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Just an American in England on the 4th of July
4th of July, 2019. It’s strange to be here in lovely London. Today will not include fireworks or sparklers or hotdogs or star-shaped, red Jell-O jigglers or parades or flags waving or freedom from school. It will include watermelon and corn on the cob corn salad and celebrating with American friends. It’s just past eight in the morning and the hubs and I have already sung along to Proud to be an American and John Mellencamps’s Pink Houses (aka Ain’t that America). Undoubtedly the words Oh say can you see will escape my lips at some point today; it can’t be helped. And once you start in on that bravado…
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A Pilgrim in Progress
Since the world outside of the U.S. doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, here in London this past Thursday was, in many ways just another ordinary day. Except that it wasn’t. It was Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. So Doug and I traveled into the city on a jammed packed rush hour train to attend “Thanksgiving Day Service for the American Community in London” at St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was grand and gorgeous. We sang Come Ye Thankful People Come and America the Beautiful (sniffle, sniffle) accompanied by a thousand other Americans living in the UK, and a hearty pipe organ. Yet if I could have blinked and transported across the ocean, to my…