reframing a birthday

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

―Arundhati Roy

**The audio recording of this Morton Train is available to paid subscribers here.**

I was born on George Washington’s birthday in the year of our country’s bicentennial: February 22, 1976. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been fascinated by - and a student of - American history all my life. It has always felt kind of personal to me.

This year, during the week of my 50th birthday, on President’s Day of all days, I got results from a CT Scan that revealed I had a large mass in my pelvis. The shock and the fear in that moment was disorienting, inducing a pervasive anxiety that quickly became my new normal.

My forties were coming to a close just as I was embarking on an unpredictable - perhaps long, perhaps fatal - medical journey. As the birthday wishes began to trickle in, I was making those tedious calls that only we in America have to make: Does my primary doctor need to make the referral for the MRI and will my insurance fully cover an “in network” MRI and how soon can the MRI be “authorized,” etc.

In between those tedious calls, in a moment when I could be still and quiet, wondering what is this large pelvic mass and what is it I need to know to steady myself, a voice from deep within said, “I’m okay. I’ll be okay.” The anxiety didn’t go away in that moment but, amazingly, a feeling of real trust was born alongside it.

Despite the stressful - and as yet unknown - health situation, I managed to celebrate my big birthday and, thanks to friends and loved ones, feel celebrated on my big birthday.

But starting a whole new decade of life during a time of fear and waiting was disappointing and strange. I wasn’t ready for my 50th birthday to be over. I needed to pause this new beginning somehow. So I decided to stash a huge piece of birthday cake in the freezer, promising myself that I’d eat it only when this mysterious medical journey was over.

Three months later, after the MRI, the various blood tests and exams, the mistaken diagnosis, a surgery that my doctor described as quite unusual, and the final post-op appointment, I got the good news that I was healthy and well on my way to recovery.

And so, it was at the end of May when I took that February cake out of the freezer and happily, gratefully, devoured it.

***

This summer, of course, marks the 250th birthday of the United States of America. It was on July 4, 1776, near the start of the Revolutionary War, that the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, announcing to the world the formation of a new nation free from monarchical and theocratic rule.

Every man who signed the document put his life at risk by doing so, for it was considered an act of treason against the British crown and, therefore, punishable by death. The Declaration of Independence was groundbreaking, visionary, and incredibly idealistic in 1776.

Let’s face it. It still is today.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

It’s been 250 years and the United States has yet to thoroughly fulfill the promise of this Declaration. Given that 41 of the 56 signers were enslavers of their fellow human beings, the document has been - from its inception - more aspirational than applicative. Though certainly, in a variety of important ways, we have made marked progress in these two and a half centuries toward a more perfect union.

But dammit, here we are in 2026, approaching this milestone birthday while in the middle of a dangerous “rolling coup” as recently described by The Nation magazine. Everything about this fascist oligarchy is the antithesis of that 1776 Declaration.

I wonder, then, how do we celebrate this birthday? What exactly are we celebrating?

***

On the evening of June 14th, as the bizarre, pay-per-view “UFC Freedom 250” fight was taking place on the desecrated lawn of the White House, the Committee for the First Amendment held an event at New York City’s Town Hall.

The Committee was first formed during the McCarthy Era when artists in the Entertainment Industry were being blacklisted, intimidated, and silenced. Jane Fonda (whose father had been a leading member of the original) resurrected the Committee last year when the current administration began openly assaulting those fundamental First Amendment rights (freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government).

Because the “Rise Up” event was held on Flag Day, Fonda declared in her opening speech, “We want to take back our flag and fight for a multi-racial democracy in which everybody will feel represented.”

Fifteen hundred of us were packed into the historic Town Hall that night, a building commissioned by the League for Political Education as a forum for civic discourse over a century ago. There were hundreds of “Rise Up” watch parties held across the country too, and the event was streamed on C-SPAN, the Indivisible/ No Kings YouTube channel, and various other platforms. A multiplicity of voices was represented on the stage that evening - from a Black journalist to a queer rabbi to a Texan child to Patti Smith’s sing-a-long performance of “People Have the Power.” The event was lauded as being “star-studded” with the stars utilizing this platform to bring attention to social justice history and our growing solidarity in the face of unprecedented corruption.

The juxtaposition of the high-minded “Rise Up” event with the simultaneous cage match on the White House lawn was as stark as could be.

***

The country’s big birthday, like my own big birthday before it, is taking place during an unsettling time. And yet, just like the “I’m okay, I’ll be okay” voice that spoke up - and took up space - alongside my fear and anxiety back in February, the voices from the Town Hall stage provided me with a similar steady trust in the tough, tough journey of our citizenry right now: We’re okay, we’ll be okay.

Perhaps this July 4th is the perfect occasion to recognize that a revolutionary spirit has been reborn in us in recent months, that it is currently coursing through the collective at an unstoppable pace, that it is mysteriously uniting us during the throes of revolutionary change. (How incredible that, last weekend, there was an enormous gathering of diverse voices in DC announcing a Declaration of INTERdependence!)

As Thomas Paine wrote in his galvanizing Common Sense pamphlet back in 1776: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

Now that’s something to celebrate.