Today is July 4, Independence Day. It’s a day that brings back many memories for me.
I remember so many July 4 afternoons in McIntire Park in my home town of Charlottesville, Virginia. It was the focal point of the town for many festivals, carnivals, and celebrations, but no day of the year brought more people to the park than Independence Day. Sometimes there’d be a small carnival, but just as often there’d just be a few hot dog vendors and a lawn covered with people. There were usually some eye-openers … certain years, the US Army’s “Golden Knights” parachute team would jump over the park. One year, one of their parachutes failed to open.
As a kid, the highlight of Independence Day had nothing to do with independence, or any other concept other than having a place to run wild, a place where most of my friends were bound to show up and we’d have a great afternoon of freedom, capped off by a terrific fireworks display.
Today it’s a bit different. I live in a major city rather than in a small town, so there’s no one focal point where people gather to celebrate the 4th. At the numerous places where there are fireworks displays, the crowds grow into the tens of thousands. It’s still a fun day to celebrate, but I know a lot more about why we’re celebrating now. We’re celebrating the birth of America. What better way is there to do that than by eating high-fat, unhealthy foods and setting off explosives over our heads?
The 4th is usually made even more interesting by the fact that our child, Alexis, cannot stand fireworks. She goes into a complete and utter panic, and runs for the nearest cover. This was amusing when she was 6 years old, but it’s a bit puzzling at 15. So, we always have to find some sort of alternative activity for her.
This year, I think we’re going to Stone Mountain, a huge exposed mass of granite just East of Atlanta. There’s a huge park there … one that has become far too commercialized since its management was turned over to a private firm. Still, they have one of the most spectacular laser and fireworks shows in the area, and the park (if you can avoid the dippin’dots vendors and the DUKW rides and the riverboat and the steam train and the waterslides, etc.) is still a beautiful, relaxing place to be. We’re trying to arrange to bring a friend or two.
It’s a long weekend for me, since Independence Day is one of those holidays we celebrate by taking a day off from work on the following Monday. So, there’ll be plenty of time tomorrow for Yvette to master Scotch Eggs, a food brought to my attention by one Henry the Thirst. I’ve printed out the recipe and am getting hungrier each time I read it. It’s interesting that the British consider them more of a picnic food than a breakfast food … in this country, anything that involves eggs and sausage generally is a breakfast food by default!
A short topic for today is something I call linguistic arrogance. I wrote an essay about it years ago, but it just came to mind again and I thought I’d share.
Linguistic arrogance is the only way I can explain certain things we do to the names of people and places in our English language. There are a few glaring examples. The most obvious is the person who (theoretically) discovered America. This man, captain of a three-ship fleet, was Spanish, and his name was Cristobal Colon. (There’s an accent over that last “o”, but I forget how to type that.) For some reason, many decades ago, someone decided that when we’re talking about the discoverer of America, a Spanish name just wouldn’t do, so (without asking cristobal) they changed his name. Americanized it, so to speak. He’s now “Christopher Columbus”, whether he likes it or not.
Next, what about the Germans? Their country is called “Deutschland”, but I guess that must have been too difficult to pronounce … because we call it “Germany”. We’ve added a “y” to “Italia” where none clearly belongs. We use “Japan” for a name which is clearly closer to “Nippon”. Espana (sorry, no tilde)? Spain.
It strikes me as strange that we feel the need to change the names of people, places, and things, rather than simply learn to pronounce them properly. To me, that’s linguistic arrogance.
Now, off to celebrate. Have a great day, everyone. Hey, even you folks in Britain can celebrate today … if we hadn’t declared independence, then George Bush, Dick Cheney, and most of the employees of Halliburton would all be British today! 🙂