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My husband and I made a huge move this year. We moved from Montana to Maryland after having lived in Montana for 36 years. Many people thought we were crazy to move away from “paradise” back to the east coast megalopolis, away from my daughter and grandchildren. I had a stable job with tenure, was plugged into my local art community and doing relatively well with that. But things are never as simple as they may appear on the surface.

The reasons for this big move included many things, from the personal to the professional. The biggest reason was that I have a PhD and can’t get paid for it in Montana. I had maxxed out the teacher pay scale in Montana and would never get another raise for the rest of my career. The economy in Montana is now made to suit the rich and famous, not the average taxpayer–we would never have been able to afford to buy a house, and rental housing costs were rapidly rising so as to be unaffordable also.

Why am I telling you all of this in a 4th of July blog post about the MAMF Facebook banner?

Because very shortly after we arrived in Maryland, the 4th of July rolled around. With the economy being what it is, and the political climate being what it is, we were feeling very tenuous about everything, including the enormous cross-country move we had just made to an uncertain future.

However, one of the great benefits of living on the east coast is that there are so many things to do here, and there are so many options for what to do on the 4th of July. We live just outside of Baltimore, so we opted to go to Fort McHenry, birthplace of our national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner. They had a full day of activities planned from morning until evening, and we decided that was the place to be.

Yes, the Star Spangled Banner was written during the war of 1812, not the revolutionary war or during the time of our birth as a nation. But it was written at a time when our continued future as a nation was under threat and somewhat uncertain.

I found that to be an apt metaphor for what our country is experiencing now, as tens of thousands of government employees are losing their jobs, histories in our nation’s museums are being revised, and tarriffs are driving up the cost of everything so that regular people wonder how we will make ends meet.

When my husband and I were at Fort McHenry, watching the flag-raising ceremony, and then the fife and drum corps walking into the parade yard, I shed more than just a few tears for where we are right now, and also for the hope and surety that our country will surely survive these difficult times we find ourselves in right now.

“[Our] flag was still there.”

That gave me great comfort.

Whatever you found yourself doing for this 4th of July, I hope it was meaningful and more than just hot dogs and fireworks. Those things are part of the celebration too; but let us all remember that WE, the PEOPLE, are what make this country what it is, and we can all get through this together and see it through to better times.

God bless America.

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