Happy Fourth of July, everyone!
This holiday is such an interesting one. It doesn’t follow the holiday norms. I mean, it’s not connected to a religious faith like Christmas, Rosh Hashanah or Eid. It isn’t tied to the seasons like a solstice or Thanksgiving. It is not connected with a national identity, like St. Patrick’s Day or Oktoberfest.
Midcoast resident Heather D. Martin wants to know what’s on your mind; email her at heather@heatherdmartin.com.
At its core, it’s a birthday.
A big one. Each year we gather to celebrate the birth of not just one person, but an entire country. Our country.
As with any birthday or anniversary, we cannot help but pause and compare the nuanced, many faceted (and frequently flawed) reality of “what is” to the glittering perfection of the hopes, the dreams and the aspirations of “what might be” when it was first created.
It is true for people, it’s true for ideas, it’s true for nations, too.
Which is why we need birthday parties. If we are expected to wrestle with the existential angst of truth versus fantasy (what the heck happened to the pre-war era apartment in Prague I thought I’d have, and where did these extra 10 pounds come from?) then we sure as heck need some cake and ice cream to see us through.
Even more so when it’s the annual reckoning between promises of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and the day’s screaming headlines. Yes. Pass the ice cream.
Which leads me to … are you kidding me? A nationwide recall of ice cream? What?
Well, the bad news is, the recall is legit. The problem is listeria. Or, to be more precise, Listeria monocytogenes, which according to the FDA is “an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Although healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea, listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women.”
Yikes. This is serious stuff and not something to mess around with. The outbreak is linked to one major manufacturer: “Totally Cool, Inc.”
One manufacturer, but a wide range of products. Newsweek reports it impacts 13 major brands including: Friendly’s, Cumberland Farms, Hershey’s, and ChipWich, plus a bunch more.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that we here in Maine are blessed – yes, blessed I say – with a cornucopia of small, independent local creameries who have nothing to do with the listeria issue and whose ice cream can be consumed worry free.
Within easy reach of where I sit in the Midcoast, I can grab myself a scoop of Round Top, Fielder’s Choice, Shain’s of Maine, Blanchard’s Creamery, Gelato Fiasco or, of course, Gifford’s.
When I was back home up the coast I had handy access to my longtime favorites of Morton’s Moo and Pugnuts as well, stopping along the way at John’s Ice Cream if the mood strikes.
And this list represents a tiny sampling of what we in Maine have on offer. Want more? Yes. Yes, you do, because it is hot out and ice cream is delicious.
Set your browser to realmaine.com and look up their Ice Cream Trail. Yup, it is exactly what it sounds like. A whole list of creameries all there for you to explore. All Maine. All local. No recall. Just yummy, yummy goodness.
Which, well, this one conversation feels like an encapsulation of the larger conversation, doesn’t it? When we try and grapple with the big picture, the nationwide narrative, it gets overwhelming and depressing and feels unsafe and toxic. But when we bring it back to a human level, to our communities where neighbors know neighbors, life is sweet indeed.
This Fourth of July, I will dive into the birthday atmosphere and spend some time thinking about the promise – and the shortcomings – of this grand experiment that is our country. And I will fortify myself for the task with a giant helping of locally made ice cream.
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