The Patriot’s Dilemma

  

Statue of Liberty Bicentennial 1976

A friend of mine wrote to me, “I will not be celebrating the Fourth as a patriot. This is sad, and a departure from past years. I feel little regard for what my country has become—a country I once marched off to fight for.”

 

He enlisted in the Marines during the Vietnam War and became a second lieutenant. He wasn't driven by politics. Fresh out of college, he believed serving his country was simply the right thing to do.

 

Fate intervened in my own life. By the time I graduated, I was married and my draft status was changed to 3A; the Vietnam War was still in its infancy.  I opposed the war, but I never sought ways to avoid military service. Timing made the decision for me.

 

Even so, I always thought of myself as patriotic. It was never difficult to separate disagreements with one administration from my affection for the country itself. Governments came and went. America endured and I was proud to be an American, warts and all.

 

That feeling has changed.

 

I'm told I shouldn't let the current administration diminish my patriotism or prevent me from celebrating America's 250th birthday. I understand the sentiment. But to me, this celebration no longer feels like the broad, nonpartisan commemoration envisioned when Congress established America250. Instead, it has become something more closely identified with one political figure and one political movement, the same movement that fomented the events of Jan. 6, 2021  Fairly or unfairly, that has made it difficult for me to participate with the same enthusiasm I once felt.

 

I've done the math. I've been alive for one-third of our nation's history.

 

That's a long time to watch America struggle toward the lofty ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and later protected by the Bill of Rights. Progress was never smooth. We stumbled, sometimes badly. McCarthyism stained our politics. Vietnam and Civil Rights divided the country. Watergate shook confidence in government. Yet despite those setbacks, I always believed the overall direction was forward—that each generation expanded liberty a little further than the last.

 

Today, for the first time in my lifetime, I find myself wondering whether that long arc has begun to bend in the opposite direction.

 

Perhaps that explains why I find myself thinking nostalgically about the Bicentennial in 1976. Although we were already living in Connecticut, my thoughts go to New York City and the magnificent Operation Sail. The country was still recovering from Vietnam and Watergate. Gerald Ford occupied the White House. Confidence in government had been badly damaged.

 

Yet I never questioned my patriotism.  And I was thrilled by Operation Sail.

 

I have written before about that remarkable celebration and posted photographs (there are others atthe link not pictured here) that I discovered years later, photographs perhaps taken by my father, who was a professional photographer.

USCGC Eagle and the USS FORRESTAL Operation Sail

 

Among them is this image of the USS Forrestal. Scarred by the tragic flight deck fire the Vietnam War, she nevertheless sailed proudly into New York Harbor for the Tall Ships celebration. Somehow she seemed to embody the country itself but still moving forward.

 

July 4 during those Connecticut years we were usually on our boat with our sons, overlooking the fireworks along the Connecticut shoreline. On very clear nights we could also see them in the distance across the Long Island Sound along the Long Island shore.  Sometimes we’d leave the boat at our marina and take a blanket to the beach for a BBQ with friends and to dreamily watch the fireworks together.   But it was never just about the fireworks. We understood what that day represented.

 

By 2014, my Fourth of July reflections had become more cautionary. President Obama was in office, partisan divisions were deepening, and I worried about growing voter apathy before the midterm elections. Yet I still ended that essay with some optimism:

 

 "The story of our forefathers' struggle to conceive a new nation out of many points of view is what July 4th must be remembered for the next time we, the citizens, go to the polls to vote. E Pluribus Unum! Unless we can find common ground so our legislature works, and we can stop the march toward divisiveness and corporatocracy, July 4th will be nothing more than a fireworks show for the general amusement of a non-enlightened population."

 

Reading those words today, I realize my concerns have deepened rather than disappeared. I worry about the independence of our institutions. I worry about the integrity of future elections. Most of all, I worry that the far right increasingly treats political opponents as mortal enemies. And today that movement enjoys unprecedented power within the federal government.

 

Perhaps that is why this Fourth of July will be quieter for me than most.

 

I won't be attending fireworks or patriotic celebrations beyond spending time with friends. Instead, I'll be thinking about the remarkable experiment begun 250 years ago by men who believed that free people could govern themselves—not perfectly, but honestly, under laws rather than personalities.

 

To me, patriotism has never meant cheering for whoever occupies the White House. It means remaining faithful to the ideals that transcend any president: constitutional government, the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power, and the conviction that our democracy is always worth defending—even from enemies within.

 

So today and tomorrow I will celebrate those ideals. If patriotism means remaining faithful to those ideals even when your heart is heavy, then the friend with whom I began this essay is, to me, a true patriot.

