FIELD TRIP 250!

freedom & OOTD quarrels, Stevie Wonder, and mysteries

It is Independence Day in the United States, the big 250, and very hot. I am going to eat a Chicago dog, stand in a bathwater-warm pool drinking a cold slushy bev, and, later, whip up a berry-adorned tart to share with friends as we watch an enormous, illegal fireworks display engineered by my industrious and pyrotechnically obsessed neighbor, Aaron.

Currently: the teenager is mad at me because I gave her 4th fit a side-eye. Tiny red tube top, tiniest blue jean shorts, cowboy boots (those are mine btw). I understand her frustration, but I maintain the right to state an opinion on the near-nudity of this sartorial combo. She reminded me that she is 18 and can wear what she wants.

We are all free today. I will wear my Dolly’s Tennessean Travel Stop hat, red sequined pasties, and granny panties.

Are you near nude and reading today? I hope so. (Honestly, it’s too hot for anything else.) I have a recommendation! Back in March I read this deeply researched and funny AF piece by Jill Lepore, “Scandal, Protest, Goofiness, and Grandeur at the US Bicentennial,” about the various ways our civic leaders have attempted to celebrate America’s birthday over the decades. Here’s how it starts:

Just after noon on July 1, 1976—an otherwise sleepy Thursday except that it was less than seventy-two hours until the Bicentennial—President Gerald Ford entered the U. S. Capitol. He then made his way to the National Statuary Hall, strode across its marble floor, and approached an ornate, thirty-five-hundred-pound, five-foot-tall, four-foot-wide cast-iron safe that had been sealed a hundred years earlier. Photographers stood poised, fingertips hovering over shutter buttons. The President, in a three-piece suit, was there to open the safe.

Don’t you want to know what was in the safe?!?!

Well, keep reading. Along the way, you’ll encounter lines like this:

Early American Fourths of July brought out the star-spangled bandstand, helping to build a sense of national unity where there hadn’t really been one, not because Americans agreed about what the anniversary meant but because they disagreed, publicly, boisterously, and pyrotechnically.

and this:

Up until the two hundred and fiftieth, which, save a miracle, is going to break all earlier records for dismal misadventure, regrettable calamity, and shocking violence, no fifty-year anniversary of the founding was more turbulent than the Bicentennial.

and this:

No one especially knew what to call the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary, a sesquicentennial that promoters tried to bill, complete with punctuation, as “the Sesqui!”

I strongly urge you to read the whole thing.

SONG FTW!

While we were in Memphis a few weeks ago, I woke up one morning with the song “Jammin’” by Stevie Wonder in my head. (Oh, the mystery & magic of waking up with the most random songs in one’s head, in this case a song I had not listened to in decades!) When I mentioned this to my fellow-Stevie-fan husband, he pooh-poohed said song, or the album it is on, Hotter Than July, as not the good era Stevie. Too 80s, when everything good went bad, is what he meant. Sourpuss stuff on his part.

Often I agree with this take. I am not above sourpussing. But I’m here to tell you that Hotter Than July has some excellent cuts, is an interesting listen overall—inconceivably, Stevie dips into country on track 4, “I Ain’t Gonna Stand For It;” there’s pedal steel! It’s a country-funk ditty—and look-a-here, none other than Hanif Abdurraqib reviewed Hotter Than July for Pitchfork in 2022.

At the moment I am as frustrated as my daughter was by me earlier, because Pitchfork briefly let me see the full text of the review, only to snatch it back behind a paywall. Nice peep show, this.

But here’s what Abdurraqib had to say about Hotter Than July in an NPR interview that same year: “I actually think that Hotter Than July would be considered a part of this classic run, if not for - and I have to say this is not my opinion, but I think the historical critical opinion - if there wasn't the interruption of Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants.”

Anyway, you should probably definitely listen to “Jammin’” today, which is actually called “Master Blaster (Jammin’)” and is a fond nod to Bob Marley.

Never forget: America gave us Stevie Wonder, y’all.

You ask me, am I happy?
Well as matter of fact
I can say that I'm ecstatic
'Cause we all just made a pact
We've agreed to get together
Joined as children in Jah
When you're moving in the positive
Your destination is the brightest star

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My rock ‘n’ roll/prodigal daughter/spiritual/literal homecoming novel, THE COME APART, is out now from TriQuarterly Books.