Extending Our Neighborhoods from Coast to Coast

                  The 4th of July is my favorite holiday.  Fresh corn slathered in butter, burgers on the barbie, tomatoes, ice cream, and anyone who mentions carb gets sent skyward attached to a bottle rocket.

                  It's a day when it is politically correct to be shamelessly patriotic.  You can show the flag, wear your American Legion cap, and pledge allegiance to God and country without Michael Moore making a docudrama about you.
                 It is a day when families get together to celebrate the birth of this great nation.  It is a day when neighbors get together at block parties and try to outdo each other by bringing their best food, best manners, and best of all forget the differences that pull us every which way until it appears we're coming apart at the seams.  After September 11, 2001 we set aside our petty bickering and became united as our name ------ "United States" implies.
                Then time passed and slowly but surely we drifted back to our old ways to where in the middle of 2013, as a nation, we may be divided than we've ever been.  We're back to our political, petty, distrustful, selfish selves.  We've settled into a familiar complacency and discontent where once more we are experiencing a lot of pluribus and not much unum.  We are 237 years old this year.  I'm wondering whether we'll see 240 or 250.  Not because of attacks from without but from the way we have a tendency to implode when there is no major adversity to test our unity.  The last presidential election was so contentious it slithered into a mudslinging slop-opera.
                We are a much divided country where the people in the Blue States don't trust the people in the Red States.  The Blue Staters think the Red Staters are gun slinging, bible-thumping corn-fed yahoos, and the Red Staters think the Blue Staters are elitist "America is always wrong," anti-God, hell bent on turning the country into a bigger welfare state than it already is.
                Once we were the "Great Melting Pot," now we are a hyphenated nation with a national identity crisis.  My background is Italian, with both sets of grandparents having emigrated from the old country.  However, I'm always surprised whenever someone refers to me as an Italian-American.  I am proud of my heritage, but it has little to do with who I am today, except that often I have red sauce stains on my shirt front.  Italian sciences are indisputable.   Yet, I can no more take credit for the genius of Michelangelo and Galileo, than I can accept the blame for the degradations of Mussolini and Capone.  To quote that great sailor-philosopher, Popeye, "I yam what I yam."
                It is understandable that immigrants want their places of origin to be recognized and remembered and to keep alive the traditions that made themwho they are.  So let us celebrate being African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Mexican-Americans and all the hyphenated ethnicities that make up our population.
                But at some point don't we have to become full-time American Americans?  We don't live in the United-hyphen-States of America.  We became a nation when the colonies were able to restrain their individualism and work towards the common goal of freedom.
                I remember the first time I saw the Viet Nam Memorial in Washington.  I watched people searching the black marble for a name, scanning the wall with their fingers as if they were braille readers.  Suddenly they would find a name and surrender to their grief, some falling to their knees weeping while their fingers caressed the letters in their loved one's name.  I felt like a voyeur imposing myself into their suffering.  I had to avert my eyes and leave the area.  The Viet Nam Memorial is not divided into sections for service people with hyphenated names representing various national origins.  It is a memorial to more than 50,000 Americans who gave their last full measure.
               When you see the Stars and Stripes flying from a building or being displayed in a parade to honor our country, hold your hand over your heart and be thankful you are living here in freedom, regardless of your background.  Be proud that many of the people who made the sacrifices to insure our freedom share your ethnicity.  Acknowledge them.  Cherish your shared heritage.  Wear a smile.  Look at Old Glory.  Search out that common thread among her stars and stripes.  Grasp it.  Pull it tightly.  And at least for the weekend let's remind ourselves that Americans are noted for being neighborly and extend our neighborhoods until they stretch from sea to shining sea.