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So I just picked up my copy of Harry Potter 7 from the Waterstones at Picadilly Circus. (Can I just tell you I love the fact that I got the book seven hours before everyone else in the states??) It was the official release party in England. After six hours of waiting (in two sweaters and a Gryffindor robe, nonetheless) I finally got my hands on a copy. And I should be excited. All my questions will be answered. But the truth is that I just don’t know what to do with myself in a post-Potter world.

But I guess that won’t stop me from reading. Off to chapter 1.

The fourth of July is upon us once again. For the next week or two, it will become impossible to go outside without being greeted by an olfactory mix of barbecues, bug repellent, and the ever-present smoke and sulfur. We’ll be celebrating the birth of this great nation with full patriotic pomp and circumstance—parades and picnics, floats and flags, candy and crowds.

Yesterday, I went to my city’s annual patriotic celebration. In classic American tradition, this celebration has gotten bigger and better each year since its inception. The closing fireworks were so spectacular that they elicited involuntary “oohs and aahs” from even the most seasoned veterans of firework displays. It was a complete success. But really, does this pyrotechnic event truly symbolize our American identity?

One of the most famous American symbols, the Statue of Liberty, points us in another direction. Written in the pedestal on which the statue stands, is the following invitation:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Not only does the statue welcome the poor and downtrodden to our country, it does so with an implicit promise that America will become a “land of opportunity” to these people, that circumstances in our country will be markedly better than those they left. Read more