The Rockets’ Red Glare

 

When people have asked me, recently, whether or not this was my first Fourth of July, I’ve told them of course it wasn’t. It was my twenty-seventh Fourth of July, it was just the first time I’d seen people making such an almighty fuss over it.

Independence Day is fun. While Thanksgiving is typically American through its sentimentality, with its focus on hearth, home and family (and turkey), the Fourth finds its American-ness in its bombastic, extrovert, in-your-face, up-your-nose and down-your-throat attitude. If Thanksgiving is about motherhood and apple pie, the Fourth of July is about fireworks, hot dogs and beer. And frankly, as is so often the case here, if you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t have joined.

Local celebrations should be taken with a respectably large pinch of salt. If you dig too much into the history of these things, which one is apt to do as an outsider, it unravels spectacularly and you don’t get the best out of the celebration. In Catholic parts of Germany- the West and the South- the beginning of Lent is celebrated with parades, parties and copious amounts of alcohol, very much like Mardi Gras.

I remember seeing pupils, from a school that I worked at, parading through the streets  during Karneval, as it is called in western Germany, as part of their local scout troop and all dressed as penguins.They waved their flippers at us, and we teachers waved back, and then we went to the pub. If one tried to explain this beginning with the story of Jesus having to go into the wilderness for forty days, and continued via an explanation of the ritual habits of medieval European Catholics, you will almost certainly lose the narrative thread between there and the point at which a bunch of ten-to-fourteen-year-olds parade through the centre of Limburg-an-der-Lahn, dressed as penguins .

Similarly, getting hung up on the historical background of Independence Day gets you nowhere much.  Congress voted for the independence of the thirteen colonies on July 2nd, 1776. This point is one which, today, is somewhat moot. Even if not-President-quite-yet John Adams wrote to his wife:

“The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

Whoops. I’m personally devastated for the bloke. If you look at what he thought should happen, he’s absolutely bang on the money, 225 years later. But the only reason we remember this letter now is because he was two days out. You can almost hear Adams’ ghost screaming down the centuries “It was two days, two and a quarter centuries ago, you pedantic bastards!”. Or something.

What IS a slightly entertaining fact, if you are apt to be entertained by such things (in which case, welcome to the Dork Squad; we have t-shirts) is that Adams died on the fourth of July 1826, exactly fifty years (and two days) after Congress declared independence from Great Britain, and exactly fifty years after they approved the Declaration of Independence. Not only that, but his great friend and rival, Thomas Jefferson, spent the same day doing exactly the same thing, i.e. dying. Not only that, but they had been the only two signatories of the Declaration of Independence who later became President of the United States.

But this, while geekily pleasing to know, is useless on the day itself unless you want people to raise their eyebrows at you, and edge slowly away. The celebration of the Fourth of July has very little to do with the reasons to founders broke away from Britain. The day is not spent debating the meaning of liberty, decrying the excesses of absolute monarchy and denouncing taxes found to be unjust. Except possibly for the last one, but it sometimes seems that pretty much all taxation is seen as unjust in America; hardly a day goes by without somebody having a good old denounce.

In America, today, as Adams predicted, it’s a holiday spent the way a Summer holiday should be spent. His prediction was pretty darn accurate. For instance, Cayucos Community Church advertised their “Festival of Freedom, including ‘God Bless America’” for weeks in advance. There are parades held nationwide, one starting at the end of our street. The population of Cayucos goes from 3,000 to 30,000 over that weekend, as visitors come from more parade-deprived areas to get a look at ours here.

Having an opportunity to get the hell out of Dodge before it all went completely mad, we did so. We spent it at the cabin we were married at, by a usually tranquil lake which was packed with boats all trying hard to avoid one another. It was 35°C (95°F) and the chance to swim was a welcome one, even if it meant swimming through the waves created by the wakes of an unusual amount of lake traffic. There was a boat parade on the lake, however, and as you can see, some folks got deeply into the spirit of the thing.

The cabin was dolled up to the nines with flags and banners, and we baked a pretty good berry cake, which was photographed going into the oven, and looking decidedly more patriotic than when it came out, and whose recipe was therefore not included (right). The lake was illuminated by a proverbially huge firework display, whose roars echoed and reverberated (is that a tautology? Possibly. I’m not sure I care.) from the surrounding mountains. The pictures are below; do enjoy. The one thing Adams missed off his list was barbecues. It’s the done thing. His ghost almost certainly approves. We had grilled hot dogs. We’re being a bit more adventurous this weekend with baby back pork ribs prepared overnight with the following dry rub recipe, lifted from Cook’s Illustrated American Classics:

Dry Rub for Barbecue

4 tbsp. sweet paprika
2 tbsp. chilli powder
2 tbsp. ground cumin
2 tbsp. dark brown sugar
2 tbsp. salt
1tbs dried oregano
1tbs granulated sugar
1tbs ground black pepper
1tbs ground white pepper
1-2tsp cayenne pepper

Mix all these together, and store in an airtight container. Rub the mixture into the surface of the meat and allow to marinate for at least one hour before cooking. For more flavour, rub it in the day before, cover the rubbed meat in cling film and put it in the fridge overnight.

July 4th 2011 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

5 American things I love

Sunday is Independence Day. I have reasons to be cheerful that the Thirteen Colonies won the war, and so do you. Here are five of them, plucked at random and in no particular order. Obviously there are more than 5 things to like about America, but this is what I chose to write about today. Oh, and I was wrong, Iain. It turned out to have a recipe in after all. Call me Julie.

 

1.  The First Amendment.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Freedom of the press, of thought, of speech, of conscience and of faith enshrined in law. I am entitled to my opinion and to express it, and so are you. I can pray the way I choose to, and so may you, or choose to not at all. I can associate with whom I want, and for whatever purpose as long as we’re mellow about it.

