On this, our country’s Independence Day, let me tell you a story about America.
Several years ago, my long-lost brother Brad got back in touch with me. Technically, my stepbrother, because he was the child of my Dad’s second wife, but everyone in my family is only half-sibling to each other anyway, so we don’t pick at the technicalities. We had online correspondence for a while and then one year he offered to pay for a vacation for me to see him back where he lives on the East Coast. This was shortly after my Mom died, and I needed something to clear my head, so I said yes. Besides, as it turned out, after Dad and his wife separated, Brad wound up moving to a small town in Maryland not too far removed from where my Dad’s sister and brother (my aunt and uncle) live. How Brad ended up there is a rather odd and involved tale in itself, and unfortunately I can’t remember most of it. But he didn’t even know that Dad’s other relatives were nearby, and this also served as a means for us to meet them, since I hadn’t seen my aunt and uncle in years either.
What does this have to do with America? Well, this part of America is right outside Washington DC, and not too much drive from the Gettysburg battlefields. So in addition to Brad and I meeting my aunt and uncle (and their spouses) we toured the sites. Brad took me to Gettysburg. My Aunt Pat and her husband Joe took me to Arlington National Cemetery. And Brad and I met my Uncle Mark in Washington, after doing a short tour of the Smithsonian.
The last time I was in Washington was as a kid, maybe before high school, when Pat and Joe took me to the Smithsonian then. And I remember seeing the giant flag that was flying over Fort McHenry, during the War of 1812 battle that inspired the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When I was a kid, the flag was displayed vertically, well lit, in such a way as to convey its size and importance. But as it turned out, being exposed to light that way damaged the fabric of what was already a very old piece. When I went to the modern flag exhibit, that giant wall display wasn’t there anymore. There was a set of dark, walk-through corridors showing the history of the Fort McHenry flag, its public displays and the attempts at restoration. And in the middle of the exhibit, one of these darkened corridors had an angled display of the flag remains they were trying to preserve, under ultraviolet light. And that light made the white of the stripes and stars look more twilight purple, and the field of blue look more night black.
Then one of the last things we did before I had to go home was when Pat and Joe took me back to Washington to see the National Archives, where the originals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are kept. I’d remembered seeing those too. And when I was younger, those were obviously fragile copies, but they were still legible. But a similar concern with light and deterioration has caused the government to move the documents to a new building, and when I made the tour this time, the room was in a normal, but very dim, light, and it was all I could do to read anything on the documents.
And part of me thought, if it’s like this now, how long is it going to be before these artifacts are so fragile that they have to be taken away from public display? And will that be enough to save them?
It was a sobering experience. I can actually say that I got to see the foundations of my country’s democracy fade away before my very eyes.