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While standing in a hot line in full sunlight yesterday in front of the Natural History Museum…

UD was approached by a man in line ahead of her who said Ma’am I’ve got the last of the shade up here and I want to switch places with you so that you can have it. UD gratefully accepted his offer and reflected, as she glanced at his MAGA hat (she’d overheard that he was visiting from Tulsa and was here for the festivities on the Mall), that it’s always crude and stupid to perceive other people in broad ideological terms. Leaving your little house in an affluent lefty bubble in ‘thesda and heading into the sweltering city means encountering the actuality of individuals. “Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath,” said Saul Bellow, and for UD you need the bath because money and technology and group-think make it easy to remove yourself altogether from the human story, and that removal really has to be resisted if you want to go on being human.

Today however UD was firmly within her tribe, putting out more and more beach chairs at the end of her driveway so that her Garrett Park neighbors could watch our little parade (theme this year: Garrett Park is an Arboretum) on yet another sweltering afternoon. By the time Mr UD stood up to read excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, a crowd had gathered to join us as we saluted, a few minutes later, the parade marshal, 93 year old Barbara Shidler, with whom UD‘s mother gardened and landscaped and helped establish the arboretum (scroll down to Mitzi Rapp).

Love of country; love of town. The day inspires.

Margaret Soltan, July 4, 2019 7:14PM
Posted in: snapshots from home

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