Air show

Celebrating the dependence of independence

DEAR EXPOSEUR—It is Friday, June 26th, 2026. As I am writing this, a four-ship formation of U.S. Navy F-18s is flying over Druid Hill Park in a tight diamond. The roar of their engines is rattling the old glass window panes and setting off car alarms and causing dogs to bark in panic, and all the mourning doves and starlings and other birds are in startled flight from the boughs of the lindens and the rooflines of the century-old brick homes of my street. The cause of celebration is our nation's semiquincentennial birthday. Or, more accurately, the 250th anniversary of our nation's birth announcement.

I do not own a telephoto lens. The longest focal length in my camera bag is 50mm. I can't be bothered to swap lenses (my Canon body is downstairs on its tripod, which has a 35mm prime lens fixed to it), and the camera nearest me is my fixed-lens Fuji — also a 35mm. So these shots are pretty wide.

Photographing airplanes is an art form unto itself, and not one I am particularly talented at. But I have enjoyed leaning out the window over the street, watching another hot day in the city, with my neighbors running their errands and the kids across the street selling homemade bracelets and Mr. Anthony mulching the tree beds.

As I hang out the window in the sweltering, humid air of the afternoon, I also admire the precision and the talent of the pilots. They have been practicing for the past two days, doing loop-de-loops and barrel rolls and other spectacular feats of aerial prowess overhead. It is all very grand. There are some neat videos on Reddit of the Blue Angels depositing red, white, and blue smoke over Harbor East.

Despite all the precision and the showmanship, I don't feel particularly celebratory.

I keep thinking about the cost of this patriotic panem et circenses, maybe because of the other work I’ve been doing lately. I know, I know. How cynical can I be?

Celebrating our nation in a year that has seen staggering job losses, a soaring cost of living, rising authoritarianism, and flagrant white nationalism at the highest levels of government feels wrong.

The jets will finish their run and bank back toward wherever they came from, and the roar will fade out of the brick canyons of the city, and my neighbors and their kindness and community service will still be here.

Today a community center left pallets of blackberries out on the corner for anyone who needed them. The man who runs the trash route on my street, who lives right across from me, knocked on my elderly neighbors’ door to check on them; they’ve been in poor health for a while now, and he wanted to know how they were holding up. Across the city this week, people gave up their Tuesday to work the primary and sit with the count until it came out right. And the Safe Streets coordinators are out there every night talking young men down off the worst nights of their lives, the reason this city is as safe now as it has been in years.

The most admirable facet of America has always been exactly this: empathy, and the plain work of looking after the people nearest you.

As we leave June behind and near the anniversary of our independence, remember that the rugged self-reliance we are being told is exceptional is anything but. Real patriotism comes from tenderness, from compassion, and from admitting that we are all pretty dependent on one another. I think that's worth celebrating, and we don't need an air show to do it.