 

From the ABC Islands to the Bering Strait

 

HMS Resolution

A few weeks ago we took a family cruise to the “ABC Islands” — Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao — places we’ve been before. In my reflective reading world, I also “went” as far as the Bering Strait on board HMS Resolution in Hampton Sides’ The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook. One of my personal objectives on the trip was to read that book, which had been hibernating on my Kindle since it was published to rave reviews. It is an unusual nonfiction choice for me, but I downloaded it particularly for a cruise. After all, I’ve been a boater all my life, and what better place to read such a work than while underway on a ship? More on the book later.

 

A Caribbean cruise is the one opportunity each year for our sons and their spouses to escape the frigid Northeast — one in NYC and the other in Boston — and for us to meet up with them and let the crew of a cruise ship (in this case, the Celebrity Silhouette) do the piloting, the housekeeping, and the cuisine. Celebrity does a reasonably good job, although we have noted over the years the gradual degradation of the overall experience, as most cruise lines have abandoned refinement for the interests of the masses. If it were not for the fact that Celebrity still maintains the Solarium — quiet, tasteful, with its own little health restaurant for lunch — I think our days with them would be over.

 

As we have been to the ABCs before and done the obligatory tourist bit, and knowing that days in port mean a fairly empty and very enjoyable ship, we did not intend to get off at any of the ports. By Curaçao, however, I was ready for a long walk, so I revisited the Queen Emma Bridge, a wooden pontoon bridge that pivots for marine traffic, connecting neighborhoods in the capital city of Willemstad. I remember when Ann and I last walked on that bridge some 15 years ago, after it was refurbished. I love its floating structure and the beauty of the waters and of Willemstad. Some views of the famed bridge from different perspectives.......

 

 

I made the mistake of promising my family that I would learn to play Canasta on board, along with Jonathan and Tracie, from the master Canasta purveyor — my wife Ann — who, if not an expert, is close and a damn good teacher. My family knows my aversion to games in general. I figure that as the hourglass runs out, it becomes even more imperative to squeeze in everything I want to do — which for me is mostly reading, writing, and music. “Oh,” they protested, “can’t you make an exception to play as a family?” I relented.

 

Because I was Ann’s partner, we were “winners,” and although I made a show of pretending to understand the basics, I had a devil of a time deciphering this game. In Canasta, you aren’t allowed to start playing your cards — from two decks, so good luck remembering what’s been played — until you have something called a “meld” that reaches a seemingly random number which changes every round. Watch out for the Threes, for reasons still unknown to me. You need to build these melds, but if you use a Wild Card (the Deuces or the Jokers), your pile becomes “dirty,” whatever the heck that means. I kept getting Aces. Good, right? But I’m told you want to discard Aces at a certain point. What point? I even had to consult AI to recollect. Now is this clear enough?...

 

Discarding Aces in Canasta is primarily done to avoid a severe 1,500-point penalty for holding more than two Aces at the end of a round. It is a strategic move to clear penalty cards, signal to your partner that you are holding a pair of Aces, or to prevent opponents from completing a valuable Natural Aces Canasta.

 

I never really got past this Ace Thing. And to make it even more “fun,” just when you think you’re winning, someone “freezes the deck.” I think this has something to do with Threes, but I’m too lazy now to check it out.

 

Still, I went along for the ride and hope they recognize I was being a good sport. It is certainly not fair for me to poke fun at the game, as I didn’t even get out of first grade in my understanding. But I prefer to spend my time elsewhere. If I must play a table game, I prefer chess — not because I am very good, but because I understand it and, unlike most board games, it is far less subject to the vagaries of chance.

 

Back to the cruise. Most of the activity on board is centered on eating, so securing a set table for six at dinner seemed a priority. Consequently we had a family dinner every night at our leisure during the eight days, ranging from very good food to so-so. We sometimes connected for other meals, but everyone largely did their own thing. We went to one show, the only one that interested Ann and me, a Broadway revue, which was very professional, certainly up to the standards of any regional production if not Broadway itself. 

 

For exercise, the kids did the gym. I walked outside on the track, although it was blowing like hell most days. That windy weather culminated right before returning to Ft. Lauderdale in a monster cold front and unseasonably cold weather when we arrived.

 

Parting is such sorrow — they off to catch flights back to the Northeast, and we back to our home in Florida, which was freezing the next several days. Florida homes are not prepared for that kind of cold, and our reverse cycle ran nearly nonstop. We are doing this again over next Christmas and New Year’s, eleven days to more interesting destinations in the southern Caribbean and on a newer ship, but neither the ship nor the destinations are the point. It’s being together, and we are grateful that our family enjoys doing this.

 

While underway, I keep the navigation channel on in our room. There isn’t much detailed information there, but heading and nautical miles traveled interest me. I’ve toured the bridges of these big ships, and the control and navigation equipment they have — as well as the redundancies built in — are impressive.

