A Patriotic Gift 2024
A nice thing happened to me — a thing that was unexpectedly nice. I asked for something and I got it. Just like that.
Though an Army brat, I’m not an uber-overt patriot. But as a musician in bands and orchestras, I’ve played lots of patriotic concerts. It’s usually fun for my piccolo to flit cheerfully above the tubas and trombones. It’s sometimes moving when we play the anthems for each of the US military services as veterans of each service stand, some tottering, but still proud. Of course, since I live near Ft. Campbell Kentucky, home of my dad’s unit, the famed 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles,” the longest applause is for the US Army.
After decades away, coming back to my red-state home from mostly blue or at least purple states was hard. Very hard. Tardy to the party as usual, this Tennessee town finally put up a statue celebrating women’s suffrage a few years after I returned to the South. The statue was put up a hundred years after the fact but, whatever, better late than never.
With another piccolo player and a drummer, I’d marched at the head of the parade walking a few blocks from the courthouse to the public square. We played spirited fife and drum tunes from the days of the Revolutionary and Civil wars. I’d been doing some research and found out that blacks and native Americans were allowed into US military fife and drum corps in lieu of giving us guns to fight. Uh-huh.
Sidebar: One reason California is so progressive on gun safety laws is because in the Sixties patriots like the Black Panthers started applying the second amendment reading that, to paraphrase Oprah, “you get a gun, you get a gun, everyone gets a gun” to themselves. The image of strong black men with automatic weapons was more that republicans in the state could process. Hence, gun laws.
The issues came with the more formal patriotic programs performed outside for an audience seated in rickety metal chairs, mostly senior citizens from local assisted living venues. In addition to being longer, the concert band consisting of professionals, semi-pros, and talented amateurs] normally includes a flag-bearing color guard from the local all-white Sons of the American Revolution chapter (FYI: their female counterpart chapter in DC was the group that banned Marian Anderson from Constitution Hall). We also include a short speech by a local historian, professor emeritus of the nearby state university.
Over the years, the professor’s speeches got to a point where, much as I love playing, I considered dropping out of these annual events. The speaker, a small-of-stature elderly white male, repeatedly spoke of an imaginary country consistent with a conservative pre-MAGA dreamscape, where everything was wonderful, everyone was courageous and god-fearing (but only via Jesus), every word was truth (except the lies needed to salve egos), and by implication every person was white. No mention of mistakes the nation has made.
To me, addressing the nation’s horrible wrongs, like the Trail of Tears, Japanese internment, and, of course, the big kahuna — slavery — would be a way of highlighting our strength and progress as a nation, but no.
In recent years, the speaker has heard me speak on similar topics at historical sites and has now begun to acknowledge in the most mild-mannered way possible that perhaps the US has made mistakes in the past, but those are far behind us now. His attitude sometimes reminds me of the fact that virtually every book I read in public high school and the local state college was by white men, about white men, for white men. The courses were also taught by white men. Interestingly, once I got to Ivy-level schools, there was a little more diversity.
Anyway, in one college situation, we had read, I think it was Catcher in the Rye or something. The protagonist had done something and the professor had asserted that behavior as a “universal reaction.” I remember thinking, “So I guess I’m invisible, nonexistent, living in an alternate universe because not I, nor anybody I knew or had ever known, would ever behave like that.” It was both an issue of race and gender.
But I didn’t say anything. Part of it was not caring enough to speak up. If a white man could manage to get a doctorate, live through desegregation which had happened fewer than ten years before, teach at a university, and still stay so ignorant, I couldn’t be bothered to help him. Part of it was being the only chocolate chip on a class of pure vanilla ice cream, or to put it bluntly, the only black person in a state college class in the birthplace of the Klan.
After college, I didn’t realize how grateful I would for the tiniest bit of inclusion until I was watching the first episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. As a fan of the original, I’d always been a bit put off by Uhura as, essentially, a secretary in space. This was common for sci-fi written by white males; they could imagine all kinds of technological wonders, but not a single societal change between races and genders. Thank GOD for Octavia Butler. But I digress.
Star Trek’s opening narration about the Starship Enterprise whose crew would “bravely go where no man has gone before” left me shivering in the chilly secretarial pool. But loving the show, especially Spock and Sulu, I just let it go as one more unavoidable example of white male power.
But then when TNG changed the narration to a crew that would “bravely go where no one has gone before” I brightened, stunned, surprised. I nearly teared up. It meant so much. Just one word. Such a small thing, but after years of exclusion, this tiny window of inclusion made me so grateful. It was so nice. So when we got to this latest concert, the Star Trek paradigm came back to me.
Last year, we’d included “I Still Do,” a song from a Christian theater piece called: We Hold These Truths: A Patriotic Musical Based On Eternal Truths. It’s pleasant light pop music, or what my friend, the classical soprano, calls “Jesus is my boyfriend music,” music with a bland rock beat common in white megachurches where the only black presence is in the musical style. Charlie, the guy who regularly sings with us for these events sang these lyrics:
I used to believe with all my heart in the land of the brave and the free
I used to think every man had a right to be what he wanted to be
And I used to think every nation should stand for God and rights
I used to believe that a patriot’s creed should be freedom at any price
And I still do.
Not again, I said. We got the vote in the 1920s. [I got out of college in the 1970s.] TNG premiered in the 1990s. How is it we’re in a new millenium and these people are still singing old-timey concepts that exclude women while the speeches are still excluding minorities. Hell-to-the-naw.
Quietly, I took Charlie aside and asked him to change the one word, man to one. He agreed, but kind of mumbled it in performance so it was unclear what he was singing.
This year, same song, same “every man” BS. So I went beyond Charlie to the director. Mike is a white male from Pennsylvania Dutch country who’d met his first black person in his twenties when he joined the military.
Mike has directed military bands around the world, conducting standard marches, newly commissioned works, and jazz classics. Perhaps, because he was from a community where black people were nonexistent and therefore not seen as a threat, followed by his stint in a military that had desegregated nearly a decade before the town we were currently in, he was fair-minded. If you were talented, you were featured. He gave leadership roles to those who proved they were ready. I was section leader, principal player, and, because of my musicology background, I was often chosen to give verbal program notes for pieces.
So since Charlie couldn’t be trusted to remember 50% of the population, I went straight to the top. I emailed Mike and asked if that one word could be changed. Could we change “every man” to “every one.”]
At the next rehearsal, I took my sheet music out of my folder. After Charlie’s introductory speech, the music begins with solo flute — me — playing the opening phrase of “My country ’tis of thee.” Then, as the rest of the group softly joins in, he begins to sing the verse.
I used to believe with all my heart in the land of the brave and the free
I used to think every one had a right to be what he wanted to be
There it was. No muss, no fuss. Just one word that acknowledged my existence as well as that of women, who constitute nearly half the group. I brightened, stunned, surprised. I nearly teared up. It meant so much. Just one word. Such a small thing, but after years of exclusion, this tiny window of inclusion made me so grateful. It was so nice. Maybe I’m part of this universe after all.
