Happy Birthday America

Thank you all for reading Wake and Bake. It is a great joy to share with you, my fellow Americans, my love for this country and the people who make America great. Those of us who go to work each day, anonymously and selflessly, share the same dreams. We want a better life for ourselves and those around us. We are willing to work tirelessly to achieve those goals. When I started writing these essays I simply wanted to shine the light on the hard working people, who rise before dawn every day, that bring sweetness, if only for a moment, into our daily lives. They are, like many others, the grout that holds everything together. Let us cherish the unseen and unknown heroes who make our country the greatest nation state in the history of the world.

There is no other place on this planet that has the diversity of the USA. We are not perfect but in the course of our history we have never given up seeking a more perfect union. There is no other place on earth that provides greater opportunity, through hard work and sacrifice, regardless of ethnicity, religion and national origin. This is the place where my father, penniless and oppressed, could rise up and remake himself and his destiny. It is unimaginable that a man, who walked barefoot out of Hitler’s concentration camp, could live to see his children and grandchildren attend prestigious universities and fulfill their own American dreams. He would often say that this miracle could happen “only in America”.

Many of us are quite uncomfortable with present day America. Let me tell you what he would say. Despite our faults and despite our struggles, the USA is far more compassionate and far more equal than we have ever been before. Do we have things to fix? What house doesn’t ! That is the beauty of our experiment. There is a belief that we can make things better as long as that belief is based on mutual respect for our fellow citizens. If we continue to divide our house into blue and red and purple, well as the saying goes, “ a house divided cannot stand”. The words on our coins read E Pluribus Unum, from the Latin, “out of many, one”. The Ben Franklin caption, written in 1754, associated with his famous drawing of a segmented snake, reads Join or Die. Today, we must get back to our garden or the American experiment will become a footnote of history. That snake in the garden has to come together again.

Peace to Everyone… Now dance to James Brown..