I recently celebrated a birthday. There comes a time when the novelty of circling the sun for another year loses its mystique. This should have been a “big” one, but it wasn’t. I look the same. I feel the same. I can’t pretend to be young, or even “youngish”. My face has earned its lines and my middle its paunch. My last “big” birthday was big. It was the only one since I turned eighteen or twenty-one that made me think about my life and its direction. I eventually got over it and kept on doing whatever it is that I do.
The United States just celebrated a big one. It feels like it should have been bigger. Maybe we are old enough as a country that these don’t hit the same anymore. There aren’t twenty countries in the world older than the United States. Cultures sure, but with the end of colonialism (you are welcome, we got that started), world wars, the collapse of communism, etc., countries are rarely as old as the good ole’ U. S. of A.
The World Cup, an event that we here ignore unless we can’t, has recently reminded the U.S. that we are a pretty special place. German soccer fans and Scottish professional drinkers have highlighted our openness, cheerfulness, and helpfulness. We forget sometimes that we are really all that and a bag of chips. (“Soccer” is an English term that we adopted and they subsequent forgot. They tease us about it. They also used to tease us about universal healthcare. Something about the NHS has quieted that discussion.)
(Nothing says “Happy Fourth” like parading a British tank that we seized during the Battle of Yorktown, probably.)
The 250th should have been bigger. That is probably due to the negative polarization in our politics, but we have always had division in large measure. We fought the first modern war against ourselves. The press of the 18th and 19th centuries was brutal, more “fake” than “news.” The Fourth of July is one day when we should put such differences aside and just bask in the Freedom. And outside of university faculties and the protest subculture, we largely do. The poison of Howard Zinn and the “America is bad, actually” crowd has not spread to the heartland. Most Americans unironically love their county.
I won’t remember this one like the Bicentennial. That year everything was red, white, and blue. Every product sold in commerce had a Bicentennial edition, every product. We were just a year past the fall of Saigon and another past Watergate. We had a president that no one elected. And we still had a blowout birthday party: tall ships, the Bob Hope special, huge crowds in Philadelphia and Washington. This year the crowds were “manageable”. We argued over algae in the Reflecting Pool like it mattered.
We should reflect on our strengths, the ones shown to us by our World Cup guests, our strengths as a people, but also as a country. We did not have to build any large stadiums to host the World Cup. We have large stadiums in every state, and most states have several. Our infrastructure, the thing that we complain about when we compare ourselves to other places with their shiny new bridges and high-speed rail, is something that we have in abundance. We are blessed by geography and culture. We are the most committed capitalists in the world. We waste more than most countries produce. We are ungovernable, but in a mostly good way. We should be grateful for our blessings.
Speaking of abundance, I have bought six watches so far this year. That number seems high given my waning interest in the whole watch collecting enterprise. We will see how the year goes. I am selling a few, consolidating as one does. Many of the watches that I am selling, or plan to sell, are some of my most recent purchases. I am in a “meh” phase. Very little excites me in either new or vintage. I have largely owned all that I could have ever wanted to. I need to remember to be grateful for the wealth that an overfull watchbox represents.
I have fewer watches with my watchmaker and fewer in the queue to go. I may just move a few on as non-working. I have been saving watches for years, like foster kittens, and my time in having them fixed up for the next person may be coming to an end. I have been watching quite a few furniture restoration videos recently. I want to restore a dresser that has served four generations in my family. It is at least a hundred years old and probably has been painted several times. I now feel confident that I can address the problems with the laminate on the sides. I have stored it for a decade now. Time to get to work, assuming that I have an abundance of time.
(Waltham is the most important watch company in the history of watches…like Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, or Henry Ford without the antisemitism. They were the first modern watch manufacturer. And they were American.)
The Escapement Room 