The Fourth of July

For the third year in a row our family has hosted a kind of open house on the farm on the Fourth of July. We wanted to thank all of the people who had supported us for so many years in our efforts to make a life on a homestead possible. Most of those people were only known to us through the Internet, most of whom were visitors to a blog about outsider economics and Fourth Turning theory called The Burning Platform. The Admin of the site was a man I had become friends with years before after posting comments on various threads and essays he’d written over the years. He’d been kind enough to post some of my commentaries as stand-alone essays and after nearly ten years of having given up on writing, I felt encouraged to take it up again and I was profoundly grateful to him for giving me an opportunity. I met with him early on to let him know I had been an early casualty of what has become known as the cancel culture for some of my opinion pieces and didn’t want to draw any unwarranted criticism of his site because of it. He stood fast to his principles of free speech and assured me that I was free to post whatever and whenever I liked and we’ve become friends ever since. Then, with my wife’s encouragement, we put out the invitation to anyone in the same spirit of welcome and planned our first annual 4th of July celebration and opened our property to anyone else who felt drawn to see the place I’d tried so diligently to describe in my writing and to share in our commitment to community with good people wherever they lived. It was a way of turning a virtual community into an actual one and to thank the man who’d made it possible.

Most of the people I knew by screen names and sobriquets and from their written word alone. Others were the readers who rarely if ever posted a word online and the first year we wound up with a group of a hundred or more people from all over the country. We didn’t know what we were doing, but we tried our best to make sure that there was enough food, drink and atmosphere to make the journey worth it and it was a modest success. There were of course plenty of family and neighbors as well, others who’d given us so much encouragement and help over the years and the blend of young and old, from one region or another, across a fairly broad spectrum of the American landscape. Everyone had a great time and a lot of face-to-face friendships were established.

This year, after the past year of unusual behavior, it was a relief to get a large group of simpatico souls together for a full day of simple socializing, interesting conversations, a game of horseshoes or a plate of farm raised meats and side dishes. There were kegs of local beer, kids on trampolines and knots of twenty-somethings manning smoky firepits throughout the day. We had the goats roaming around followed by toddlers and the weather — after a week of scorching heat followed by torrential rains — was nearly perfect. There were no mosquitoes, I never heard a cross word or saw a face that wasn’t smiling and animated, and no one complained about the fare. My oldest friend in the world and his wife drove up from New Jersey and my next-door neighbor helped prepare the meal in the sugarhouse. All of our frequent visitors who’ve become good friends pitched in and brought things to make the day a breeze. And to everyone’s good fortune Admin and his lovely wife made the trek up the east coast to New England to meet all the frequent and loyal visitors to his blog and to hand out some really nice custom coffee mugs. I think I may have walked more miles in the nineteen hours I spent on that Independence Day than I did on my best day this year so far and every step was worth it. We flew flags from every fence post and hung them from the front of the barn, not ironically or politically, but out of love for what we understand as America, something far more than an idea or a place. America as a people, with all kinds of opinions, idiosyncrasies, talents and concerns, origins and destinations, who share a common sense of kinship to one another. And everyone who attended felt it too.

Despite the ever-present social anxiety that has spread like a plague through not only cities and towns, families and associations in the last year, I have remained optimistic and upbeat. When you are surrounded by the beauty of Nature and the profound and important work of raising a family with values and honor, it is impossible not to be no matter what happens. When you see that reflected in the faces of so many others, friends and strangers, and hear the sound of laughter and pleasant chatter from one end of the lawn to the other under a Summer sky it reaffirms all of the confidence and hope you could ever imagine no matter what may come about.

I remain entranced by the splendor of this country and inspired by the variety and wisdom of the people who inhabit it. Whatever the dark and unhappy people of the Narrative may think, America is the last best hope of mankind and it is impervious to their perpetual efforts to dampen and squash the spirit that inhabits those who reject their malicious attempts to tell us otherwise. I saw it with my own eyes on Sunday and it looked back at me in all the faces of everyone who came to share the day with us and I know that it will spread out much further than the small patch of in the land in foothills of New Hampshire when everyone returns to their homes and neighborhoods across this country. And while I cannot promise that I will be around forever, as long as I am we will open the gates every year for anyone who wants to share the sense of community built here in the ether and made real in person on The Fourth of July.