How do I loath thee, 4^th of July? Let me list the ways:

The noise, the smoke, the chaos, the stupidity. The dogs frightened and running away or hiding under beds. The birds disrupted and confused and killed. The fingers of children blown off. The limp rockets red glare in suburbia. The Pentecostal churches still selling fireworks as a fundraiser despite the record heat wave and imminent fire danger. Maybe they want the real fire and brimstone to lay waste to their state. The hot dogs and their maggots. Baseball and its utter boredom from start to finish. The apple pie made from apples from Chile. The jingoism and the dangerous American exceptionalism. The Statue of Bigotry (thank you Lou Reed for that line.) Dull Americans wrapping themselves in Chinese-made flags who don’t know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. One, ideals never lived up to. Second, Articles and Amendments routinely violated. The Star Spangled Banner, a national anthem inspired by a losing battle! The unvaccinated Americans who will contract covid during 4^th of July celebrations and quite possibly die exercising their “freedom” to be a dumbshit and quite possibly kill someone else, mostly likely someone they know and love.

It’s a damn funny or tragic or righteously right-on thing to see an American flag waving over a homeless encampment. But they’ll be flying. And it probably won’t be in irony. How could it with so many veterans among the homeless.

Remember that time the Secretary of the Interior James Watt didn’t want the Beach Boys to play the Mall on 4^th of July because of their undesirable rock and roll nature and the undesirables who liked rock and roll? I don’t know why I remember that 4^th of July from almost 40 years ago. It was probably the last one where something went right and the Beach Boys played anyway.

Remember that one 4^th of July one of our naval vessels shot down a commercial airliner somewhere in the Middle East by mistake and killed something like 200 civilians? I heard the news on a date with my future wife while watching fireworks. That was the last time I ever watched a fireworks show.

I remember my band Gravy debuting in a Portland basement on a 4^th of July. It rained that day. It used to rain every 4^th of July in Oregon! That was the whole point!

In protest of all the things I loathe about 4^th of July, I will make a potato salad with hippie pickles, fresh mint, oregano and mustard from a Communist country—or what used to be a Communist country!

I drove past a homeless encampment. Domiciles that defied description flashed before my eyes. Some were like centaurs in that they were half of something and half of something else. Such as: half tent, half truck; half RV, half shipping crate; half plywood shack, half tepee; half tarp, half dog house. You get the idea.

Something attached to the roof of one of the domiciles caught my attention. I did a double take. It was a rooftop television antenna, a real behemoth. Pure analog from the 1970s. How it came to be installed there, well…no matter. The better question is why install a non-functioning television antenna atop a domicile in a homeless encampment. I have pondering the answer ever since.

Possible answers:

1. Insanity
2. A big fat joke
3. A thin fuck you
4. Cultural commentary
5. Art
6. Something to do
7. To communicate with aliens
8. Sly obnoxious symbol
9. Lightning rod

I invite your answers. I’m leaning toward a combination of #2 and #5. Why? Because I laughed when I saw the antenna and I immediately grasped the intent of the artist.

Finish Ernest Hemingway’s Garden of Eden, easily one of the strangest and kinkiest novels in American literature.

Finish Jim Thompson’s The Nothing Man, easily one of the most cynical and depraved novels I’ve ever read.

Write a Gore Vidal-like political essay called “State of Oregon.”

Make a cold lentil dish.

Check for beavers in the local creek at dusk.

Read poem I composed at my uncle’s graveside service.

Drink a beer in an Oregon Tavern Age joint.

Nap outside.

Daydream.

Talk on the phone to someone who lives at the ocean.

Watch episodes of Gilligan’s Island.

I rode my bicycle leisurely down a side street. It was hovering near 90 degrees. To my left, some 20 yards away, adults supervised dozens of kids playing dodge ball on a field in a city park. I heard glee on the breeze and it sounded good. To my right, some 20 yards away, stood a homeless encampment of three battered RVs, a plywood pallet shanty, a half dozen tarped and taped vehicles, one tent, a plastic dog igloo (that presumably provided shelter for a human being) and two huge piles of garbage. Seven or so people wandered around the encampment. I heard no glee.

What crossed my mind as I rode through this American juxtaposition wrought by forces I am always trying to comprehend was this: as a kid I played in city parks all the time. I never once played within easy view of a homeless encampment. What does seeing that do to contemporary kids? What do adults say about it, if they say anything at all. Surely they must. These used to be called teaching moments, but I suppose they don’t call these encounters with the homeless teaching moments anymore because they aren’t supposed to happen all the time about the same subject. These teaching moments are supposed to be extraordinary in nature and not a routine daily occurrence. I would say these constant encounters of juxtaposition I just described create a new kind of visceral curriculum. I wonder if teachers are teaching with this curriculum. I certainly would be if I were still in the classroom and I know I would have taken my classes up to these encampments, observed, and asked the residents to discuss what was happening. Perhaps we would have documented the experience with some method. Perhaps they would have told me to fuck off.

Or perhaps I wouldn’t have done a damn thing. Can you really take school age students on a field trip to a homeless encampment? What about adult students in a writing workshop? Now that’s something to consider. We could even walk.