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Despite the occasional email entreaties from obviously misguided publicists, I don't often write on questions of baby gear and products for kids (especially as there are others who do it so much better that I ever could). I was, however, charmed by this sighting of a perambulator in this photo I found lying around my shop. (The photo is undated, though note the nose of an automobile peeking out from behind the wagon in the background.) The photo is captioned on the verso in a contemporary hand, "Pete, Dolly, and Marie at the Sheep Camp on Willow Creek."
I can't tell from this shot whether the baby buggy has been modified or not to suit the needs of the family's circumstances (perhaps they have added rubber bumpers?) but I found it sweet and even pastoral that even amid the rough circumstances of sheep camp somebody would find the time to load little Dolly into the pram and wheel her down to the meadow so she could watch her daddy ply his Burdizzo emasculatome among the frolicsome lambs.
"So, dude -- what you up to this weekend?"
"I dunno, thought we might hang out at Hannah's place or head over to Emily's and have a few juice boxes, catch a couple of Diego videos, maybe head out later and pull some puppy's ears or tails or something."
"Dude. That sounds pretty frickin' cool. Count me in."
(Image taken from my kid's latest safety-related coloring book, the invitingly entitled Fido: Friend or Foe?)
I catch a fair amount of grief for proclaiming the Fourth of July to be my favorite holiday. But hey! I'm all down with Charles Beard and that happily querulous thread of dissent running from Lysander Spooner and Josiah Warren (with perhaps Elias Hicks thrown in for good measure) down to today and those folks on Saturdays who pass out the fliers in front of the co-op. Heck, we can even identify with John F.W. Ware, who angrily proclaimed at the Boston celebration in 1873,
The republic is lapsed into an oligarchy. We keep its name, its form, its phrases; but there is no tyranny on God's earth so galling, so degrading, so fraught with mischief as the tyranny that the moral cowardice of the American people has placed in the hands of the American public man.
Even as early as 1810, some folks like Alexander Townsend were convinced things had pretty much gone to hell:
If our national career will admit one day of rest; if we are not in the descent of a precipice so steep that we dare not look back; if it be yet in our power to make even a momentary stand, the contemplation of the feelings, manners, and principles, that led the fathers to independence, may possibly arrest the sons in their progress to degradation.
And yet I am strangely optimistic. Huzzah for decentralized local political agency! Huzzah for the kindness of neighbors! Such are the twined notes that compose our clarion call!
Whew. I've clearly been reading too much of my own inventory. But as I was explaining to my skeptical German friends this morning, I am celebrating the proclaimed ideals of the holiday rather than my nation's manifest errors. In some fundamental way I'm probably celebrating the history of the celebration itself. And what better way to celebrate in a public manner than to take part in a parade? (A parade through a somewhat functioning downtown, no less.)
So the kid decked out her scooter with streamers and stickers and her own healthy dose of celebratory sentiment. Wife B. added an appropriate sign. We marched with the kid's preschool contingent and met up with our German friends who strolled with us along the parade route. We were even not too far behind our admirable blogging county clerk. And after the parade we went out for lunch with our friends and had Korean barbecue. What says America better than kimchee ramen soup?