On a more abstracted level, it boils down to this: the State will not tell you how or what to think. This is the absolute basis for a free society, and was passed in 1791.

 

To contrast-  almost 30 years later, a peaceful demonstration of 60,000 was brutally put down by cavalry at St Peter’s Fields in Manchester. 15 unarmed civilians were killed, and more than 600 wounded.  They had dared to suggest that the city of Manchester should be represented in Parliament, as it had no MPs at the time (compared to Old Sarum, population Nil, which had 2.)

Four members of the Manchester Yeomanry were brought up in court, for having killed people guilty, it seems, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was found that they had acted quite lawfully in dispersing an illegal gathering. Henry Hunt, the radical orator who the 60,000 had turned up to see, got 30 months in Ilchester prison for “sedition”. Not for planning or calling for bloody revolution and heads on pikes, but for asking if Manchester could have 2 MPs, please.

Incidentally, John Ashton, who was one of the civilians murdered because, like Hunt, he had neither the right to assemble nor to speak freely the way an American would have done 28 years previously, was carrying a flag on which was inscribed “Taxation without representation is unjust and tyrannical”. Sound familiar?

 

 

2.  San Francisco

 

I’d quite like to buy San Francisco. A groovier place existeth not. It’s got class. It’s relaxed. It’s a large collection of wonderfully insane people doing whatever they want in a very relaxed way. It gives the impression of always being at the absolute optimum time of the day, no matter what time that is. Time for a really great morning cup of coffee. Time for a walk by the harbour. Time to meet up with people. Time just to chill under this nice big tree. Time to clock off work and go for a beer. Time to dress up and go out.

It is soaked in its own remarkable history. It was built on the strength of the Gold Rush, which turned it from a village to amajor world city in a matter of a few years. The price of one city property went from $16 to $45,000 in three years between 1848 and 1851. San Franciscans are more eccentric even than the English. They have the weather for it. For proof that this has ALWAYS been the case, please go here and here.

  

 

3. Reuben Sandwiches

I'm talkin 'bout enjoyin' a bowl of chicken soup, with a Reuben, and then makin' dirty Reuben love.”

                                                  - Legendary Anchorman Ron Burgundy

Reubens are an American classic. I would find any theory which suggested that this was not a Jewish-American dish hard to believe- salt beef, sauerkraut and caraway all scream Ashkenazi to me. Wherever it comes from, the effect is the same. The senses scream for seconds; the digestive and cardio-vascular systems protest loudly.

1 cup sauerkraut, well drained
1/2 tsp caraway seed
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 cup Thousand Island dressing (or, better yet, Russian Dressing, if available)
12 slices of rye bread
1lb thinly sliced salt beef (good pastrami would almost do at a pinch- this variant is called a Rachel)
6 thick slices of American cheese (Or mild cheddar)
3tbs melted butter
serves 6

-Toss the sauerkraut, caraway and garlic powder together in a bowl. Set it aside.
-Spread the rye bread on one side with the dressing.
-Top 6 of the slices with the beef, sauerkraut and cheese, and then the second slice of bread. Brush with melted butter.
-Dry-fry the sandwiches butter-side down. Butter the other side and flip when browned.
-Continue cooking until the cheese melts and the bread is lightly browned.

4. The Chrysler Building

 

I really want to see this up close. When I was about 12 and getting into Jazz in a big way, I fell in love with Art Deco. Seriously, it’s no wonder they all thought I was gay. But never mind.

It’s one of the most beautiful buildings in the world and won a very bitterly-contested race to build the world’s tallest building after its architect, William van Alen, got permission to put a 53m spire on top of the stainless steel-clad crown. It was assembled in secret within the skyscraper and then hoisted up at the last minute, making the Chrysler Building the first man-made construction over 1000 feet in height, beating the rival 40 Wall Street project, which had been the tallest building in the world for all of a month. It retained the title for a year or so, before the Empire State Building was completed in 1931.

The Chrysler Building represented the end of an era, though. It started construction in 1928, and was completed in May 1930. Between these two dates, Walter P. Chrysler, the automotive giant who financed the building project to provide his children with a legacy was named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year for 1928, only the second time it had ever been awarded. Also, the Wall Street Crash occurred.

Gone were the days when magnates would compete to build skyscrapers. The Jazz Age was mortally wounded, and the days of the Great Depression had arrived. What remained was the Chrysler building, a gleaming steel obelisk commemorating the infallible style and arrogant ambition of the previous decade.

 

5.  Tom Paine

Napoleon said of Thomas Paine that “A statue of gold should be erected to him in every city in the universe.” Tsk, the French, eh?

Paine wrote pamphlets which helped whip up popular support for the American Revolution. Born and brought up in England, he first moved to America in 1774 at the age of 37. He had few original ideas, but he did have a way with words. Tom Paine articulated complex, avante-garde  ideas in a way which struck a chord with the common people. People who can do this are often groundbreaking. Lenin, for example, or Stephen Hawking, or Abraham Lincoln, would fit into this category.  He came out with some crackers.

 
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”, and

“These are the times that try men’s souls.” and

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

His first job was an apprentice corset-maker and then in his teens he enlisted and served as a privateer. Years later he escaped execution during the French Revolution (which he had helped to foment) because his door, which would have shown the chalk mark which indicated one for the guillotine had been opened to let the air circulate, making him the world’s first draught dodger.

After his death, his bones were dug up by the English radical William Cobbett, who took them back to England to give him a triumphal re-burial. But apparently, reburying your political hero is one of those things which keeps slipping your mind, because Cobbett died before he got round to doing it. His heirs lost the bones, and Tom Paine was never seen again.

 

Happy 4th July, everybody!