Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: The Declaration of Independence had to be a cohousing

[Kathryn McCamant (kmccamant]

I think this is a great tradition Eris. 

On Independence Day, all Americans should read the Declaration of Independence 
aloud with our neighbors, and then toast to our interdependence (not a 
mis-spelling) as well!


Katie 
-- 
Kathryn McCamant, President
CoHousing Solutions

241B Commercial Street 

Nevada City, CA 95959

T.530.478.1970  C.916.798.4755

www.cohousing-solutions.com
 




On 7/5/17, 12:17 PM, "Cohousing-L on behalf of Eris Weaver" 
<cohousing-l-bounces+kmccamant=cohousing-solutions.com [at] cohousing.org on 
behalf of eris [at] erisweaver.info> wrote:

    
    Sharon Villines wrote:
    > Can you say more about this?
    
    in response to my post:
    
    >> ...where our Independence Day celebration always includes a dramatic 
    >> reading
    >> of the Declaration of Independence!
    
    Eris speaking again:
    
    I am actually the instigator (and reciter!) of this tradition. (I also 
    recite the preamble to the Constitution upon occasion.)
    
    It always annoys me that everyone refers to the holiday as Fourth of 
    July. We are not celebrating a date on the calendar, we are celebrate 
    Independence Day, our declaration of independence from Britain. Let's 
    celebrate what we're celebrating!
    
    I also have personal/family history interwined with this. My mother's 
    family escaped to the US when their country (Lithuania) was taken over 
    by the USSR at the end of WWII. (They spent five years in Germany as 
    Displaced Persons...a fancy term for refugees.) And Lithuania was the 
    first of the Soviet republics to declare their independence in the early 
    1990s, leading up to the dissolution of the USSR. So I grew up 
    surrounded by the patriotism of those who have lived under a very 
    different regime.
    
    I love our country and I love these documents...with all their human 
    flaws. They contain within them the possibility for change & improvement 
    and lordy have we seen change & improvement! (Maybe not as much as fast 
    as some of us want...but
    let me tell you, as a teenage dyke who feared my life would be one of 
    loneliness, violence & discrimination who is now MARRIED to another 
    woman, that is one hell of a lot of change in one lifetime! My 
    grandmother remembered when women couldn't vote. We had slavery 150 
    years ago, recently we had an African American president. I could go on 
    but I won't.)
    
    We can't, we mustn't, allow those who think "patriotism" means waving a 
    flag and shouting "America First!" and want to go back to some mythical 
    "real" America where women & blacks & queers knew their place, own that 
    word! Patriotism to me means doing the work to keep improving, to keep 
    connecting, to keep striving toward that dream.
    
    Which, I guess, is also what cohousing is about too.
    
    eris
    
    
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