 

Most private yachts today have miniature versions: joysticks as the helm, GPS, radar, depth finders all synced, forward looking depth finders, bow and stern thrusters, even stabilizers and water makers on some. When we started boating more seriously in the 1980s, we had a compass and an early version of LORAN (radio-controlled long-range navigation), and that was about it — and, oh yes, my wife Ann on the bow ringing a bell in thick fog to announce our presence to other boats. For years before GPS, we traveled the Long Island Sound and the Block Island Sound by my charting from buoy to buoy, dead reckoning, and following our compass while noting speed and time elapsed when visibility was impaired. From 1984, me and my compass and not much more:

 

Which finally leads me back to The Wide Wide Sea. I was able to finish it after the cruise. I kept thinking that my early days in boating were, in a way, not entirely different from those of 18th-century mariners with compass bearings and dead reckoning being our main tools, though on a much smaller scale and rarely out of sight of land in good weather. This book chronicles James Cook’s third and final voyage. The enormity of it puts my nautical experiences into diminished perspective.

 

Nowadays, on large cruise ships, we take so much of what goes into making the voyage for granted. We covered almost 3,000 statute miles on our recent ABC cruise. Cook’s ships covered about 40,000 miles over those four years of his third voyage, creating nautical charts where none had existed.

 

Map of Cook's Third Voyage

HMS Resolution and its companion ship, HMS Discovery, were captained by James Cook and Charles Clerke respectively. Neither captain would return, Cook killed on the Big Island of Hawaii and Clerke dying of consumption off the coast of Russia. Discovery was finally brought back by the then-young William Bligh, later of HMS Bounty fame.

 

The third voyage focused on finding the Northwest Passage, sailing from England via the Cape of Good Hope to the Pacific. It included his return to Tahiti, Tasmania, and New Zealand, and eventually the discovery of the Hawaiian Islands. The Admiralty issued his orders under a guise of secrecy at the very moment the American Revolution was breaking out.

 

Mai by Joshua Reynolds

On the prior voyage, he had brought back a Pacific Islander, Omai (also known as Mai), who was feted by the English during his stay. The public believed the main goal of the third voyage was to return Omai to his homeland. The British did not want Spain or Russia to know the true purpose: to discover the fabled Northwest Passage and claim more territory.

 

Captain James Cook

Cook was true to his mission. Imagine him navigating the waters off Alaska, reaching a dead end in the Gulf of Alaska, weaving through the Aleutian Islands, through the Bering Strait and into the Arctic Ocean, only to be greeted by a wall of ice. He had to turn back, thinking he was too late in the season — better to try again he thought the following year. Returning to warmer Pacific waters, he charted newly encountered islands, including the Hawaiian chain, with remarkable accuracy. He was as much an ethnographer as a navigator and discoverer. He generally commanded the respect of the peoples he encountered (and many Hawaiians frequently identified him as their god, Lono), as well as his crew. It was his misreading of the natives at Kealakekua Bay on the Kona coast that finally cost him his life. Ironically, he had sensed they had grown weary of his ships’ presence, and Resolution and Discovery left — only to turn back when the mainmast of Resolution was found to be rotten. The ship’s carpenters needed wood for repairs. Had the mast been sound, perhaps Cook would not have met his untimely and, simply put, gruesome death.

 

One of the things that stood out in Hampton Sides’ narrative is that each ship functioned like a self-sufficient village — with carpenters, sailmakers, surgeons, naturalists, and even a small armed marine force. What also struck me was the navigation technology that made such voyages possible, particularly the recently perfected Larcum Kendall K1 chronometer, which allowed accurate determination of longitude. That was the missing link. The sextant had long been used to determine latitude by measuring celestial angles. Together, these tools — along with compass bearings and speed logs — gave Cook the ability to map vast stretches of the Pacific with astonishing precision.

 

Larcum Kendall K1 chronometer

The book is one of those rare nonfiction works that reads like a gripping novel, both a sea story and a story of island peoples, of cultural clash and of Cook’s unusual ability to bridge those gaps, except in that final, perhaps fateful, lapse in judgment. On my boats and numerous cruises, some across the Atlantic and one across the Pacific, I have probably logged as many miles at sea as Cook did, but possessing only an infinitesimal fraction of his knowledge and, I daresay, courage. It is a remarkable tale, even for a landlubber, and Hampton Sides makes you feel as if you are aboard, enduring the vicissitudes of long voyages, from equatorial heat to the bone-chilling Bering Strait, facing the dangers of the unknown and the exhilaration of discovery, trading with different cultures, and yes, confronting the complicated and often tragic consequences of contact, including the spread of Old World diseases Cook tried, imperfectly, to contain.

 

The Wide Wide Sea is fascinating and compelling reading. I will bring a renewed awareness and respect for those pioneer mariners, and for those who design and pilot today’s ships, on our next family cruise.