By VERNA BROCK
I hope everyone had a good Fourth of July. It’s hard to believe we just celebrated our 250th anniversary as a country. America is clearly an adolescent nation, especially when compared to so many others. Our oldest cities and towns can’t begin to compete with London, Paris or Rome. But oh what a ride it has been!
Very few of our (manmade) landmarks are older than a couple of centuries. So many of our historic buildings have burned or crumbled. No ancient colosseums or ancient cathedrals for us. Certainly in Florida, we’re fortunate to even have buildings that date from the 1800s. Often constructed from wood, our humid climate does little to preserve them, especially without constant care and updating.
It’s one reason I’m so tickled to have our old cracker house, which is nearly 100 years old. It dates to a far slower time. Built with no electricity, indoor plumbing and a two-rut road out front, it has survived many changes, growth, and three owners. The history that has transpired in Wakulla mirrors so much of what occurred across the country. I hope I get to spend a few more years loving this place.
I like to imagine the first pioneers here, and wonder what they would think if they saw us today. I doubt they would recognize the place or imagine the fast-paced world we live in. Computers, the Internet, phones with a dozen functions, radio and television, and an age of medical miracles all make our lives much easier (if more complicated). Huge grocery stores carry everything we can possibly desire or imagine—even some things we don’t realize we want until we see them on the shelf. We can order anything, and have it delivered right to our homes, sometimes in less than twenty-four hours.
I know events can seem overwhelming. We’re all bombarded with streaming messages 24-7, and the news cycles never end. But it helps to remember the dark times this nation has weathered. From the Revolution we just celebrated, to the Civil War and Jim Crow, the Great Depression, the World Wars, the struggle for equal rights for all of our people, Vietnam, and 9/11, our people have managed to be strong. We defend and commit to the ideals which birthed this country. However flawed or long the journey, we repeatedly prove that “the moral arc of the universe continues to bend towards justice.”
All of history is a living, breathing tapestry, binding each of us to our forefathers and to one another. It will always stretch back through previous generations as an instuction, even as it points the way to the future. Where it takes us completely depends on where we as Americans choose to go.
Let us choose to follow our ideals into the future.