July 4, 2021

This 4th of July, in the slice of America that I saw, We The People got back to basics. Early in the morning from southeastern Louisiana, banjo player Don Vappie read the Declaration of Independence aloud during his Coffee on the Porch hang. WWOZ in New Orleans laced the Declaration of Independence and Constitution throughout a morning radio show. At least one church here in Brooklyn sang the national anthem. Joey Chestnut ate 76 hotdogs at the Coney Island hot dog eating contest, in an apparent tribute to 1776. The Yankees and the Mets played baseball in the Bronx and split. Fireworks lit up the New York sky. Someone, somewhere, was most certainly eating apple pie. But it was the reading of the Declaration of Independence, and the fact that people talked about it, about wanting to do better to make the aspirations reality, that set the tone for the day and, hopefully, for the rest of this challenging year.