On the Fourth of July, I turned on the cable TV news and learned that North Korea is taking its newest maddening steps to frighten every person on the planet. So I stepped outside, where my little piece of the planet exists, and found everybody having a wonderful time in the summer sunshine.
When I picked up my newspaper, I saw that President Donald Trump was heading off to a summit with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who upset America’s last election in an act that threatens the very heart of democracy.
So I walked a couple of blocks from my house and found hundreds of neighbors gathering by a playground where music played, and children romped about, and a young woman on stilts marched about dressed like Lady Liberty.
When I turned on my radio, I heard a talk-show host bemoaning the latest presidential message, a trashy wrestling video that turned out to have rancid anti-Semitic origins, not that this seemed to bother Donald Trump.
So I looked at the faces of my neighbors, dark skin and light, gentile and Jew and Muslim, too, as we all strode happily through the streets in Happy Birthday tribute to America.
We have a choice here. We can frighten ourselves to death over the dangerous people in positions of power. Or we can step outside our front doors and bask in the clear and obvious hunger that we have to find common ground with each other, and to celebrate the values that bind us.
I live in Mount Washington, where we have such parades year after year. It looked like maybe 600 people showed up this year, but that’s just a guess. All I know is, we filled up the green and leafy streets, and those who didn’t march sat on their front lawns and cheered us as we walked by.
And there were Boy Scouts among us (including one lad with green hair. Are the scouts giving merit badges these days for hair color?) And one young lady in spangles tossed big hoops into the air, and a couple of guys played bagpipes (amazing how moving “God Bless America” sounds on the pipes), and lots of people had their dogs tootling along.
There were lots of parades like this in neighborhoods all over the Baltimore area, and all over America. And their instincts were the same as my neighborhood’s.
We celebrate not only America, but each other. We can turn on the cable news, or open our newspaper, and let our anxieties consume us.
Or we can walk with our neighbors and find sweet comfort in all of the things that bind us, and strengthen us.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, most recently “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age” (Johns Hopkins University Press).
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