Lee Bates lived for twenty-five years with Katharine Coman in a committed partnership that has sometimes been described as a "romantic friendship."  Bates wrote, after Coman died, "So much of me died with Katharine Coman that I'm sometimes not quite sure whether I'm alive or not." Many Americans who mouth the remembered words of her love song to her country would condemn this woman today, three ways from Sunday, as my Grandmother would put it. Today, many good Christians in these United States would deny her faith as false, see her hope as evil, judge her love as sinful. But there are other words in Katherine Bates' song that are not sung or remembered by Americans on days like today, the 230th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (which also has a lot of words to it that most American citizens don't bother to read or remember). Words like: America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law! or: O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife. Who more than self their country loved And mercy more than life! or: America! America! God shed his grace on thee Till selfish gain no longer stain The banner of the free! or: O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! or: America! America! God shed his grace on thee Till nobler men keep once again Thy whiter jubilee! 3:05:26 PM    comment []

Please read this fine Fourth of July essay by "Huitzli" at Stone Bridge: What is patriotism, really? Eymologically, it is the love of the Fatherland. Well, you know where I can go with that, but I won't bother. The emotional intensity of whatever it is we call patriotism probably derives from something basic in our genetic heritage. We are social animals, after all. For several million years, our primate and hominid forebears lived in small groups, and no doubt an intense loyalty to those groups was necessary for human survival. But instinctive loyalty to a group of family and friends who protected one another from leopards and roving marauders is a very different thing from that same instinct turned to witless support for a series of immoral wars, and all manner of terrible abuses of human dignity at home and abroad, sold to us because those wars, and those abuses, are the policies of the nation-state you or I happen to have been born in, and come to us wrapped in the flag and decorated with magnetic yellow ribbons you can stick on your SUV. This is a country which has always talked the talk—read the Declaration of Independence for proof of that—but rarely walked the walk. "All men are created equal." I believe that myself, but it was written by slave-owners who wouldn't dream of letting women or propertyless men vote. Read the rest HERE. Dr. Omed was sorely tempted to post the entire piece, but I want you to go to Stone Bridge and take a look around. 1:08:49 PM    comment []