Walt Whitman on America

My family: two parents (one of whom was the daughter of a Vietnamese import-export official during the Indochina era; the other a pilot in the South Vietnamese Air Force); five siblings (a dentist, an orthodontist, a software engineer, a software-engineer-turned-dental-assistant, and a construction foreman), three in-laws (another dentis, another engineer, a dental hygenist), and nine children. (Inference: I am the aberration here).

Today's activity: big family barbeque with burgers, hot dogs, chips, community pool, board games.

I could make some crack about assimilation, give some line about how I too, am America, or write some essay about my love for America and my love for complaining about it.

But instead, I'll just give you some Walt Whitman.

Happy Fourth of July!



Long, Too Long America

Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and
prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing,
grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children
en-masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse
really are?)