America the Beautiful

A Patriotic Fourth of July Post

Greetings from Minnesota! I just spent a fun-filled week near Manchester, Vermont, with my husband’s side of the family, and now I’m here in my hometown visiting friends and family.

The view from the house my mother-in-law rented in Vermont. Thank you, Louise!

I had never been to Vermont before, and I was delighted to discover that it is a wonderful place! We hung out, swam, kayaked, hiked, cooked, ate, shopped, and petted all the goats.¹

Noah with the most extroverted goat in the world. She kept butting all the other goats out of the way so we could pet her.

If you are feeling down about the US lately, I highly recommend visiting a new place and interacting with its people. When we explore our country and talk with our fellow citizens face to face, we can’t help but feel renewed pride in our country and hope for our future.

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Occupatio

In the interests of keeping this post short(er), I’ll resist the temptation to discuss several benefits we Americans enjoy.

I won’t extoll the convenience of combining all our errands in a single Target run.

I won’t note that right turn on red speeds us through intersections safely and swiftly.

I won’t rhapsodize about unlimited free ice water, bestowed generously, not grudgingly, in restaurants.

I won’t sing the praises of American washing machines, which are large enough to handle laundry for more than one person at a time, or of American dryers, which actually dry everything, even the towels (which totally stymie European dryers).

I won’t congratulate us for our history as the land of opportunity, and I won’t cite the example of Abraham Lincoln, whose childhood home was a humble 120-square-foot log cabin, but one generation later his son, Robert, built Hildene, an 8000-square-foot summer home that boasts 8 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms.²

The back of Hildene, with a small part of its splendid garden.

Nope. Instead, I’ll talk about a terrific character trait that nearly all of us Americans share:

We’re Friendly and Generous

For proof that Americans are wonderfully kind and helpful, we need look no further than those heartwarming accounts from overseas guests who have come here for the World Cup. Their enthusiastic appreciation of us lifts our spirits. As just one example, Kansas City welcomed their Dutch visitors with a huge party and, in the words of one visitor, “I’ve never, ever experienced something like this. It was amazing!”

Our international guests are encountering the “real America,” which is neither red and rural nor blue and urban. The real America is wherever we find warm, kind, open-hearted Americans—in other words, it’s everywhere, and all of us.

Our family experienced this generosity in Vermont too. One day we visited North Meadow Farm. You just show up and stroll over to pet the aforementioned goats and cuddle the bunnies. Plus there are shaggy cows, a pig the size of a VW bus (only a slight exaggeration), and an impromptu and informative tour, courtesy of the farmer herself.

Because my niece and two sisters-in-law wanted to learn how to knit, we also checked out a local makers’ center, the Main Street Makery.³ A retired woman started the center to share her love of crafting with young people. You just come in and help yourself to supplies. There are also free workshops and drop-in crafting sessions for kids of all ages. And if you’re not feeling crafty but would like a little pick-me-up, you can choose a cheery painted rock.

Here in Minnesota, I’m getting a kick out of the Minnesota Nice. There’s Diane, my mom’s across-the-street neighbor, who spotted us returning from errands and invited us in for coffee. Or there’s Mike, my mom’s behind-the-house neighbor, who brought over a piece of carrot cake for my mom and, when he saw I was visiting, ran home to get another piece for me. Or the older couple in front of me in the loooooong line at the post office, who entertained a cute but restive little girl and even tied her shoes for her.

Readers, let’s celebrate our neighborliness! Please share a story about a time a fellow American was friendly and generous with you.

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Time for a confession. I had an ulterior motive in writing this post—to praise a specific American virtue that has become salient in recent weeks:

We’re Sensible about Air Conditioning

As luck would have it, the week of our family reunion coincided with the deadly heatwave that has been afflicting Europe. So while my friends in Switzerland suffered through several days of highs in the upper 90s, with no air-conditioning anywhere whatsoever, my husband and I were sitting pretty stateside.⁴

I honestly don’t understand how AC can be controversial. People in Europe have no respite from the deadly heat, because not only homes, but businesses, schools, and hospitals lack AC. (Hospitals! Imagine your surgeon dripping sweat into your open abdominal cavity! Imagine having to sweat through your sheets as you recover in a stifling room!) Europeans are suffering and dying because they reject the blessing of AC, apparently out of sheer cussedness. I agree with Noah Smith that Europe’s resistance to AC is driving it insane.

