Do they celebrate 4th of July in England?

Answer: No

Yesterday I read the news that the House had passed the Big Ugly Bill and I felt some kind of way about that. I woke up this morning — 4 July — and felt such a weight on my heart. In a way it was good to be in Merry Old England because it’s just another day. The “land of the free” seems a mockery today, so I appreciated being spared the public spectacle.

On the one hand, nobody celebrates wars they lost. Our 13 rebel colonies were the first to be lost to Britain, though not the last. Yet the stain of imperialism lingers in these imperial powers. When we were in France we stayed in a posh Airbnb, which had a series of prints telling the story of Robinson Crusoe, including this one:

Just in case people needed reminding who was in charge, who needed to be “civilized.”

On the other hand, maybe we should appreciate how the ups and downs of life make this moment. Molly Rose Kaufman and I also saw Notre Dame repaired after the terrible fire. Part of the repair required oak from trees three feet wide and sixty feet tall. Our teacher Michel Cantal-Dupart recounted that 400 years ago a minister gave oak seedlings to people around the country — the trees harvested to repair Notre Dame might not have been those trees, but it is helpful to consider that something planted a long time ago is the answer to the problems of today.

Molly Rose and I took the train to Merry England on July 2 and hence we’re here for the 4th. At Hall’s Bookstore in Royal Tunbridge Wells I found a volume of poems by C. Day Lewis, which had the lines:

We are growing too like trees To give the rising wind a voice: Eagles shall build upon our verse, Our winged seeds are tomorrow’s sowing.