No. 19 of 108
July 2, 2025
In “old” news you may have missed (3 days ago), an article described how visitors to national parks responded to QR codes on signs encouraging reporting on the effort to remove negative signs and information about “past or living Americans”. The overhaul effort is part of an executive order across federal institutions, particularly focusing on “corrosive ideology” about historic racism and sexism. Some comments indeed praised efforts, criticized divisiveness, “went too far”, “uncomfortable”, praised reinstatement of historical figures. Mostly people expressed love for “our parks”, “our park rangers”, “our bears”. Less mosquitoes, please. Too many mosquitoes! More moose… where are the moose?! No more cuts! Hire back, hire more. The bathrooms are dirtier now because of the cuts! Don’t sell the land! We should know what happened at Manzanar. Why did you change the native names? Denali fits better than McKinley because Denali is what the name was. We come every year. We love this place. We love our park rangers. (In today’s news, the House can’t proceed on the Big Beautiful Bill due to conservative holdouts. A judge blocked the rule of banning migrants from making asylum claims.)
Americans have feelings about the places that are called National this or National that. Less as a reflection of a country in a nationalistic way, more as a reflection of a country in which we/they the people claim as “our”. When Americans say they love, that is exactly what they mean. Gallup recently reported just 58% of adults are extremely or very proud to be American, the lowest level of national pride in more than twenty years. Okay. It is possible to be not proud of what’s happening or how it’s happening or why it’s happening and still have love. If there is love, then perhaps kuleana – mutual responsibility – can seed. If, when, and where there is love.
No. 19 of 108