I’ve struggled since Memorial Day thinking, debating with and challenging myself on whether or not I want to celebrate the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the founding of this country. I was raised to be proud of the United States. My parents raised me to be respectful of the flag, to stand for the pledge and the National Anthem, my duty to vote and to sit on a jury, and to believe that this is the greatest country. It has that potential certainly. It could be. We are in a place where anything’s possible. If I moved to Japan, I couldn’t become Japanese, but anyone can move here and become an American. That used to be a good thing.

Let’s be honest: as much as I’m in denial, I won’t be here in fifty years to celebrate the tricentennial and it saddens me that so much of this celebration has been taken away from us. I look at the waving flags and I feel nothing but ill. Sadness of what we’ve been reduced to.

But I’m not going to let a group of corrupt racists take this week away from me. I’m not. I left my flags up for Memorial Day (as they should be flown for our fallen), and then took them down a week later. I’ve decided to put them up again for the next two weeks. I think it’s important to celebrate our past, to acknowledge and reconcile the bad, to praise the good, and to hope for the better, and for a better future filled with joy and equality, laughter and hope, so that’s what I am going to do.

Everyday this week, I’ll have something else to share, from heartfelt to commercial, consumer bandwagons, and of course, baseball…

and apple pie.