America

Also, a Mystery Log.

Tomorrow is July 4, 2026, and if you’re a student of American history, you know what that means: It means I’ll be trying to recover from celebrating my 79th birthday, which is today.

But it also means that tomorrow the United States will celebrate its 250th birthday, the anniversary of that fateful day in 1776 when the Founding Fathers adopted the Declaration of Independence, an act for which they could have been hanged. Imagine being that brave. Granted, you and I routinely accept “Terms of Service” agreements that, for all we know, give Google and Microsoft the right to harvest our kidneys with unsterilized toenail clippers. But that’s not us being brave; that’s just us being stupid. The Founding Fathers knew what they were risking, and they did it anyway, and that’s why today we live in the greatest nation on Earth by almost every meaningful statistical measure. To cite just one:

Source: The Central Intelligence Agency

Yes, we have a lot to celebrate, and tomorrow there will be festivities from sea to shining sea. The most spectacular celebration, of course, will be in Washington. D.C., where a huge crowd is expected to gather for the lighting of the Official Semiquincentennial Sparkler, which, at 150 feet tall, is believed to be the largest sparkler ever made. Here it is here being installed by workers on the National Mall:

The Semiquincentennial Sparkler was built by Lockheed Martin at a cost of $27 million. Once ignited, it’s expected to be visible as far away as Cleveland. A spokesperson for the the National Park Service stated that the sparkler is “probably very safe,” but suggested that, as a precaution, spectators should “be prepared to flee.”

So it’s a patriotic time in our nation, and that’s why my topic today is:

WHAT MAKES AMERICA GREAT

What does make America great? That’s the question I was asking myself in preparation for writing this essay when a man named Joey Smith rang my doorbell. Joey is the proprietor of Trees Gone Wild, a service that comes around every year to trim our trees, the idea being that if there’s a hurricane, we won’t have 165 m.p.h. oak missiles whizzing through our family room.

Joey wanted me to come outside. “Got a present for you,” he said.

Here’s what it was:

This log came from a palm tree that the workers were removing because it was dead. A worker named Alfredo Salguero had climbed the palm and was lopping off pieces with a chainsaw when he noticed that this section had a hole in it. So instead of letting it fall to the ground, he tied a rope around it and lowered it gently. The workers heard squeaky noises coming from the hole; they figured there were baby animals in there, maybe squirrels.

So now Michelle and I were the owners of a mystery log. There was definitely something alive in there, and whatever it was, it was making quite a bit of noise. Michelle, who is not a wildlife biologist but is a mom, thought it was birds. So I stuck my iPhone into the hole and took a photo, and...

Yup. Definitely birds. Three of them, calling for their mommy, who was probably around somewhere, wondering what the heck happened to her tree.

So I made some phone calls and eventually got in touch with Karen Dettmann, who runs an operation in the Florida Keys called Ark Angels Wildlife Rescue. She said that if I could get the baby birds to her, she’d get them to a person in the Keys who specializes in rescuing wild birds. Karen suggested that we meet for a handoff the next morning at a location roughly halfway between us, in the parking lot of a place called Sonny’s BBQ in Florida City. She said it was next to the Walmart Supercenter, if I was familiar with that.

As it happens, I was. In June 2000 I did a story for the Miami Herald about RV people camping overnight in Walmart parking lots; for the story I rented an RV and spent the night with my family in the Florida City Supercenter lot. Here’s the staged photo that the Herald ran with my story, showing Michelle and me pretending we’re having the time of our lives sitting around on hot grimy asphalt, and four-month-old Sophie Barry clearly wondering how she can get in touch with Child Protective Services.

Al Diaz, the Miami Herald

Actually, that night was kind of fun; we spent several entertaining hours wandering around the Supercenter, which is the same size as Europe but contains more merchandise. Back then the Supercenter was open 24 hours, which meant that if for whatever reason at 2:30 a.m. you urgently needed to purchase pillowcases, lawn fertilizer, Milk Duds, a whisk broom, a refrigerator and a kayak, you only had to make one stop.

But getting back to our baby birds: The next morning I tied their log to the passenger seat of my car, and Michelle put some comforters around it to keep them comfortable. Here’s a photo of the log and me preparing to depart on our mission:

The birds were still making quite a bit of noise, as you can hear in this video:

It was a 45-minute drive from my house to Florida City, and the birds kept talking the whole way. I found myself talking back, trying to reassure them that all would be well. This is going to sound a little weird, but: It was almost as if the log and I were having a conversation, even developing a relationship, as suggested by the AI-enhanced image below, in which the log has been anthropomorphized into Louie the Log, here telling me an amusing story:

When I got to Sonny’s BBQ, it was pouring rain. Karen showed up a little while later, apologizing for being late; she’d been bottle-feeding baby raccoons, of which she’s caring for more than a dozen. Here’s Karen:

And here’s a picture she sent me of one of the baby raccoons:

Karen Dettmann

Aww.

I untied Louie the Log and wedged him into the backseat of Karen’s truck, then said goodbye to the three baby birds, which was sad, but you have to let them go sometime. They were still talking nonstop. Kids these days.

For the rest of the day Michelle and I fretted about how the babies were doing, so we were relieved when, the next morning, I got a text from Kelly Grinter, founder of the Marathon Wild Bird Center down in the Middle Keys, who had received the birds from Karen. She reported that they were woodpeckers, and they were OK.

“So far, so good!” she wrote. “Crazy the size differences. The little guy is struggling but holding his own. The other two are doing very well!”

Kelly sent a video, which gave us our first chance to get a good look at the baby birds:

So they’re not going to win the Cutest Baby Animal Contest, especially if they have to go up against the raccoons. But they’ve been through a lot. And they’ll look better once they put some clothes on.

Anyway, I’m glad they’re doing OK. I’m sorry that our tree-trimming caused them to become homeless, but they’re in good hands, literally, and ideally they’ll grow up strong and healthy, and before long they’ll be whacking away at trees with their heads, as Nature intended.

The thing is, all this drama prevented me from getting around to writing my Semiquincentennial essay on the topic of:

WHAT MAKES AMERICA GREAT

But what I would have written, if I hadn’t been distracted, is, in brief, this: What makes America great — prepare for a searing insight — is Americans. I don’t mean American politicians; I mean everyday, hardworking, generous, friendly, decent Americans, who I believe greatly outnumber the idiots. I mean the people who hold the door for you, and say “thank you” when you hold the door for them, and buy Girl Scout cookies even though they already have some at home, and never butt in line, and will lend you their jumper cables, and will take the trouble to lower a log gently to the ground instead of dropping it because there might be critters inside, and will take time out from bottle-feeding a dozen baby raccoons to schlep 50 miles in the rain so they can take custody of three baby woodpeckers, and all the other millions of small but good things that millions of Americans do every day. Which is not to say we can’t be better. But I sincerely believe — and I’m a professionally cynical old guy of 79 — that we’re pretty good.

So happy birthday to us.

OK, I’m getting sappy, so it’s time to turn things over to — speaking of greatness — you paying subscribers. Today we have three scientific polls.