Before we moved overseas, I assumed that Europe didn’t have AC because everything was old and it would be prohibitively difficult and expensive to retrofit centuries’-old buildings with modern technology. But my sympathies were misplaced. In fact the vast majority of new buildings in Europe are constructed without AC. This included our brand-new house when we lived in Prague. During our time there, a deadly heatwave hit Europe, and it was utterly wretched in that house. We got through it with the simple expedient of going on a road trip in our air-conditioned car. (Not a climate-friendly solution, I grant you.) In our town in Switzerland, a lot of new homes are being built. They sell for millions, and yet they have no AC. It’s madness, I tell you!

Air conditioning is a moral issue. This latest heatwave killed more than 1300 people, most of them old, very young, sick, or poor—in other words, the most vulnerable among us. The elites opposing AC because of climate change are not the champions of the little guy they think they are. They’re punching down.

In fact, European resistance to AC offers some valuable lessons for all of us. To tackle the problems that plague us, be they heatwaves or anything else, we need to

• Update our priors. Until about twenty years ago, Europe didn’t need AC, because it didn’t get hot in the summer. But climate change has come for us more swiftly than expected, and so Europeans are going to have to let go of what worked for them in the past and adapt to the new situation.

• Examine our prejudices. Some Europeans are hostile to AC because they associate it with Americans, whom they view as selfish and infantile. Difficult as it might be, though, they would be better off acknowledging that Americans are correct on this issue, and that AC is necessary for everyone’s health, happiness, and prosperity.

• Solve rather than suffer. Many of us seem to unconsciously believe that if we just suffer and sacrifice enough, we will demonstrate to God or the universe that we’re taking a problem seriously, and that somehow our suffering will be rewarded. Climate change is a terrible threat, but refusing to adopt AC will not fix it. We need effective action, not pointless sacrifice.

We Americans sometimes struggle to update our priors too (for example, after vaccines were available and Covid had mutated to the milder Omicron variant, many states still kept schools closed). We, too, make poor decisions because of prejudice (for example, many people are opposed to universal healthcare because they fear “socialized medicine”). We, too, have been known to wallow in misery rather than attempting to solve our problems (for example, by scrolling online and getting depressed and angry instead of taking action in the real world).

The conversation about AC offers all of us the opportunity to ask ourselves, What ideas and beliefs do I hold that are no longer relevant? What strategies are working for other people, and might they work for us too? And what can we do, on our own and together, to make our country a better place?

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How about you, readers? What is your favorite thing about America or Americans? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The Tidbit

You know what else I love about America? Sweet corn straight from the cob! (Europeans don’t eat corn; they think of it as animal feed. The more fools they!)

This recipe was inspired by a video I saw at the New York Times.⁵ It serves six as a side dish or four as a main dish. You can easily double the recipe, and if it’s too hot to stand over the stove during the day, you can make it the night before.

Refreshing summer salad with sweet corn and chickpeas

Ingredients

For the salad:

2T vegetable oil

1 shallot, finely minced

1 small clove garlic, finely minced with 1/2tsp salt to make a paste

1 jalapeño pepper, finely minced (remove veins and seeds if you prefer less heat)

salt to taste

kernels from two corn cobs (about 2c; you can also use frozen or canned corn, but it won’t be as good)

1 15oz can chickpeas, rinsed and drained

1/2tsp cumin

1/4tsp smoked paprika

freshly-ground black pepper to taste

about 3oz fresh arugula, stemmed (I use about half of a large package, like this one)

For the dressing:

1/2c crème fraîche

zest and juice from one lime

1/2tsp salt

To finish:

cilantro leaves, to taste

1 lime, cut into wedges

Method

1. In a large frying pan, heat the oil and sauté the shallot, sprinkling salt over it to help it along. Add the jalapeño, garlic, and corn, and cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently.

2. Meanwhile, mix up the dressing in a small bowl.

3. When the corn is beginning to caramelize, add in the chickpeas, spices, and a few grinds of pepper. Cook to heat through.

4. Turn off the heat, and toss the corn mixture with the arugula. You want the arugula to just wilt a bit.

5. Transfer the salad to a large bowl and mix in the dressing. Taste to check the seasonings and add more if necessary. Chill at least an hour.

6. Just before serving, top the salad with cilantro leaves (if you like cilantro, that is), and serve with wedges of lime.

1. One of the goats is named McLovin. Cracks me up!

2. Gee, I wonder what Robert’s favorite number was?

3. The Main Street Makery doesn’t have a website, but it’s in Peru, Vermont, right across the street from the JJ Hapgood General Store & Eatery. Stop by if you’re ever in town!

4. Poor Matt had to return to Switzerland before the heatwave had ended. He said that one day of stifling, inescapable heat was plenty.

5. I am too cheap to pay for the Cooking subscription, but I do like to watch the free videos, which can suggest ideas for our own creations.