Deep Thoughts

"What is the best of the American way of life?"

At the beginning of the year, I asked all of my first year students (that is, the freshmen) to write five questions they had about life in the United States. I wanted to gauge their facility with English, but I also wanted to see what they were interested in knowing. Many of their questions were things like "How many people live in the US?" and "What is the US like?" but some of them were funny or intriguing. One girl wrote, "What kind of boys are there in California?" One boy asked about trucks, another about why the US uses 110 volts while everywhere else uses 220. The funniest was, "Are refrigerators in the US bigger than in Europe?" (Yes.) But one of the questions I like the best was the one above.

I know it's worded a little awkwardly, but it sounds like an NPR question that way. And it made me wonder, what is the best of the American way of life? How can you describe to students all the great things about our country? I don't really know where to begin; In-N-Out keeps springing to mind, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. In-N-Out, county fairs, Fourth of July concerts, apples at an orchard market, tons of little things that you take for granted. So here's my question to readers: What, in your opinion, is the best of the American way of life? I doubt I'll actually get any responses, but I'd appreciate anything that comes this way. At the very least, I hope you all consider the question carefully, without cynicism or political bias.

And now here's a little Walt Whitman for ya.

1
A song of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms--a song of the soil of fields.

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork;
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.

2
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself,
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields,
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to Thee,
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart,
Tuning a verse for thee.

O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice!
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths!
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb!
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee.
--from "A Carol for Harvest, for 1867"