Much excitement surrounded this past Independence Day--the 250th. That's a big, round number, so special events, special programs, special displays of patriotism, special everything took place across the land.

In these parts, the celebration, no matter the milestone, fits the locale: spending time with family and friends, attending a parade, going to the lake or river, drinking cheap domestic beer, grilling hot dogs and burgers, and blowing stuff up, all while Toby Keith belts some post-9/11 ballads through the speakers. Hopefully Ray Charles' cover of "America the Beautiful," and if the reader is a bona fide patriot, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." These time-honored methods of merrymaking unfold down dirt roads and along neighborhood streets, all within municipal code, right?

John Adams, the pyromaniac founding father, envisioned it thus: "Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forevermore." That line comes from a letter to his wife, Abigail. Technically, Adams was referring to July 2, the day the Second Continental Congress actually voted for independence. July 4 is the date on the finalized Declaration. Too late to change it now, I suppose.

Adams understood July 4 as the yearly commemoration of the political act of declaring independence. But he also saw it as a way of ritualizing and renewing our civic and social bonds, artificial as the pomp and parade may seem; bonds that frequently come undone in the face of sheer self-interest. But that renewal........

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