A day late and a flag wave short

Yesterday was Patriots' Day, and I did what I usually do.

I went to the Red Sox game, which on Patriots' Day has an early (11 a.m.) start. The early start time tradition started years ago, and I guess the thinking is that, because Fenway Park is just off the route of the Boston Marathon (a mile or so from the finish line), the baseball fans also get to see some of the race. The Marathon has become a lot bigger deal that it was when the early-start was introduced nearly 60 years ago, and now getting to and fro from the game requires dealing with security checkpoints and massive crazy crowds. But it's still fun to be around. More or less.

A few years back, for some reason we tried to take one of our usual ways home and ended up - thanks to blocked streets and security measures - walking a couple of miles out of our way in the cold and drizzle. But we know better now: fight the crowds into the entrance to the T-station in Kenmore Square and use the underground passageway that takes you under the Marathon Route and over to the side of the street where your passage home is not blocked.  

Anyway, the Patriots' Day game is pretty much my favorite game to see live, even if the weather is iffy (make that terrible, most of the time). I'm writing this before Game Day, so I don't know whether the Sox won or lost, or whether the game was even held. (I've had rain checks in the past.) But if the game was on, I know that, win or lose, I was enjoying it with my niece (Sweet) Caroline.

For me, the Red Sox game is a highlight of the day, as is the Marathon, which is always a good buzz (other than in 2013, when the bombing occurred). And it takes my mind off the fact that it's exceedingly difficult to enjoy this wonderful, quirky holiday in the malign era we're currently enduring.

Last year, here's a bit of what I wrote:

I've never been a big flag waver, but this year I'm feeling a definite deficit of patriotism - at least of the fervid, jingoistic, blinders-on variety that for a good long time has defined the term. But if the definition of patriotism can accommodate someone who appreciates the country for its good, wants to acknowledge the not-so-good (and the out-and-out bad), and tries to make things better by voting for good candidates, donating to good causes (increasingly of the pro-democracy kind), and showing up for demonstrations to demonstrate to the powers that regrettably be (as if they give damn) that not everyone in America welcomes the slide into autocracy/kleptocracy,well, I guess I can count myself as patriotic.

So if I'm feeling anything today, it's the red, white, and blues. (Source: Pink Slip)

Ditto for this year, with the add on that things are far, far, far worse than I could possiblly have imagined they would be way back in April 2025, when we were only a few months into Trump Redux.

I have two patriotic traditions.

On the Fourth of July, I reread the Declaration of Independence. 

And on Patriots Day, I recite  (mostly from memory) Ralph Waldo Emerson's beautiful tribute to the "embattled farmers" who "fired the shot heard round the world." The poem was first read in 1837 at the dedication of a monument at Concord Bridge honoring those "embattled farmers." It is a beautiful, tranquil spot, probably my favorite tourist site in our state.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

So much to be proud of in our history, so much good (even if there are plenty of not so proud moments, plenty of not so good, which, under the current regime, we are not supposed to admit to). 

This year, I've added William Butler Yeats' The Second Coming to my Patriots' Day mix:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

Sadly, a very rough beast has slouched into the White House. I'm a day late, and a flag wave short, to celebrate Patriots' Day 2026, other than to say God - if there is a God - help us. 

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Image Source: Commons/Wikimedia